“Anything? What happened was just anything?”
“Of course it wasn't just anything.”
“Sometimes I wake up at night because I dream a gun is going off. Then I listen to the awful silence and remember lying there, staring into the dark. I was so scared I couldn't move, and I wet my bed. And there were sirens and red lights flashing, and neighbors coming out on their porches and looking out their windows. And you wouldn't let me see it when they carried him out, and you wouldn't let me go upstairs. I wish I had, because imagining it has been worse.”
“That man is dead, Lucy. He can't hurt anyone now.”
“There are others just as bad, maybe worse than him.”
“I'm not going to tell you there aren't.”
“What are you doing about it, then?”
“I spend my every waking moment picking up the pieces of the lives destroyed by evil people. What more do you want me to do?”
“If you let something happen to you, I promise I will hate you,” my niece said.
“If something happens to me, I don't suppose it will matter who hates me. But I wouldn't want you to hate anyone because of what it would do to you.”
“Well, I will hate you. I swear.”
“I want you to promise me, Lucy, that you won't lie to me again.”
She did not say a word.
“I don't ever want you to feel that you need to hide anything from me,” I said.
“If I'd told you I wanted to go to the range, would you have let me?”
“Not without Lieutenant Marino or me.”
“Aunt Kay, what if Pete can't catch him?”
“Lieutenant Marino is not the only person on the case,” I said, not answering her question, because I did not know how to answer it.
“Well, I feel sorry for Pete.”
“Why?”
“He has to stop whoever this person is, and he can't even talk to you.”
“I imagine he's taking things in stride, Lucy. He's a pro.”
“That's not what Michele says.”
I glanced over at her.
“I was talking to her this morning. She says that Pete came by the house the other night to see her father. She said that Pete looks awful - his face was as red as a fire truck and he was in a horrible mood. Mr. Wesley tried to get him to go to the doctor or take some time off, but no way.”
I felt miserable. I wanted to call Marino immediately, but I knew it wasn't wise. I changed the subject.
“What else have you and Michele been talking about? Anything new with the State Police computers?”
“Nothing good. We've tried everything we can think of to figure out who Waddell's SID number was switched with. But any records marked for deletion were overwritten long ago on the hard disk. And whoever is responsible for the tampering was swift enough to do full system backups after the records were altered, meaning we can't run SID numbers against an earlier version of CCRE and see who pops up. Generally, you have at least one backup that's three to six months old. But not so in this case.”
“Sounds like an inside job to me.”
I thought how natural it seemed to be home with Lucy. She no longer was a guest or an irascible little girl. “We need to call your mother and Grans,“ I said.
“Do we have to tonight?”
“No. But we do need to talk about your returning to Miami.”
“Classes don't start until the seventh, and it won't make any difference if I miss the first few days.”
“School is very important.”
“It's also very easy.”
“Then you should do something on your own to make it harder.”
“Missing classes will make it harder,” she said.
The next morning I called Rose at eight-thirty, when I knew a staff meeting was in progress across the hall, meaning that Ben Stevens was occupied and would not know I was on the line.
“How are things?” I asked my secretary.
“Awful. Dr. Wyatt couldn't get here from the Roanoke office because they got snow in the mountains and the roads are bad. So yesterday Fielding had four cases with no one to help him. Plus, he was due in court and then got called to a scene. Have you talked to him?”
“We touch base when the poor man has a moment to get to the phone. This might be a good time for us to track down a few of our former fellows and see if one of them might consider coming here to help us hang on for a while. Jansen's doing private path in Charlottesville. You want to try him and see if he wants to give me a call.”
“Certainly. That's a fine idea.”
“Tell me about Stevens,” I said.
“He hasn't been here very much. He signs out in such an abbreviated, vague fashion that no one is ever sure where he's gone. I'm suspicious he's looking for another job.”
“Remind him not to ask me for a recommendation.”
“I wish you'd give him a great one so someone else would take him off our hands.”
“I need for you to call the DNA lab and get Donna to do me a favor. She should have a lab request for the analysis of the fetal tissue from Susan's case.”
Rose was silent. I could feel her getting upset.
“I'm sorry to bring this up,” I said gently.
She took a deep breath. “When did you request the analysis?”
“The request was actually made by Dr. Wright, since he did the post. He would have his copy of the lab request at the Norfolk office, along with the case.”
