According to Marino, the police had yet to find any neighbors who had seen the victim over the weekend. A friend she worked with tried to call Saturday and Sunday and didn't get an answer. When the woman didn't show up to teach her one o'clock class the friend called the police. An officer arrived at the scene and went around to the back of the house. A window on the third floor was wide open. The victim had a roommate who apparently was out of town.
The address was less than a mile from downtown and on the fringes of Virginia Commonwealth University, a sprawling physical plant with more than twenty thousand students. Many of the schools that made up the university were located in restored Victorian homes and brownstones along West Main. Summer classes were in session, and students were walking and riding bicycles along the street. They lingered at small tables on restaurant terraces, sipping coffee, their books stacked by their elbows as they talked with friends and luxuriated in the sunny warmth of a lovely June afternoon.
Henna Yarborough was thirty-one and taught journalism at the university's School of Broadcasting, Marino had told me. She had moved to the city from North Carolina last fall. We knew nothing more about her except that she was dead and had been dead for several days.
Cops, reporters were all over the place.
Traffic was slow rolling past the dark red brick, three-story house, with a blue-and-green handmade flag fluttering over the entrance. There were windowboxes bright with pink and white geraniums, and a blue-steel slate roof with an Art Nouveau flower design in pale yellow.
The street was so congested I was forced to park almost half a block away, and it didn't escape my notice that the reporters were more subdued than usual. They scarcely stirred as I passed. They didn't jam cameras and microphones in my face. There was something almost militaristic in their bearing-stiff, quiet, definitely not at ease-as if they sensed this was another one. Number five. Five women like themselves or their wives and lovers who had been brutalized and murdered.
A uniformed man lifted the yellow tape barring the front doorway at the top of the worn granite steps. I went into a dim foyer and up three flights of wooden stairs. On the top landing I found the chief of police, several high-ranking officers, detectives and uniformed men. Bill was there, too, closest to an open doorway and looking in. His eyes briefly met mine, his face ashen.
I was hardly aware of him as I paused in the doorway and looked inside the small bedroom filled with the pungent stench of decomposing human flesh that is unlike any other odor on earth. Marino's back was to me. He was squatting on his heels and opening dresser drawers, his hands deftly shuffling through layers of neatly folded clothing.
The top of the dresser was sparsely arranged with bottles of perfume and moisturizers, a hairbrush and a set of electric curlers. Against the wall to the left of it was a desk, and the electric typewriter on top of it was an island in the midst of a sea of paper and books. More books were on a shelf overhead and stacked on the hardwood floor. The closet door was open a crack, the light off inside. There were no rugs or knickknacks, no photographs or paintings on the walls-as if the bedroom had not been lived in very long or else her stay was temporary.
Far to my right was a twin bed. From a distance I saw disarrayed bedcovers and a splay of dark, tangled hair. Watching where I stepped, I went to her.
Her face was turned toward me, and it was so suffused, so bloated by decomposition, I could not tell what she had looked like in life except she was white, with shoulder-length dark brown hair. She was nude and resting on her left side, her legs drawn up, her hands behind her and tightly bound. It appeared the killer used the cords from venetian blinds, and the knots, the pattern, were joltingly familiar. A dark blue bedspread was thrown over her hips in a manner still ringing of careless cold contempt. On the floor at the foot of the bed was a pair of shorty pajamas. The top was buttoned, and it was slit from the collar to the hem. The bottoms appeared to be slit along the sides.
Marino slowly crossed the bedroom and stood next to me. "He climbed up the ladder," he said.
"What ladder?" I asked.
There were two windows. The one he was staring at was open and nearer the bed. "Against the brick outside," he explained, "there's an old iron fire escape ladder. That's how he got in. The rungs are rusty. Some of it flaked off and is on the sill, probably from his shoes."
"And he went out that way, too," I assumed aloud.
