He took me in his arms, whispering my name, like a small cry of pain. I wondered why he was here, why he was not in Denver.
He kissed me as he pushed the door with his foot. It slammed shut with a tremendous bang.
My eyelids flew open. Thunder cracked. Lightning lit up my bedroom again and then again as my heart pounded.
The next morning I performed two autopsies, then went upstairs to see Neils Vander, section chief of the fingerprints examination lab. I found him inside the Automated Fingerprint Identification System computer room deep in thought in front of a monitor. In hand was my copy of the report detailing the examination of Deborah Harvey’s purse, and I placed it on top of his keyboard.
“I need to ask you something.”
I raised my voice over the computer’s pervasive hum.
He glanced down at the report with preoccupied eyes, unruly gray hair wisping over his ears.
“How did you find anything after the purse had been in the woods so long? I’m amazed.”
He returned his gaze to the monitor. “The purse is nylon, waterproof, and the credit cards were protected inside plastic windows, which were inside a zipped-up `Compartment. When I put the cards in the superglue tank, a lot of smudges and partials popped up. I didn’t even need the laser.”
“Pretty impressive.”
He smiled a little.
“But nothing identifiable,” I pointed out.
“Sorry about that.”
“What interests me is the driver’s license. Nothing popped up on it.”
“Not even a smudge,” he said.
“Clean?”
“As a hound’s tooth.”
“Thank you, Neils.”
He was off somewhere again, gone in his land of loops and whorls.
I went back downstairs and looked up the number for the 7-Eleven Abby and I had visited last fall. I was told that Ellen Jordan, the clerk we had talked to, would not be in until nine P.M. I mowed through the rest of the day without stopping for lunch, unaware of the passing hours. I wasn’t the slightest bit tired when I got home.
I was loading the dishwasher when the doorbell rang at eight P.M. drying my hands on a towel, I walked anxiously to the front door.
Abby Turnbull was standing on the porch, coat collar turned up around her ears, face wan, eyes miserable. A cold wind rocked dark trees in my yard and lifted strands of her hair.
“You didn’t answer my calls. I hope you won’t refuse me entrance into your house,” she said.
“Of course not, Abby. Please.”
I opened the door wide and stepped back.
She did not take off her coat until I invited her to do so, and when I offered to hang it up, she shook her head and draped it over the back of a chair, as if to reassure me that she did not intend to stay very long. She was dressed in faded denim jeans and a heavy-knit maroon sweater flecked with lint. Brushing past her to clear paperwork and newspapers off the kitchen table, I detected the stale odor of cigarette smoke and a pungent hint of sweat.
“Something to drink?” I asked, and for some reason I could not feel angry with her.
“Whatever you’re having would be fine.”
She got out her cigarettes while I fixed both of us a drink.
“It’s hard to start,” she said when I was seated. “The articles were unfair to you, to say the least. And I know what you must be thinking.”
“It’s irrelevant what I’m thinking. I’d rather hear what’s on your mind.”
“I told you I’ve made mistakes.”
Her voice trembled slightly. “Cliff Ring was one of them.”
I sat quietly.
“He’s an investigative reporter, one of the first people I got to know after moving to Washington. Very successful, exciting. Bright and sure of himself. I was vulnerable, having just moved to a new city, having been through . . . well, what happened to Henna.”
She glanced away from me.
“We started out as friends, then everything went too fast. I didn’t see what he was like because I didn’t want to see it.”
Her voice caught and I waited in silence while she steadied herself.