Mortal Friends Read online

  After the tour, we went back upstairs to my office, and this time he accepted my offer of coffee. He asked me how I’d gotten into the antiques business. I told him that I used to be a decorator, but that I’d always wanted to open a shop.

  “I like being my own boss,” I said.

  I asked him how he’d gotten to be a detective. He said, “When you grow up where I grew up, you’ve basically got two choices: you’re either with the law or against it. My older brother was against it. He got shot. I figured I’d try the other route.”

  Gunner wasn’t too much more specific about his background, but we did talk about some of his cases. He seemed most proud of the work he’d done several years back on the Beltway sniper case, in which ten people were shot and killed and three others critically wounded while they were minding their business, doing mundane things like mowing the lawn, pumping gas, or getting on a school bus.

  “Everyone was looking for a white guy in a white van. Then it turned out to be two black guys in a blue car. But we got ’em,” Gunner said.

  He proudly showed me a newspaper clipping featuring a picture of himself among a group of officers as they arrested Lee Boyd Malvo, the young sniper.

  “That’s me,” he said. “Second from the left in the back row.”

  He looked a lot younger then, even though it wasn’t all that long ago. When he left the shop that day, I’d kind of wondered why he’d dropped by.

  In the weeks that followed, Gunner came to visit a few times just to shoot the breeze. Rosina joked that it was because he had a crush on me, and I joked that it was because he had a crush on her. But in truth, it didn’t really seem as if he had a crush on either of us. He was simply interested in getting to know me as a friend. He wanted to know all about me, what my background was, where I’d gone to school, how I happened to wind up in Washington. I told him that I’d lived here briefly when I was a young girl. My father was a lawyer with an international practice. He and my mother moved down to D.C. for a brief period of time in the early ’80s so he could open a branch of the firm here. We had a house in Kalorama with a pool and a garden. I had wonderful memories of the place and moved here after design school. It was a cheaper, gentler place to live than New York—much less competitive and hard-edged, provided you weren’t in politics.

  Gunner said he’d seen my picture in a couple of magazines at various social events. I think he was impressed. At least, he said he was. The social world seemed to intrigue him. He was always asking about the parties I went to and the people I knew. I got invited to a lot of big parties, ones you didn’t necessarily have to pay for, and I asked him if he ever wanted to tag along. I thought he’d be a cool escort. But he declined.

  Then one afternoon he came in, asking to speak to me in private again. I showed him upstairs to my office. He clearly had something weighty on his mind. He fidgeted a lot and looked sheepish.

  “Look, I, um…I haven’t been totally honest with you,” he began.

  I went on alert. “You haven’t?”

  “Nope.” He flashed his dark velvet eyes at me and expelled a hard sigh, like this was difficult for him. “Fact is, I need your help.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Gunner explained that he was part of a “special task force” assigned to investigate Nancy Sawtelle’s murder, as well as the four other murders the police suspected to be the work of the Beltway Basher. By this point, I knew quite a lot about “Miss Montrose,” as Violet had dubbed her. The papers had reported that Sawtelle fit the same general pattern as the other four women. She was a brunette who was bludgeoned to death in a wooded area and who maintained an apartment near Dupont Circle. The one difference was that she was older than the others by some twenty years.

  As I said, I’ve always been more interested in crimes where I could have been the victim, so this one utterly fascinated me. Not only was Nancy Sawtelle around my age, she’d been murdered in a park I frequented, a park whose tranquil beauty was the setting for dog walkers, joggers, family outings, and the innocent routines of daily life.

  “How can I help you?” I asked him.

  “Well, I’ve been coming around here with kind of a purpose in mind.”

  “Oh?” I said warily.

  “You go to a lot of these society events, and you’re friends with a lot of fancy folk, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “The guy who’s doing these girls…? We have reason to believe he’s someone in your world—you know, so-ci-ety.” So-sigh-a-tee, he pronounced it, with a wink in his voice.

