Marino said easily, “If Matt’s the killer, he wouldn’t worry about leaving prints in his own house. His prints are gonna be all over the place anyway.” A pause. “If. Fact is, we’re looking for a squirrel. Fact is, Matt’s a squirrel. Fact is, he ain’t the only squirrel in the world—there’s one behind every bush. Fact is, I really don’t know who the hell whacked his wife.”
I saw the face from my dreams, the white face with no features. The sun breaking through the windshield was hot but I couldn’t seem to get warm.
He continued, “The rest’s pretty much what you’d imagine. I’m not going to startle her. Going to ease my way to the edge of the bed and wake her up by putting one hand over her mouth, the knife to her throat. I’m probably not going to carry a gun because if she struggles and it goes off maybe I get shot, maybe she does before I’ve had a chance to do my thing. That’s real important to me. It’s got to go down the way I planned or I’m real upset. Also, I can’t take the chance of anyone hearing gunfire and calling the cops.”
“Do you say anything to her?” I asked, clearing my throat.
“I’m going to talk low, tell her if she screams I’ll kill her. I’ll tell her that over and over again.”
“What else? What else will you say to her?”
“Probably nothing.” He shoved the car in gear and turned around. I took one last look at the house where what he just described happened, or at least I almost believed it happened exactly as he said. I was seeing it as he was saying it. It did not seem speculation but an eyewitness revelation. An unemotional, unremorseful confession.
I was formulating a different opinion of Marino. He wasn’t slow. He wasn’t stupid. I think I liked him less than ever.
We headed east. The sun was caught in the leaves of the trees and rush hour was at its peak. For a while we were trapped in a sluggish flow of congestion, cars occupied by anonymous men and women on their way home from work. As I looked at the passing faces I felt out of synch, detached, as if I did not belong in the same world other people lived in. They were thinking about supper, perhaps the steaks they would cook on the grill, their children, the lover they would soon be seeing, or some event that had taken place during the day.
Marino was going down the list.
“Two weeks before her murder UPS delivered a package. Already checked out the delivery guy. Zip,” he said. “Not long before that some guy came by to work on the plumbing. He squares okay, too, best we can tell. So far, we’ve come up with nothing to suggest any service person, delivery guy, what have you, is the same in the four cases. Not a single common denominator. No overlapping or similarities where the victims’ jobs are concerned either.”
Brenda Steppe was a fifth-grade teacher who taught at Quinton Elementary, not far from where she lived. She moved to Richmond five years ago, and had recently broken off her engagement to a soccer coach. She was a full-figured redhead, bright and good-humored. According to her friends and her former fiancé, she jogged several miles every day and neither smoked nor drank.
I probably knew more about her life than her family in Georgia did. She was a dutiful Baptist who attended church every Sunday and the suppers every Wednesday night. A musician, she played the guitar and led the singing at the youth group retreats. Her college major was English, which was also what she taught. Her favorite form of relaxation, in addition to jogging, was reading, and she was reading Doris Betts, it appeared, before switching off her bedside light that Friday night.
“The thing that sort of blew my mind,” Marino told me, “is something I recently found out, one possible connection between her and Lori Petersen. Brenda Steppe was treated in the VMC ER about six weeks ago.”
“For what?” I asked, surprised.
“A minor traffic accident. She got hit when she was backing out of her driveway one night. No big deal. She called the cops herself, said she’d bumped her head, was a little dizzy. An ambulance was dispatched.
She was held a few hours in the ER for observation, X-rays. It was nothing.”
“Was she treated during a shift when Lori Petersen was working?”
“That’s the best part, maybe the only hit we’ve gotten so far. I checked with the supervisor. Lori Petersen was on that night. I’m running down everybody else who might’ve been around, orderlies, other doctors, you name it. Nothing so far except the freaky thought the two women may have met, having no idea that this very minute their murders would be in the process of being discussed by you and yours truly.”