A Quiet Death

TWENTY

Thursday dawned bright and clear but too damn cold to walk a dog. Too cold to do anything, in my opinion, except slip into a bathtub full of bubbles and try to soak off the oily feeling I got after my confrontation with James Hoffner.

I’d been almost fully immersed, a hot washcloth neatly folded and pressed over my eyelids, when Paul knocked on the door. ‘Would madam care for coffee?’

I raised a corner of the washcloth and peeked out. ‘Madam would. Very much.’

Paul pushed the door open with one foot and eased into the bathroom, a mug of coffee in each hand. He handed one to me, then lowered the toilet seat lid and sat down on its chenille cover. ‘You really shouldn’t have provoked the man, Hannah.’

‘Who? Hoffner?’

‘Who else have you been provoking lately?’

I slid the washcloth completely off my eyes so I could glare at my husband. ‘But he needed provoking. Especially after what he did to our house. And I think he followed me when I went up to New York City, too. The creep.’

‘You can’t prove that he did either of those things.’

‘That’s why he needed provoking.’

‘To what end?’

I slithered down in the tub until bubbles covered everything but my head. ‘The way he smiled, like he was smarter than me. Made my blood boil! He shouldn’t be allowed to think that he can get away with spying, with trashing other people’s houses, even if he has it done by some goons in absentia.’

Using my toes, I turned the tap so that more hot water would trickle into the tub. ‘Help me sort something out.’

Paul leaned back against the toilet tank, extended his long legs and crossed them at the ankles. ‘I have a feeling this is going to take some time, so let me get comfortable,’ he grinned.

‘I’ve been working on a timeline,’ I said, ‘and some things just aren’t fitting in. The Metro crash was on Tuesday afternoon, September seventh.’

‘“A date that will live in infamy,”’ Paul quoted.

I wrung the washcloth out and placed it over my eyes again. ‘And when did Meredith Logan go missing?’

‘I don’t know. We didn’t hear about Meredith until much later, from Emily. I’m assuming that you know the answer to this question.’

‘I do. Meredith disappeared on Tuesday, September seventh, around lunchtime.’

‘And you believe there’s a connection?’

If my eyes hadn’t been hidden under a washcloth, I would have rolled them. ‘What do you think Nicholas Ryan Aupry, aka Skip, was doing on September seventh before he stepped on to a Metro train and sat down next to me?’

‘I don’t know. What?’

‘He told me he was doing genealogical research at the Library of Congress, in the Thomas Jefferson building, just four or five blocks away from the Lynx News building.’ I raised a single finger. ‘Opportunity.’

‘OK, but what’s his motive?’

‘Like me, he’d figured out that John Chandler was his father and he wanted to confront him. Meredith Logan simply got in the way and, I don’t know, maybe something snapped.’

‘You did say that he’d confessed to a murder when he thought he was dying.’

‘Exactly! Yet when I saw Skip in the hospital yesterday afternoon, he claimed he didn’t remember praying with me. But when he said it, his eyes shot right over to the rosary on his bedside table, so I’m convinced he did remember it happening. And if he remembers praying, he also has to have remembered that he confessed to a killing.’

‘He could have been speaking figuratively, Hannah. What were his actual words?’

‘“I think I killed somebody.”’

‘He thinks he killed somebody? How can one be ambivalent about that? Either you killed somebody or you didn’t. It’s not like Skip pushed Meredith off the edge of a cliff then left her lying on the rocks below, not knowing whether she was alive or dead. Meredith’s death was very hands-on. She was strangled.’

‘Motive and opportunity,’ I said. ‘Skip’s number one on my suspect list.’

‘Your theory should be easy enough to prove one way or the other. Don’t you have to sign in at the Library of Congress? Wouldn’t he have to apply for a Reader Identification Card? And there are security cameras all over the joint, as I recall.’

Underneath my washcloth, I nodded, agreeing. ‘Security is really tight. Airport-like. Last time I was there…’ I raised a corner of the washcloth and fixed an eye on my husband, ‘… I was doing research for good old Whitworth and Sullivan, damn them.’

I repositioned the washcloth over my eyes and lay back. ‘Security guards paw through your packages, handbags, backpacks, you name it, coming and going, and you have to pass through metal detectors and theft detection systems, too.’

Paul balanced his mug on his left thigh. ‘So, let’s say, for point of argument, that Skip lied about being at the Thomas Jefferson building. He wouldn’t show up on their surveillance tapes at all. And if he was doing research at the Jefferson building, as he claimed, the tapes would show when he came and when he left, wouldn’t they?’

‘They would,’ I agreed. ‘But I’ll bet the police are not looking at Library of Congress surveillance tapes because nobody knows what you and I do, that Skip confessed to a murder, that he was in the neighborhood at the time, and that he may have a family connection with the boss of the murder victim.’

‘And you’re going to point this out to them, right?’

I whipped the washcloth off my eyes and tucked it into the soap dish. ‘I don’t know what to do! I wish I knew somebody with access to those security tapes.’

‘The long-suffering police lieutenant Dennis Rutherford?’

I sighed. ‘There may be twenty-one police jurisdictions in the Washington, DC area, but, alas, Chesapeake County is not one of them.’

‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Hannah?’

‘What?’

‘The press has been speculating that Meredith’s death was the work of a serial killer. How about that other victim, the girl they found near Reagan Airport? And the woman who was attacked in Rock Creek Park? They can’t all have been Skip’s doing. He could have murdered Meredith, I’ll give you that, but you and I both know that he was teetering between life and death in intensive care when the other two girls were attacked.’

I extended my arm. ‘Hand me a towel, Professor, and stop being so damned reasonable.’

Paul stood, grabbed a towel off the rack next to the sink, and when I climbed out of the tub, he wrapped me snugly in it. ‘I feel like a taco,’ I said.

‘You don’t look like a taco.’ He kissed the top of my head.

‘Who knows almost as much about what the police are up to as the police do themselves?’ I asked my husband a few minutes later as I was struggling to pull my jeans on over damp legs.

‘Police scanner hobbyists?’

I hadn’t thought about that one. ‘Zzzzt! No, the correct answer is the media.’

‘And so?’

‘I think it’s time I paid another visit to Lynx News, don’t you?’