There was something reassuring about the Globe and Laurel that made me feel safe. Brick, with simple lines and not a hint of ostentation, the restaurant occupied a sliver of northern Virginia real estate in Triangle, near the U.S. Marine Corps base. The narrow strip of lawn in front was always tidy, boxwoods neatly pruned, the parking lot orderly, every car within the painted bound allotted space.
Semper Fidelis was over the door, and stepping inside I was welcomed by the cream of the "always faithful" crop: police chiefs, four-star generals, secretaries of defense, directors of the FBI and CIA, the photographs so apes of its familiar to me that the men sternly smiling in them seemed a host of long-lost friends. Maj. Jim Yancey whose bronzed combat boots from Vietnam were on top of the piano across from the bar, strode across recd: Highland tartan carpet and intercepted me.
"Dr. Scarpetta," he said, grinning as he shook my hand. "I was afraid you didn't like the food when last you were here, and that's why you waited so long come back."
The major's casual attire of turtleneck sweater a corduroy trousers could not camouflage his former profession. He was as military as a campaign hat, posture proudly straight, not an ounce of fat, white hair in a buzz cut. Past retirement age, he still looked fit enough for combat, and it wasn't hard for me to imagine him bumping over rugged terrain in a Jeep or eating rations from a can in the jungle while monsoon rains hammer down.
"I've never had a bad meal here, and you know it," I said warmly.
"You're looking for Benton, and he's looking for you. The old boy's around there" - he pointed - "in his usual foxhole."
"Thank you, Jim. I know the way. And it's so good see you again."
He winked at me and returned to the bar.
It was Mark who had introduced me to Major Yancey's restaurant when I drove to Quantico two weekend every month to see him. As I walked beneath a ceiling covered with police patches and passed displays of old Corps memorabilia, recollections tugged at my heart. I could pick out the tables where Mark and I had sat, and it seemed odd to see strangers there now, engaged in their own private conversations. I had not been to the Globe in almost a year.
Leaving the main dining room, I headed for a more secluded section where Wesley was waiting for me in his "foxhole," a corner table before a window with red draperies. He was sipping a drink and did not smile as we greeted each other formally. A waiter in a black tuxedo appeared to take my drink order.
Wesley looked up at me with eyes as impenetrable as a bank vault, and I responded in kind. He had signaled the first round, and we were going to come out swinging.
"I am very concerned that we're having a problem with communication, Kay," he began.
"My sentiments exactly," I said with the iron-hard calm I had perfected on the witness stand. "I, too, am concerned by our problem with communication. Is the Bureau tapping my phone, tailing me as well? I hope whoever was hiding in the woods got good photographs of Marino and me."
Wesley said just as calmly, "You, personally, are not under surveillance. The wooded area where you and Marino were spotted yesterday afternoon is under surveillance."
"Perhaps if you had kept me informed," I said, holding in my anger, "I might have told you in advance when Marino and I had decided to go back out there."
"It never occurred to me you might."
"I routinely pay retrospective visits to scenes. You've worked with me long enough to be aware of that."
"My mistake. But now you know. And I would prefer that you not go back out there again."
"I have no plans to do so," I said testily. "But should the need arise, I will be happy to give you advance warning. Might as well, since you'll find out anyway. And I certainly don't need to waste my time picking up evidence that has been planted by your agents or the police."
"Kay," he said in a softer tone, "I'm not trying interfere with your job."
"I'm being lied to, Benton. I'm told no cartridge case was recovered from the scene, only to discover it was receipted to the Bureau's laboratory more than a week ago."
"When we decided to set up surveillance, we didn't want word of it to leak," he said. "The fewer people told about what we were up to the better."
"Obviously, you must be assuming the killer might return to the scene."
"It's a possibility."
"Did you entertain this possibility with the first four cases?"
"It's different this time."
"Why?"
"Because he left evidence, and he knows it."
"If he were so worried about the cartridge case, he had had plenty of time to go back and look for it last
fall." I said.
"He may not know we would figure out Deborah Harvey was shot, that a Hydra-Shok bullet would be recovered from her body."
"I don't believe the individual we're dealing wig is stupid," I said.
The waiter returned with my Scotch and soda.
