Postmortem (30 page)

I didn't respond.

"I wasn't going to rule out nothing when I first walked into that bedroom and found her sitting up in her pretty little nightie, a big hole in her chest. Me, I always think murder first. Suicide's last on my list because if you don't think murder first, it's a little late after the fact. The only friggin' mistake I made back then was not taking a suspect's kit from Boltz. Suicide seemed so obvious after you did the post I marked the case exceptionally cleared. Maybe I shouldn't have. Back then I had a good reason to get his blood, to make sure the sperm inside her was his. He said it was, said they had sex early that morning. I let it go. I didn't get squat from him. Now I can't even ask. I don't got probable cause."

"You have to get more than blood," I said idiotically. "If he's A negative, B negative in the Lewis blood group system, you can't tell if he's a nonsecreter-you have to get saliva . . ."

"Yo. I know how to take a suspect kit, all right? It don't matter. We know what he is, right?"

I said nothing.

"We know the guy whacking these women is a nonsecreter. And we know Boltz would know the details of the crimes, know 'em so well he could take out Henna and make it look like the other ones."

"Well, get your kit and we'll get his DNA," I said angrily. "Just go ahead. That will tell you definitely."

"Hey. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll run him under the damn laser, too, and see if he sparkles."

The glittery residue on the mislabeled PERK flashed in my mind. Did the residue really come from my hands? Did Bill routinely wash his hands with Borawash soap? "You found the sparkles on Henna's body?"

Marino was asking. "On her pajamas. The bedcovers, too."

Neither of us spoke for a while.

Then I said, "It's the same man. I know what my findings are. It's the same man."

"Yeah. Maybe it is. But that don't make me feel any better."

"You're sure what Abby said is true?"

"I buzzed by his office late this afternoon."

"You went to see him, to see Boltz?" I stammered.

"Oh, yeah."

"And did you get your confirmation?" My voice was rising.

"Yeah." He glanced over at me. "I got it more or less."

I didn't say anything. I was afraid to say anything.

"Course, he denied everything and got right hot about it. Threatened to sue her for slander, the whole nine yards. He won't, though. No way he'll make a peep about it because he's lying and I know it and he knows I know it."

I saw his hand go toward his left outer thigh and I suddenly panicked. His microcassette recorder!

"If you're doing what I think you're doing . . ." I blurted out.

"What?" he asked, surprised.

"If you've got a goddam tape recorder going . . ."

"Hey!" he protested. "I was scratching, all right? Hell, pat me down. Do a strip search if it'll make you feel better."

"You couldn't pay me enough."

He laughed. He was honestly amused.

He went on, "Want to know the truth? It makes me wonder what really happened to his wife."

I swallowed hard and said, "There was nothing suspicious about the physical findings. She had powder residues on her right hand-"

He cut me off. "Oh, sure. She pulled the trigger. I don't doubt that, but maybe we know why now, huh? Maybe he's been doing this for years. Maybe she found out."

Cranking the engine, he turned on his lights. Momentarily, we were rocking between houses and emerging on the street.

"Look." He wasn't going to give it a rest. "I don't mean to pry. Better put, it ain't my idea of a good time, okay? But you know him, Doc. You been seeing him, right?"

A transvestite was sashaying along a sidewalk, his yellow skirt swishing around his shapely legs, his false breasts firm and high, the false nipples erect beneath a tight white shell. Glassy eyes glanced our way.

"You been seeing him, right?" he asked again.

"Yes."

My voice was almost inaudible.

"What about last Friday night?"

I couldn't remember at first. I couldn't think. The transvestite languidly turned around and went the other way.

"I took my niece to dinner and a movie."

"He with you?"

"No."

"You know where he was last Friday night?"

I shook my head. "He didn't call or nothing?"

"No."

Silence.

"Shit," he muttered in frustration. "If only I'd known about it then, known what I know about him now. I would've driven past his crib. You know, checked to see where the hell he was. Shit."

Silence.

He tossed the cigarette butt out the window and lit up again. He was smoking one right after another. "So, how long you been seeing him?"

"Several months. Since April."

"He seeing any other ladies, or just you?"

"I don't think he's been seeing anybody else. I don't know. Obviously there's a lot about him I don't know."

He went on with the relentlessness of a threshing machine, "You ever pick up on anything? Anything off about him, I'm saying?"

"I don't know what you mean."

My tongue was getting thick. I was almost slurring my words as if I were falling asleep.

"Off," he repeated. "Sex-wise."

I said nothing.

"He ever rough with you? Force anything?"

A pause. "What's he like? He the animal Abby Turnbull described? Can you see him doing something like that, like what he done to her?"

I was hearing him and not hearing him. My thoughts were ebbing and flowing as if I were slipping in and out of consciousness.

". . . like aggression, I'm saying. Was he aggressive? You notice anything strange . . . ?"

The images. Bill. His hands crushing me, tearing at my clothes, pushing me down hard into the couch.

". . . guys like that, they have a pattern. It ain't sex they're really after. They have to take it. You know, a conquest . . ."

He was so rough. He was hurting me. He thrust his tongue into my mouth. I couldn't breathe. It wasn't he. It was as if he'd become somebody else.

"Don't matter a damn he's good-looking, could have it when he wants it. You see that? People like that, they're off. OFF . . ." Like Tony used to do when he was drunk and angry with me.

". . . I mean, he's a friggin' rapist, Doc. I know you don't want to hear it. But, goddam it, it's true. Seems like you might have picked up on something . ."

