“So Kayla Anson could have been driving. Or she could have been being driven. Or she could have’ been dead in the car. Can you remember, where was she sitting in the car when her body was found?”
“Front passenger seat.”
“Passenger seat.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Stacey said. “I’ve been thinking the same thing myself. She could have been alive when the car went by me in Morris. If I’d chased it instead of let it go, she could be alive. I’ve been over and over it. But I just can’t figure out what else I could have done. The car was going at least ninety. It might have been a hundred. I’m surprised everybody in the thing didn’t end up dead on the road somewhere.”
“But you called ahead to the Washington police.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what did they do?”
“There wasn’t much they could do. They sent a car out to the Morris line, but if the BMW was going like that, it would have been long gone by the time they got there.”
“Is it far, from the town line to Kayla Anson’s house?”
“It’s practically a straight shot on One-oh-nine. Maybe five miles. Then a left turn and maybe fifty feet. And that’s the Anson drive.”
“I’m surprised nobody else heard the car. You’d think somebody would. Going at that speed. Or that Bennis or Margaret Anson would have heard it.”
“Well,” Stacey said, “I don’t think your friend Bennis could have heard it. Not if it got to the house at twenty after eight or half past. She didn’t get there herself until quarter to. If then. She had dinner at the McDonald’s off Exit Eight on I-Eighty-four at ten minutes after eight. That’s what she said she did, and we checked. Three people there recognized her. From stories about you. In People magazine.”
“Ah,” Gregor said.
He and Stacey both looked down at the dining room table, now covered with neat stacks of paper, not a thing out of place.
“Well,” Stacey said, “I guess I’d better get you to this press conference. If I don’t, they’ll probably send somebody out to pick you up.”
Seven
1
What Bennis Hannaford really wanted to do was to drive out to Margaret Anson’s house and get a look at the garage—now, in the daylight, when she would be able to see what she was doing. Something had been bothering her about the garage ever since she had found Kayla Anson’s body in it, but the more she thought about it, the less she was able to see what it was. She went over and over it in her mind. The big barnlike place. The car. The cement floor. The light from the one small window. When she came to the light, she always stopped and thought of it again, because there seemed to be something there that was important. Then she decided that it was lost to her. Maybe she was just obsessing on the scene because it had been such an awful scene, something she would rather have had no part in at all. Remembering what the light had looked like, falling over the tops of the cars, was so much easier than remembering what Kayla Anson’s face had looked like in that same light.
In the end, she did drive out to Sunny Vale Road. It was actually on the way from Caldwell to Waterbury, except that she had to turn off 109 for a few feet to reach the front of the house. As it turned out, she didn’t even do that. The trip was ridiculous on the face of it. She wouldn’t have been able to get a look at the garage unless Margaret Anson had opened the gate and let her in. That was as likely to happen as Tinker Bell was likely to get a religious vocation. Once she had got to the road, though, Bennis could see that she wouldn’t even be able to go to the front door and ask. Sunny Vale Road was packed with cars and minivans and people.
Media, Bennis said to herself, slowing down as she went up the hill. She recognized one or two of the people pacing back and forth on the narrow blacktop. She felt her lungs begin to convulse again and let herself cough. There was nobody here to lecture her about smoking. This time the cough went on and on, giving way suddenly to dry heaves. When it died down, Bennis found herself shaking.
When this was over, she was going to have to go someplace and get it checked out. That was what she was going to have to do.
She slowed the car literally to a crawl. It was a good thing there was nobody behind her on the road. It was a good thing she didn’t want to go down Sunny Vale, too. She could see the CNN van, open at the back, with people jumping in and out of it. She could see a blonde woman she was sure was one of the anchorwomen for WVIT, without a coat and walking in little circles to ward off the cold. Why were local anchorwomen always blonde?