Wesley went on, "The cartridge case you recovered was planted. I won't deny that. And yes, you and Marino walked into an area under physical surveillance. There were two men hiding in the woods. They saw everything the two of you did, including picking up the cartridge case. Had you not called me, I would have called you."
"I'd like to think you would have."
"I would have explained. Would have had no choice, really, because you inadvertently upset the apple cart. And you're right."
He reached for his drink. "I should have let you know in advance; then none of this would have happened and we wouldn't have been forced to call things off, or better put, postpone them."
"What have you postponed, exactly?"
"Had you and Marino not stumbled upon what we were doing, tomorrow morning's news would have carried a story targeted at the killer."
He paused. "Disinformation to draw him out, make him worry. The story will run, but not until Monday."
"And the point of it?" I asked.
"We want him to think that something turned up during the examination of the bodies. Something to make us believe he left important evidence at the scene.
Alleged this, alleged that, with plenty of denials and no comments from the police. All of it intended to imply that whatever this evidence is, we've had no luck finding it yet. The killer knows he left a cartridge case out there. If he gets sufficiently paranoid and returns to look for it we'll be waiting, watching him pick up the one we planted, get it on film, and then grab him."
"The cartridge case is worthless unless you have him and the gun. Why would he risk returning to the scene, especially if it appears that the police are busy looking around out there for this evidence?"
I wanted "He may be worried about a lot of things, because he lost control of the situation. Had to have, or it would not have been necessary to shoot Deborah in the back. It might not have been necessary to shoot her at all. It appears he murdered Cheney without using a gun. How does he know what we're really looking for, Kay? Maybe it's cartridge case. Maybe it's something else. He isn't going be certain about the exact condition of the bodies when they were found. We don't know what he did to the couple and he doesn't really know what you may have discovered while doing the autopsies. And he might not go back out there the day after the story runs, but he might try it week or two later if everything seems quiet."
"I doubt your disinformation tactic will work," I said.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The killer evidence. We'd be foolish not to act on that."
The opening was too wide for me to resist walking through it. "And have you acted on evidence found in the first four cases, Benton? It's my understanding that a jack of hearts was recovered inside each of the vehicles.
A detail you apparently have worked very hard to suppress."
"Who told you this?"
he asked, the expression on his face unchanged. He did not even look surprised.
"Is it true?"
"Yes."
"And did you find a card in the Harvey-Cheney case?"
Wesley stared off across the room, nodding at the waiter. "I recommend the filet mignon."
He opened his menu. "That or the lamb chops."
I placed my order as my heart pounded. I lit a cigarette, unable to relax, my mind frenetically groping for a way to break through.
"You didn't answer my question."
"I don't see how it is relevant to your role in the investigation," he said.
"The police waited hours before calling me to the scene. The bodies had been moved, tampered with, by the time I got there. I'm being stonewalled by investigators, you've asked me to indefinitely pend the cause and manner of Fred's and Deborah's deaths. Meanwhile, Pat Harvey is threatening to get a court order because I won't release my findings."
I paused. He remained unflappable.
"Finally," I concluded, my words beginning to bite, "I make a retrospective visit to a scene without knowing it's under surveillance or that the evidence I collected was planted. And you don't think the details of these cases are relevant to my role in the investigation? I'm no longer sure I even have a role in the investigation. Or at least you seem determined to make sure I don't have one."
"I'm not doing anything of the sort."
"Then someone is."
He did not reply.
"If a jack of hearts was found inside Deborah's Jeep on somewhere near their bodies, it's important for me to know. It would link the deaths of all five couples. When there's a serial killer on the loose in Virginia, it is of great concern to me."
Then he caught me off guard. "How much have you been telling Abby Turnbull?"
"I haven't been telling her anything," I said, my heart pounding harder.
"You've met with her, Kay. I'm sure you won't deny that."
"Mark told you, and I'm sure you won't deny that."
"Mark would have no reason to know you saw Abby in Richmond or Washington unless you told him. And any event, he would have no reason to pass this along."
I stared at him. How could Wesley have known I had seen Abby in Washington unless she really was being watched? "When Abby came to see me in Richmond," I said "Mark called and I mentioned she was visiting. Are you telling me he said nothing to you?"
"He didn't."