"Can't say for sure, but it would appear so. The door downstairs was locked. We had to bust it open. But outside," he added, looking toward the window again, "there's tall grass under the ladder. No footprints. It rained cats and dogs Saturday night so that don't help our cause worth a damn either."
"This place air-conditioned?" My skin was crawling, the airless room hot and damp and bristling with decay.
"Nope. No fans either. Not a single one."
He wiped his flushed face with his hand. His hair was clinging like gray string to his wet forehead, his eyes bloodshot and darkly ringed. Marino looked as if he hadn't been to bed or changed his clothes in a week.
"Was the window locked?" I asked.
"Neither of them was-" He got a surprised look on his face as we turned in unison toward the doorway. "What the hell…?"
A woman had started screaming in the foyer two floors below. Feet were scuffing, male voices were arguing.
"Get out of my house! Oh, God… Get out of my house, you goddam son of a bitch!" screamed the woman.
Marino abruptly brushed past me, and his steps thudded loudly on the wooden stairs. I could hear him saying something to someone, and almost immediately the screaming stopped. The loud voices faded to a murmur.
I began the external examination of the body.
She was the same temperature as the room, and rigor already had come and gone. She got cool and stiff right after death, and then as the temperature outside rose so did the temperature of her body. Finally, her stiffness passed, as if the initial shock of death vanished with time.
I did not have to pull back the bedspread much to see what was beneath it. For an instant, I wasn't breathing and my heart seemed to stop. I gently laid the spread back in place and began peeling off my gloves. There was nothing more I could do with her here. Nothing.
When I heard Marino coming back up the stairs, I turned to tell him to be sure the body came to the morgue wrapped in the bedcovers. But the words stuck in my throat. I stared in speechless astonishment.
In the doorway next to him was Abby Turnbull. What in God's name did Marino think he was doing? Had he lost his mind? Abby Turnbull, the ace reporter, the shark that made jaws seem like a goldfish.
Then I noticed she was wearing sandals, a pair of blue jeans and a white cotton blouse that wasn't tucked in. Her hair was tied back. She wasn't wearing makeup. She carried no tape recorder or notepad, just a canvas tote bag. Her wide eyes were riveted to the bed, her face twisted by terror.
"God, no!"
As she placed her hand over her open mouth.
"It's her, then," Marino said in a low voice.
She moved closer, staring. "My God. Henna. Oh, my God…"
"This was her room?"
"Yes. Yes. Oh, please, God…"
Marino jerked his head, motioning a uniformed man I couldn't see to come upstairs and escort Abby Turnbull out. I heard their feet on the stairs, heard her moaning.
I quietly asked Marino, "You know what you're doing?"
"Hey. I always know what I'm doing."
"That was her screaming," I numbly went on. "Screaming at the police?"
"Nope. Boltz had just come down. She was yelling at him."
"Boltz?"
I couldn't think.
"Can't say I blame her," he replied unemphatically. "It's her house. Can't blame her for not wanting us crawling all over the damn place, telling her she can't come in…"
"Boltz?" I asked idiotically. "Boltz told her she couldn't come in?"
"And a couple of the guys."
Shrugging. "She's going to be something to talk to. Totally off the wall."
His attention drifted to the body on the bed, and something flickered in his eyes. "This lady here's her sister."
The living room was filled with sunlight and potted plants. It was on the second floor, and had been recently and expensively refurbished. The polished hardwood floor was almost completely covered with a dhurrie rug of pale blue and green geometrical designs against a field of white, and the furniture was white and angular with small pillows in pastels. On the whitewashed walls was an enviable collection of abstract monotype prints by Richmond artist Gregg Carbo. It was an impractical room, one Abby designed with no one in mind but herself, I suspected. An impressive frosty lair, it bespoke success and a lack of sentiment and seemed very much in character with what I'd always thought of its creator.
