“Of course. Benton trained Mark in the Academy long before I came to Virginia,” I replied. “They’re very good friends.”
“What’s Mark working on-in Denver?”
“I have no idea. Some special assignment.”
“Is he aware of the cases here? The couples?”
“I would assume so.”
Pausing, I asked, “Why?”
“I don’t know. But be careful what you say to Mark.”
“Tonight was the first time he’s called in months. Obviously, I say very tittle to him.”
She got up and I led her to her room.
As I gave her a gown and showed her the bath, she went on, the effects of the Cognac becoming apparent, “He’ll call again. Or you’re going to call him. So be careful.”
“I’m not planning on calling him,” I said.
“You’re just as bad as he is, then,” she said. “Both of you hardheaded and unforgiving as hell. So there. That’s my assessment of the situation, whether you like it or not.”
“I have to be at the office by eight,” I said. “I’ll make sure you’re up by seven.”
She hugged me good night and kissed my cheek: The following weekend I went out early and bought the Post and could not find Abby’s story. It did not come out the next week or the week after that, and I thought this strange. Was Abby all right? Why had I not heard a word from her since our visit in Richmond? In late October I called the Post’s newsroom.
“I’m sorry,” said a man who sounded harried. “Abby’s on leave. Won’t be back until next August.”
“Is she still in town?” I asked, stunned.
“Got no idea.”
Hanging up, I flipped through my address book and tried her home number. I was answered by a machine – Abby did not return that call or any of the others I made during the next few weeks. It wasn’t until shortly after Christmas that I began to realize what was going on.
On Monday, January sixth, I came home to find a letter in my mailbox. There was no return address, but the handwriting was unmistakable. Opening the envelope, discovered inside a sheet of yellow legal paper scribbled with “FYI. Mark,” and a short article clipped from recent issue of the New York Times. Abby Turnbull, I read with disbelief, had signed a book contract to write about the disappearance of Fred Cheney and Deborah Harvey, and the “frightening parallels” between their cases and those of four other couples in Virginia who had vanished and turned up dead.
Abby had warned me about Mark, and now he was warning me about her. Or was there some other reason for his sending me the article? For a long interval I sat in my kitchen, tempted to leave an outraged message on Abby’s machine or to call Mark. I finally decided to call Anna, my psychiatrist.
“You feel betrayed?”
she asked when I got her on the phone.
“To put it mildly, Anna.”
“You’ve known Abby is writing a newspaper story. Is writing a book so much worse?”
“She never told me she was writing a book,” I said.
“Because you feel betrayed doesn’t mean you truly have been,” Anna said. “This is your perception at the moment, Kay. You will have to wait and see. And as for why Mark sent you the article, you may have to wait and see about that, too. Perhaps it was his way of reaching out.”
“I’m wondering if I should consult a lawyer,” I said. “See if there’s something 1 should do to protect myself. I have no idea what might end up in Abby’s book.”
“I think it would be wiser to take her words at face value,” Anna advised. “She said your conversations were off the record. Has she ever betrayed you before?”
“No.”
“Then I suggest you give her a chance. Give her an opportunity to explain. Besides,” she added, “I’m not sure how much of a book she can write. There have been no arrests, and there is no resolution as to what happened to the couple. They have yet to turn up.”
The bitter irony of that remark would hit me exactly two weeks later, on January twentieth, when I was on the capitol grounds waiting to see what happened when a bill authorizing the Forensic Science Bureau to create a DNA data bank went before the Virginia General Assembly.