Mortal Friends

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  I nudged Grider. “Oh-oh, here we go.”

  Cynthia marched right up to me without giving Senator Grider a glance. She said, “Well, if it isn’t Nightmare Girl. And just what the hell do you think you’re doing crashing my party?”

  Senator Grider stuck out his hand. “How do, Ms. Rinehart? I b’lieve you’re my hostess for this shindig tonight.”

  “Who are you?” she said, squinting at him in the low light.

  “I am the man who accompanied Reven Lynch to this party,” he said, then whispered a pointed aside to me: “Presidential humor.”

  Cynthia looked like she was getting ready to call security to have us both chucked out when the light suddenly dawned. Watching her fury morph into embarrassment when she realized she’d just offended Senator Grider was a gratifying moment. I wished that Violet could have been there. I never thought I’d see the day when Cynthia was speechless, but she was then. She looked back and forth at us several times, as if to say, Don’t tell me you two are here together?

  “I told Senator Grider that you might not be thrilled to see me here, Cynthia. So if you’d prefer us to leave, we certainly will, won’t we, Zack?”

  Before Grider could respond, she slammed into reverse.

  “Leave? I wouldn’t hear of it! I was rude. I apologize. Forgive me, Senator, for not recognizing you. Reven, since you are gracious enough to be here tonight and accept my hospitality, the very least I can do is to offer it to you with open arms.”

  She pointed her hand at me like a gun, daring me to shake it—which I did, with a sulfurous smile. She turned to Grider and purred, “Now you, Senator, are sitting next to me at dinner. We mustn’t talk now, or we might run out of conversation.”

  “Doubt it,” he said.

  Cynthia flitted off to “attend” to her other guests. Grider stared after her.

  “Like watching burlap turn to silk,” he said.

  Cynthia headed straight for Grant, obviously to inform him who I was with. I saw they were having a little tiff. It looked like she was trying to get Grant to come over and say hello to Senator Grider, and Grant didn’t want to oblige her, probably because it meant having to face me. I knew he was desperate to avoid me, but it was difficult to do so without appearing rude to the senator.

  Cynthia won. She and Grant shuffled over to us. Grant shook Senator Grider’s hand and thanked him for coming. Then he said a sheepish hello to me. I just stared at him. He knew what I was thinking. I didn’t have to say a word.

  Dinner was announced. Cynthia grabbed Grider’s arm and pulled him toward the dining area. Grant and I were left alone just as another burst of those breaking-glass-fingernails-scraping-a-blackboard wind chimes crashed over the sound system. I said, “Sayonara, asshole,” and moved on to find my seat.

  I was placed at the head table between Senator Grider and Mr. Bolton Sr. My place card read, “Guest of Senator Grider.” Zach obviously hadn’t told them I was coming. Mr. Bolton was standing, waiting for the ladies to be seated. As he turned to shake my hand, he suddenly realized who I was. He froze. He couldn’t even say my name. He gave me a curt nod and sat down. I figured that was because I was a reminder that his son was still married to Violet, and that this evening’s festivities were hardly in the best of taste.

  I admit I was very surprised to see Grant’s parents there at all. The senior Boltons were a pair of ruthless pioneers who had reinvented themselves as landed gentry. Grant Bolton Sr. was a robust man of seventy-plus years with iron gray hair and the hardy demeanor of a sportsman. Though he cultivated the style of a patrician to the manor born, he was in fact a tough, snobbish, self-made man who had all the pretensions of Old Money and none of its charm. He had built the Potomac Bank virtually from scratch into the powerhouse it was today.

  His wife was seated next to Grant, on the opposite side of the table. Rainy Bolton was a petite and tidy woman who wore her steel-wool hair in a tight bun and her mouth in a smile that looked like a frown. Her beige silk evening suit was tailored and proper, and purposely plain in the style of Really Old Money. I figured she’d bought it at Inga’s. She wore a diamond and pearl choker and earrings to match. I knew from Violet that her mother-in-law’s collection of dowdy antique jewelry had not been “handed down” to her from her grandmother, as Rainy claimed, but surreptitiously purchased at auction to look as if it had been inherited. To me, Rainy Bolton was “mutton dressed as lamb and twice as tough,” as my mother used to say.