Curled up in a corner of the white leather couch, she was nervously smoking a long thin cigarette. I'd never seen Abby up close, and she was so peculiar looking she was striking. Her eyes were irregular, one slightly greener than the other, and her full lips did not seem to belong on the same face as the prominent, narrow nose. She had brown hair, which was graying and just brushing her shoulders, and her cheekbones were high, her complexion finely lined at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Longlegged and slender, she was my age, perhaps a few years younger.
She stared at us with the unblinking glassy eyes of a frightened deer. A uniformed man left and Marino quietly shut the door.
"I'm real sorry. I know how hard this is…"
Marino started in with the usual windup. He calmly explained the importance that she answer all questions, remember everything about her sister - her habits, her friends, her routines-in as much detail as she could. Abby sat woodenly and said nothing. I sat opposite her.
"I understand you've been out of town," he was saying.
"Yes."
Her voice trembled and she shivered as if she were cold. "I left Friday afternoon for a meeting in New York."
"What sort of meeting?"
"A book. I'm in the process of negotiating a book contract. Had a meeting with my agent. Stayed over with a friend."
The microcassette recorder on top of the glass coffee table silently turned. Abby stared blindly at it.
"So, you have any contact with your sister while you was in New York?"
"I tried to call her last night to tell her what time my train was coming in."
She took a deep breath. "When I didn't get an answer, I was puzzled, I guess. Then I just assumed she'd gone out somewhere. I didn't try after I pulled into the station. The train station. I knew she had classes this afternoon. I got a cab. I had no idea. It wasn't until I got here and saw all the cars, the police…"
"How long's your sister been living with you?"
"Last year she and her husband separated. She wanted a change, time to think. I told her to come here. Told her she could live with me until she got settled or went back to him. That was fall. Late August. She moved in with me last August and started her job at the university."
"When was the last time you saw her?"
"Friday afternoon."
Her voice rose and caught. "She drove me to the train station."
Her eyes were welling.
Marino pulled a rumpled handkerchief out of a back pocket and handed it to her. "You have any idea what her plans for the weekend were?"
"Work. She told me she was going to stay in, work on class preparations. As far as I know, she didn't have any plans. Henna wasn't very outgoing, had one or two good friends, other professors. She had a lot of class preparation, told me she would do the grocery shopping on Saturday. That's all."
"And where was that? What store?"
"I have no idea. It doesn't matter. I know she didn't go. The other policeman in here a minute ago had me check the kitchen. She didn't go to the grocery store. The refrigerator's as bare as it was when I left. It must have happened Friday night. Like the other ones. All weekend I've been in New York and she's been here. Been here like this."
No one said anything for a moment. Marino was looking around the living room, his face unreadable. Abby shakily lit a cigarette and turned to me.
I knew what she was going to ask before the words were out.
"Is it like the other ones? I know you looked at her."
She hesitated, trying to compose herself. She was like a violent storm about to break when she quietly asked, "What did he do to her?"
I found myself giving her the "I won't be able to tell you anything until I've examined her in a good light" response.
"For God's sake, she's my sister!" she cried. "I want to know what the animal did to her! Oh, God! Did she suffer? Please tell me she didn't suffer…"
We let her cry, deep, heaving moans of naked anguish. Her pain carried her far beyond the realm where any mortal could reach her. We sat. Marino watched her with unwavering, unreadable eyes.
I hated myself at times like this, cold, clinical, the consummate professional unmoved by another person's pain. What was I supposed to say? Of course she suffered! When she found him inside her room, when she began to realize what was going to happen, her terror, which would have been that much worse because of what she'd read in the papers about the other murdered women, chilling accounts written by her own sister. And her pain, her physical pain.
"Fine. Of course you're not going to tell me," Abby began in rapid jerky sentences. "I know how it is. You're not going to tell me. She's my sister. And you're not going to tell me. You keep all your cards close to your vest. I know how it goes. And for what? How many does the bastard have to murder? Six? Ten? Fifty? Then maybe the cops figure it out?"
