12
Abby Turnbull had been a crime reporter in Richmond when Elizabeth Mott and Jill Harrington were murdered. I was willing to bet that Abby not only remembered the cases, but probably knew more about them than Captain Montana did.
The next morning she called from a pay phone and left a number where she told Rose she would wait for fifteen minutes. Abby insisted that I call her back from a "safe place."
"Is everything all right?" Rose asked quietly as I peeled off my surgical gloves.
"God only knows," I said, untying my gown.
The nearest "safe place" I could think of was a pay phone outside the cafeteria in my building. Breathless and somewhat frantic to meet Abby's deadline, I dialed the number my secretary had given me.
"What's going on? " Abby asked immediately. "Some Metro cop came by my apartment, said you'd sent him."
"That's correct," I reassured her. "Based on what you've told me, I didn't think it a good idea to call you at home. Are you all right?"
"Is that why you wanted me to call?"
She sounded disappointed.
"One of the reasons. We need to talk."
There was a long silence on the line.
"I'll be in Williamsburg on Saturday," she then said. "Dinner, The Trellis at seven?"
I did not ask her why she was going to be in Williamsburg. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but when I parked my car in Merchant's Square Saturday, I found my apprehensions diminishing with each step I took. It was hard to be preoccupied with murder and other acts of incivility while sipping hot apple cider in the sharp wintry air of one of my favorite places in America.
It was a low season for tourists, and there were still plenty of people about, strolling, browsing inside the restored shops, and riding past in horse-drawn carriages driven by liverymen in knee breeches and three-cornered hats. Mark and I had talked about spending a weekend in Williamsburg. We would rent one of the nineteenth-century carriage houses inside the Historic District, follow cobblestone sidewalks beneath the glow of gaslights and dine in one of the taverns, then drink wine before the fire until falling asleep in each other's arms.
Of course, none of it had come to pass, the history of our relationship more wishes than memories. Would it ever be different from this? Recently, he had promised me on the phone that it would. But he had promised before, and so had I. He was still in Denver and I was still here.
Inside the Silversmith's Shop, I bought a handwrought sterling silver pineapple charm and a handsome chain. Lucy would get a late Valentine's Day present from her negligent aunt. A forage, inside the Apothecary Shop brought forth soaps for my guest room, spicy shaving cream for Fielding and Marino, and potpourri for Bertha and Rose. At five minutes before seven, I was inside The Trellis looking for Abby. When she arrived half an hour later, I was impatiently waiting at a table nestled against a planter of wandering jew.
"I'm sorry," she said with feeling, slipping out of her coat. "I got delayed. Got here as fast as I could."
She looked keyed up and exhausted, her eyes nervously darting about. The Trellis was doing a brisk business, people talking in low voices in the wavering shadows of candlelight. I wondered if Abby felt she had been followed.
"Have you been in Williamsburg all day?"
I asked.
She nodded.
"I don't suppose I dare ask what you've been doing."
"Research" was all she said.
"Nowhere near Camp Peary, I hope."
I looked her in the eye.
She got my meaning very well. "You know," she said.
The waitress arrived and then went off to the bar to get Abby a Bloody Mary.
"How did you find out?"
Abby asked, lighting a cigarette.
"A better question is how did you find out?"
"I can't tell you that, Kay."
Of course she couldn't. But I knew. Pat Harvey.
"You have a source," I said carefully. "Let me just ask you this. Why would this source want you to know? Information wasn't passed on to you without there being motive on the source's part."
"I'm well aware of that."
"Then why?"
"The truth is important."
Abby stared off. "I'm also a source."
"I see. In exchange for information, you pass on what you dig up."
She did not respond.
"Does this include me?"
I asked.
"I'm not going to screw you, Kay. Have I ever?"
She looked hard at me.
"No," I said sincerely. "So far, you never have."
Her Bloody Mary was set before her, and she absently stirred it with the stalk of celery.
"All I can tell you," I went on, "is you're walking on dangerous ground. I don't need to elaborate. You should realize this better than anyone. Is it worth the stress? Is your book worth the price, Abby?"
When she made no comment, I added with a sigh, "I don't guess I'm going to change your mind, am I?"
"Have you ever gotten into something you can't get out of?"
"I do it all the time."
I smiled wryly. "That's where I am now."
"That's where I am, too."
"I see. And what if you're wrong, Abby?"
"I'm not the one who can be wrong," she replied. "Whatever the truth is about who's committing these murders, the fact remains that the FBI and other interested agencies are acting on certain suspicions and making decisions based on them. That's reportable. If the feds, the police, are wrong, it just adds another chapter."
"That sounds awfully cold," I said uneasily.
"I'm being professional, Kay. When you talk professionally, sometimes you sound cold, too."
I had talked to Abby directly after the body of her murdered sister was discovered. If I hadn't sounded cold on that horrible occasion, at best I had come across as clinical.
"I need your help with something," I said. "Eight years ago, two women were murdered very close to here. Elizabeth Mott and Jill Harrington."
She looked curiously at me. "You don't think - "
"I'm not sure what I'm thinking," I interrupted. "But I need to know the details of the cases. There's very little in my office reports. I wasn't in Virginia then. But there are news clips in the files. Several of them have your byline."
"It's hard for me to imagine that what happened to Jill and Elizabeth is connected to the other cases.' "So you remember them," I said, relieved.
"I will never forget them. It was one of the few times working on something actually gave me nightmares."
"Why is it hard for you to imagine a connection?"
"A number of reasons. There was no jack of hearts found. The car wasn't found abandoned on a roadside, but in a motel parking lot, and the bodies didn't turn up weeks or months after the fact decomposing in the woods. They were found within twenty-four hours. Both victims were women, and they were in their twenties, not teenagers. And why would the killer strike and then not do it again until some five years later?"
"I agree," I said. "The timing doesn't fit with the profile of your typical serial killer. And the MO seems inconsistent with the others. The victim selection seems inconsistent as well."
"Then why are you so interested?"
She sipped her drink.
"I'm groping, and I'm troubled by their cases, which were never solved," I admitted. "It's unusual for two people to be abducted and murdered. There was no evidence of sexual assault. The women were killed around here, in the same area where the other murders have occurred."
"And a gun and a knife were used," Abby mused.
She knew about Deborah Harvey, then.
"There are some parallels," I said evasively.
Abby looked unconvinced but interested.
"What do you want to know, Kay?"
"Anything you might remember about them. Anything at all."