"You still sound so damn chiefly," the familiar voice said.
"Abby! I'm sorry."
I laughed. "Rose told me it was you. As usual, I'm in the middle of about fifty other things, and I think I've completely lost the art of being friendly on the phone. How are you?"
"Fine. If you don't count the fact that the homicide rate in Washington has tripled since I moved up here."
"A coincidence, I hope."
"Drugs."
She sounded nervous. "Cocaine, crack, and semiautomatics. I always thought a beat in Miami would be the worst or maybe New York. But our lovely nation's capital is the worst."
I glanced up at the clock and jotted the time on a call sheet. Habit again. I was so accustomed to filling out call sheets that I reached for the clipboard even when hairdresser called.
"I was hoping you might be free for dinner tonight," she said.
"In Washington?"
I asked, perplexed.
"Actually, I'm in Richmond."
I suggested dinner at my house, packed up my briefcase, and headed out to the grocery store. After much deliberation as I pushed the cart up and down aisles, I selected two tenderloins and the makings for salad. The afternoon was beautiful. The thought of seeing Abby was improving my mood. I decided that an evening spent with an old friend was a good excuse to brave cooking out again.
When I got home, I began to work quickly, crushing fresh garlic into a bowl of red wine and olive oil. Though my mother had always admonished me about "ruining a good steak," I was spoiled by my own culinary skills. Honestly, I made the best marinade in town, and no cut of meat could resist being improved by it. Rinsing Boston lettuce and draining it on paper towels, I sliced mushrooms, onions, and the last Hanover tomato as I fortified myself to tend to the grill. Unable to put off the task any longer, I stepped out onto the brick patio.
For a moment, I felt like a fugitive on my own property as I surveyed the flower gardens and trees of my backyard. I fetched a bottle of 409 and a sponge and began vigorously to scrub the outdoor furniture before taking a Brillo pad to the grill, which I had not used since the Saturday night in May when Mark and I last had been together. I attacked sooty grease until my elbows hurt. Images and voices invaded my mind. Arguing. Fighting. Then a retreat into angry silence that ended with making frantic love.
I almost did not recognize Abby when she arrived at my front door shortly before six-thirty. When she had worked the police beat in Richmond, her hair had been to her shoulders and streaked with gray, giving her a washed-out, gaunt appearance that made her seem older than her forty-odd years. Now the gray was gone. Her hair was cut short and smartly styled to emphasize the fine bones of her face and her eyes, which were two different shades of green, an irregularity I had always found intriguing. She wore a dark blue silk suit and ivory silk blouse, and carried a sleek black leather briefcase.
"You look very Washingtonian," I said, giving her a hug.
"It's so good to see you, Kay."
She remembered hiked Scotch and had brought a bottle of Glenfiddich, which we wasted no time in uncorking. Then we sipped drinks on the patio and talked nonstop as I lit the grill beneath a dusky late summer sky.
"Yes; I do miss Richmond in some ways," she was explaining. "Washington is exciting, but the pits. I indulged myself and bought a Saab, right? It's already been broken into once, had the hubcaps stolen, the hell beaten out of the doors. I pay a hundred and fifty bucks a month to park the damn thing, and we're talking four blocks from my apartment. Forget parking at the Post. I walk to work and use a staff car. Washington's definitely not Richmond."
She added a little too resolutely, "But I don't regret leaving."
"You're still working evenings?"
Steaks sizzled as I placed them on the grill.
"No. It's somebody else's turn. The young reporters race around after dark and I follow up during the day. I get called after hours only if something really big goes down."
"I've been keeping up with your byline," I told her. "They sell the Post in the cafeteria. I usually pick it up during lunch."
"I don't always know what you're working on," she confessed. "But I'm aware of some things."
"Explaining why you're in Richmond?"
I ventured, as I brushed marinade over the meat.
"Yes. The Harvey case."
I did not reply.
"Marino hasn't changed."
"You've talked to him?"
I asked, glancing up at her.
She replied with a wry smile, "Tried to. And several other investigators. And, of course, Benton Wesley. In other words, forget it."
"Well, if it makes you feel any better, Abby, nobody's talking much to me, either. And that's off the record."
"This entire conversation is off the record, Kay," she said seriously. "I didn't come to see you because I wanted to pick your brain for my story."
She paused. "I've been aware of what's been going on here in Virginia. I was a lot more concerned about it than my editor was until Deborah Harvey and her boyfriend disappeared. Now it's gotten hot, real hot."
"I'm not surprised."
"I'm not quite sure where to begin."
She looked unsettled. "There are things I've not told anybody, Kay. But I have a sense that I'm walking on ground somebody doesn't want me on."
"I'm not sure I understand," I said, reaching for my drink.
"I'm not sure I do, either. I ask myself if I'm imagining things."
"Abby, you're being cryptic. Please explain."
Taking a deep breath as she got out a cigarette, she replied, "I've been interested in the deaths of these couples for a long time. I've been doing some investigating, and the reactions I've gotten from the beginning are odd. It's gone beyond the usual reluctance I often run into with the police. I bring up the subject and people practically hang up on me. Then this past June, the FBI came to see me."