Marino continued to stare blandly at her. He said, "Don't blame the police, Miss Turnbull. We're on your side, trying to help-"
"Right!"
She cut him off. "You and your help! Like a lot of help you were last week! Where the shit were you then?"
"Last week? What are you referring to, exactly?"
"I'm referring to the redneck who tailed me all the way home from the Newspaper," she exclaimed. "He was right on top of me, turning everywhere I did. I even stopped at a store to get rid of him. Then I come out twenty minutes later and there he is again. The same goddam car! Following me! I get home and immediately call the cops. And what do they do? Nothing. Some officer stops by two hours later to make sure everything's all right. I give him a description, even the plate number. Did he ever follow up? Hell no, I never heard a word. For all I know, the pig in the car's the one who did it! My sister's dead. Murdered. Because some cop couldn't be bothered!"
Marino was studying her, his eyes interested. "When exactly was this?"
She faltered. "Tuesday, I think. A week ago Tuesday. Late, maybe ten, ten-thirty at night. I worked late in the newsroom, finishing up a story…"
He looked confused. "Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you was on the graveyard beat, six to two A.M., or something."
"That Tuesday one of the other reporters was working my beat.
I had to come in early, during the day, to finish up something the editors wanted for the next edition."
"Yeah," Marino said. "Okay, so this car. When did it start following you?"
"It's hard to know. I didn't really notice it until several minutes after I'd pulled out of the parking deck. He could have been waiting for me. Maybe he saw me at some point. I don't know. But he was right on my rear bumper, his high beams on. I slowed down, hoping he'd go around me. He slowed down, too. I speeded up. Same thing. I couldn't shake him. I decided to go to Farm Fresh. I didn't want him following me home. He did anyway. He must have gone by and come back, waited for me in the parking lot or on a nearby street. Waited until I came back out and drove off."
"You positive it was the same car?"
"A new Cougar, black. I'm absolutely sure. I got a contact at DMV to run the plate number since the cops couldn't be bothered. It's a rental car. I've got the address of the dealership, the car's plate number written down if you're interested."
"Yeah, I'm interested," Marino told her.
She dug inside her tote bag and found a folded piece of notepaper. Her hand trembled as she gave it to him.
He glanced at it and tucked it inside a pocket. "So what then? The car followed you. It followed you all the way home?"
"I had no choice. I couldn't drive around all night. Couldn't do a damn thing. He saw where I live. I came in and went straight to the phone. I guess he drove past, went on. When I looked out the window, I didn't see him anywhere."
"You ever seen the car before?"
"I don't know. I've seen black Cougars before. But I can't say that I've ever seen that exact car before."
"You get a look at the driver?"
"It was too dark and he was behind me. But there was definitely just one person inside the car. Him, the driver."
"Him? You're sure about that?"
"All I saw was a big shape, someone with short hair, okay? Of course it was a him. It was awful. He was sitting rigidly, staring straight at the back of my head. Just this shape, staring. Right on my bumper. I told Henna. I told her about it. I told her to be careful, to keep an eye out for a black Cougar and if she saw a car like that near the house to call 911. She knew what was going on in the city. The murders. We talked about it. Dear God! I can't believe it! She knew! I told her not to leave her windows unlocked! To be careful!"
"So it was normal for her to have a window or two unlocked, maybe open."
Abby nodded and wiped her eyes. "She's always slept with windows open. It's hot in here sometimes. I was going to get air-conditioning, have it installed by July. I just moved in right before she came. In August. There was so much else to do and fall, winter, wasn't that far off. Oh, God. I told her a thousand times. She was always off in her own world. Just oblivious. I couldn't get it to sink in. Just like I never could get her to fasten her seatbelt. She's my baby sister. She's never liked me telling her what to do. Things slid right over her, it's like she didn't even hear them. I'd tell her. I'd tell her the things that go on, the crimes. Not just the murders, but the rapes, the robberies, all of it. And she'd get impatient. She didn't want to hear it. She'd say, 'Oh, Abby, you see only the horrible things. Can't we talk about something else?'
