Sara frowned into that smile. She picked up her recorder, placed it in her purse. "I don't think you and I have any `private business,' Senator. If you'll excuse me…"
She started to move past him toward the temple's entrance. She thought for a moment that he might make some move to detain her; she tensed, but he stepped aside politely.
"I meant what I said about compassion," he commented just before she reached the stairs. " I know why you dislike me. I know why you look so familiar. Andrea was your sister."
The words battered Sara like fists. She gasped at the pain.
"I also believe you're a fair person," Hartmann continued, and each word was another blow. " I think that if you were finally told the truth, you'd understand."
Sara gave a cry that was half-sob, unable to hold it back. She placed a hand on cool, rough stone and turned. The sympathy she saw in Hartmann's eyes frightened her.
"Just leave me alone, Senator."
"We're stuck together on this trip, Ms. Morgenstern. There's no sense in our being enemies, not when there isn't any reason."
His voice was gentle and persuasive. He sounded kind. It would have been easier if he'd been accusatory, if he'd tried, to bribe her or threaten her. Then she could have fought back easily, could have reveled in her fury. But Hartmann stood there, his hands at his sides, looking, of all things, sad. She'd imagined Hartmann many ways, but never like this. "How…" she began, and found her voice choked. "When did you find out about Andrea?"
"After our conversation at the press reception, I had my aide Amy run a background check. She found that you'd been born in Cincinnati, that your family name was Whitman. You lived two streets over from me, on Thornview. Andrea was what, seven or eight years older than you? You look a lot like her, like she might have grown up to be." He steepled his hands to his face, rubbing at the corners of his eyes with his forefingers. "I'm not very comfortable with lying or evasion, Ms. Morgenstern. That's not my style. I don't think you are either, not from the blunt articles you've written. I think I know why we've been at odds, and I also know it's a mistake."
"Which means that you think it's my fault."
"I've never attacked you in print."
"I don't lie in my articles, Senator. They're fair. If you have a problem with any of my facts, let me know and I'll give you verification."
"Ms. Morgenstern-" Hartmann began, a trace of irritation in his voice. Then, oddly, he leaned his head back and chuckled loudly. "God, there we go again," he said, and he sighed. "Really, I read your articles. I don't always agree with you, but I'll be the first to admit that they're well written and researched. I even think that I could like the person who wrote them, if ever we had the chance to talk and know each other." His gray-blue eyes caught hers. "What's between us is the ghost of your sister."
His last words took the breath from her. She couldn't believe that he'd said them; not so casually, not with that innocent smile, not after all those years. "You killed her," she breathed, and didn't realize that she'd spoken the words aloud until she saw the shock on Hartmann's face. He went white for an instant. His mouth opened, then clamped shut. He shook his head.
"You can't believe that," he said. "Roger Pellman killed her. There was no question at all about that. The poor retarded kid…" Hartmann shook his head. "How can I say it gently? He came out of the woods naked and howling like all the demons of hell were after him. Andrea's blood covered him. He admitted killing her."
Hartmann's face was still pale. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his gaze was withdrawn. "Damnit, I was there, Ms. Morgenstern. I was standing outside in my front yard when Pellman came running up the street, gibbering. He ran into his house, the neighbors all around watching. We all heard his mother scream. Then the cops came, first to the Pellmans', then taking Roger into the woods with them. I saw them carry out the wrapped body. My mom had her arms around your mother. She was hysterical, wailing. It infected all of us. We were all crying, all of the kids, even though we really didn't understand what was going on. They handcuffed Roger, hauled him away…"
Sara stared, bewildered, at Hartmann's haunted face. His hands were clenched into fists at his side. "How can you say I killed her?" he asked softly. "Don't you realize that I was in love with her, as infatuated as an eleven-year-old kid can be. I would never have done anything to hurt Andrea. I had nightmares for months afterward. I was furious when they assigned Roger Pellman to Longview Psychiatric. I wanted him to hang for what he'd done; I wanted to be the one to pull the damn switch on him."
It can't be. The insistent denial pounded in her head. Yet she looked at Hartmann and knew, somehow, that she was wrong. Doubt had begun to dampen some of the fiery hatred.
"Succubus," she said, and found her throat dry. She licked her lips. "You were there, and she had Andrea's face." Hartmann took a gulping, deep breath. He looked away from her for a moment, toward the northern temple. Sara followed his gaze and saw that the tour group from the Stacked Deck had gone inside. The ball court was deserted, quiet. "I knew Succubus," Hartmann said at last, still looking away from her, and she could feel the trembling emotion in his voice. " I knew her at the end of her public career, and we still saw each other occasionally. I wasn't married then, and Succubus…" He turned around to Sara, and she was surprised to see his eyes bright with moisture. "Succubus could be anyone, you know. She was anyone's ideal lover. When she was with you, she was exactly what you wanted."
In that instant Sara knew what he was going to say. She had already begun to shake her head in denial.
"For me, quite often," Hartmann continued, "she was Andrea. You were right, you know, when you said we're both obsessed. We're obsessed by Andrea and her death. If that hadn't happened, I might have forgotten my crush on her six months later, like every pubescent fantasy. But what Roger Pellman did engraved Andrea in my mind. Succubus-she roamed in your head and used what she found there. Inside me, she found Andrea. So when she saw me during the riot, when she wanted me to save her from the violence of the mob, she took the face she had always shown to me: Andrea's."
" I didn't kill your sister, Ms. Morgenstern. I'll plead guilty to thinking of her as my fantasy lover, but that's all."
"Your sister was an ideal for me. I wouldn't have harmed her at all. I couldn't."
It can't be.
Sara remembered all the strange links she'd found in the months after she'd first seen the videotape of Succubus's death. Sara had thought that she'd escaped the cloying Andrea worship of her parents, that she'd left her murdered sister behind her for the rest of her life. Succubus's face had shattered all that. Even after she'd shakily written the article that would eventually win her the Pulitzer, she'd thought it had been a mistake, a cruel trick of fate. But Hartmann had been there. She'd known all along that the Senator was from Ohio. She discovered later that not only was he from Cincinnati, but he'd lived nearby, been a classmate of Andrea's. She'd done more research, suddenly suspicious. Mysterious deaths and violent acts seemed to plague Hartmann: in law school, as a New York City councilman, as mayor, as senator. None of them were ever Hartmann's fault. There was always someone else, someone with motive and desire. But still…
She dug further. She found that five-year-old Hartmann and his parents had been on vacation in New York the day Jetboy died and the virus was loosed on the unsuspecting world. They'd been among the lucky ones. None of them had ever shown any signs of having been infected. Still, if Hartmann were a hidden ace, "up the sleeve" in the vernacular…
It was circumstantial. It was flimsy. Her reporter's instinct had screamed "Objectivity!" at her emotions. That hadn't stopped her from hating him. There was always that gut feeling, the certainty that he was the one. Not Roger Pellman, not the others who had been convicted, but Hartmann. For the last nine years or more she'd believed that. Yet Hartmann didn't seem dangerous or malign now. He stood there patiently-a plain face, a high forehead threatening to recede and sweating from the fierce sun, a body soft around the waist from years of sitting behind administrative desks. He let her stare, let her search his gaze unflinchingly. Sara found that she couldn't imagine him killing or hurting. A person who enjoyed pain in the way she'd imagined would show it somewhere: in his body language, his eyes, his voice. There was none of it in Hartmann. He had a presence, yes, a charisma, but he didn't feel dangerous-