When it dawned on her that I had no idea what she was talking about, her expression changed to astonishment.
“You don’t know?” she asked.
“What jack of hearts?”
“In each of these cases, a playing card has been found.”
Her incredulous eyes were fixed on mine.
I vaguely remembered something from one of the few transcripts of police interviews I had seen. The detective’ from Gloucester had talked to a friend of Bruce Phillips and Judy Roberts, the first couple. What was it the detective had asked? I recalled it had struck me as rather peculiar. Cards. Did Judy and Bruce ever play cards? Had the friend ever seen any cards inside Bruce’s, Camaro? “Tell me about the cards, Abby,” I said.
“Are you familiar with the ace of spades, with how it was used in Vietnam?”
I told her I wasn’t.
“When a particular outfit of American soldiers wanted to make a point after making a kill, they would leave an ace of spades on the body. In fact, a company that manufactures playing cards supplied this unit with boxes of the cards just for this purpose.”
“What does this have to do with Virginia?” I asked, baffled.
“There’s a parallel. Only we’re not talking about an ace of spades, but a jack of hearts. In each of the first four cases, a jack of hearts was found in the abandoned car.”
“Where did you get this information?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, Kay. But we’re talking about more than one source. That’s why I’m so sure of it.”
“And did one of your sources also tell you that a jack of hearts was found in Deborah Harvey’s Jeep?”
“Was one found?”
She idly stirred her drink.
“Don’t toy with me,” I warned.
“I’m not.”
She met my eyes. “If a jack of hearts was found inside her Jeep or anywhere else, I don’t know about it. Obviously, it’s an important detail because it would definitely link Deborah Harvey’s and Fred Cheney’s deaths with those of the first four couples. Believe me, I’m looking hard for that link. I’m not sure it’s there. Or if it is, what it means.”
“What does this have to do with the FBI?”
I asked reluctantly, for I was not sure I wanted to hear her reply.
“They’ve been preoccupied with these cases almost from the start, Kay. And it goes way beyond VICAP’s usual participation. The FBI’s known about the cards for a long time. When a jack of hearts was found inside the first couple’s Camaro – on the dash – no one paid much attention. Then the second couple disappeared, and there was another card, this one on the passenger seat. When Benton Wesley found out, he immediately started controlling things. He went back to the detective in Gloucester County and told him not to say a word about the jack of hearts found inside the Camaro. He told the investigator in the second case the same thing. Each time another abandoned car turned up, Wesley was on the phone with that investigator.”
She paused, studying me as if trying to read my thoughts. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you didn’t know,” she added. “I don’t suppose it would be that hard for the police to withhold from you what was discovered inside the cars.”
“It wouldn’t be hard for them to do that,” I replied. “Were the cards found with the bodies, that would be another matter. I don’t know how that could be kept from me.”
Even as I heard myself say the words, doubt whispered in the back of my mind. The police had waited hours before calling me to the scene. By the time I got there, Wesley had arrived, and Deborah Harvey’s and Fred Cheney’s bodies had been tampered with, searched for personal effects.
“I would expect the FBI to keep quiet about this,” I continued to reason. “The detail could be critical to the investigation.”
“I’m so sick of hearing shit like that,” Abby said angrily. “The detail about the killer leaving a calling card, so to speak, is critical to the investigation only if the guy comes forward and confesses, says he left a card in each couple’s car when there’s no way for him to know about that unless he really did it. I don’t think that’s going to happen. And I don’t think the FBI is sitting on this thing just because they want to make sure nothing screws up the investigation.”