I have a handgun. I told her to keep it by her bed when I wasn't here. But she wouldn't touch it. No way. I offered to teach her how to shoot it, to get her one of her own. But no way. No way! And now this! She's gone! Oh, God! And all these things I'm supposed to tell you about her, about her habits and everything, it doesn't matter!"
"It does matter. Everything matters…"
"None of it matters because I know it wasn't her he was after! He didn't even know about her! He was after me!"
Silence.
"What makes you think that?"
Marino calmly asked.
"If it was him in the black car, then I know he was after me. No matter who he is, I'm the one who's been writing about him. He's seen my byline. He knows who I am."
"Maybe."
"Me! He was after me!"
"You may have been his target," Marino matter-of-factly told her. "But we can't know that for sure, Miss Turnbull. Me, I've got to consider all possibilities, like maybe he seen your sister somewhere, maybe on the campus or in a restaurant, a shop. Maybe he didn't know she lived with somebody, especially if he followed her while you was at work - if he followed her at night and saw her come in when you wasn't home, I'm saying. He may not have had any idea you're her sister. It could be a coincidence. Was there any place she frequented, a restaurant, a bar, any place?"
Wiping her eyes again, she tried to remember. "There's a deli on Ferguson within walking distance of the school. The School of Broadcasting. She ate lunch there once or twice a week, I think. She didn't go to bars. Now and then we ate out at Angela's on Southside but we were always together on those occasionsshe wasn't alone. She may have gone other places, shops, I mean. I don't know. I don't know every single thing she did every minute of the day."
"You say she moved in last August. She ever leave, maybe for the weekend, take any trips, that sort of thing?"
"Why?" She was bewildered. "You thinking someone followed her, someone from out of town?"
"I'm just trying to ascertain when she was here and when she wasn't."
She said shakily, "Last Thursday she went back to Chapel Hill to see her husband and spend some time with a friend. She was gone most of the week, got back on Wednesday. Today classes started, the first day of classes for the summer session."
"He ever come here, the husband?"
"No," she warily replied.
"He have any history of being rough with her, of violence-"
"No!" she blurted out. "Jeff didn't do this to her! They both wanted a trial separation! There wasn't any animosity between them! The pig who did this is the same pig who's been doing it!"
Marino stared at the tape recorder on the table. A tiny redlight was flashing. He checked the pockets of his jacket and looked irritated. "I'm gonna have to go out to the car for a minute."
He left Abby and me alone in the bright white living room.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence before she looked at me.
Her eyes were bloodshot, her face puffy. Bitterly, miserably, she said to me, "All those times I've wanted to talk to you. And now, here it is. This. You're probably secretly glad. I know what your opinion of me is. You probably think I deserve it. I get a dose of what the people I write about must feel. Poetic justice."
The remark cut me to the bone. I said with feeling, "Abby, you don't deserve this. I would never wish this on you or anyone."
Staring down at her tightly clenched hands, she painfully went on, "Please take care of her. Please. My sister. Oh, God. Please take care of Henna…"
"I promise I'll take care of her…"
"You can't let him get away with this! You can't!"
I didn't know what to say.
She looked up at me and I was startled by the terror in her eyes. "I don't understand anything anymore. I don't understand what's going on. All these things I've been hearing. And this happens. I tried. I tried to find out, tried to find out from you. Now this. I don't know who's us or them anymore!"
Quietly, I said, "I don't think I understand, Abby. What did you try to find out from me?"
She talked very fast. "That night. Earlier in the week. I tried to talk to you about it. But he was there…"
It was coming to me. I dully asked, "What night?"
She looked confused, as if she couldn't remember. "Wednesday," she said. "Wednesday night."
"You drove to my house late that night and then quickly drove off? Why?"
She stammered, "You… you had company."
