I was loading the dishwasher when the doorbell rang at eight P.M. drying my hands on a towel, I walked anxiously to the front door.
Abby Turnbull was standing on the porch, coat collar turned up around her ears, face wan, eyes miserable. A cold wind rocked dark trees in my yard and lifted strands of her hair.
"You didn't answer my calls. I hope you won't refuse me entrance into your house," she said.
"Of course not, Abby. Please."
I opened the door wide and stepped back.
She did not take off her coat until I invited her to do so, and when I offered to hang it up, she shook her head and draped it over the back of a chair, as if to reassure me that she did not intend to stay very long. She was dressed in faded denim jeans and a heavy-knit maroon sweater flecked with lint. Brushing past her to clear paperwork and newspapers off the kitchen table, I detected the stale odor of cigarette smoke and a pungent hint of sweat.
"Something to drink?" I asked, and for some reason I could not feel angry with her.
"Whatever you're having would be fine."
She got out her cigarettes while I fixed both of us a drink.
"It's hard to start," she said when I was seated. "The articles were unfair to you, to say the least. And I know what you must be thinking."
"It's irrelevant what I'm thinking. I'd rather hear what's on your mind."
"I told you I've made mistakes."
Her voice trembled slightly. "Cliff Ring was one of them."
I sat quietly.
"He's an investigative reporter, one of the first people I got to know after moving to Washington. Very successful, exciting. Bright and sure of himself. I was vulnerable, having just moved to a new city, having been through… well, what happened to Henna."
She glanced away from me.
"We started out as friends, then everything went too fast. I didn't see what he was like because I didn't want to see it."
Her voice caught and I waited in silence while she steadied herself.
"I trusted him with my life, Kay."
"From which I am to conclude that the details in his story came from you," I said.
"No. They came from my reporting."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't talk to anybody about what I'm writing," Abby said. "Cliff was aware of my involvement in these cases, but I never went into detail about them. He never seemed all that interested."
She was beginning to sound angry. "But he was, more than a little. That's the way he operates."
"If you didn't go into detail with him," I said, "then how did he get the information from you?"
"I used to give him keys to my building, my apartment, when I'd go out of town so he could water my plants, bring the mail in. He could have had copies made."
Our conversation at the Mayflower came back to me.
When Abby had talked about someone breaking into her computer and had gone on to accuse the FBI or CIA, I had been skeptical. Would an experienced agent open a word processing file and not realize that the time and date might be changed? Not likely.
"Cliff Ring went into your computer?"
"I can't prove it, but I know he did," Abby said. "I can't prove he's been going through my mail, but I know he has. It's no big deal to steam open a letter, reseal it, and then place it back in the box. Not if you've made a copy of the mailbox key."
"Were you aware he was writing the story?"
"Of course not. I didn't know a damn thing about it until I opened the Sunday paper! He'd let himself into my apartment when he knew I wouldn't be there. He was going through my computer, anything he could find. Then he followed up by calling people, getting quotes and information, which was pretty easy, since he knew exactly where to look and what he was looking for."
"Easy because you had been relieved of your police beat. When you thought the Post had backed off from the story, what your editors had really backed away from was you."
Abby nodded angrily. "The story was passed into what they viewed as more reliable hands. Clifford Ring's hands," she said.
I realized why Clifford Ring had made no effort to contact me. He would know that Abby and I were friends. Had he asked me for details about the cases, I might have said something to Abby, and he had wanted to keep Abby in the dark about what he was doing for as long as possible. So Ring had avoided me, gone around me.
"I'm sure he…" Abby cleared her throat and reached for her drink. Her hand shook. "He can be very convincing. He'll probably win a prize. For the series."
"I'm sorry, Abby."
"It's nobody's fault but my own. I was stupid."
"We take risks when we allow ourselves to love - "
"I'll never take a risk like that again," she cut me off. "It was always a problem with him, one problem after another. I was always the one making concessions, giving him a second chance, then a third and a fourth."
"Did the people you work with know about you and Cliff?
"We were careful." She got evasive.
"Why?"
"The newsroom is a very incestuous, gossipy place."
"Certainly your colleagues must have seen the two of you together."
"We were very careful," she repeated.
"People must have sensed something between you. Tension, if nothing else."
"Competition. Guarding my turf. That's what he would say if asked."
And jealousy, I thought. Abby never had been good at hiding her emotions. I could imagine her jealous rages. I could imagine those observing her in the newsroom misconstruing, assuming she was ambitious and jealous of Clifford Ring, when that was not the case. She was jealous of his other commitments.
"He's married, isn't he, Abby?"
She could not stop the tears this time.
I got up to refresh our drinks. She would tell me he was unhappy with his wife, contemplating divorce, and Abby had believed he would leave it all for her. The story was as threadbare and predictable as something in Ann Landers. I had heard it a hundred times before. Abby had been used.
I set her drink on the table and gently squeezed her shoulder before I moved back to my chair.
She told me what I expected to hear, and I just looked at her sadly.
"I don't deserve your sympathy," she cried.
"You've been hurt much more than I have."
"Everybody has been hurt. You. Pat Harvey. The parents, friends of these kids. If the cases hadn't happened, I'd still be working cops. At least I'd be all right professionally. No one person should have the power to cause such destruction."
I realized she was no longer thinking about Clifford Ring. She was thinking of the killer.
"You're right. No one should have the power. And no one will if we don't allow it."
"Deborah and Fred didn't allow it. Jill, Elizabeth, Jimmy, Bonnie. All of them."
She looked defeated. "They didn't want to be murdered."
"What will Cliff do next?"
I asked.
"Whatever it is, it won't involve me. I've changed all my locks."
"And your fears that your phones are bugged, that you're being followed?"
"Cliff's not the only one who wants to know what I'm doing. I can't trust anyone anymore!"
Her eyes filled with angry tears. "You were the last person I wanted to hurt, Kay."
"Stop it, Abby. You can cry all year and it won't do me any good."
"I'm sorry…"
"No more apologies."
I was very firm but gentle.
She bit her bottom lip and stared at her drink.
"Are you ready to help me now?"
She looked up at me.
"First, what color was the Lincoln we saw in Williamsburg last week?"