“You don't want me to call Norfolk and have them make a copy for us?”
“No. This can't wait, and I don't want anyone to know that I've requested a copy. I want it to appear that our office inadvertently got a copy. That's why I want you to deal directly with Donna. Ask her to pull the lab request immediately and I want you to pick it up in person.”
“Then what?”
“Then put it in the box up front where all the other copies of lab requests and reports are left for sorting.”
“You're sure about this?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
I hung up and retrieved a telephone directory, which I was flipping through when Lucy walked into the kitchen. She was barefoot and still wearing the sweat suit she had slept in. Groggily wishing me a good morning, she began rummaging in the refrigerator as I ran my finger down a column of names. There were maybe forty listings for the name Grimes, but no Helens. Of course, when Marino had referred to the guard as Helen the Hun, he was being snide. Maybe Helen wasn't her real name at all. I noted that there were three listings with the initial H., two for the first name and one for a middle name.
“What are you doing?” Lucy asked, setting a glass of orange juice on the table and pulling out a chair.
“I'm trying to track down someone,” I said, reaching for the phone.
I had no luck with any of the Grimeses I called.
“Maybe she's married,” Lucy suggested.
“I don't think so.”
I called Directory Assistance and got the listing for the new penitentiary in Greensville.
“What makes you think she isn't?”
“Intuition.”
I dialed. “I'm trying to reach Helen Grimes,” I said to the woman who answered.
“Are you referring to an inmate?”
“No. To one of your guards.”
“Hold, please.”
I was transferred.
“Watkins,” a male voice mumbled.
“Helen Grimes, please,” I said.
“Officer Helen Grimes.”
“Oh. She don't work here anymore.”
“Could you please tell me where I could reach her, Mr. Watkins? It's very important.”
“Hold on.”
The phone dunked against wood. In the background, Randy Travis was singing.
Minutes later, the man returned. “We're not allowed to give out information like that, ma'am.”
“That's fine, Mr. Watkins. If you give me your first name, I'll just send all this to
you and you can forward it to her.”
A pause. “All what?”
“This order she placed. I was calling to see if she wanted it mailed fourth-class or sent ground.”
“What order?”
He didn't sound happy.
“The set of encyclopedias she ordered. There are six boxes weighing eighteen pounds each.”
“Well, you can't be sending no encyclopedias here.”
“Then what do you suggest I do with them, Mr. Watkins? She's already made the down payment and your business address was the one she gave us.”
“Shhhhooo. Hold on.”
I heard paper rustle; then keys clicked on a keyboard.
“Look,” the man said quickly. “The best I can do is give you a P.O. box. You just send the stuff there. Don't be sending nothing to me.”
He gave me the address and abruptly hung up. The post office where Helen Grimes received her mail was in Goochland County. Next I called a bailiff I was friendly with at the Goochland courthouse. Within the hour he had looked up Helen Grimes's home address in court records, but her telephone number was unlisted. At eleven A.M., I gathered my pocketbook and coat, and found Lucy in my study.
“I've got to go out for a few hours,” I said.
“You lied to whoever you were talking to on the phone.”
She stared into the computer screen. “You don't have any encyclopedias to deliver to anyone.”
“You're absolutely right. I did lie.”
“So sometimes it's okay to lie and sometimes it's not.’
“It's never really okay, Lucy.”
I left her in my chair, modem lights winking and various computer manuals open and scattered over my desk and on the floor. On the screen the cursor pulsed rapidly. I waited until I was well out of sight before slipping my Ruger into my pocketbook. Though I was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, I rarely did. Setting the alarm, I left the house through the garage and drove west until Cary Street put me on River Road. The sky was marbled varying shades of gray. I was expecting Nicholas Grueman to call any day. A bomb ticked silently in the records I had given him, and I did not look forward to what he was going to say.
Helen Grimes lived on a muddy road just west of the North Pole restaurant, and on the border of a farm. Her house looked like a small barn, with few trees on its tiny parcel of land, and window boxes clumped with dead shoots that I guessed once had been geraniums. There was no sign in front to announce who lived inside, but the old Chrysler pulled up dose to the porch announced that at least somebody did.
When Helen Grimes opened her door, I could tell by her blank expression that I was about as foreign to her as my German car. Dressed in jeans and an untucked denim shirt, she planted her hands on her substantial hips and did not budge from the doorway. She seemed unbothered by the cold or who I said I was, and it wasn't until I reminded her of my visit to the penitentiary that recognition flickered in her small, probing eyes.
