I spent the first part of the evening at home looking over a plat of the poor farm and imagining where I would build housing and other facilities for the new residents. I pursued this exercise until it became clear that I had no idea what I was doing.
Reluctantly, I turned my attention to the file of Abigail’s murder. Reggie had acquired lots of photos and hand-drawn diagrams of the crime scene. There also were interviews with neighbors. Most of the interviews were of the short “I didn’t see nothing unusual” variety. One neighbor reported seeing a truck and a man running from the garage. Albert Loftus was picked up a few hours after the murder based on an anonymous tip and instantly became the prime suspect. Because the evidence against Albert was so compelling, further analysis of the crime scene evidence was suspended. As with my attempt to design a new poor farm, my attempt to glean information from a crime report was hampered by a lack of skill and training. Even so, I stared at the photos and drawings, confident that determination could overcome ignorance. But if the file had a story to tell, I couldn’t hear it.
Around ten, I gave up and crawled into bed. My feline companions took their spots on the bedspread. With the lights out, I closed my eyes to a chorus of bathing and purring. I was on the serene edge of sleep when I was pulled back by an image of Abigail’s kitchen. I rolled out of bed, retrieved the crime scene folder, and looked again at the pictures of Abigail’s house. Except for the white ceramic cup that contained Willet’s DNA, the kitchen was clean and orderly. The towels were hung straight from bars attached to the cabinets. The sink was empty. The dishes, including the cup used by Baby John, had been placed in the dishwasher. I resisted drawing any conclusions about Willet and his sister’s murder. But I was suddenly flush with questions about when he was at the house and why he was there.
I picked Robbie up at around nine and headed toward Manassas. Robbie was chatty and in good spirits.
“I had breakfast with the Residents this morning. Carrie told me that when Abigail came to the farm, the farm supported more than twenty tenants, many of them veterans who couldn’t find work or who had trouble reentering civilian life. It was still an active farm. Harry and Cecil spent the day working the fields and Carrie helped in the kitchen and the garden. They didn’t see much of Abigail, and she did her best to avoid them. Carrie said that one day, she saw Abigail coming from the basement. Carrie remembered that Abigail had coal dust on her hands. What was she doing in the basement of your house?”
We spent a few minutes speculating about what might have taken Abigail into the depths of the poor farm’s basement, and settled on the idea that she was hiding from someone, then slipped into a comfortable silence.
We took the John Marshall Highway to I-66. The rolling hills were covered by patches of snow that glistened in the bright morning sun. A colt ran and darted toward its indifferent mother. On the southern slopes where the snow had fully melted, the pale green hues of new grass hinted at the approaching spring. Life was in the process of renewing itself, even as we were mired in the story of a life that had ended too soon.
We found Margo Strauss’ house in an older suburb of Manassas. Time and a lack of money had taken its toll on the neighborhood, but Margo’s home was the exception. Brightly painted in Florida colors of pale blues, yellows, and coral, I would not have been surprised to find Jimmy Buffet in residence singing Margaritaville. While the house was welcoming, Margo was not.
“I don’t know what you expect to accomplish by badgering an old frail woman,” she said as we stepped inside. “Doc Adams is a son-of-a bitch sometimes and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Something about a doctor killing babies. Carla doesn’t know anything about that and, if she did, she couldn’t tell you without going all to pieces. All you’re going to do is upset her and leave me with trying to fix it.”
“I’m Shep and this is Robbie,” I said after Margo was finished.
Robbie offered her hand but Margo turned away. “She’s in there watching TV. Do what you have to do and leave.”
We followed Margo’s gaze to a small room where a white-haired woman sat in a recliner. Carla was petite and looked almost doll-like in the large chair. She glanced at us, but her attention was on a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
“The mouse always wins,” she said. “I’d like to see Tom win once”
“Cheering for the undercat,” I said.
The remark, which I thought was funny, had no effect on Carla.
Robbie and I took seats on either side of Carla and watched as Jerry put a firecracker under Tom’s tail. Carla looked at her watch and changed the channel to MSNBC.