Bill. I remembered we stood in the glare of the front porch light. We were in plain view and his car was parked in my drive. It was her. Abby was the one who drove up that night, and she saw me with Bill, but this didn't explain her reaction. Why did she panic? It seemed a frightened visceral reflex when she extinguished her headlights and slammed the car into reverse.
She was saying, "These investigations. I've heard things. Rumors. Cops can't talk to you. Nobody's supposed to talk to you. Something's screwed up and that's why all calls are being referred to Amburgey. I had to ask you! And now they're saying you screwed up the serology in the surgeon… Lori Petersen's case. That the entire investigation's screwed up because of your office and if it wasn't for that the cops might have caught the killer by now…"
She was angry and uncertain, staring wildly at me. "I have to know if it's true. I have to know! I have to know what's going to happen to my sister!"
How did she know about the mislabeled PERK? Surely Betty wouldn't tell her. But Betty had concluded her serology tests on the slides, and copies - all copies of all lab reports - were being sent straight to Amburgey. Did he tell Abby? Did someone in his office tell her? Did he tell Tanner? Did he tell Bill?
"Where did you hear this?"
"I hear a lot of things." Her voice trembled.
I looked at her miserable face, at her body drawn in by grief, by horror. "Abby," I said very calmly, "I'm quite sure you hear a lot of things. I'm also quite sure a lot of them aren't true. Or even if there is a grain of truth, the interpretation is misleading, and perhaps you might ask yourself why someone would tell you these things, what this person's real motive is."
She wavered. "I just want to know if it's true, what I've heard. If your office is at fault."
I couldn't think how to respond.
"I'm going to find out anyway, I'll tell you that right now. Don't underestimate me, Dr. Scarpetta. The cops have screwed up big time. Don't think I don't know. They screwed up with me when that damn redneck followed me home. And they screwed up with Lori Petersen when she dialed 911 and no one responded until almost an hour later. When she was already dead!"
My surprise was visible.
"When this breaks," she went on, her eyes bright with tears, with rage, "the city's going to rue the day I was ever born! People are going to pay! I'll make sure certain people pay, and you want to know why?"
I was staring dumbly at her.
"Because nobody who counts gives a damn when women are raped and murdered! The same bastards who work the cases go out on the town and watch movies about women being raped, strangled, slashed. To them it's sexy. They like to look at it in magazines. They fantasize. They probably get their rocks off by looking at the scene photographs. The cops. They make jokes about it. I hear it. I hear them laughing at scenes, hear them laughing inside the ER!"
"They don't really mean it like that." My mouth was dry. "It's one of the ways they cope."
Footsteps were coming up the stairs.
Glancing furtively toward the door, she went into her tote bag and clumsily got out a business card and scribbled a number on it. "Please. If there's anything you can tell me after it's - it's done…" She took a deep breath. "Will you call me?"
She handed me the card. "It's got my pager number. I don't know where I'll be. Not in this house. Not for a while. Maybe never."
Marino was back.
Abby's eyes fixed angrily on him. "I know what you're going to ask," she said as he shut the door. "And the answer's no. There weren't any men in Henna's life, nobody here in Richmond. She wasn't seeing anyone, she wasn't sleeping with anyone."
Wordlessly, he clicked in a new tape and depressed the Record button.
He slowly looked up at her. "What about you, Miss Turnbull?"
Her breath caught in her throat. Stammering, "I have a close relationship, am close to someone in New York. Nobody here. just a lot of business associations."
"I see. And just what exactly's your definition of a business association?"
"What do you mean?"
Her eyes got wide with fear.
He looked thoughtful for a moment, then casually said, "What I'm wondering is if you're aware that this 'redneck' who followed you home the other night, has, in fact, been keeping an eye on you for several weeks now. The guy in the black Cougar. Well, he's a cop. Plainclothes, works out of Vice."
She stared at him in disbelief.
