Postmortem (18 page)

His hunger was too much. It exploded from him, invaded instead of caressed as he pushed me down hard into the couch. It was at that moment I had a vivid image of his wife slumped against pale blue satin pillows in bed like some lovely life-size doll, the front of her white negligee stained dark red, the ninemillimeter automatic just inches from her limp right hand.

I'd gone to the suicide scene knowing only that the wife of the man running for Commonwealth's attorney apparently had committed suicide. I did not know Bill then. I examined his wife. I literally held her heart in my hands. Those images, all of them, flashed graphically behind my eyes in my dark living room so many months later.

Physically, I withdrew from him. I'd never told him the real reason why, although in the days that followed he continued to pursue me even more vigorously. Our mutual attraction remained but a wall had gone up. I could not seem to tear it down or climb over it much as I wanted to.

I was scarcely hearing a word he was saying.

". . . and I don't see how you could rig DNA results unless you're involved in a conspiracy that includes the private lab conducting the tests and half the forensic bureau, too-"

"What?" I asked, startled. "Rig DNA results?"

"You haven't been listening," he blurted out impatiently.

"Well, I missed something, that's certain."

"I'm saying no one could accuse you of rigging anything that's my point. So our relationship has nothing to do with what I'm thinking."

"Okay."

"It's just . . ." He faltered.

"Just what?" I asked. Then, as he drained his glass again, I added, "Bill, you have to drive."

He waved it off.

"Then what is it?" I demanded again. "What?"

He pressed his lips together and wouldn't look at me. Slowly, he drew it out. "It's just I'm not sure where you'll be in the eyes of the jurors by then."

I couldn't have been more stunned had he struck me with his open palm.

"My God . . . You do know something. What? What! What is that son of a bitch plotting? He's going to fire me because of this goddam computer violation, is this what he's said to you?"

"Amburgey? He's not plotting anything. Hell, he doesn't have to. If your office gets blamed for the leaks, and if the public eventually believes the inflammatory news stories are why the killer's striking with increased frequency, then your head will be on the block. People need someone to blame. I can't afford my star witness to have a credibility or popularity problem."

"Is this what you and Tanner were discussing so intensely after lunch?"

I was just a blink away from tears. "I saw you on the sidewalk, coming out of The Peking . . ."

A long silence. He had seen me, too, then but had pretended otherwise. Why? Because he and Tanner probably were talking about me! "We were discussing the cases," he replied evasively. "Discussing a lot of things."

I was so enraged, so stung, I didn't trust myself to say a word.

"Listen," he said wearily as he loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt. "This didn't go right. I didn't mean for it to come out like this. I swear to God. Now you're all upset, and I'm all upset. I'm sorry."

My silence was stony.

He took a deep breath. "It's just we have real things to worry about and we should be working on them together. I'm painting worst-case scenarios so we can be prepared, okay?"

"What exactly do you expect me to do?" I measured each word to keep my voice steady.

"Think five times about everything. Like tennis. When you're down or psyched you've got to play it careful. Concentrate on every shot, don't take your eye off the ball for a second."

His tennis analogies got on my nerves sometimes. Right now was a good example. "I always think about what I'm doing," I said testily. "You don't need to tell me how to do my job. I'm not known for missing shots."

"It's especially important now. Abby Turnbull's poison. I think she's setting us up. Both of us. Behind the scenes. Using you or your office computer to get to me. Not giving a damn if she maims justice in the process. The cases get blown out of the water and you and I are both blown out of office. It's that simple."

Maybe he was right, but I was having a hard time accepting that Abby Turnbull could be so evil. Surely if she had even a drop of human blood in her veins she would want the killer punished. She wouldn't use four brutally murdered young women as pawns in her vindictive machinations if she were guilty of vindictive machinations, and I wasn't convinced she was.

I was about to tell him he was exaggerating, his bad encounter with her had momentarily distorted his reason. But something stopped me.

I didn't want to talk about this anymore.

I was afraid to.

It was nagging at me. He'd waited until now to say anything. Why? His encounter with her was weeks ago. If she were setting us up, if she were so dangerous to both of us, then why hadn't he told me this before now?

"I think what you need is a good night's sleep," I said quietly.

"I think we'd be wise to strike this conversation, at least certain portions of it, go on as if it never happened."

He pushed back from the table. "You're right. I've had it. So have you. Christ, I didn't mean for it to go like this," he said again. "I came over here to cheer you up. I feel terrible . . . " His apologies continued as we went down the hall. Before I could open the door, he was kissing me and I could taste the wine on his breath and feel his heat. My physical response was always immediate, a frisson of spine-tingling desire and fear running through me like a current. I involuntarily pulled away from him and muttered, "Good night."

He was a shadow in the darkness heading to his car, his profile briefly illuminated by the interior light as he opened the door and climbed in. I was still standing numbly on the porch long after red taillights had burned along the vacant street and disappeared behind trees.

Chapter
8

The inside of Marino's silver Plymouth Reliant was as cluttered and slovenly as I would have expected it to be - had I ever given the matter a moment's thought.

On the floor in back were a chicken-dinner box, crumpled napkins and Burger King bags, and several coffee-stained Styrofoam cups. The ashtray was overflowing, and dangling from the rearview mirror was an evergreen-scented air freshener shaped like a pine tree and about as effective as a shot of Glade aimed inside a Dumpster. Dust and lint and crumbs were everywhere, and the windshield was practically opaque with smoker's soot.

"You ever give this thing a bath?" I was fastening my seatbelt.