"Then how did you find out?"
"There are some things I can't tell you. And you're just going to have to trust me."
The waiter set down our salads, and we ate in silence. Wesley did not speak again until our main courses arrived.
"I'm under a lot of pressure," he said in a quiet voice.
"I can see that. You look exhausted, run-down."
"Thank you, Doctor," he said ironically.
"You've changed in other ways as well."
I pushed the point.
"I'm sure that is your perception."
"You're shutting me out, Benton."
"I suppose I keep my distance because you ask questions that I can't answer; so does Marino. And then I feel even more pressure. Do you understand?"
"1'm trying to understand," I said.
"I can't tell you everything. Can you let it go at that?"
"Not quite. Because that's where we're at cross-purposes. I have information you need. And you have information I need. I'm not going to show you mine unless you show me yours."
He surprised me by laughing.
"Do you think we can strike a deal under these terms?"
I persisted.
"It looks like I don't have much of a choice."
"You don't," I said.
"Yes, we did find a jack of hearts in the Harvey-Cheney case. Yes, I did have their bodies moved before you arrived at the scene, and I know that was poor form, but you have no idea why the cards are so significant of the problems that would be precipitated by word of them leaking. If it made the newspapers, for example I'm not going to say anything further about that right now."
"Where was the card?" I asked.
"We found it inside Deborah Harvey's purse. When a couple of the cops helped me turn her over, we found the purse under her body."
"Are you suggesting that the killer carried her purse out into the woods?"
"Yes. It wouldn't make any sense to think Deborah carried her purse out there."
"In the other cases," I pointed out, the card was left in plain sight inside the vehicle."
"Exactly. Where the card was found is just one more inconsistency. Why wasn't it left inside the Jeep? Another inconsistency is that the cards left in the other cases are Bicycle playing cards. The one left with Deborah is a different brand. Then there's the matter of fibers."
"What fibers?" I asked.
Though I had collected fibers from all of the decomposed bodies, most of them were consistent with the victims' own clothing or the upholstery of the vehicles. Unknown fibers - what few I had found - had supplied no link between the cases, had proved useless so far.
"In the four cases preceding Deborah's and Fred's murders," Wesley said, "white cotton fibers were recovered from the driver's seat of each abandoned car.
"That's news to me," I said, irritation flaring again.
"The fiber analysis was done by our labs," he explained.
"And what is your interpretation?" I asked.
"The pattern of fibers recovered is interesting. Since the victims weren't wearing white cotton clothing at the time of their deaths, I have to assume that the fibers were left by the perpetrator, and this places him driving the victims' cars after the crimes. But we've been assuming that all along. One has to consider his clothing. And a possibility is that he was wearing some type of uniform when he encountered the couples. White cotton trousers. I don't know. But no white cotton fibers were recovered from the driver's seat of Deborah Harvey's Jeep."
"What did you find inside her Jeep?" I asked.
"Nothing that tells me anything right now. In fact, the interior was immaculate."
He paused, cutting his steak. "The point is, the MO's different enough in this case to worry me a lot, because of the other circumstances."
"Because one of the victims is the Drug Czar's daughter, and you're still considering that what happened to Deborah may have been politically motivated, related to her mother's antidrug endeavors," I said.
He nodded. "We can't rule out that the murders of Deborah and her boyfriend were disguised to resemble the other cases."
"If their deaths aren't related to the others, and were a hit," I asked skeptically, "then how do you explain their killer knowing about the cards, Benton? Even I didn't find out about the jack of hearts until recently. Certainly it hasn't been in the newspapers."
"Pat Harvey knows," he startled me by saying.
Abby, I thought. And I was willing to bet that Abby had divulged the detail to Mrs. Harvey, and that Wesley knew this.
"How long has Mrs. Harvey known about the cards," I asked.
"When her daughter's Jeep was found, she asked if we'd recovered a card. And she called me about again after the bodies turned up."
"I don't understand," I said. "Why would she have known last fall? It sounds to me as if she knew the details of the other cases before Deborah and Fred disappeared."
"She knew some of the details. Pat Harvey was interested in these cases long before she had persona; motivation."