  “Yeah, we’ve actually heard that too.”

  He perked up. “You have?”

  “Yeah. There’s been this rumor going around for ages that the Beltway Basher’s a big shot. My friend Violet and I are always joking about it. Maybe it’s because of that intern who was killed years ago. You know, the one who was supposedly having the affair with the congressman…? So the police think it’s some powerful guy too?”

  “Could be. We haven’t had much to go on up to now. But we may have caught a break…. Look, I’m gonna tell you something I’m not supposed to be telling you. Can I trust you?” He held my gaze for a long moment.

  “Yes, you can,” I said solemnly.

  “Well, even if I can’t, I don’t really have a lotta options here,” he said, like he was talking to himself. He hesitated another moment, then said: “We found a calendar in Nancy Sawtelle’s apartment. She was tracking this guy she identified as ‘X.’”

  Gunner went on to describe the calendar as “one of those month-at-a-glance wall jobs with pictures of harp seals and leopards and all kinds of adorable endangered shit on it.” He said that Nancy Sawtelle had written entries in the little individual day boxes, like for example, “X @ KenCen” or “X @ Smith,” which he thought stood for the Smithsonian. He showed me how she always used the “internet A,” as Gunner called it. He figured she was stalking some guy, and the guy she was stalking could very well turn out to be her killer. He said the police didn’t know a whole lot about Nancy Sawtelle. Her fingerprints didn’t show up on the national database. All they knew was that she’d moved to D.C. about eight months prior to her death. She’d rented a small apartment near Dupont Circle, and she’d had a couple of jobs waiting tables.

  “This calendar is key,” Gunner went on. “The guy she was tracking…? He goes to a lot of social events. She’s got him at the National Gallery, the Phillips, the Folger, the Smithsonian. But there’s only one place where he went where we know that all our other victims went too—”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The Kennedy Center. Her last entry reads, ‘X @ KenCen.’ That was the night of the Symphony Ball.”

  “Oh, my God, I was there!”

  “I know. I saw your picture in the paper.”

  “But how do you know this guy she was tracking is your serial killer?”

  “We don’t. But it’s still one helluva link. And, frankly, at this point it’s the only new lead we got.”

  “So, assuming that this guy is the killer, you think he met all these women at the Kennedy Center?”

  Gunner shrugged. “Met them, saw them, invited them there maybe. I hear tell some of these guys like to have their girlfriends go to the same events as their wives. Gives ’em a charge. You ever hear that?”

  “I told you I hear everything in this shop.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “Why don’t you make a list of the events she marked in the calendar and compare it to a list of the people who attended those events?”

  Gunner smiled for the first time ever. The smile lit up his face and made him look years younger. He said gently, “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

  I got the point and felt stupid for suggesting it. “Okay. So you’ve already done that. Don’t you have any suspects?”

  “A few…hundred.” He sprang up from the couch and paced around. “Shit! It’s like all you same damn people go to all the same damn parties
all the same damn time! Don’t you guys ever get sick of each other?”

  I chuckled. “You have no idea.”

  “Well, I need to get an idea because I believe there’s a stone cold killer hiding in plain sight in this town.”

  “Oh, I can think of several! Some of them are in power.”

  “All kidding aside, Reven, those rumors you all have been hearing may be true. This guy may actually be a prominent person—someone you know, or know of.”

  I sank back in my chair. “Wow…. This isn’t a joke, is it?”

  Gunner reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out four pictures he’d cut out from magazines. He laid them down on the desk in front of me, one at a time, in a row. Each picture was a group shot of some partygoers, the kinds of photos that appear on the glossy patchwork pages of Capitol File and Washington Life. In each photo, the head of one girl in the group was circled in blue ink. None of the circled girls was identified by name in print. Each girl just happened to be standing near some celebrity or social couple who were the photographer’s real target and who were mentioned in the caption below. The circled girls were unidentified—just four more anonymous pretty faces on the fringes of a big social event. Gunner didn’t have to tell me who they were.