"Not anymore I don't. Sure, it's assigned to me, but it ain't mine. They don't let me take it home at night or over the weekend or nothing. So I wax it to a spit shine and use up half a bottle of Armor All on the inside and what happens? Some drone's going to be in it while I'm off duty. I get it back looking just like this. Never fails. After a while, I started saving everybody the trouble. Started trashing it myself."

Police traffic quietly crackled as the scanner light blinked from channel to channel. He pulled out of the parking lot behind my building. I hadn't heard a word from him since he abruptly left the conference room on Monday. It was late Wednesday afternoon now, and he had mystified me moments ago by suddenly, appearing in my doorway with the announcement that he wanted to take me on a "little tour."

The "tour," it turned out, entailed a retrospective visit to the crime scenes. The purpose, as best I could ascertain, was for me to fix a map of them in my head. I couldn't argue. The idea was a good one. But it was the last thing I was expecting from him. Since when did he include me in anything unless he absolutely had no choice? "Got a few things you need to know," he said, as he adjusted the side mirror.

"I see. I suppose the implication is had I not agreed to your 'little tour' then you might never have gotten around to telling me these few things I need to know?"

"Whatever."

I waited patiently as he returned the lighter to its socket. He took his time settling more comfortably behind the wheel.

"Might interest you to know," he began, "we gave Petersen a polygraph yesterday and the sucker passed it. Pretty telling, but it don't completely let him off the hook. It's possible to pass it if you're one of these psychopaths who can lie as easy as other people breathe. He's an actor. He probably could say he's Christ crucified and his hands wouldn't sweat, his pulse would be steadier than yours and mine when we're in church."

"That would be highly unusual," I said. "It's pretty hard, close to impossible, to beat a polygraph. I don't care who you are."

"It's happened before. That's one reason it's not admissible in court."

"No, I won't go so far as to say it's infallible."

"Point is," he went on, "we don't have probable cause to pop him or even tell him not to skip town. So I've got him under surveillance. What we're really looking for is his activities after hours. Like, what he does at night. Like, maybe does he get in his car and drive through various neighborhoods, cruising, getting the lay of the land."

"He hasn't gone back to Charlottesville?"

Marino flicked an ash out the window. "He's hanging around for a while, says he's too upset to go back. He's moved, staying in an apartment on Freemont Avenue, says he can't set foot in the house after what happened. I think he's gonna sell the joint. Not that he'll need the money."

He glanced over at me and I was briefly faced with a distorted image of myself in his mirrored shades. "Turns out the wife had a hefty life insurance policy. Petersen's going to be about two hundred grand richer. Guess he'll be able to write his plays and not have to worry about making a living."

I didn't say anything.

"And I guess we just let it slide he was brought up on rape charges the summer after he graduated from high school."

"You've looked into that?"

I knew he had or he wouldn't have mentioned it.

"Turns out he was doing summer theater in New Orleans and made the mistake of taking some groupie too seriously. I've talked with the cop who investigated the case. According to him, Petersen's the lead actor in some play, and this babe in the audience gets the hots for him, comes to see him night after night, leaves him notes, the whole nine yards. Then she turns up backstage and they end up bar-hopping in the French Quarter. Next thing you know, she's calling the cops at four in the morning, all hysterical, claiming she's been raped. He's in hot water because her PERK's positive and the fluids pop up nonsecreter, which is what he is."

"Did the case go to court?"

"Damn grand jury threw it out. Petersen admitted having sex with her inside her apartment. Said it was consensual, she came on to him. The girl was pretty bruised up, even had a few marks on her neck. But no one could prove how fresh the bruises were and if Petersen caused 'em by working her over. See, the grand jury takes one look at a guy like him. They take into account he's in a play and this girl initiated the encounter. He still had her notes inside the dressing room, which clearly showed the girl had a thing for him. And he was real convincing when he testified she had bruises when he was with her, that she supposedly told him she'd been in a fight several days earlier with some guy she was in the process of breaking up with. Nobody's going to throw the book at Petersen. The girl had the morals of a guppy and was either a Froot Loop or else she made a stupid mistake, laid herself wide open, so to speak, for getting a number done on her."

"Those kinds of cases," I quietly commented, "are almost impossible to prove."

"Well, you just never know. It's also sort of coincidental," he added as a by-the-way for which I was completely unprepared, "that Benton called me up the other night to tell me the big mother computer in Quantico got a hit on the MO of whoever's whacking these women here in Richmond."

"Where?"

"Waltham, Massachusetts, as a matter of fact," he replied, glancing over at me. "Two years ago, right at the time Petersen was a senior at Harvard, which is about twenty miles east of Waltham. During the months of April and May, two women was raped and strangled inside their apartments. Both lived alone in first-floor apartments, was tied up with belts, electrical cords. The killer apparently got in through unsecured windows. Both times it occurred on the weekend. The crimes are a carbon copy of what's been happening here."

"Did the murders stop after Petersen graduated and moved here?"

"Not exactly," he replied. "There was one more later that summer which Petersen couldn't have committed because he was living here, his wife just starting at VMC. But there were a few differences in the third case. The victim was a teenager and lived about fifteen miles from where the other two homicides occurred.

She didn't live alone, was shacked up with a guy who was out of town at the time. The cops speculated her murder was a copycat some squirrel read about the first two in the papers and got the idea. She wasn't found for about a week, was so decom posed there wasn't a hope in hell of finding seminal fluid. Typing the killer wasn't possible."

"What about typing the first two cases?"

"Nonsecreter," he slowly said, staring straight ahead.