Mortal Friends

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “Aw, and here I thought you’d invited me.”

  I was a little frightened, but I tried not to show it. “What do you want, Bob?”

  “Come for a ride with me.”

  “Do you seriously think I’d ever get back into that car, after…?”

  I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

  “It’s not the same car. I had to buy a new one. The old one was impounded.” He pointed down the block to what looked like yet another vintage Rolls. It was hard to see in the dark. “Navy blue this time. Green seems to be a bad-luck color.”

  “No chauffeur?”

  “Not tonight. Come on. It’s a nice night.”

  “No. I’m really tired. I want to go to bed. So if you’d please move…?”

  He smiled that bemused, insinuating smile of his and stood idling in front of the door, making it impossible for me to pass without having contact with him. I smelled liquor on his breath.

  “How ’bout a drink, then? Invite me in. One drink, and I’ll leave. Promise.”

  “I think you’ve had a few too many drinks already.”

  As I put my key in the lock, he leaned in close.

  “I could force my way in if I wanted,” he whispered.

  I froze. “Are you going to?”

  “No.” He backed off.

  I opened the door, slid into the house, switched on the light, and quickly turned to face him.

  “Please don’t shut the door,” he said. “Just talk to me for a minute. I need to talk to someone.”

  I closed the door partway and hovered near the entrance, making sure I could shut it quickly if I needed to.

  “I’m sorry, Reven. I’m so damn sorry.”

  “Why? Because your marriage didn’t work out?”

  “That’s part of it. You wouldn’t let me come in for a few minutes, just to talk?”

  “Better not,” I said, clinging to the door.

  “You ever have episodes where you can’t remember things exactly?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where you can’t tell whether something is real or a dream?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Never? You never feel like you’re watching yourself doing something you shouldn’t do? And you’re not really doing it. But you can see yourself doing it. And then, afterward, you say, ‘Wait. Did I do that? I never could have done something like that.’”

  The light from the hall illuminated him. He raised his hand to wipe his brow. He was sweating. There was dirt under his fingernails. For a man who was always so fastidiously groomed, this was as odd as the fact he was wearing a sweat suit at ten o’clock at night.

  “How come you’re dressed like that?” I asked him.

  “I went jogging.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Earlier.”

  “You usually have three for the road when you jog?”

  “Yeah, well, I fell down and kinda blacked out. I’m so fucked up.”

  “So, you get drunk, go jogging, black out, fall down, and then just decide to get in your car and drive over to see me?”

  “I rang the bell. You didn’t answer. I decided to wait. You mad?”

  “No. I gotta go.”

  I started to close the door. Bob suddenly stepped forward and put his hand out, like he was going to barge in. I slammed the door in his face and locked it. I stood still in the hall for a long moment, straining to hear what he was doing. My heart was beating wildly. I was terrified. After a few seconds, I turned off the hall light and peered through the curtains of the window facing the street. I saw Bob walking to his car. I was so relieved.

  Something was very wrong. I felt it. What was all that baloney about doing things you don’t remember doing and thinking you’re in a dream?

  I called Gunner on his cell. No answer. I texted him: “Need 2 C U ASAP.” I went upstairs and took the shoe box down from the top shelf of the closet. That’s where I kept the gun Violet had given me. I loaded it and put it in my night-table drawer. I didn’t sleep a wink that night.

  Over the next couple of days, I tried desperately to reach Gunner. He didn’t respond to any of my calls or text messages, which was odd, because I knew he was waiting for me to get back to him on Violet.

  Later on that week, another young woman was found bludgeoned to death in the woods—this time off the Little Falls Parkway up in Bethesda. I heard about it in the shop and ran home to watch the six o’clock news.

  Jenna Jakes, the local anchor, was standing in the middle of yet another chaotic scene of police cars and milling officers, microphone in hand.

  “Police believe that twenty-four-year-old Katrina Hemsford was killed at least four days ago by blunt force trauma to the head, then buried right over there in a shallow grave,” she said, pointing back at the woods.

  “Sources close to the investigation say the way she was murdered bears an eerie resemblance to that of six other victims of the so-called Beltway Basher. Martin Wayne Wardell, the man they arrested three weeks ago in connection with that case, has only admitted to killing three women. Privately there are questions: Did Wardell act alone? Did he have an accomplice? Or is there a copycat out there? One thing is sure, no one is safe yet.”

  I picked up the phone.

  Chapter 43

  The cops at the local area precinct had never heard of Detective Gunner. Neither did they know what I was talking about when I demanded to speak to someone on the Beltway Basher task force. I phoned a couple of other precincts, with the same results.

  At this point, I was certain that Bob Poll was involved in this recent murder. The time frame seemed right. I couldn’t wait any longer for Gunner to get back to me. I turned to my friend Joy Croft, a Washington fixture who wrote a lively blog about the city called “Capitol Pros and Cons.” Joy once ran for the city council, and there was very little about Washington or its denizens in all spheres of life she didn’t know. When people got into a jam or needed a favor, they called Joy.

