All That Remains - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 37

At noon, she faced cameras in her Washington office adding to the pathos by having Bruce Cheney, Fred's father, by her side. She looked awful. Weight added 1 the camera and makeup could not hide how thin she had gotten or the dark circles under her eyes.

"When did these threats begin, Mrs. Harvey, and what was the nature of them?" a reporter asked.

"The first one came shortly after I began investigating the charities. And I suppose this was a little over a year ago," she said without emotion. "This was a letter mailed to my home in Richmond. I won't divulge the specific nature of what it said, but the threat was directed at family."

"And you believe this was connected to your probe into fraudulent charities like ACTMAD?"

"There's no question about that. There were other threats, the last one as recent as two months before my daughter and Fred Cheney disappeared."

Bruce Cheney's face flashed on the screen. He was pale, blinking in the blinding haze of TV lights.

"Ms. Harvey…"

"Mrs. Harvey…"

Reporters were interrupting each other, and Pat Harvey interrupted them, the camera swinging back her way.

"The FBI was aware of the situation, and it was their opinion that the threats, the letters, were originating from one source," she said.

"Mrs. Harvey…

"Ms. Harvey" - a reporter raised her voice above the commotion - "it's no secret that you and the Justice Department have different agendas, a conflict of interests arising from the investigation of the charities. Are you suggesting the FBI knew that the safety of your family was in jeopardy and didn't do anything?"

"It's more than a suggestion," she stated.

"Are you accusing the Justice Department of incompetence?"

"What I'm accusing the justice Department of is conspiracy," Pat Harvey said.

Groaning, I reached for a cigarette as the din, the interruptions reached a crescendo. You've lost it, I thought, staring in disbelief at the TV inside the small medical library in my downtown office.

It got only worse. And my heart was filled with dread as Mrs. Harvey turned her cool stare to the camera and one by one ran her sword through everyone involved is the investigation, including me. She spared no one, and there was nothing sacred, including the detail of the jack of hearts.

It had been a gross understatement when Wesley had said she was uncooperative and a problem. Beneath her armor of reason was a woman crazed by rage and grief. Numbly I listened as she plainly and without reservation indicted the police, the FBI, and the Medical Examiner', Office for complicity in a "cover-up."

"They are deliberately burying the truth about these cases," she concluded, "when the act of doing so serve only their self-interest at the unconscionable expense of human lives."

"What a lot of shit," muttered Fielding, my deputy chief, sitting nearby.

"Which cases?"

a reporter demanded loudly. "The, deaths of your daughter and her boyfriend or are you referring to the four other couples?"

"All of them," Mrs. Harvey replied. "I'm referring to all of the young men and women hunted down like animals and murdered."

"What is being covered up?"

"The identity or identities of those responsible," as if she knew. "There has been no intervention on the part of the Justice Department to stop these killings, The reasons are political. A certain federal agency is protecting its own."

"Could you please be more specific?" a voice shot back.

"When my investigation is concluded, I will make a full disclosure."

"At the hearing?" she was asked. "Are you suggesting that the murder of Deborah and her boyfriend…"

"His name is Fred. " It was Bruce Cheney who had spoken, and suddenly his livid face filled the television screen.

The room went silent.

"Fred. His name is Frederick Wilson Cheney."

The father's voice trembled with emotion. "He's not just Debbie's boyfriend He's dead, murdered, too. My son!"

Words caught in his throat, and he hung his head to hide his tears.

I turned off the television, upset and unable to sit still.

Rose had been standing in the doorway, watching. She looked at me and slowly shook her head.

Fielding got up, stretched, and tightened the drawstring of his surgical greens.

"She just screwed herself in front of the whole damn world," he announced, walking out of the library.

I realized as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee what Pat Harvey had said. I began to really hear it as it replayed inside my head.

"Hunted down like animals and murdered… " Her words had the sound of something; scripted. They did not strike me as glib, off the cuff or a figure of speech.

A federal agency protecting its own? Hunt.

A jack of hearts like a knight of cups. Someone who is perceived or perceives himself as a competitor, a defender. One who does battle, Hilda Ozimek had said to me.

A knight. A soldier.

Hunt.

Their murders were meticulously calculated, methodically planned. Bruce Phillips and Judy Robe disappeared in June. Their bodies were found in mid August, when hunting season opened.

Jim Freeman and Bonnie Smyth disappeared in July their bodies found the opening day of quail and pheasant Ben Anderson and Carolyn Bennett disappeared March, their bodies found in November during deer season.

Susan Wilcox and Mark Martin disappeared in late February, their bodies discovered in mid-May, during spring gobbler season.

Deborah Harvey and Fred Cheney vanished Labor Day weekend and were not found until months late when the woods were crowded with hunters after rabbit squirrel, fox, pheasant, and raccoon. I had not assumed the pattern meant anything because most of the badly decomposed and skeletonized bodied that end up in my office are found by hunters. When someone drops dead or is dumped in the woods, hunter is the most likely person to stumble upon the remains. But when and where the couples' bodies were discovered could have been planned.

The killer wanted his victims found, but not right away, so he killed them off season, knowing that it was probable his victims would not be discovered until hunters were out in the woods again. By then the bodies were decomposed. Gone with the tissue were the injuries he had inflicted. If rape was involved, there would be no seminal fluid. Most trace evidence would be dislodged by wind and washed away by rain. It may even be that it was important to him that the bodies be found by hunters because in his fantasies he, too, was a hunter. The greatest hunter of all.

Hunters hunted animals, I thought as I sat at my downtown desk the following afternoon. Guerrillas, military special agents, and soldiers of fortune hunted human beings.

Within the fifty-mile radius where the couples had vanished and turned up dead were Fort Eustis, Langley Field, and a number of other military installations, including the CIA's West Point, operated under the cover of a military base called Camp Peary.

"The Farm," as Camp Peary is referred to in spy novels and investigative non-fiction books about intelligence, was where officers were trained in the paramilitary activities of infiltration, exfiltration, demolitions, night-time parachute jumps, and other clandestine operations.

Abby Turnbull took a wrong turn and ended up at the entrance of Camp Peary, and days later FBI agents came looking for her.

The feds were paranoid, and I had a suspicion I might know why. After reading the newspaper accounts of Pad Harvey's press conference, I had become only morel convinced.

A number of papers, including the Post, were on my desk, and I had studied the write-ups several times The byline on the Post's story was Clifford Ring, the reporter who had been pestering the commissioner and other personnel of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Ring mentioned me only passing when he implied that Pat Harvey was in-appropriately using her public office to intimidate a threaten all involved into releasing details about daughter's death. It was enough to make me wonder if Mr. Ring was Benton Wesley's media source, the FBI conduit for planted releases, and that would not have been so bad, really. It was the point of the stories that, found disturbing.