"I beg your pardon?"
I stopped basting and looked hard at her.
"You remember that triple homicide in Williamsburg? The mother, father, and son shot to death during a robbery?"
"Yes."
"I was working on a feature about it, and had to drive to Williamsburg. As you know, when you get off Sixty four, if you turn right you head toward Colonial Williamsburg, William and Mary. But if you turn left off the exit ramp, in maybe two hundred yards you dead end at the entrance of Camp Peary. I wasn't thinking. I took the wrong, turn."
"I've done that once or twice myself," I admitted.
She went on, "I drove up to the guard booth and explained I'd taken a wrong turn. Talk about a creepy place. God. All these big warning signs saying things like' Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity,' and 'Entering This Facility Signifies Your Consent to the Search of Your Person and Personal Property.' I was half expecting a SWAT team of Neanderthals in camouflage to bolt out of the bushes and haul me away."
"The base police are not a friendly lot," I said, somewhat amused.
"Well, I wasted no time getting the hell out of there," Abby said, "and, in truth, forgot all about it until four days later when two FBI agents appeared in the lobby of the Post looking for me. They wanted to know what I'd been doing in Williamsburg, why I'd driven to Camp Peary. Obviously, my plate number had been recorded on film and traced back to the newspaper. It was weird."
"Why would the FBI be interested?"
I asked. "Camp Peary is CIA."
"The CIA has no enforcement powers in the United States. Maybe that's why. Maybe the jerks were really CIA agents posing as FBI. Who can say what the hell is going on when you're dealing with those spooks? Besides, the CIA has never admitted that Camp Peary is its main training facility, and the agents never mentioned the CIA when they interrogated me. But I knew what they were getting at, and they knew I knew."
"What else did they ask?"
"Basically, they wanted to know if I was writing something about Camp Peary, maybe trying to sneak in. I told them if I had
intended to sneak in, I would have been a little more covert about it than driving straight to the guard booth, and though I wasn't currently working on anything about, and I quote, 'the CIA,' maybe now I ought to consider it."
"I'm sure that went over well," I said dryly.
"The guys didn't bat an eye. You know the way they are."
"The CIA is paranoid, Abby, especially about Camp Peary. State police and emergency medical helicopters aren't allowed to fly over it. Nobody violates that airspace or gets beyond the guard booth without being cleared by Jesus Christ."
"Yet you've made that same wrong turn before, as have hundreds of tourists," she reminded me. "The FBI's never come looking for you, have they?"
"No. But I don't work for the Post. " I removed the steaks from the grill and she followed me into the kitchen. As I served the salads and poured wine, she continued to talk.
"Ever since the agents came to see me, peculiar things have been happening."
"Such as?"
"I think my phones are being tapped."
"Based on what?"
"It started with my phone at home. I'd be talking to someone and hear something. This has also happened at work, especially of late. A call will be transferred, and I have this strong sense that someone else is listening in. It's hard to explain."
She nervously rearranged her silverware. "A static, a noisy silence, or however you want to describe it. But it's there."
"Any other peculiar things?"
"Well, there was something several weeks ago. I was standing out in front of a People's Drug Store off Connecticut, near Dupont Circle. A source was supposed to meet me there at eight P.M., then we were going to find some place quiet to have dinner and talk. And I saw this man. Clean cut, dressed in a windbreaker and jeans, nice looking. He walked by twice during the fifteen minutes I was standing on the corner, and I caught a glimpse of him again later when my appointment and I were going into the restaurant. I know it sounds crazy, but I had the feeling I was being followed."
"Had you ever seen this man before?"
She shook her head.
"Have you seen him since?"
"No," she said. "But there's something else. My mail. I live in an apartment building. All the mailboxes are downstairs in the lobby. Sometimes I get things with postmarks that don't make sense."
"If the CIA were tampering with your mail, I ran assure you that you wouldn't know about it."
"I'm not saying my mail looks tampered with. But in several instances, someone - my mother, my literary agent - will swear they mailed something on a certain day, and when I finally get it, the date on the postmark is inconsistent with what it should be. Late. By days, a week. I don't know."
She paused. "I probably would just assume it had to do with the ineptitude of the postal service, but with everything else that's been going on, it's made me wonder."
"Why would anyone be tapping your phone, tailing you, or tampering with your mail?"
I asked the critical question.
"If I knew that, maybe I could do something about it."
She finally got around to eating. "This is wonderful."
Despite the compliment, she didn't appear the least bit hungry.
"Any possibility," I suggested bluntly, "that your encounter with these FBI agents, the episode at Camp Peary, might have made you paranoid?"
"Obviously it's made me paranoid. But look, Kay. It's not like I'm writing another Veil or working on a Watergate. Washington is one shoot-out after another, the same old shit. The only big thing brewing is what's going on here. These murders, or possible murders, of these couples. I start poking around and run into trouble. What do you think?"
"I'm not sure."
1 uncomfortably recalled Benton Wesley's demeanor, his warnings from the night before.
"I know the business about the missing shoes," Abby said.
I did not respond or show my surprise. It was a detail that, so far, had been kept from reporters.
