“The car Mr. Joyce saw going down his road with the headlights off could have been a Lincoln Mark Seven,” I said.
“Could have been. Mark Sevens came out in 1990. Jim and Bonnie was murdered in the summer of 1990. And in the dark, a Mark Seven wouldn’t look all that different from a Thunderbird, which was what Mr. Joyce said the car he saw looked like.”
“Wesley will have afield day with this,” I muttered, incredulous.
“Yeah,” Marino said. “I got to call him.”
March came in with a whispered promise that winter would not last forever. The sun was warm on my back as I cleaned the windshield of my Mercedes while Abby pumped gas. The breeze was gentle, freshly scrubbed from days of rain. People were out washing cars and riding bikes, the earth stirring but not quite awake.
Like a lot of service stations these days, the one I frequented doubled as a convenience store, and I bought two cups of coffee to go when I went inside to pay. Then Abby and I drove off to Williamsburg, windows cracked, Bruce Hornsby singing “Harbor Lights” on the radio.
“1 called my answering machine before we left,” Abby said.
“And?”
“Five hang-ups.”
“Cliff?”
“I’m willing to make a bet,” she said. “Not that he wants to talk to me. I suspect he’s just trying to figure out if I’m home, has probably cruised past my parking lot a number of times, too, looking for my car.”
“Why would he do that if he’s not interested in talking to you?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know that I’ve changed my locks.”
“Then he must be stupid. One would think he would realize you would put two and two together when his series ran.”
“He’s not stupid,” Abby said, staring out the side window.
I opened the sunroof.
“He knows I know. But he’s not stupid,” she said again. “Cliff’s fooled everyone. They don’t know he’s crazy.”
“Hard to believe he could have gotten as far as he has if he’s crazy,” I said.
“That’s the beauty of Washington,” she replied cynically. “The most successful, powerful people in the world are there and half of them are crazy, the other half neurotic. Most of them are immoral. Power does it. I don’t know why Watergate surprised anyone.”
“What has power done to you?”
I asked.
“I know how it tastes, but I wasn’t there long enough to get addicted.”
“Maybe you’re lucky.”
She was silent.
I thought of Pat Harvey. What was she doing these days? What was going through her mind? “Have you talked to Pat Harvey?”
I asked Abby.
“Yes.”
“Since the articles ran in the Post?”
She nodded.
“How is she?”
“I once read something written by a missionary to what was then the Congo. He recalled encountering a tribesman in the jungle who looked perfectly normal until he smiled. His teeth were filed to points. He was a cannibal.”
Her voice was flat with anger, her mood suddenly dark. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“That’s Pat Harvey,” she went on. “I dropped by to see her before heading out to Roanoke the other day. We talked briefly about the stories in the Post, and I thought she was taking it all in stride until she smiled. Her smile made my blood run cold.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“That’s when I knew Cliff’s stories had pushed her over the edge. Deborah’s murder pushed Pat as far as I thought she could go. But the stories pushed her further. I remember when I talked to her I had this sense that something wasn’t there anymore. After a while I figured out what’s not there is Pat Harvey.”
“Did she know her husband was having an affair?”
“She does now.”
“If it’s true,” I added.
“Cliff wouldn’t write something that he couldn’t back up, attribute to a credible source.”
I wondered what it would take to push me to the edge. Lucy, Mark? If I had an accident and could no longer use my hands or went blind? I did not know what it would take to make me snap. Maybe it was like dying. Once you were gone you didn’t know the difference.