'She didn't die… well, it was quick, wasn't it?'
She squinted in the setting sun, and she bit her lower lip.
'I just don't want to think she suffered,' she said.
'Most people who die in fires don't suffer,' I answered, evading her question with gentle words. 'Usually carbon monoxide overcomes them and they aren't conscious.'
'Oh, thank God,' she said.
'I'll be inside,' McGovern said to me.
'Mrs Harvey,' I said, 'did you know Kellie very well?'
'We've been neighbors for almost five years. Not that we did a whole lot together, but I certainly knew her.'
'I'm wondering if you might have any recent photographs of her, or know someone who might?'
'I might have something.'
'I have to make sure of the identification,' I then said, although my motive was other than that.
I wanted to see for myself what Shephard had looked like in life.
'And if there's anything else you can tell me about her, I would appreciate it,' I went on. 'For example, does she have family here?'
'Oh no,' Harvey said, staring at her neighbor's ruined house. 'She was from all over. Her father was military, you know, and I think he and her mom live somewhere in North Carolina. Kellie was very worldly from having moved around so much. I used to tell her I wished I could be as strong and smart as her. She didn't take crap off anyone, let me tell you. One time there was a snake on my deck, and I called her, all hysterical. She came on and chased it in the yard and killed it with a shovel. I guess she had to get that way because the men just wouldn't leave her alone. I always told her she could be a movie star, and she would say, But Sandra, I can't act. And I would say, But neither can most of them!'
'She was pretty streetwise, then,' I said.
'You bet. That's why she had that burglar alarm put in. Feisty and streetwise, that's Kellie. If you want to come in with me, I'll see what I can do about pictures.'
'If you don't mind,' I said. 'That's very nice of you.'
We cut through a hedge and I followed her up steps into her big, bright kitchen. It was apparent that Harvey liked to cook, based on a well-stocked pantry and every conceivable appliance. Cookware hung from hooks in the ceiling, and whatever was simmering on the stove smelled rich with beef and onions, perhaps a stroganoff or stew.
'If you want to sit right over there by the window, I'll go get what I've got from the den,' she said.
I took a seat at the breakfast table and looked out the window at Kellie Shephard's house. I could see people passing behind broken windows, and someone had set up lights because the sun was low and smoldering. I wondered how often her neighbor had watched her come and go.
Certainly, Harvey was curious about the life of a woman exotic enough to be a movie star, and I wondered if someone could have stalked Shephard without her neighbor noticing a strange car or person in the area. But I had to be careful what I asked, because it was not publicly known that Shephard had died a violent death.
'Well, I can't believe it,' Harvey called out to me as she returned to the kitchen. 'I got something better. You know, some television crew was at the hospital last week filming a feature about the trauma center. It showed on the evening news, and Kellie was in it, so I taped it. I can't believe it took me this long to think of it, but my brain's not working all that well, if you know what I mean.'
She was holding a videotape. I accompanied her into the living room, where she inserted the tape into the VCR. I sat in a blue wing chair in a sea of blue carpet while she rewound and then hit the play button. The first few frames were of Lehigh Valley hospital from the perspective of a helicopter swooping in with an emergency case. It was then I realized that Kellie was really a medflight paramedic, and not merely a nurse on a ward.
Footage showed Kellie in a jumpsuit dashing down a corridor with other members of the flight crew who had just been paged.
'Excuse me, excuse me,' she said on tape as they darted around people in the way.
She was a spectacular example of the human genome working just right, her teeth dazzling, and the camera in love with every angle of her fine features and bones. It was not hard to imagine patients getting major crushes on her, and then the film showed her in the cafeteria after another impossible mission had been accomplished.
'It's always a race against time,' Shephard was telling the reporter. 'You know even a minute's delay could cost a life. Talk about an adrenaline rush.'
As she continued her rather banal interview, the angle of the camera shifted.
'I can't believe I taped that, but it's not often someone I know is on TV,' Harvey was saying.
It didn't penetrate at first.
'Stop the tape!' I said. 'Rewind. Yes, right there. Freeze it.'
The frame was of someone in the background eating lunch.
'No,' I said under my breath. 'No way.'
Carrie Grethen was wearing jeans and a tie-dye shirt, and eating a sandwich at a table with other busy hospital personnel. I had not recognized her at first because her hair was below her ears and henna red, and last I had seen her, it was short and bleached white. But it was her eyes that finally pulled at me like a black hole. She was staring straight into the camera as she chewed, her eyes as coldly bright and evil as I remembered.
I came out of the chair and went straight to the VCR and popped out the tape.
'I need to take this,' I said, my voice on the verge of panic. 'I promise you'll get it back.'
'Okay. As long as you don't forget. It's my only copy.' Sandra Harvey got up, too. 'Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost.'
'I've got to go. Thank you again,' I said.
I ran next door and trotted up steps into the back of the house, where cold water was an inch deep on the floor and dripping slowly from the roof. Agents were moving about, taking photographs and talking amongst themselves.
'Teun!' I called out.
I carefully moved further inside, stepping over missing areas of flooring and doing my best not to trip. I was vaguely aware of an agent dropping the burned carcass of a cat into a plastic bag.
'Teun!' I called out again.
I heard sure feet splashing and stepping over fallen roofing and collapsed walls. Then she was mere inches from me and steadying my arm with her hand.
'Whoa. Careful,' she started to say.
'We've got to find Lucy,' I said.
'What's going on?'
She began to carefully escort me out.
'Where is she?' I demanded.
'There's a two-alarm fire downtown. A grocery store, probably an arson. Kay, what the hell…?'
We were out on the lawn and I was clutching the videotape as if it were my only hope in life.
'Teun, please.' I held her gaze. 'Take me to Philadelphia.'
'Come on,' she said.
16
MCGOVERN MADE THE trip back to Philadelphia in forty-five minutes, because she was speeding. She had radioed her field office and talked on a secure tac channel. Although she was still very careful what she relayed, she had made it clear that she wanted every available agent out on the street looking for Carrie. While this was going on, I reached Marino on my cellular phone and told him to get on a plane now.
'She's here,' I said.
'Oh shit. Do Benton and Lucy know?'
'As soon as I find them.'
'I'm out the door,' he said.
I did not believe, nor did McGovern, that Carrie was still in Lehigh County. She wanted to be where she could do the most damage, and I was convinced she somehow knew that Lucy had moved to Philadelphia. Carrie could have been stalking Lucy, for that matter. One thing I believed but could not make sense of was that the murders in Warrenton and now here were intended to lure those of us who had defeated Carrie in the past.
'But Warrenton happened before she escaped from Kirby,' McGovern reminded me as she turned onto Chestnut Street.
'I know,' I said as fear turned my pulse to static. 'I don't understand any of it except that somehow she's involved. It's not coincidence that she was on that news clip, Teun. She knew that after Kellie Shephard's murder we would review everything we could find. Carrie knew damn well we would see that tape.'