"You've heard some of the theories," he said. "Drug overdoses. Some new weird designer drug on the street, the kids going out in the woods to party and ending up dead. Or some drug dealer who gets his thrills by selling bad stuff in some remote place, then watching the couples die."
"I've heard the theories, and there is nothing to support them. Toxicology results were negative for drugs in the first eight deaths."
"I remember that from the reports," he said," thoughtfully. "But I also assumed this didn't necessarily mean the kids hadn't been involved in drugs. Their bodies were almost skeletonized. Doesn't seem there was much left to test."
"There was some red tissue left, muscle. That's enough for testing. Cocaine or heroin, for example. We, at least, would have expected to find their metabolites of benzoylecogonine or morphine. As for designer drugs, we tested for analogues of PCP, amphetamines."
"What about China White?"
he proposed, referring to a very potent synthetic analgesic popular in California. "From what I understand, it doesn't take much for an overdose and is difficult to detect."
"True. Less than one milligram can be fatal, meaning the concentration is too low to detect without using special analytical procedures such as RLA."
Noting the blank expression on his face, I explained, "Radioimmunoassay, a procedure based on specific drug antibody reactions. Unlike conventional screening procedures, RIA can detect small levels of drugs, so it's what we resort to when looking for China White, LSD, THC."
"None of which you found."
"That's correct."
"What about alcohol?"
"Alcohol's a problem when bodies are badly decomposed. Some of those tests were negative, others less than point oh-five, possibly the result of decomposition. Inconclusive, in other words."
"With Harvey and Cheney as well?"
"No trace of drugs so far," I told him. "What is Pat Harvey's interest in the early cases?"
"Don't get me wrong," he replied. "I'm not saying.' was a major preoccupation. But she must have gotten tips back when she was a U.S. attorney, inside information, and she asked some questions. Politics, Kay "' I suppose if it had turned out that these deaths of couples in Virginia were related to drugs - either accidental deaths or drug homicides - she would have used the information to buttress her anti-drug efforts."
That would explain why Mrs. Harvey seemed well informed when I had lunch at her house last fall I thought. No doubt she had information on file in her office because of her early interest in the cases.
"When her inquiries into this didn't go anywhere" Wesley continued, "I think she pretty much let it go until her daughter and Fred disappeared. Then it all came back to her, as you can imagine."
"Yes, I can imagine. And I can also imagine the bitter irony had it turned out that drugs killed the Drug Czar's daughter."
"Don't think that hasn't crossed Mrs. Harvey's mind, Wesley said grimly.
The reminder made me tense again. "She has a right know, Benton. I can't pend these cases forever."
He nodded to the waiter that we were ready for coffee "I need you to buy me more time, Kay."
"Because of your disinformation tactics?"
"We need to give that a shot, let the stories run without interference. The minute Mrs. Harvey gets anything from you, all hell's going to break loose. Believe me, I know how she'll react better than you do at this point. She'll go to the press, and in the process screw up everything we've been setting up to lure the killer."
"What happens when she gets her court order?"
"That will take time. It won't happen tomorrow. Will you stall a little longer, Kay?"
"You haven't finished explaining about the jack of hearts," I reminded him.
"How could a hit man have known about the cards?"
Wesley replied reluctantly, "Pat Harvey doesn't gather information or investigate situations alone. She has aides, a staff. She talks to other politicians, any number of people, including constituents. It all depends on who she divulged information to, and who out there might have wished to destroy her, assuming that's the case, and I'm not saying it is."
"A paid hit disguised to look like the early cases," I considered. "Only the hit man made a mistake. He didn't know to leave the jack of hearts in the car. He left it with Deborah's body, inside her purse. Someone perhaps involved with the fraudulent charities Pat Harvey is supposed to testify against?"
"We're talking about bad people who know other bad people. Drug dealers. Organized crime."
He idly stirred his coffee. "Mrs. Harvey's not faring too well through all this. She's very distracted. This congressional hearing isn't exactly foremost on her mind, at the moment."
"I see. And I suspect she's not exactly on friendly terms with the Justice Department, because of this hearing."
Wesley carefully set his teaspoon on the edge of his saucer. "She's not," he said, looking up at me. "What she's trying to bring about isn't going to help us. It's to put ACTMAD and other scams like it out of business but it's not enough. We want to prosecute. In the past there's been some friction between her and the DEA, also the CIA."