"See," Marino laconically went on, "that's why nobody got real upset when you called in the complaint, Miss Turnbull. Well, strike that. It would've upset me, if I'd known about it at the time - because the guy's supposed to be better than that. If he's following you, you're not supposed to know it, is what I'm saying.
He was getting chillier by the second, his words beginning to bite.
"But this particular cop don't like you none too well. Fact is, when I went out to the car a minute ago, I raised him on the radio, got the straight skinny from him. He admits he was hassling you deliberately, lost his cool a little bit when he was tailing you that night."
"What is this?" she cried in a spasm of panic. "He was harassing me because I'm a reporter?"
"Well, it's a little more personal than that, Miss Turnbull."
Marino casually lit a cigarette. "You remember a couple years back you did that big expose on the Vice cop who was dipping into the contraband and got himself hooked on coke? Sure, you remember that. He ended up eating his service revolver, blew his damn brains out. You gotta remember that clear as a bell. That particular Vice cop was the partner of the guy following you. Thought his interest in you would motivate him to do a good job. Looks like he went a little overboard…"
"You!"
she cried incredulously. "You asked him to follow me? Why?"
"I'll tell you. Since it appears my friend overplayed his hand, the gig's up. You would have found out eventually he's a cop. May as well put all of it out on the table, right here in front of the doc, since, in a way, it concerns her, too."
Abby glanced frantically at me. Marino took his time tapping an ash.
He took another drag and said, "Just so happens the ME's office is taking a lot of heat right now because of these alleged leaks to the press, which translates directly into leaks to you, Miss Turnbull. Someone's been breaking into the doc's computer. Amburgey's twisting the blade in the doc, here, causing a lot of problems and making a lot of accusations. Me, I'm of a different opinion. I think the leaks got nothing to do with the computer. I think someone's breaking into the computer to make it look like that's where the information's coming from in order to disguise the fact that the only data base being violated is the one between Bill Boltz's ears."
"That's insane!"
Marino smoked, his eyes fixed on her. He was enjoying watching her squirm.
"I absolutely had nothing to do with any computer violations!" she exploded. "Even if I knew how to do such a thing, I would never, never, do it! I can't believe this! My sister's dead… Jesus Christ…"
Her eyes were wild and swimming in tears. "Oh, God! What does any of this have to do with Henna?"
Marino coldly said, "I'm to the point of not having any idea who or what's got to do with anything. I do know some of the stuff you've been printing ain't common knowledge. Someone in the know's singing, singing to you. Someone's screwing up the investigation behind the scenes. I'm curious why anybody would be doing that unless he's got something to hide or something to gain."
"I don't know what you're getting-"
"See," he interrupted, "I just think it's a little strange that about five weeks ago, right after the second strangling, you did a big spread on Boltz, a day-in-the-life-of story. A big profile of the city's favorite golden boy. The two of you spend a day together, right? It just so happens I was out that night, saw the two of you driving away from Franco's around ten o'clock. Cops is nosy, especially if we've got nothing better to do, you know, if it's slow on the street. And it just so happens I tagged along after you…"
"Stop it," she whispered, shaking her head side to side. "Stop it!"
He ignored her. "Boltz don't drop you off at the newspaper.
See, he takes you to your house and when I breeze by several hours later-bingo! The fancy white Audi's still there, all the lights in the house off. What do you know? Right after that, all these juicy details start showing up in your stories. I guess that's your definition of a professional association."
Abby was trembling all over, her face in her hands. I couldn't look at her. I couldn't look at Marino. I was knocked so off balance it was barely penetrating-the unwarranted cruelty of his hitting her with this now, after all that had happened.
"I didn't sleep with him."
Her voice shook so badly she could barely talk. "I didn't. I didn't want to. He… he took advantage of me."
"Right."
Marino snorted.
