“The ticket wasn’t for you?”
“No,” I said for the third time. ‘It was issued in her name.”
“Then she really needs to contact us herself.”
“Sterling Harper is dead,” I said. “She can’t contact you herself.” A startled pause.
“She died suddenly right around the time of a trip she was supposed to go on,” I explained. “If you could just check your computer …”
This went on. It got to where I could recite the same lines without thinking. USAir had nothing, nor did the computers for Delta, United, American, or Eastern. As far as the agents could tell from their
records, Miss Harper had not flown out of Richmond during the last week of October, when Beryl Madison was murdered. Miss Harper hadn’t driven, either. I seriously doubted she had taken the bus. That left the train.
An Amtrak agent named John said his computer was down and asked if he could call me back. I hung up as someone rang my doorbell.
It was not quite noon. The day was as tart and crisp as a fall apple. Sunlight painted white rectangles in my living room and winked off the windshield of the unfamiliar silver Mazda sedan parked in my drive. The pasty, blond young man I observed through the peephole was standing back from my front door, head down, the collar of a leather jacket up around his ears. My Ruger was hard and heavy in my hand, and I stuffed it in the pocket of my warm-up jacket as I unfastened the dead bolt. I didn’t recognize him until we were face-to-face.
“Dr. Scarpetta?” he asked nervously.
I made no move to let him inside, my right hand in my pocket and firm around the butt of the revolver.
“Please forgive me for appearing on your doorstep like this,” he said. “I called your office and was told you’re on vacation. I found your name in the book and the line was busy. So I concluded you were home. I, well, I really need to talk to you. May I come in?”
He looked even more innocuous in person than he had looked on the videotape Marino had shown me.
“What is this about?” I asked firmly.
“Beryl Madison, it’s about her,” he said. “Uh, my name’s Al Hunt. I won’t take much of your time. I promise.”
I backed away from the door and he stepped inside. His face got as white as alabaster when he seated himself on my living room couch and his eyes fixed briefly on the butt of the revolver protruding from my pocket as I settled in a wing chair a safe distance away.
“Uh, you’ve got a gun?” he said.
“Yes, I do,” I answered.
“I don’t like them, like guns.”
“They’re not very likable,” I agreed.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “My father took me deer hunting once. When I was a boy. He hit a doe. She was crying. The doe, she was crying, lying on her side and crying. I never could shoot anything.”
“Did you know Beryl Madison?” I asked.
“The police — The police have talked to me about her,” he stammered. “A lieutenant. Marino, Lieutenant Marino. He came by the car wash where I work and talked to me, then asked me down to headquarters. We talked for a long time. She used to bring her car in. That’s how I met her.”
As he rambled on I couldn’t help but wonder what “colors” were radiating from me. Steely blue?
Maybe a hint of bright red because I was alarmed and doing my best not to show it? I contemplated ordering him to leave. I considered calling the police. I couldn’t believe he was sitting inside my house, and perhaps the sheer audacity on his part and mystification on mine explains why I did nothing at all.
I interrupted him. “Mr. Hunt–”
“Please call me Al.”
“Al, then,” I said. “Why did you want to see me? If you have information, why aren’t you talking to Lieutenant Marino?”
The color rose to his cheeks and he looked uncomfortably down at his hands.
“What I have to say doesn’t really belong in the category of police information,” he said “I thought you might understand.”