We bumped, swayed, and rumbled northbound, the train whistle hooting balefully.
“The stuff with Beryl pushed him over the edge,” Marino was saying. “You want my opinion, he related to her killer to the point he freaked, took himself out of circulation, kissed off before he cracked.”
“I think it’s more likely Beryl reopened the old wound,” I answered. “It reminded him of his inability to have relationships.”
“Sounds like he and the killer are cut from the same cloth. Both of them unable to relate to women. Both of them losers’.”
“Hunt wasn’t violent.”
“Maybe he was leaning that way and couldn’t live with it,” Marino said.
“We don’t know who killed Beryl and Harper,” I reminded him. “We don’t know if it was someone like Hunt. We don’t know that at all, and we still have no idea about the motive. The killer could just as easily be someone like Jeb Price. Or someone called Jim Jim.”
“Jim Jim my ass,” he said snidely.
“I don’t think we should dismiss anything at this point, Marino.”
“Be my guest. You run across a Jim Jim who graduated from Valhalla Hospital and now’s a part-time terrorist carrying around orange acrylic fibers on his person, give me a buzz.”
Settling down in his seat and shutting his eyes, he mumbled, “I need a vacation.”
“So do I,” I said. “I need a vacation from you.”
Last night Benton Wesley had called to talk about Hunt, and I mentioned where I was going and why. He was adamant that it was unwise for me to go alone, visions of terrorists, Uzis, and Glasers dancing in his head. He wanted Marino with me, and I might not have minded had it not turned out to be such an ordeal. There were no other seats available on the six-thirty-five morning train, so Marino had booked both of us on the one leaving at four-forty-eight A.M. I ventured into my downtown office at three A.M. to pick up the Styrofoam box now inside my shopping bag. I was feeling physically punished, my sleep deficit climbing out of sight. The Jeb Prices of the world wouldn’t need to do me in. My guardian angel Marino would spare them the trouble.
Other passengers were dozing, their overhead lamps switched off. Soon we were creaking slowly through the middle of Ashland and I wondered about the people living in the prim white frame homes facing the tracks. Windows were dark, bare flagpoles greeting us with stark salutes from porches. We passed sleepy storefronts–a barbershop, a stationery store, a bank–then picked up speed as we curved around the campus of Randolph-Macon College with its Georgian buildings and its frosted athletic field peopled at this early moonlit hour by a row of varicolored football sleds. Beyond the town were woods and raw red clay banks. I was leaning back in the seat, entranced by the rhythm of the train. The farther we got from Richmond the more I relaxed, and quite without intending to I drifted off to sleep.
I did not dream but was unconscious for an hour, and when I opened my eyes the dawn was blue beyond the glass and we were passing over Quantico Creek. The water was polished pewter catching light in laps and ruffles, and there were boats out. I thought of Mark. I thought of our night in New York and of times long past. I had not heard a word from him since the last cryptic message on my answering machine. I wondered what he was doing, and yet I was afraid to know.
Marino sat up, squinting groggily at me. It was time for breakfast and cigarettes, not necessarily in that order.
The dining car was half filled with semicomatose clientele who could have been sitting in any bus station in America and looked very much at home. A young man dozed to the beat of whatever was playing inside the headphones he wore. A tired woman held a squirming baby. An older couple was playing cards. We found an empty table in a corner, and I lit up while Marino went to see about food. The only positive thing I could say about the prepackaged ham and egg sandwich he came back with was that it was hot. The coffee wasn’t bad.