  “The dead girls?” I said.

  He nodded. “Murdered in the meanest way. See what they all have in common?”

  “They’re all cute young brunettes wearing bad dresses? Sorry!”

  “What the pictures have in common.”

  I studied them more closely. “I don’t know…. They’re group shots, party pictures…. All in the same magazine? I don’t know.”

  “Where are all these parties?”

  I looked again and recognized the unmistakable red carpet in one, the giant columns in another, the gift shop in another.

  “The Kennedy Center,” I said.

  “That’s correct. So we got Nancy Sawtelle’s calendar and we got the Kennedy Center. And those are the only two leads we have.”

  Gunner added Nancy Sawtelle’s driver’s license to the group. He pointed to each picture in turn. “Bianca Symonds…Maria Dixon…Liza Cooley…Dinise Shevette…Nancy Sawtelle…These girls had names. They had lives. Now they’re gone,” he said, as if that really meant something to him.

  He collected the pictures one by one with care, like he was gathering flowers. He sat back down on the couch, slowly sifting through the bunch before putting them back in his pocket. I didn’t say anything. I just watched him. He wasn’t detached and matter-of-fact like some detectives you see on TV. These murders seemed to have affected him very deeply. I felt sorry for him.

  “I don’t know how I can help you, but I will if I can,” I said.

  “Okay, look, I got a hunch. But in order for me to play it out, I gotta get to know a lot more about society and society people. Right now that world’s got glass around it. You all are just a bunch of colorful fish swimming around in this big old aquarium. I don’t have any idea who the real players are. But you know that world. You know who the really important people are—not just the ones who get their pictures in the paper. You know how things really work.”

  “Unfortunately, I do. Social life may look like it’s all jewels and clothes and parties. But actually, it’s helmets, guns, and trenches. Trust me, it’s a war zone.”

  “Like life,” he said. “But you gotta know the lies of a world before you can find out the truth.”

  “I guess.”

  “So…you know what a confidential informant is?”

  “A CI? A snitch? Indeed I do,” I said proudly. “My friend Violet Bolton has taught me all the crime slang.”

  “Oh, yeah? She interested in crime, is she?”

  “Violet? She’s a crime addict. She should have been a detective.”

  “That right? Well, I need a snitch—someone who’ll report back to me on all the social stuff going on in Washington. The dirt. Who’s doin’ what, and who’s doin’ who.”

  “And you think I can do this?”

  “I know you can. The question is, will you?”

  “Sure!”

  As thrilled as I was with my ersatz Mata Hari assignment, I confessed that I didn’t think there was a whole lot going on at the moment—that is, no new affairs or social wars I could think of. But Gunner wasn’t deterred. He told me to start with the Symphony Ball, telling him who was there and what the event was like. I gave him a blow-by-blow. Told him about Grant and Violet. Told him about Cynthia and the big donation. Naturally, I mentioned Bob, but I didn’t go into detail, since I hadn’t heard from him since getting those damn roses.

  When I finished, Gunner said, “You know a lot more than you think. You’re just used to it all, so a lot of things don’t seem strange to you like they do to me. Think of me as a visitor in a foreign country and yourself as a native. You gotta explain things to me that you take for granted.”

  “Yes, but very often visitors see things the natives don’t,” I pointed out.

  “Let’s hope.”

  When Gunner was getting ready to leave, I joked I was pretty sure I didn’t know any killers, but that there were a few people I wouldn’t mind killing.

  “Yeah? Like who, for instance?”

  “Like come into my shop on a Saturday afternoon and take your pick.”

  He tried to look appreciative, but I knew he didn’t think that was funny, especially under the circumstances.

  “I won’t come here again,” he said. “We’ll meet somewhere else. I’ll let you know where. I have your word now, right? No telling anyone about me or that you’re helping me, okay? Trust me, no one likes the police snooping around in their business.”