"And now?" I continued to probe.
"It's worse, because she's emotionally involved, has to rely on the Bureau to assist in solving her daughter's homicide. She's uncooperative, paranoid. She's trying work around us, take matters into her own hands. Sighing, he added, "She's a problem, Kay."
"She probably says the same thing about the Bureau."
He smiled wryly. "I'm sure she does."
I wanted to continue the mental poker game to see if Wesley was keeping anything else from me, so I gave him more. "It appears that Deborah received a defensive injury to her left index finger. Not a cut, but a hack inflicted by a knife with a serrated blade."
"Where on her index finger?" he asked, leaning, forward a little.
"Dorsal." I held up my hand to show him. "On top, near her first knuckle."
"Interesting. Atypical."
"Yes. Difficult to reconstruct how she got it."
"So we know he was armed with a knife," he thought out loud. "That makes me all the more suspicious that something went wrong out there. Something happened he wasn't expecting. He may have resorted to a gun to subdue the couple, but intended to kill them with the knife. Possibly by cutting their throats. But then something went haywire. Deborah somehow got away and he shot her in the back, then maybe cut her throat to finish her off."
"And then positioned their bodies to look like the others?"
I asked. "Arm in arm, facedown, and fully clothed?"
He stared at the wall above my head.
I thought of the cigarette butts left at each scene. I thought of the parallels. The fact that the playing card was a different brand and left in a different place this time proved nothing. Killers are not machines. Their rituals and habits are not an exact science or set in stone. Nothing that Wesley had divulged to me, including the absence of white cotton fibers in Deborah's Jeep, was enough to validate the theory that Fred's and Deborah's homicides were unrelated to the other cases. I was experiencing the same confusion that I felt whenever I visited Quantico, where I was never sure if guns were firing bullets or blanks, if helicopters carried marines on real business or FBI agents simulating maneuvers, or if buildings in the Academy's fictitious town of Hogan's Alley were functional or Hollywood facades.
I could push Wesley no further. He wasn't going to tell me more.
"It's getting late," he commented. "You have a long drive back."
I had one last point to make.
"I don't want friendship to interfere with all this, Benton."
"That goes without saying."
"What happened between Mark and me-" "That's not a factor," he interrupted, and his voice firm but not unkind.
"He was your best friend."
"I'd like to think he still is."
"Do you blame me for why he went to Colorado, left Quantico? " "I know why he left," he said. "I'm sorry he left. He was very good for the Academy."
The FBI's strategy of drawing out the killer by way disinformation did not materialize the following Monday. Either the Bureau had changed its mind, or it was preempted by Pat Harvey, who held a press conference the same day.
At noon, she faced cameras in her Washington office adding to the pathos by having Bruce Cheney, Fred's father, by her side. She looked awful. Weight added 1 the camera and makeup could not hide how thin she had gotten or the dark circles under her eyes.
"When did these threats begin, Mrs. Harvey, and what was the nature of them?" a reporter asked.
"The first one came shortly after I began investigating the charities. And I suppose this was a little over a year ago," she said without emotion. "This was a letter mailed to my home in Richmond. I won't divulge the specific nature of what it said, but the threat was directed at family."
"And you believe this was connected to your probe into fraudulent charities like ACTMAD?"
"There's no question about that. There were other threats, the last one as recent as two months before my daughter and Fred Cheney disappeared."
Bruce Cheney's face flashed on the screen. He was pale, blinking in the blinding haze of TV lights.
"Ms. Harvey…"
"Mrs. Harvey…"
Reporters were interrupting each other, and Pat Harvey interrupted them, the camera swinging back her way.
"The FBI was aware of the situation, and it was their opinion that the threats, the letters, were originating from one source," she said.
"Mrs. Harvey…
"Ms. Harvey" - a reporter raised her voice above the commotion - "it's no secret that you and the Justice Department have different agendas, a conflict of interests arising from the investigation of the charities. Are you suggesting the FBI knew that the safety of your family was in jeopardy and didn't do anything?"
"It's more than a suggestion," she stated.
"Are you accusing the Justice Department of incompetence?"
"What I'm accusing the justice Department of is conspiracy," Pat Harvey said.