He drank too much, Bill did. He was worse when he had too much to drink.

". . . happens all the time. You wouldn't believe the reports I get, these young ladies calling me to their cribs two months after the fact. They finally get around to telling someone. Maybe a friend convinces them to come forward with the info. Bankers, businessmen, politicians. They meet some babe in a bar, buy her a drink and slip in a little chloral hydrate. Boom. Next thing, she's waking up with this animal in her bed, feels like a friggin' truck's been run through her . . ."

He would never have tried such a thing with me. He cared about me. I wasn't an object, a stranger . . . Or maybe he'd simply been cautious. I know too much. He would never have gotten away with it.

". . . the toads get away with it for years. Some of 'em get away with it their whole lives. Go to their graves with as many notches on their belts as Jack the Giant Killer . . ."

We were stopped at a red light. I had no idea how long we'd been sitting here, not moving.

"That's the right al-lusion, ain't it? The drone who killed flies, put a notch on his belt for each one . . ."

The light was a bright red eye.

"He ever do it to you, Doc? Boltz ever rape you?"

"What?"

I slowly turned toward him. He was staring straight ahead, his face pale in the red glow of the traffic light.

"What?" I asked again. My heart was pounding.

The light blinked from red to green, and we were moving again.

"Did he ever rape you?" Marino demanded, as if I were someone he didn't know, as if I were one of the "babes" whose "cribs" he was called to in the past.

I could feel the blood creeping up my neck.

"He ever hurt you, try to choke you, anything like . . ."

Rage exploded from me. I was seeing flecks of light. As if something were shorting out. Blinded as blood pounded inside my head.

"No! I've told you every goddam thing 1 know about him! Every goddam thing I'm going to tell you! PERIOD!"

Marino was stunned into silence.

I didn't know where we were at first.

The great white clock face floated directly ahead as shadows and shapes materialized into the small trailer park of mobile unit laboratories beyond the back parking lot. There was no one else Tuesday it rained. Water poured from gray skies and my wipers couldn't clear the windshield fast enough. I was part of the barely moving string of traffic creeping along the interstate.

The weather mirrored my mood. The encounter with Marino left me feeling physically sick, hung over. How long had he known? How often had he seen the white Audi parked in my drive? Was it more than idle curiosity when he cruised past my house? He wanted to see how the uppity lady chief lived. He probably knew what the Commonwealth paid me and what my mortgage was each month.

Spitting flares forced me to merge into the left lane, and as I crept past an ambulance, and police directing traffic around a badly mangled van, my dark thoughts were interrupted by the radio.

" . . . Henna Yarborough was sexually assaulted and strangled, and it is believed she was murdered by the same man who has killed four other Richmond women in the past two months. . . " I turned up the volume and listened to what I'd already heard several times since leaving my house. Murder seemed to be the only news in Richmond these days.

" . . . the latest development. According to a source close to the investigation, Dr. Lori Petersen may have attempted to dial 911 just before she was murdered . . ."

This juicy revelation had been on the front page of the morning newspaper.

" . . . Director of Public Safety Norman Tanner was reached at his home . . ."

Tanner read an obviously prepared statement. "The police bureau has been apprised of the situation. Due to the sensitivity of these cases, I can't make any comment . . ."

"Do you have any idea who the source of this information is, Mr. Tanner?" the reporter asked.

"Not at liberty to make any comments about that . . ."

He couldn't comment because he didn't know.

But I did.

The so-called source close to the investigation had to be Abby herself. Her byline was nowhere to be found. Obviously, her editors would have taken her off the stories. She was no longer reporting the news, now she was making it, and I remembered her threat: "Someone will pay . . ."

She wanted Bill to pay, the police to pay, the city to pay, God Himself to pay. I was waiting for news of the computer violation and the mislabeled PERK. The person who would pay was going to be me.

I didn't get to the office until almost eight-thirty, and by then the phones were already ringing up and down the hall.

"Reporters," Rose complained as she came in and deposited a wad of pink telephone message slips on my blotter. "Wire services, magazines and a minute ago some guy from New Jersey who says he's writing a book."

I lit a cigarette.

"The bit about Lori Petersen calling the police," she added, her face lined with anxiety. "How awful, if it's true . . ."

"Just keep sending everybody across the street," I interrupted. "Anybody who calls about these cases gets directed to Amburgey."

He had already sent me several electronic memos demanding I have a copy of Henna Yarborough's autopsy report on his desk "immediately."

In the most recent memo, "immediately" was underlined and included was the insulting remark "Expect explanation about Times release."

Was he implying I was somehow responsible for this latest "leak" to the press? Was he accusing me of telling a reporter about the aborted 911 call? Amburgey would get no explanation from me. He wasn't going to get a damn thing from me today, not even if he sent twenty memos and appeared in person.

"Sergeant Marino's here," Rose quite unnerved me by adding. "Do you want to see him?"

I knew what he wanted. In fact, I'd already made a copy of my report for him. I supposed I was hoping he'd stop by later in the day, when I was gone.

I was initialing a stack of toxicology reports when I heard his heavy footsteps down the hall. When he came in, he was wearing a dripping-wet navy blue rain slicker. His sparse hair was plastered to his head, his face haggard.

"About last night. . ." he ventured as he approached my desk.

The look in my eyes shut him up.

Ill at ease, he glanced around as he unsnapped his slicker and dug inside a pocket for his cigarettes. "Raining cats and dogs out there," he muttered. "Whatever the hell that means. Don't make any sense, when you think of it."