  Joy was a good-looking blond divorcée in her forties who managed to be catnip to men without being threatening to women. Her wry sense of humor, coupled with a languid sexuality, made an interesting contrast to her pragmatic, levelheaded nature. She loved antiques, and she’d written about my shop on her blog several times. The two of us often had lunch together, and dished the whole Washington scene. Joy was the kind of cool friend who didn’t ask a lot of questions if you went to her for help. She just helped you.

  I knew she used to date this policeman named Norman Peterson, who was now an assistant chief in the Metropolitan Police Department. So I called her and asked if I could call Chief Peterson and use her name, because I needed to get in touch with one of his detectives. I told her it was urgent.

  “I’ll do you one better,” she said. “I’ll take you to see him myself. I haven’t seen Norm in a while.”

  Joy and I drove out to some godforsaken corner of Northeast Washington that very afternoon. The chief’s headquarters were located in a fairly deserted area in a rough section of town. The building looked like a bunker—a great big square mass of concrete blocks, surrounded by a chain-link-fence-enclosed parking lot. Chief Peterson received us in his office, a spacious room with homey touches like trophies, merit citations, and family photographs hanging on the walls. Seated behind a big square desk, piled high with folders and official-looking papers, Peterson stood up when we came in, greeting Joy warmly. Noticeably warmly, in fact. Joy had that effect on men.

  Norman Peterson was a tall, handsome man with a kind of fleshy muscularity, like someone who used to be in great shape but wasn’t working out anymore. Joy introduced us, and he shook my hand with a zealous grip. A youngish-looking uniformed officer stood beside him, not quite at attention, but almost. He looked like a kid. He had a thin face, a long neck, a protruding Adam’s apple, and a blotchy complexion. Peterson introduced him to us as Gary. Just Gary.

  Chief Peterson sat down and invited me and Joy to do so as well. Gary rem
ained standing at attention by the chief’s side. Joy and Peterson chatted for a while, catching up. I gathered they hadn’t spoken in many months. They were flirtatious with each other in that way that former lovers often are, drawing on little private moments with only one or two words, or a knowing laugh. Peterson showed us a picture of his two children, then casually let drop that he was separated from his wife. While he made goo-goo eyes at Joy, I wondered if anyone ever stayed married anymore.

  “So, what brings you ladies here?” Peterson finally said.

  “Reven has something she wants to ask you,” Joy said.

  “Ask away,” he said.

  I hesitated a little at that point, and Joy diplomatically asked me if I wanted her to leave the room. She sensed, quite rightly, that I needed to speak to the chief in private. I took her up on her offer, and she left.

  “I’ll wait for you outside,” she said.

  So then it was just me, Chief Peterson, and Gary, the young officer.

  “I’m trying to get in touch with Detective Gunner,” I began. Peterson glanced up at Gary. “You do know him, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah. We know him,” Peterson said. “And why do you want to get in touch with him, if I may ask?”

  “I have some important information for him—about the case.”

  Peterson narrowed his eyes. “What case?”

  “The Beltway Basher case. He’s on the special task force…?”

  Peterson shifted in his chair and glanced up at Gary again. “Why don’t you begin at the beginning,” he said.

  I tried to make a long story short. I explained how I’d first met Detective Gunner and how he’d enlisted me as sort of nontraditional confidential informant who could tell him stuff about the Washington social scene. I also mentioned that I’d gone out with Bob Poll, and in fact it was my tip on the green mink blanket that had actually led to the arrest of Bob’s chauffeur, Maxwell, aka Martin Wayne Wardell. As I was talking, Chief Peterson and Gary exchanged uneasy, almost questioning glances at each other.

  When I’d finished, Peterson said: “So let me get this straight. You say you’ve been working for Detective Gunner as a CI?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you he was on the serial killer task force?”

  “Yes.”

  Peterson rolled his eyes at Gary. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands in front of his face, with the tips of his finger touching his nose, like he was praying.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  “Why, what’s the matter?” I asked.

  He slapped his hands palms down on the desk in apparent exasperation. “And tell me exactly why you want to get in touch with Detective Gunner?”

  “I need to talk to him about the case.”

  “So he’s been talking to you about the case?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he been saying?” Peterson was growing more intense now, more irritated. I was getting a little anxious. I didn’t want to get Gunner in any trouble.

  “Well, as I understand it, Maxwell—Mr. Wardell—has confessed to three of the murders, but not to Nancy Sawtelle, the woman they found in Montrose Park and two others. You’re not sure if he killed them, right?”

  “Go on,” Peterson said.

  “Okay, well, I guess some people think it’s possible that Mr. Wardell may be telling the truth—that he didn’t kill those other girls—or that he had an accomplice, right?”

  “Is that what Detective Gunner told you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, sort of?”

  “Yes, he did tell me that.”

  “And did he have any theories about who this other killer may be?”

  Well, naturally, I didn’t want to incriminate Violet. But I figured they knew that Bob Poll had once been a suspect, so I proceeded from there.

  “Well, I know you all once suspected Bob Poll—Mr. Wardell’s employer. Isn’t that right?”

  Peterson narrowed his eyes. “We all?”

  “I mean, the detectives on the task force. As I said, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Detective Gunner, but he hasn’t returned my calls.”

  “And why exactly are you trying to get in touch with him?”

