“She said something about looking for a phone,” I said dully.
“Spurrier’s only got two phones. One in his bedroom upstairs, the other in the kitchen, same color as the wall and between two cabinets, hard as shit to see. I almost didn’t find it either. It looks like we rolled up to the house maybe minutes after the shootings, Doc. I think Mrs. Harvey set her gun on the coffee table when she went over to Abby, saw how bad it was and tried to find a phone to call for help. Mrs. Harvey must have been in another room when I walked in, maybe heard me and ducked out of sight. All I know is when I went in, I scanned the immediate area. All I saw was the bodies in the living room, checked their carotids and thought Abby had a faint pulse, but I wasn’t sure. I had a choice, had to make a split-second decision. I could start searching Spurrier’s crib for Mrs. Harvey, or get you and then look. I mean, I didn’t see her when I first came in. I thought she might have gone out the back door or upstairs,” he said, obviously distressed he’d put me in jeopardy.
“I want to hear the tape,” I said again.
Marino rubbed his face in his hands, his eyes bleary and bloodshot when he looked back at me. “Don’t put yourself through it.”
“I have to.”
Reluctantly, he got up from the table and left. When he returned, he opened a plastic evidence bag that contained a microcassette recorder. He set it upright on the table, briefly rewound a portion of the tape, and depressed the Play button.
The sound of Abby’s voice filled the kitchen.
“. . . I’m just trying to see your side of it, but that doesn’t really explain why you drive around at night, stop and ask people things that you don’t really need to know. Such as directions.”
“Look, I already told you about the coke. You ever snorted coke?”
“No.”
“Try it some time. You do a lot of off-the-wall things when you’re high. You get confused and think you know where you’re going. Then suddenly you’re lost and have to ask directions.”
“You said you’re not doing coke anymore.”
“Not anymore. No way. My big mistake. Never again.”
“What about the items the police found in your house . . . ? Uh . . .”
There was the faint chime of a doorbell.
“Yeah. Hold on.”
Spurrier sounded tense.
Footsteps receded. Voices were indistinguishable in the background. I could hear Abby shifting on the couch. Then Spurrier’s disbelieving voice: “Wait. You don’t know what you’re – ” “I know exactly what I’m doing, you bastard.”
It was Pat Harvey’s voice, increasing in volume. “That was my daughter you took out into the woods.”
“I don’t know what you’re – ”
“Pat. Don’t!”
A pause.
“Abby? Oh my God.”
“Pat. Don’t do it, Pat.”
Abby’s voice was tight with fear. She gasped as something hit the couch.
“Get away from me!” A commotion, rapid breathing, and Abby screaming, “Stop! Stop!” then what sounded like a cap gun going off.
Again and again.
Silence.
Footsteps clicked across the floor and got louder. They stopped.
“Abby?”
A pause.
“Please don’t die. Abby. . .”
Pat Harvey’s voice was quavering so badly I could barely hear it.
Marino reached for the recorder, turned if off, and slipped it back inside the plastic bag as I stared at him in shock.
On the Saturday morning of Abby’s graveside service, I waited until the crowd had thinned, then walked along a footpath. beneath the shade of magnolias and oaks, dogwoods blazing fuchsia and white in the gentle spring sun.
The turnout for Abby’s funeral had been small. I met several of her former Richmond colleagues and tried to comfort her parents.
Marino came. So did Mark, who hugged me tight, then left with the promise he would come by my house later in the day. I needed to talk with Benton Wesley, but first I wanted a few moments alone.
Hollywood Cemetery was Richmond’s most formidable city for the dead, some forty acres of rolling hills, streams, and stands of hardwood trees north of the James River. Curving streets were paved and named, with speed limits posted, the sloping grass crowded with granite obelisks, headstones, and angels of grief, many of them more than a century old. Buried here were Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler, and Jefferson Davis, and tobacco magnate Lewis Ginter. There was a soldiers’ section for the Gettysburg dead, and a family plot of low-lying lawn where Abby had been buried beside her sister, Henna.