All That Remains - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 35

A detail you apparently have worked very hard to suppress."

"Who told you this?"

he asked, the expression on his face unchanged. He did not even look surprised.

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

"And did you find a card in the Harvey-Cheney case?"

Wesley stared off across the room, nodding at the waiter. "I recommend the filet mignon."

He opened his menu. "That or the lamb chops."

I placed my order as my heart pounded. I lit a cigarette, unable to relax, my mind frenetically groping for a way to break through.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't see how it is relevant to your role in the investigation," he said.

"The police waited hours before calling me to the scene. The bodies had been moved, tampered with, by the time I got there. I'm being stonewalled by investigators, you've asked me to indefinitely pend the cause and manner of Fred's and Deborah's deaths. Meanwhile, Pat Harvey is threatening to get a court order because I won't release my findings."

I paused. He remained unflappable.

"Finally," I concluded, my words beginning to bite, "I make a retrospective visit to a scene without knowing it's under surveillance or that the evidence I collected was planted. And you don't think the details of these cases are relevant to my role in the investigation? I'm no longer sure I even have a role in the investigation. Or at least you seem determined to make sure I don't have one."

"I'm not doing anything of the sort."

"Then someone is."

He did not reply.

"If a jack of hearts was found inside Deborah's Jeep on somewhere near their bodies, it's important for me to know. It would link the deaths of all five couples. When there's a serial killer on the loose in Virginia, it is of great concern to me."

Then he caught me off guard. "How much have you been telling Abby Turnbull?"

"I haven't been telling her anything," I said, my heart pounding harder.

"You've met with her, Kay. I'm sure you won't deny that."

"Mark told you, and I'm sure you won't deny that."

"Mark would have no reason to know you saw Abby in Richmond or Washington unless you told him. And any event, he would have no reason to pass this along."

I stared at him. How could Wesley have known I had seen Abby in Washington unless she really was being watched? "When Abby came to see me in Richmond," I said "Mark called and I mentioned she was visiting. Are you telling me he said nothing to you?"

"He didn't."

"Then how did you find out?"

"There are some things I can't tell you. And you're just going to have to trust me."

The waiter set down our salads, and we ate in silence. Wesley did not speak again until our main courses arrived.

"I'm under a lot of pressure," he said in a quiet voice.

"I can see that. You look exhausted, run-down."

"Thank you, Doctor," he said ironically.

"You've changed in other ways as well."

I pushed the point.

"I'm sure that is your perception."

"You're shutting me out, Benton."

"I suppose I keep my distance because you ask questions that I can't answer; so does Marino. And then I feel even more pressure. Do you understand?"

"1'm trying to understand," I said.

"I can't tell you everything. Can you let it go at that?"

"Not quite. Because that's where we're at cross-purposes. I have information you need. And you have information I need. I'm not going to show you mine unless you show me yours."

He surprised me by laughing.

"Do you think we can strike a deal under these terms?"

I persisted.

"It looks like I don't have much of a choice."

"You don't," I said.

"Yes, we did find a jack of hearts in the Harvey-Cheney case. Yes, I did have their bodies moved before you arrived at the scene, and I know that was poor form, but you have no idea why the cards are so significant of the problems that would be precipitated by word of them leaking. If it made the newspapers, for example I'm not going to say anything further about that right now."

"Where was the card?" I asked.

"We found it inside Deborah Harvey's purse. When a couple of the cops helped me turn her over, we found the purse under her body."

"Are you suggesting that the killer carried her purse out into the woods?"

"Yes. It wouldn't make any sense to think Deborah carried her purse out there."

"In the other cases," I pointed out, the card was left in plain sight inside the vehicle."

"Exactly. Where the card was found is just one more inconsistency. Why wasn't it left inside the Jeep? Another inconsistency is that the cards left in the other cases are Bicycle playing cards. The one left with Deborah is a different brand. Then there's the matter of fibers."

"What fibers?" I asked.

Though I had collected fibers from all of the decomposed bodies, most of them were consistent with the victims' own clothing or the upholstery of the vehicles. Unknown fibers - what few I had found - had supplied no link between the cases, had proved useless so far.

"In the four cases preceding Deborah's and Fred's murders," Wesley said, "white cotton fibers were recovered from the driver's seat of each abandoned car.

"That's news to me," I said, irritation flaring again.

"The fiber analysis was done by our labs," he explained.

"And what is your interpretation?" I asked.

"The pattern of fibers recovered is interesting. Since the victims weren't wearing white cotton clothing at the time of their deaths, I have to assume that the fibers were left by the perpetrator, and this places him driving the victims' cars after the crimes. But we've been assuming that all along. One has to consider his clothing. And a possibility is that he was wearing some type of uniform when he encountered the couples. White cotton trousers. I don't know. But no white cotton fibers were recovered from the driver's seat of Deborah Harvey's Jeep."

"What did you find inside her Jeep?" I asked.

"Nothing that tells me anything right now. In fact, the interior was immaculate."

He paused, cutting his steak. "The point is, the MO's different enough in this case to worry me a lot, because of the other circumstances."

"Because one of the victims is the Drug Czar's daughter, and you're still considering that what happened to Deborah may have been politically motivated, related to her mother's antidrug endeavors," I said.

He nodded. "We can't rule out that the murders of Deborah and her boyfriend were disguised to resemble the other cases."

"If their deaths aren't related to the others, and were a hit," I asked skeptically, "then how do you explain their killer knowing about the cards, Benton? Even I didn't find out about the jack of hearts until recently. Certainly it hasn't been in the newspapers."

"Pat Harvey knows," he startled me by saying.

Abby, I thought. And I was willing to bet that Abby had divulged the detail to Mrs. Harvey, and that Wesley knew this.

"How long has Mrs. Harvey known about the cards," I asked.

"When her daughter's Jeep was found, she asked if we'd recovered a card. And she called me about again after the bodies turned up."

"I don't understand," I said. "Why would she have known last fall? It sounds to me as if she knew the details of the other cases before Deborah and Fred disappeared."

"She knew some of the details. Pat Harvey was interested in these cases long before she had persona; motivation."

"You've heard some of the theories," he said. "Drug overdoses. Some new weird designer drug on the street, the kids going out in the woods to party and ending up dead. Or some drug dealer who gets his thrills by selling bad stuff in some remote place, then watching the couples die."

"I've heard the theories, and there is nothing to support them. Toxicology results were negative for drugs in the first eight deaths."