“This is only preliminary information,” he was saying. “The things that have popped up automatically once the news of her death became generally known. We’ll know much more about her in the next few days.”
“I didn’t know very much about her at all,” Faye said. Then she blushed and looked away. She had never been so ashamed of having to say anything in her life. She rubbed her hands together in her lap. “We met at a natural foods fair. At the Hartford Civic Center. I was giving a speech, you see, and I showed up a little early to look around, and we ran into each other.”
“She was interested in natural foods.” It was a statement, not a question.
Faye sighed. “I don’t know what she was interested in, really. In being—a certain kind of person, I think. In having a certain kind of life. And she was very devoted to Wicca.”
“What’s Wicca?” one of the policemen said.
“Oh, well,” Faye said. “Witchcraft, I suppose you’d call it. It’s the name of what’s supposed to be an ancient religion, to which the witches in the Middle Ages and later were supposed to belong. I’ve never credited the analysis much myself. I don’t mean that I don’t think there was a religion called Wicca. There was. We can document that. I mean I don’t think that the witches they burned in the witch-hunts were practicing Wicca. I think they were ordinary Christian women who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you see the difference. I’m not making any sense, am I? I’m going on and on.”
“You’re doing fine,” Gregor Demarkian said.
She was swimming in Jell-O, that’s what she was doing. She had been doing it since the moment she had turned on the news and heard Zara Anne’s name coming across on a bulletin, coming across with no warning at all. It shouldn’t have happened like that. Somebody had messed up. They should have sent a message to her privately one way or the other before they released Zara Anne’s name to the press.
“Anyway,” Faye said. “Zara Anne liked to think she was a witch. She liked to believe she had powers. And so, you know, on the night the Jeep was stolen—Friday night, the night before last. It’s so odd. On the night the Jeep was stolen she decided she could feel the thoughts of the person she saw driving it. That’s what she told the police. Or at least that’s what I think she told them. That she saw the Jeep following Kayla Anson’s BMW and that she could just tell, I guess, that there was malevolence, that something awful was going to happen.”
“Do you think she got a look at whoever was driving the car?”
“I don’t know. If she did, it must not have been somebody she knew, because she would have said, I think. I think she would have liked being able to give definite information, to point a finger. To get on the news, I guess. And how could she have seen? It was a dark night. We have streetlights out there. The glare would have kept her from seeing anybody through the windows of a car.”
“Probably true,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“I think she wanted to set herself up as a psychic,” Faye said. “Except that she wouldn’t have called herself that. And I told her at the time that it was dangerous, to say the things she was saying, when there was somebody out there who had already murdered one person. But she said them anyway. And not just to me.”
“Do you mean to the police?” Gregor Demarkian asked.
“I mean to all sorts of people. To a reporter who came here, for one thing. It was on the news on Saturday, I remember, and some woman reporter asked Margaret Anson what she thought of it, the things that Zara Anne was saying. Margaret Anson didn’t give an answer, of course. They were trying to catch her as she left the house. They were just sort of following her in her driveway. And she ignored them. But it was right there on the news. Zara Anne liked that. She liked it very much.”
“And today?” Gregor Demarkian asked. “Did she do anything special today?”
“I don’t know,” Faye said. “I’ve been out at the stand most of the day. It’s a busy day once the churches let out. People stop by and get vegetables for Sunday dinner. And then, later, I had to go out myself. I had to pick some things up at the Portuguese food store in Waterbury.”
“What time was this?” It was one of the policemen again.
“I left here around one-thirty. I was gone until just after four. I would have stayed out longer, there were still things I needed to do, but I got into my car and there it was on the radio. About Zara Anne. It was just right there on the radio.”