  Grant was the apple of his parents’ eye—the only son who had been brought up like a prince and who was expected to marry a girl of substance and worth. They thought I was much too frivolous for Grant. But, as I said, I was astonished to see them there; I thought they had really loved Violet, who had done the family credit while posing no threat to Rainy, plus given them a grandson they adored. Maybe Violet was right, I thought. Rainy was a stealth starfucker, and Cynthia was now a big star.

  Cynthia monopolized Grider. Mr. Bolton Sr. barely spoke to me, probably out of guilt. There was nothing left for me to do but drink. The appetizer arrived, followed by the first bout of the evening’s entertainment: twin brother violinists dueling to see which one could play “Flight of the Bumblebee” faster. Other variety acts punctuated the five-course meal, including six Chinese drummers who were more deafening than Niagara Falls and a bewildering scene from a Kabuki play. By the time the troupe of Korean acrobats showed up, jumping and flipping around the tables just before dessert, I’d had so much to drink I felt sloppier than a half-eaten egg roll. Yet I wasn’t quite comfortably anesthetized, so when I noticed that Senator Grider’s wineglass was still full, I asked him if I could have it. He pushed it over with a judgmental air.

  “You a teetotaler?” I asked him.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  “Well, then, don’t mind me!” I toasted him and drained the glass.

  His expression soured. “My wife had a drinking problem.”

  “Oh, I don’t have a problem. I just like to drink! Nights like this, you should seriously reconsider your position on the subject.”

  Finally, a huge cake was wheeled in on a trolley. It was one of those fantasy cakes: a large pagoda, with “Happy Birthday Grant” written across it in big red letters. Grant rose from his chair to blow out the six candles—one for each decade, and one to grow on. He blew them out in one breath, but they all flickered back to life—trick candles being Cynthia’s idea of a joke.

  Cynthia got up from her seat and tapped her glass. A chorus of pinging crystal soon silenced the room. She fastened her eyes on Grant, who was seated across the table from her. She wished him a happy birthday and then, in one of the great understatements of all time, she said, “I’m sure that some of you are wondering why I chose this museum to celebrate Grant….”

  Not some. All.

  She launched into a speech about how this was going to be “the Asian century,” and the party was not only to celebrate Grant but to mark the opening of the new exhibition, sponsored by her foundation. I may have been a little tipsy, but I got the point: she’d made another big contribution to another important institution, and this was yet another party to show it off. Grider sat with his arms crossed in front of him, his straw lips clenched tight, staring up at her like a farmer with a pitchfork.

  The valet attendants were all backed up. They took forty-five minutes to bring the car around. By the time I collapsed into the gray Buick, I was utterly exhausted. Grider and I hardly said a word to each other on the way home. He pulled up in front of my house and said, “I hate to leave you after all we’ve been through together.”

  “You mind if I don’t ask you in for a drink? I’m about to collapse.”

  “Don’t mind at all. Need to get some shut-eye myself. Like to see you again, though. I’m invited to a cocktail shindig at the Otanni Embassy this Friday. Wanna come?”

  “Sure. Great. Whatever.”

  “Pick you up at six.”

  He walked me to my door. Just as I was
about to unlock it, he said, “Like to kiss you good night, if I may.”

  I was too drunk and too tired to make an excuse. I just lifted my head and closed my eyes. He was an unexpectedly good kisser. I was amazed. I actually enjoyed it. But that could have been the wine.

  Chapter 32

  The phone rang around eight thirty the next morning. I had such a hangover, it sounded like a fire alarm. It was Gunner.

  “Turn on Channel Four right now,” he ordered and hung up.

  I paid no attention. I rolled over and went back to sleep. The phone rang again. This time it was Violet, screaming into the receiver.

  “They got him! They got him! Channel Four! Quickly! They’re doing a recap!”