Groaning, I reached for a cigarette as the din, the interruptions reached a crescendo. You've lost it, I thought, staring in disbelief at the TV inside the small medical library in my downtown office.
It got only worse. And my heart was filled with dread as Mrs. Harvey turned her cool stare to the camera and one by one ran her sword through everyone involved is the investigation, including me. She spared no one, and there was nothing sacred, including the detail of the jack of hearts.
It had been a gross understatement when Wesley had said she was uncooperative and a problem. Beneath her armor of reason was a woman crazed by rage and grief. Numbly I listened as she plainly and without reservation indicted the police, the FBI, and the Medical Examiner', Office for complicity in a "cover-up."
"They are deliberately burying the truth about these cases," she concluded, "when the act of doing so serve only their self-interest at the unconscionable expense of human lives."
"What a lot of shit," muttered Fielding, my deputy chief, sitting nearby.
"Which cases?"
a reporter demanded loudly. "The, deaths of your daughter and her boyfriend or are you referring to the four other couples?"
"All of them," Mrs. Harvey replied. "I'm referring to all of the young men and women hunted down like animals and murdered."
"What is being covered up?"
"The identity or identities of those responsible," as if she knew. "There has been no intervention on the part of the Justice Department to stop these killings, The reasons are political. A certain federal agency is protecting its own."
"Could you please be more specific?" a voice shot back.
"When my investigation is concluded, I will make a full disclosure."
"At the hearing?" she was asked. "Are you suggesting that the murder of Deborah and her boyfriend…"
"His name is Fred. " It was Bruce Cheney who had spoken, and suddenly his livid face filled the television screen.
The room went silent.
"Fred. His name is Frederick Wilson Cheney."
The father's voice trembled with emotion. "He's not just Debbie's boyfriend He's dead, murdered, too. My son!"
Words caught in his throat, and he hung his head to hide his tears.
I turned off the television, upset and unable to sit still.
Rose had been standing in the doorway, watching. She looked at me and slowly shook her head.
Fielding got up, stretched, and tightened the drawstring of his surgical greens.
"She just screwed herself in front of the whole damn world," he announced, walking out of the library.
I realized as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee what Pat Harvey had said. I began to really hear it as it replayed inside my head.
"Hunted down like animals and murdered… " Her words had the sound of something; scripted. They did not strike me as glib, off the cuff or a figure of speech.
A federal agency protecting its own? Hunt.
A jack of hearts like a knight of cups. Someone who is perceived or perceives himself as a competitor, a defender. One who does battle, Hilda Ozimek had said to me.
A knight. A soldier.
Hunt.
Their murders were meticulously calculated, methodically planned. Bruce Phillips and Judy Robe disappeared in June. Their bodies were found in mid August, when hunting season opened.
Jim Freeman and Bonnie Smyth disappeared in July their bodies found the opening day of quail and pheasant Ben Anderson and Carolyn Bennett disappeared March, their bodies found in November during deer season.
Susan Wilcox and Mark Martin disappeared in late February, their bodies discovered in mid-May, during spring gobbler season.
Deborah Harvey and Fred Cheney vanished Labor Day weekend and were not found until months late when the woods were crowded with hunters after rabbit squirrel, fox, pheasant, and raccoon. I had not assumed the pattern meant anything because most of the badly decomposed and skeletonized bodied that end up in my office are found by hunters. When someone drops dead or is dumped in the woods, hunter is the most likely person to stumble upon the remains. But when and where the couples' bodies were discovered could have been planned.
The killer wanted his victims found, but not right away, so he killed them off season, knowing that it was probable his victims would not be discovered until hunters were out in the woods again. By then the bodies were decomposed. Gone with the tissue were the injuries he had inflicted. If rape was involved, there would be no seminal fluid. Most trace evidence would be dislodged by wind and washed away by rain. It may even be that it was important to him that the bodies be found by hunters because in his fantasies he, too, was a hunter. The greatest hunter of all.
Hunters hunted animals, I thought as I sat at my downtown desk the following afternoon. Guerrillas, military special agents, and soldiers of fortune hunted human beings.
