All That Remains - Cornwell Patricia (серия книг TXT) 📗

I said. "Provided you were a killer."

"She wouldn't have done it again. I probably wouldn't have shot her inside the car, but I might have punched her, hit her in the head with the gun."

"There was no blood in the front seat," I reminded him, "Absolutely no evidence that either of the women was injured inside the car."

"Hmmmm."

"Perplexing, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

He frowned. "He's in the backseat, leaning forward, and suddenly starts bleeding? Perplexing as shit."

I put on a fresh pot of coffee while we began to toss around more ideas. For starters, there continued to be the problem of how one individual subdues two people.

"The car belonged to Elizabeth," I said. "Let's assume she was driving. Obviously, her hands were not tied at this point."

"But Jill's might have been. He might have tied her hands during the drive, made her hold them up behind her head so he could tie them from the backseat."

"Or he could have forced her to turn around and place her arms over the headrest," I proposed. "This might have been when she struck him in the face, if that's what happened."

"Maybe."

"In any event," I went on, "we'll assume that by the time they stopped the car, Jill was already bound and barefoot. Next he orders Elizabeth to remove her shoes and binds her. Then he forces them at gunpoint into the cemetery."

"Jill had a lot of cuts on her hands and forearms," Marino said. "Are they consistent with her warding off a knife with her hands tied?"

"As long as her hands were tied in front of her and not behind her back."

"It would have been smarter to tie their hands behind their backs."

"He probably found that out the hard way and improved his techniques," I said.

"Elizabeth didn't have any defense injuries?"

"None."

"The squirrel killed Elizabeth first," Marino decided.

"How would you have done it? Remember, you've got two hostages to handle."

"I would have made both of them lie facedown in the grass. I would have put the gun to the back of Elizabeth's head to make her behave as I get ready to use the knife on her. If she surprised me by resisting, I might have pulled the trigger, shot her when I wasn't really intending to."

"That might explain why she was shot in the neck," I said. "If he had the gun to the back of her head and she resisted, the muzzle may have slipped. The scenario is reminiscent of what happened to Deborah Harvey, except that I seriously doubt she was lying down when she was shot."

"This guy likes to use a blade," Marino replied. "He uses his gun when things don't go down the way he planned. And so far, that's only happened twice that we know of. With Elizabeth and Deborah."

"Elizabeth was shot, then what, Marino?"

"He finishes her off and takes care of Jill."

"He fought with Jill," I reminded him.

"You can bet she struggled. Her friend's just been killed. Jill knows she don't got a chance, may as well fight like hell."

"Or else she was already fighting with him," I ventured.

Marino's eyes narrowed the way they did when he was skeptical.

Jill was a lawyer. I doubted she was naive about the cruel deeds people perpetrate upon one another. When she and her friend were being forced into the cemetery late at night, I suspected Jill knew both of them were going to die. One or both women may have begun resisting as he opened the iron gate. If the silver lighter did belong to the killer, it may have fallen out of his pocket at this point. Then, and perhaps Marino was right, the killer forced both women to lie facedown, but when he started on Elizabeth, Jill panicked, tried to protect her friend. The gun discharged, shooting Elizabeth in the neck.

"The pattern of Jill's injuries sends a message of frenzy, someone who is angry, frightened, because he's lost control," I said. "He may have hit her in the head with the gun, gotten on top of her and ripped open her shirt and started stabbing. As a parting gesture, he cuts their throats. Then he leaves in the Volkswagen, ditches it at the motel, and heads out on foot, perhaps back to wherever his car was."

"He should have had blood on him," Marino considered. "Interesting there wasn't any blood found in the driver's area, only in the backseat."

"There hasn't been any blood found in the driver's areas of any of the couples' vehicles," I said. "This killer is very careful. He may bring a change of clothing, towels, who knows what, when he's planning to commit his murders."

Marino dug into his pocket and produced his Swiss army knife. He began to trim his fingernails over a napkin. Lord knows what Doris had put up with all these years, I thought. Marino probably never bothered to empty an ashtray, place a dish in the sink, or pick his dirty clothes off the floor. I hated to think what the bathroom looked like after he had been in it.

"Abby Turncoat still trying to get hold of you?" he asked without looking up.

"I wish you wouldn't call her that."

He didn't respond.

"She hasn't tried in the last few days, at least not that I'm aware of."

"Thought you might be interested in knowing that she and Clifford Ring have more than a professional relationship, Doc."

"What do you mean?"

I asked uneasily.

"I mean that this story about the couples Abby's been working on has nothing to do with why she was taken off the police beat." He was working on his left thumb, fingernail shavings falling on the napkin. "Apparently, she was getting so squirrelly no one in the newsroom could deal with her anymore. Things reached a head last fall, right before she came to Richmond and saw you."

"What happened?"

I asked, staring hard at him.

"Way I heard it, she made a little scene right in the middle of the newsroom. Dumped a cup of coffee in Ring's lap and then stormed out, didn't tell her editors where the hell she was going or when she'd be back. That's when she got reassigned to features."

"Who told you this?"

"Benton."

"How would Benton know what goes on in the Post's newsroom? " "I didn't ask."

Marino folded the knife and slipped it back into his pocket. Getting up, he wadded the napkin and put it in the trash.

"One last thing," he said, standing in the middle of my kitchen. "That Lincoln you was interested in?"

"Yes?"

"A 1990 Mark Seven. Registered to a Barry Aranoff, thirty-eight-year-old white male from Roanoke. Works for a medical supply company, a salesman. On the road a lot."

"Then you talked to him," I said.

"Talked to his wife. He's out of town and has been for the past two weeks."

"Where was he supposed to have been when I saw the car in Williamsburg?"

"His wife said she wasn't sure of his schedule. Seems he sometimes hits a different city every day, buzzes all over the place, including out of state. His territory goes as far north as Boston. As best she could remember, around the time you're talking about, he was in Tidewater, then was flying out of Newport Mews, heading to Massachusetts."

I fell silent, and Marino interpreted this as embarrassment, which it wasn't. I was thinking.

"Hey, what you done was good detective work. Nothing wrong with writing down a plate number and checking it out. Should make you happy you wasn't being followed by some spook."

I did not respond.

He added, "Only thing you missed was the color. You said the Lincoln was dark gray. Aranoff's ride is brown."

Later that night lightning flashed high over thrashing trees as a storm worthy of summer unloaded its violent arsenal. I sat up in bed, browsing through several journals as I waited for Captain Montana's telephone line to clear.

Either his phone was out of order or someone had been on it for the past two hours. After he and Marino had left, I had recalled a detail from one of the photographs that reminded me of what Anna had said to me last. Inside Jill's apartment, on the carpet beside a La-Z-Boy chair in the living room, was a stack of legal briefs, several out-of-town newspapers, and a copy of the New York Times Magazine. I have never bothered with crossword puzzles. God knows I have too many other things to figure out. But I knew the Times crossword puzzle was as popular as manufacturer's coupons.