Postmortem(85)

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 allusion, 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 I 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 around as we crept to a halt beside my state car.

I unfastened my seatbelt. I was trembling all over.

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.”