"It's not exactly normal for eight people to end up dead in the woods without shoes and socks turning up either at the scenes or inside the abandoned cars."
She looked expectantly at me.
"Abby," I said quietly, refilling our wineglasses, "you know I can't go into detail about these cases. Not even with you."
"You're not aware of anything that might clue me in as to what I'm up against?"
"To tell you the truth, I probably know less than you do."
"That tells me something. The cases have been going on for two and a half years, and you may know less than I do."
I remembered what Marino said about somebody "covering his ass."
I thought of Pat Harvey and the congressional hearing. My fear was kicking in.
Abby said, "Pat Harvey is a bright star in Washington."
"I'm aware of her importance."
"There's more to it than what you read in the papers, Kay. In Washington, what parties you get invited to mean as much as votes. Maybe more. When it comes to prominent people included on the elite guest lists, Pat Harvey is right up there with the First Lady. It's been rumored that come the next presidential election, Pat Harvey may successfully conclude what Geraldine Ferraro started."
"A vice-presidential hopeful?"
I asked dubiously.
"That's the gossip. I'm skeptical, but if we have another Republican President, I personally think she's at least got a shot at a Cabinet appointment or maybe even becoming the next Attorney General. Providing she holds together."
"She's going to have to work very hard at holding herself together through all this."
"Personal problems can definitely ruin your career, " Abby agreed.
"They can, if you let them. But if you survive them, they can make you stronger, more effective."
"I know," she muttered, staring at her wineglass. "I'm pretty sure I never would have left Richmond if it hadn't been for what happened to Henna."
Not long after I had taken office in Richmond, Abby's sister, Henna, was murdered. The tragedy had brought Abby and me together professionally. We had become friends. Months later she had accepted the job at the Post.
"It still isn't easy for me to come back here," Abby said. "In fact, this is my first time since I moved. I even drove past my old house this morning and was halfway tempted to knock on the door, see if the current owners would let me in. I don't know why. But I wanted to walk through it again, see if I could handle going upstairs to Henna's room, replace that horrible last image of her with something harmless. It didn't appear that anyone was home. And it probably was just as well. I don't think I could have brought myself to do it."
"When you're truly ready, you'll do it," I said, and I wanted to tell her about my using the patio this evening, about how I had not been able to before now. But it sounded like such a small accomplishment, and Abby did not know about Mark.
"I talked to Fred Cheney's father late this morning," Abby said. "Then I went to see the Harvey's."
"When will your story run?"
"Probably not until the weekend edition. I've still got a lot of reporting to do. The paper wants a profile of Fred and Deborah and anything else I can come up with about the investigation-especially any connection to the other four couples."
"How did the Harvey's seem to you when you talked to them earlier today?"
"Well, I really didn't talk to him, to Bob. As soon as I arrived, he left with his sons. Reporters are not his favorite people, and I have a feeling being 'Pat Harvey's husband' gets to him. He never gives interviews."
She pushed her half-eaten steak away and reached for her cigarettes. Her smoking was a lot worse than I remembered it. "I'm worried about Pat. She looks as if she's aged ten years in the last week. And it was strange. I couldn't shake the sensation she knows something, has already formulated her own theory about what's happened to her daughter. I guess that's what made me most curious. I'm wondering if she's gotten a threat, a note, some sort of communication from whomever's invo
lved. And she's refusing to tell anyone, including the police."
"I can't imagine she would be that unwise."
"I can," Abby said. "I think if she thought there was any chance Deborah might return home unharmed, Pat Harvey wouldn't tell God what was going on."
I got up to clear the table.
"I think you'd better make some coffee," Abby said. "I don't want to fall asleep at the wheel."
"When do you need to head out?"
I asked, loading the dishwasher.
"Soon. I've got a couple of places to go before I drive back to Washington."
I glanced over at her as I filled the coffee-pot with water.
She explained, "A Seven-Eleven where Deborah and Fred stopped after they left Richmond - "
"How did you know about that?" I interrupted her.
"I managed to pry it out of the tow truck operator who hung around the rest stop, waiting to haul away the Jeep. He overheard the police discussing a receipt they found in a wadded-up paper bag. It required one hell of a lot of trouble, but I managed to figure out which Seven-Eleven and what clerk would have been working around the time Deborah and Fred would have stopped in. Someone named Ellen Jordan works the four-to-midnight shift Monday through Friday."
I was so fond of Abby, it was easy for me to forget that she had won more than her share of investigative reporting awards for a very good reason.
"What do you expect to find out from this clerk?"
"Ventures like this, Kay, are like looking for the prize inside a box of Crackerjacks. I don't know the answers in fact, I don't even know the questions - until I start digging."
"I really don't think you should wander around out there alone late at night, Abby."
"If you'd like to ride shotgun," she replied, amused, "I'd love the company."
"I don't think that's a very good idea."
"I suppose you're right," she said. I decided to do it anyway.
4
The illuminated sign was visible half a mile before we reached the exit, a "7-Eleven" glowing in the dark. Its cryptic red-and-green message no longer meant what it said, for every 7-Eleven I knew of was open twenty-four hours a day. I could almost hear what my father would say.
All That Remains ks-3 Page 5