Within the fifty-mile radius where the couples had vanished and turned up dead were Fort Eustis, Langley Field, and a number of other military installations, including the CIA's West Point, operated under the cover of a military base called Camp Peary.
"The Farm," as Camp Peary is referred to in spy novels and investigative non-fiction books about intelligence, was where officers were trained in the paramilitary activities of infiltration, exfiltration, demolitions, night-time parachute jumps, and other clandestine operations.
Abby Turnbull took a wrong turn and ended up at the entrance of Camp Peary, and days later FBI agents came looking for her.
The feds were paranoid, and I had a suspicion I might know why. After reading the newspaper accounts of Pad Harvey's press conference, I had become only morel convinced.
A number of papers, including the Post, were on my desk, and I had studied the write-ups several times The byline on the Post's story was Clifford Ring, the reporter who had been pestering the commissioner and other personnel of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Ring mentioned me only passing when he implied that Pat Harvey was in-appropriately using her public office to intimidate a threaten all involved into releasing details about daughter's death. It was enough to make me wonder if Mr. Ring was Benton Wesley's media source, the FBI conduit for planted releases, and that would not have been so bad, really. It was the point of the stories that, found disturbing.
What I had assumed would be dished out as sensational expose of the month was, instead, being bruited about as the colossal degradation of a woman who, just weeks before, had been talked of by some as-possible Vice President of the United States. I would be the first to say that Pat Harvey's diatribe at the press conference was reckless in the least, premature at best. But I found it odd that there was no evidence of a serious attempt at corroborating her accusations. Reporters in this case did not seem inclined to get the usual incriminating "no comments" and other double-talk evasions from the governmental bureaucrats that journalists typically pursue with enthusiasm.
The media's only quarry, it seemed, was Mrs. Harvey, and she was shown no pity. The headline for one editorial was SLAUGHTERGATE?
She was being ridiculed, not only in print but in political cartoons. One of the nation's most respected officials was being dismissed as a hysterical female whose "sources" included a South Carolina psychic. Even her staunchest allies were backing away, shaking their heads, her enemies subtly finishing her off with attacks softly wrapped in sympathy.
"Her reaction is certainly understandable in light of her terrible personal loss," said one Democratic detractor, adding, "I think it wise to overlook her imprudence. Consider her accusations the slings and arrows of a deeply troubled mind."
Said another, "What's happened to hat Harvey is a tragic example of self-destruction brought on by personal problems too overwhelming to endure."
Rolling Deborah Harvey's autopsy report into my typewriter, I whited out "pending" in the manner and cause of death spaces. I typed in "homicide" and "exsanguination due to gunshot wound to lower back and cutting injuries."
Amending her death certificate and CME-1 report, I went up front and made photocopies. These I enclosed with a cover letter explaining my findings and apologizing for the delay, which I attributed to the long wait for toxicology results, which were still provisional. I would give Benton Wesley that much. Pat Harvey would not hear from me that I had been strong-armed by him to indefinitely pend the results of her daughter's medicolegal examination.
The Harveys were going to get it all - my findings on gross and microscopically, the fact that the first rounds of toxicology tests were negative, the bullet in Deborah's lower lumbar, the defense injury to her hand, and, pathetically, the detailed description of her clothing, or what had been left of it. The police had recovered her earrings, watch, and the friendship ring given to her by Fred for her birthday.
I also mailed copies of Fred Cheney's reports to his father, though I could go no further than saying that his son's manner of death was homicide, the cause "undetermined violence."
I reached for the phone and dialed Benton Wesley's office, only to be told he wasn't in. Next, I tried his home.
"I'm releasing the information," I said when he got on the line. "I wanted you to know."
Silence.
Then he said very calmly, "Kay, you heard her press conference?"
"Yes."
"And you've read today's paper?"
"I watched her press conference, and I've read I'm well aware that she shot herself in the foot."
"I'm afraid she shot herself in the head," he said.
"Not without some help."
A pause, then Wesley asked, "What are you talking about?"
"I'll be happy to spell it out in detail. Tonight. Face-to-face."
"Here?" He sounded alarmed.
"Yes."
"Uh, it's not a good idea, not tonight."
"I'm sorry. But it can't wait."
"Kay, you don't understand. Trust me-"
I cut him off. "No, Benton. Not this time."