  I’m not sure why Gunner chose me except that I was accessible. I had a shop. He hung around. It was fairly easy for him to get to know me. And besides, I wasn’t really in society, but more on the fringe. It was true I knew most of the players and had my picture taken at big events because of the shop and because I had a certain standing, I guess. But it was mainly because a few of the gossip columnists and editors were my pals and my customers. Also, unlike politicians and most socialites, I had nothing to lose by talking to him. So talk I did, without reservation or fear of reprisal.

  At the front door, he paused and said: “Remember, Reven, people never expect evil to look like them.”

  Woo woo. That sent a creepy chill right down the old spine.

  The instant Gunner left, Rosina asked me what we’d been talking about all that time. When I told her, “Antiques,” she just laughed.

  Chapter 6

  Gunner made me swear to keep our relationship a secret—which I did. Swear, I mean. I didn’t keep it to myself. I told Violet. I told Violet everything. Violet told me everything. We were best friends, after all. We gabbed to each other on an almost daily basis, dishing the dirt, no holds barred. Years ago, we made this pact never, ever, ever, ever to repeat any of the stuff we told each other. If half of what we said to each other ever got out, there would have been a lot more murders in Georgetown.

  Her reaction was predictable. She said, “If he wants to know about Washington society, how come he didn’t ask me?”

  It’s true that Violet was a much bigger deal in town than I was. It was also true that she would have given her eyeteeth to be a detective’s confidential informant, particularly one who was working on a serial killer case. I knew the implied superiority in her comment was unintended. However, it was moments like this that reminded me of how much things had changed since Violet and I first met.

  I’d known Violet Bolton—Violet McCloud, as she was called then—since our days at Wheelock Academy, one of the last of the “all girls” schools in the country, located just outside of Providence, Rhode Island. Wheelock was not a great school by any standard. My father compared it to an odd-lot house on Wall Street, because it was known for accepting troubled or less than stellar students. To be honest, my grades never reflected what I think of as my intelligence. I was always more
creative than analytical. Wheelock was the only boarding school I could get into at the time.

  Violet was my roommate for three grueling years in that gilded detention center. I couldn’t help but feel great loyalty to my companion in adolescence, a grim, unsteady, and altogether miserable phase of life. We were all of us in a chrysalis, waiting to take flight. I was a butterfly. Violet was a moth.

  I was a star back then, if I do say so myself. The fact that I was the only girl from New York didn’t hurt. It meant that I enjoyed a certain celebrity among my peers right off the bat. They thought I was more sophisticated. I was—at least, I convinced them that I was. Sophistication was a language I claimed to speak with absolute fluency. And who could dispute me? It was rather like saying: “I’m an expert on Chinese poetry of the tenth century, and you prove I’m not!” I dropped all these sophisticated New York names, and the girls loved it because New York was this big, shimmering Oz of a city they were all dying to go to and to which I actually belonged.

  Not only that, I had all the accoutrements of sophistication: my very own gold Dupont lighter (which I’d filched from my mother), fashionable clothes, purchased from the best New York department stores, and loads and loads of pretentious conversation that no one at Wheelock dared challenge. I wasn’t nearly as secure or informed as I made out, but my classmates didn’t seem to notice. Some of those girls were so provincial they didn’t even know what an astringent was. I told them flatly: “I’m an astringent.”

  An adoring clique of girls listened to me night after night as I regaled them with tales of delicious decadence and debauchery in the Big Apple—all the product of my youthful imagination. I was seductive, no question. But I was also very nice to everyone, which is why people liked me. And to be honest, I was gorgeous—a Valkyrie among trolls. Being gorgeous somehow made me a natural leader. Nor did it hurt that boys found me attractive. I was the first girl in my class to be invited on a college weekend—the Harvard-Yale game—by a Harvard senior, no less.