She looked up and briefly shut her eyes. "I was with him all day. The last meeting we went to wasn't over until seven that night. I offered dinner, said the newspaper would buy him dinner. We went to Franco's. I had one glass of wine, that was all. One glass. I start getting woozy, just incredibly woozy. I hardly remember leaving the restaurant. The last thing I remember is getting into his car. Him reaching for my hand, saying something about how he'd never made it with a police reporter before. What happened that night, I don't remember any of it. I woke up early the next morning. He was there…"
"Which reminds me." Marino stabbed out the cigarette. "Where was your sister during all this?"
"Here. She was in her room, I guess. I don't remember. It doesn't matter. We were downstairs. In the living room. On the couch, on the floor, I don't remember - I'm not sure she even knew!"
He looked disgusted.
She hysterically went on, "I couldn't believe it. I was terrified, sick like I'd been poisoned. All I can figure is when I got up to go to the ladies' room at one point during dinner he slipped something in my drink. He knew he had me. He knew I wouldn't go to the cops. Who would believe me if I called and said the Commonwealth's attorney… he did such a thing? No one! No one would believe me!"
"You got that straight," Marino butted in. "Hey, he's a good looking guy. He don't need to slip a lady a mickey to get her to give up the goods."
Abby screamed, "He's scum! He's probably done it a thousand times and gotten away with it! He threatened me, told me if I mentioned a word he'd make me out to be a slut, he'd ruin me!"
"Then what?" Marino demanded. "Then he feels guilty and starts leaking information to you?"
"No! I've had nothing to do with the bastard! If I got within ten feet of him I'd be afraid I'd blow his goddam head off! None of my information has come from him!"
It couldn't be true.
What Abby was saying. It couldn't be true. I was trying to ward off the statements. They were terrible, but they were adding up despite my desperate inward denials.
She must have recognized Bill's white Audi on the spot. That was why she panicked when she saw it parked in my drive. Earlier she found Bill inside her house and shrieked at him to leave because she hated the very sight of him.
Bill warned me she would stoop to anything, that she was vengeful, opportunistic and dangerous. Why did he tell me that? Why really? Was he laying the groundwork for his own defense should Abby ever accuse him? He had lied to me. He didn't spurn her so-called advances when he drove her to her house after the interview. His car was still parked there early the next morning- Images were flashing through my mind of the few occasions early on when Bill and I were alone on my living room couch. I became sickened by the memory of his sudden aggression, the raw brute force that I attributed to whisky. Was this the dark side of him? Was the truth that he found pleasure only in overpowering? In taking? He was here, inside this house, at the scene, when I arrived. No wonder he was so quick to respond. His interest was more than professional. He wasn't merely doing his job. He would' have recognized Abby's address. He probably knew whose house it was before anybody else did. He wanted to see, to make sure.
Maybe he was even hoping the victim was Abby. Then he would never have to worry this moment would happen, that she would tell.
Sitting very still, I willed my face to turn to stone. I couldn't let it show. The wrenching disbelief. The devastation. Oh, God, don't let it show.
A telephone started ringing in some other room. It rang and rang and nobody answered it.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs, metal making muffled clangs against wood and radios blaring unintelligible static. Paramedics were carrying a stretcher up to the third floor.
Abby was fumbling with a cigarette and she suddenly threw it and the burning match into the ashtray.
"If it's true you've been having me followed" - she lowered her voice, the room filled with her scorn - "and if your reason was to see if I was meeting him, sleeping with him to get information, then you ought to know what I'm saying is true. After what happened that night I haven't been anywhere near the son of a bitch."
Marino didn't say a word.
His silence was his answer.
Abby had not been with Bill since.
Later, as paramedics were carrying the stretcher down, Abby leaned against the door frame, clutching it with white knuckled emotion. She watched the white shape of her sister's body go past, stared after the retreating men, her face a pallid mask of abject grief.
I gripped her arm with unspoken feeling and went out in the wake of her incomprehensible loss. The odor lingered on the stairs, and when I stepped into the dazzling sunshine on the street, for a moment I was blind.