“Who told you where I live?”
Her cheeks were flushed, and I wondered if she might hit me.
“Your address is in the court records for Goochland County.”
“You shouldn't have looked for it. How would you like it if I dug up your home address?”
“If you needed my help as much as I need yours, I wouldn't mind, Helen,” I said.
She just looked at me. I noticed that her hair was damp, an earlobe smudged with black dye.
“The man you worked for was murdered,” I said. “Someone who worked for me was murdered. And there are others. I'm sure you've been keeping up with some of what is going on. There is reason to suspect that the person who is doing this was an inmate at Spring Street - someone who was released, perhaps around the time that Ronnie Joe Waddell was executed.”
“I don't know anything about anybody being released.”
Her eyes drifted to the empty street behind me.
“Would you know anything about an inmate who disappeared? Someone, perhaps, who wasn't legitimately released? It seems that with the job you had you would have known who entered the penitentiary and who left.”
“Nobody disappeared that I heard of.”
“Why don't you work there anymore?”
I asked.
“Health reasons.”
I heard what sounded like a cupboard door shut from somewhere inside the space she guarded.
I kept trying. “Do you remember when Ronnie Waddell's mother came to the penitentiary to visit him on the afternoon of his execution?”
“I was there when she came in.”
“You would have searched her and anything she had with her. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“What I'm trying to determine is if Mrs. Waddell might have brought anything to give her son. I realize that visiting rules prohibit people from bringing in items for the inmates “
"You can get permission. She got it.”
"Mrs. Waddell got permission to give something to her son?”
"Helen, you're letting all the heat out," a voice sounded sweetly from behind her.
Intense blue eyes suddenly fixed on me like gun sights in the space between Helen Grimes's meaty left shoulder and the door frame. I caught a flash of a pale cheek and aquiline nose before the space was empty again. The lock rattled and the door was quietly shut behind the erstwhile prison guard. She leaned up against it, staring at me. I repeated my question.
"She did bring something for-Ronnie, and it wasn't much. I called the warden for permission.”
"You called Frank Donahue?”
She nodded.
"And he granted permission?”
"Like I said; it wasn't much, what she brought for him.
"Helen, what was it?”
"A picture of Jesus about the size of a postcard, and something was wrote on the back. I don't remember exactly. Something like 'I will be with you in paradise; only the spelling was wrong. Paradise was spelled like 'pair of dice; all run together,' Helen Grimes said without a trace of a smile.
"And that was it?”
I asked. "This was what she wanted to give her son before he died?”
"I told you that was it. Now, I need to go in, arid I don't want you coming here again.”
She put her hand on the doorknob as the first few drops of rain slowly slipped from the sky and left wet spots the size of nickels on the cement, stoop.
When Wesley arrived at my house later in the day, he wore a black leather pilot's jacket, a dark blue cap, and a trace of a smile.
"What's happening?” I asked as we retreated to the kitchen, which by now had become such a common meeting place for us that he always took the same chair.
"We didn't break Stevens, but I think we put a pretty big crack in him. Your having the lab request left where be would find it did the trick. He's got good reason to fear the results of DNA testing done on fetal tissue from Susan Story's case.”
"He and Susan were having an affair," I said, and it was odd that I did not object to Susan's morals. I was disappointed in her taste.
"Stevens admitted to the affair and denied everything else.”
"Such as having any idea where Susan got thirty-five hundred dollars?” I said.
"He denies knowing anything about that but we're not finished with him. A snitch of Marino's says he saw a black Jeep with a vanity plate in the area where Susan was shot and about the time we think it happened. Ben Stephens drives a black Jeep with the vanity plate”
"Stevens didn't kill her, Benton," I said.
"No, he didn't. I think what happened is Stevens got spooked when whoever he was dealing with wanted information about Jennifer Deighton's case.”
"The implication would have been pretty clear,". I agreed. "Stevens knew that Jennifer Deighton was murdered.”
"And coward that he is, he decides that when it is time for the next payoff, he'll let Susan handle it. Then he'll meet her directly afterward to get his share.”
"By which time she's already been killed.
”
Wesley nodded. "I think whoever was sent to meet her shot her and kept the money: Later - maybe mere minutes later - Stevens appears in the designated spot, the alleyway off Strawberry Street.”