  “Because of that girl they just found off the Little Falls Parkway.”

  “What’s she got to do with it?” Peterson said.

  I cleared my throat. “Look, I just had to talk to someone in charge because, well, Bob Poll paid me a visit a few nights ago, and he was acting really crazy. He was drunk. He was in a sweat suit, and he was sweating.”

  Peterson threw another glance at the young officer, who stifled a laugh.

  “That didn’t come out right,” I said. “What I mean is, it was ten o’clock at night. What was he doing in a sweat suit? You don’t know him, but it’s just so unlike him. He said he was jogging, but he’d obviously had a lot to drink. I didn’t believe him. He was babbling on about all this crazy stuff, like how he blacked out and couldn’t remember things. And, well, I think he might have been up to something horrible. Then I heard about that girl. Look, I’m very sure Detective Gunner would be interested in this.”

  Peterson glanced at Gary again. It was like they had this private joke thing going on between them, and I was getting a little paranoid about it. My nerves were basically shot anyway.

  “I’m glad you guys think this is so funny. Mind letting me in on the joke?” I said.

  Peterson leaned forward and stared hard at me. He had these really piercing blue eyes. He was a damn good-looking guy, despite the desk-job beefiness. I suddenly wondered why my friend Joy broke up with him and if he was available and if she’d mind if I went out with him, because you know how touchy girls can be about friends going out with their exes. Those things were flitting through my mind—but not for long.

  “George Gunner,” he began in a slow drawl, “good old Samurai George.”

  I realized that was the very first time I’d ever heard Gunner’s first name. I’d always called him Gunner and thought of him as Gunner, never bothering to inquire what his first name was.

  “I’ve always just called him Gunner, actually.”

  “Yeah, well, Gunner or George or Samurai Sue or whatever you wanna call him hasn’t been active on the force for two years.”

  I felt a little shock wave run through me. “What?”

  “He ever tell you anything about himself?”

  “Not much, no. Just that he was on this special task force investigating the Beltway Basher. Okay, yes, and one very personal thing—that his daughter had died and his wife committed suicide as a result.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that all he told you?”

  “Yes. I didn’t want to pry any further, because I got the feeling that he really didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’ll bet he didn’t,” Peterson said.

  “What do you mean?” I was apprehensive.

  “Okay…. Well, George Gunner was one of the best detectives on the force. He was assigned to a special task force investigating the Beltway Basher case until his stepdaughter, Dinise Shevette, became the guy’s fourth victim.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah…. It was one of those freaky, terrible things. It’s possible he knew George was working the case and he targeted her. But we’ll never know. Dinise was a lovely young woman. Nice, quiet, studying to be a doctor. They found her over in Anacostia Park, dumped near the river. Gunner had to identify her body. I was told he let out this godawful scream when he saw her. Poor guy. And then his wife…I feel for the man. I really do. But there are rules.”

  “But…wait…Dinise Shevette was white. He showed me her picture.”

  “Step daughter, I said. Lila Shevette, his wife, was white. Dinise’s dad was killed in the Gulf War when she was just a kid. George brought her up. He loved that little girl like she was his own flesh and blood. Lila couldn’t have any
more kids. So Dinise was like their little star. When she was murdered, it just destroyed the both of them. Lila took an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  I clapped my hand to my mouth. “Oh, my God.…I had no idea.”

  “Naturally, we had to take him off the case, because he was now personally involved. You can understand why. Who’s gonna trust evidence we get from the father of one of the victims? It’s a defense lawyer’s dream. You can’t have people working cases they’re emotionally involved with. It’s tough enough maintaining a distance in cases like this as it is.”

  I kept shaking my head over and over in disbelief.

  Peterson went on: “He was furious we took him off the case. It became a real obsession with him. Not that I blame the guy. His life was wrecked. He had nothing left really. He began to think of himself as this kind of renegade samurai—you know, a warrior who works outside the establishment and dispenses his own kind of justice.”

  “I know. He gave me a book about that.”

  “That Ring book, right? Yeah, we used to kid him about it because that was the book all those friggin’ CEOs were reading back in the ’80s. Anyway, he started poking into stuff on his own. Lemme tell you, an obsessed cop is a dangerous man. Or, as a buddy of mine put it, ‘An obsessed man is a dangerous cop.’ Shit, I warned him to back off—didn’t I, Gary?”

  “You did. We all did.”

  “Gary’ll tell you. I told him he could potentially do the case a lot more harm than good. But he wouldn’t listen, stubborn son of a bitch. So we had to suspend him. An indefinite leave of absence.”

  “But the blanket…I told him about the blanket, and that’s how you caught Maxwell—I mean Wardell.”

  “Yeah. That’s right. We didn’t stop talkin’ to the guy. He lucked out, and we were able to follow up on that lead precisely because he was no longer working in the department. We treated it like a tip. It paid off. I didn’t say he wasn’t a good detective. He was a great detective. But this case derailed him. And by the way, for the record, we believe Wardell did all those girls by himself. He just confessed to Dinise, which is why you probably haven’t heard from Gunner. The guy’s probably on a bender somewhere. I would be, if I were him.”