  I switched on the television to the Channel Four news. A man with a blanket over his head was being escorted to a police car by about a dozen officers in flak jackets. Jenna Jakes, the local anchor, was on the scene, mike in hand, talking to the camera: “Early this morning, police took into custody a man they suspect is the Beltway Basher… blah, blah, blah…”

  I had never recovered from a hangover so fast in my life. I was glued to the set, trying to see if it was Bob Poll under that blanket. They panned back to a long shot, where I thought I saw the Rolls parked on the street. But the shot cut away after a split second, so I couldn’t be sure. My chest was thumping so hard.

  Violet screamed: “The Rolls, the Rolls, did you see the Rolls? Did you see it?”

  “I think so. Did you?”

  “Yes! I saw it! It’s Bob! It’s Bob!”

  Jenna Jakes came back on camera and said, “Martin Wayne Wardell has been charged in the murders of Bianca Symonds and Amber Corey. But authorities believe he’s responsible for at least four other murders in the District, murders committed by the man they call the Beltway Basher…”

  “It’s not Bob,” I said, deflating.

  “No…I guess that wasn’t the Rolls,” Violet said.

  “At least they finally got the guy.”

  Later on that day, I found out that it was the Rolls. Martin Wayne Wardell turned out to be none other than the avuncular, cookie-loving chauffeur: Maxwell!

  Close, but no Bob Poll.

  The news had a profound effect on me. I was relieved, but I was also pretty creeped out that he turned out to be someone I’d been alone in a car with umpteen times. He could easily have driven into Rock Creek Park and bludgeoned me to death if he’d wanted to.

  I could still see those eyes watching me in the rearview mirror—especially at night, when they were two faint gleams in the darkness. I used to think they were gentle, disinterested eyes, windows to a gentle, disinterested brain. But now I knew they were busy little eyes, sharp little eyes, hating little eyes—peepholes on a hideous world of homicidal madness. They were dark corner eyes, eyes on the hunt, eyes with a plan, eyes fueled by super-octane pain and fear. Serial killer eyes.

  Being that close to someone so evil is something you can’t really fathom until it happens to you. Violet made me read Ann Rule’s book The Stranger Beside Me, where Rule describes being holed up for nights on end in a suicide prevention clinic, taking calls on the hotline with her friend and colleague, one Theodore Robert Bundy. Rule couldn’t believe it when she finally found out who Ted Bundy really was. Or what he really was. How would you like to discover you’d spent many a midnight hour alone with a guy who kept women’s heads as trophies? Like Gunner said, “You don’t recognize evil if it looks like you.”

  The corollary to that is you don’t recognize evil if it’s in familiar surroundings. I know now you can be this close to evil and not see it until it’s too late. I was so focused on Bob Poll, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else.

  Violet told me I was lucky I was a blonde. She said that Wardell was an “organized” serial killer, as opposed to a “disorganized” one. Violet knew so much about these fiends.

  “The organized ones are the really scary ones because they’re very smart and they’re very cagey and they know how to blend into your world without you suspecting it,” she said.

  She also told me they were “as finicky about their victims as gourmets are about food…. If a guy likes brunettes, he’s gonna hunt brunettes. He probably got one look at Amber, saw she was his type, and bingo! Rosina was lucky she was out of town.”

  Whatever. I felt I’d dodged a date with death.

  I was dying to know what Bob thought.

  The press went berserk. It was a national story because it involved a serial killer in the nation’s capital, who worked for a socially prominent Washingtonian with deep connections in Congress and the White House. Several reporters wanted to interview me, but I kept my mouth shut—not just about Amber, but about the time I’d dated Bob. There were others who didn’t. In fact, the only amusing thing that came out of all this was that several women of, shall we say, interesting character blabbed to the press about being alone in that car with Maxwell—revealing, of course, that Bob had taken them out.

  Bob was even more into the “high-life, low-life” syndrome than anyone had ever imagined. A gorgeous blonde who identified herself as an “exotic dancer,” but who actually worked for a tony D.C. escort service, wrote an article entitled “My Night with a Serial Killer.” It wasn’t clear until the end if she meant Bob or Maxwell.

  “Melody must have loved that one,” Violet said.

