“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.”