  Gunner and I went for a walk later that week—not in the cemetery but in Montrose Park. I congratulated him on solving the case.

  “It’s nice to feel safe here again,” I said.

  “Your tip about the green mink blanket. That was the big break,” he said.

  As we strolled down the path into the woods, Gunner told me they had found a green mink hair on Amber. On the basis of my recollection, they got a warrant to search the car and found the blanket. The hairs matched. There was blood in the trunk of the Rolls. They searched Bob’s house and Maxwell’s house. They found blood from two of the girls in Maxwell’s house. They had their man.

  “The fiber evidence was key,” Gunner said. “Juries love forensics.”

  “So you’re sure he’s the Beltway Basher?”

  “Pretty sure,” Gunner said.

  “Did he confess?”

  “Nope. Not even to the ones we got him cold on. Not yet. He’s a scary guy.”

  I looked at him askance. “That’s an understatement.”

  “He’s got this permanent smirk on his face, like he’s got secrets we’re never gonna find out.”

  We talked a lot about the crimes. Martin Wayne Wardell was from Phoenix, not Seattle, like “Maxwell” had told me. He had a record. He’d served six months in the Central Arizona Correctional Facility on an assault and attempted rape charge against a waitress in 1997. When he got out, he moved to Virginia, changed his name to Maxwell Martin, and somehow got a chauffeur’s license and a new social security number. Just goes to show you how easy it is to become someone else. He met Bob at King Arthur’s, and Bob hired him as a combination chauffeur and bodyguard. In retrospect it seemed like an unlikely pairing.

  The theory was that Wardell had followed Amber after meeting her in my shop. The night of her party, he pretended to run into her after it was over, maybe offered her a ride home in the Rolls, then somehow lured her to his house and assaulted her there. He wrapped her up in garbage bags, put her in the trunk, and dumped her in Rock Creek Park.

  “I just can’t imagine what her last moments must have been like,” I said to Gunner. “Thank God you got him…. I think about being in the back of that car…. Of course, Violet said I’m not a brunette, so he wouldn’t have been interested. But do you think I was ever in any real danger?”

  “You never know with these guys. But I think your friend Violet’s right. Wardell hunted thin young brunettes. When he saw Amber Corey, he didn’t see a lovely young lady. He saw prey.”

  “I bought cookies for this man, for Christ’s sakes! How can I ever trust anyone again?”

  “It
’s hard. If these guys looked like what they are, they’d never get near you. The whole point is, they’re chameleons. They appear to be whatever you want them to be. You see him as a nice, kind chauffeur? Nice, kind chauffeur he is. That’s how they lure you in.”

  “Amber never had a chance, did she?”

  “Probably not.”

  We walked along in silence. Something was eating at him. I realized we were heading for the very spot where Miss Montrose was killed.

  “Where are we going, Gunner?”

  “I just want to see something, that’s all.”

  We finally reached the spot. The crime scene tape was gone now. Thin rays of sunlight pierced the budding spring foliage. The little meadow looked the picture of bucolic innocence, but I still got a chill knowing what had happened there. Gunner gazed out over the scene.

  “Bob Poll ever call you?” he asked me.

  “Nope. I would have told you.”

  “So you haven’t spoken to him since he got married, huh?”

  “Haven’t spoken to him, no. But I saw him from a distance that day, when he was staring at poor Amber through the shop window. That’s one of the reasons I thought maybe he was the one. And I got those phone calls where no one answered. Maybe it was Bob. I wonder what he thinks of all this.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s appropriately shocked,” Gunner said with a hint of sarcasm. He was lost in thought, staring at the field.

  “You know, for someone who’s just solved a major case, you don’t seem that happy,” I said.

  “There’s an old samurai saying, ‘After victory, tighten the cords of your helmet.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “C’mon. Let’s head back.” He stooped down, plucked a tiny blue flower from the ground, and handed it to me. “Present for you.”

  “Thanks.” I twirled the little bluebell around in my fingers. “Cherry blossoms’ll be out soon. Hope they last this year. Want to go with me when they bloom?”