“The market just opened,” she said. “I bought Apple stock last week at 13. Mark my words, sometime down the road, thirteen bucks is gonna look mighty good. I may not make it down the road that far, but you will, so go all in.” Carla let out a laugh that defied her diminutive size. “The long run may just be too long for me. That’s a fact. But I like thinking positive, you know.”
“Would you mind if we asked you about your time at Lady of Comfort?” I asked.
With her eyes glued to the screen, Carla shrugged and said, “Why would I mind, honey?”
“Margo said that it upsets you to talk about the past,” said Robbie. “We’re not here to upset you.”
Carla clicked off the TV. “For the love of God, I wish she’d stop telling people that crap about me. Margo is a manic depressive. She’s on every medication you can take and drinks too much. She tells everyone she’s taking care of me, but I moved in here to make sure she didn’t finally succeed in killing herself. Frankly, it would be a relief if she did, but that’s not terribly empathetic, so I try to keep those thoughts to myself. Anyway, get to your point so I can do some trading.” She laughed again. “Sorry for yelling, sweetie. Just get a little riled up sometimes. No offense intended.”
“No offense taken,” replied Robbie.
“You may have heard about a woman named Jennifer Rice being murdered in her home near Winchester,” I said.
“Right,” replied Carla, focusing her gaze on me for the first time. “Oh my God. You’re Mary’s son! I knew your real papa, Reilly Heartwood. You turned out good for a fella who went to prison.”
“Jennifer Rice was actually Abigail Nichols,” I said.
“What about Abigail?”
It took a moment for the realities to sink in. “Well, that just don’t seem right! Abigail murdered. Who would think she’d die like that? She was so good to Ruth. Murdered? This world has gone to shit.”
I suppressed a smile.
“We know that Abigail took a black baby boy and that Ruth helped her. We’re trying to find the child and reunite him with his birth mother. We were hoping you might know where Abigail went, what she named him—anything to help us find him.”
“That was a long time ago,” said Carla.
“If you could just try,” said Robbie encouragingly.
“I didn’t say I didn’t remember. I just said it was a long time ago. For Christ’s sake, I’m old but not brain dead.”
I barely contained a laugh, relieved that I hadn’t fallen into the trap that had snagged Robbie.
“Ruth was a high energy, nervous woman,” continued Carla. “According to her husband, she’d experience episodes in which she would suddenly wake up frightened and disoriented. These mini-breakdowns lasted a few days or so, after which she’d get better. She wouldn’t remember much about what happened, just that she was overwhelmed with thoughts and images and sounds, like what they called a bad trip in the sixties. She was aware that she was out of control but helpless to orient herself. When Abigail showed up with the baby, Ruth was excited. But when Abigail explained what her father was doing, Ruth started to slip. She managed for a while, but her tether to reality broke for good and she came to Lady of Comfort. I was the only one who could calm her, bathe her, or feed her.”
“Did you ever meet Abigail?” I asked.
“Not in person, but I got to know her through the letters she wrote to Ruth. Lots of times the letters bore postmarks from an exotic location. When they arrived, I believe I was more excited than Ruth. I used to read them to her and, for a time, it seemed as if she was actually trying to follow what Abigail was saying.”
“Did Abigail mention the child?” I asked.
“Paul was his first name,” replied Carla. “Give me a second…Thomas. Yup. Paul Thomas. He traveled with her when he wasn’t in school.”
“Can you think of any reason anyone would want to kill Abigail?” asked Robbie.
Carla shook her head. “No. She never wrote anything that made me think she was in trouble. Of course, the letters stopped when Ruth died forty years ago.” Carla must have read the disappointment in my face. “I have the letters in a box if you’d like to read them.”
I said I did and she disappeared from the room.
“Feisty lady,” I said. “I might buy some of that stock she mentioned”
“Let’s hope there’s something more to go on in those letters.”
We took the letters and thanked Carla for her help. The last thing she said was something about buying stock in an Internet company called Google when it went public. Robbie laughed at the name and wondered how long it would last.
When I reached the car, I called Gus and asked him to conduct a search for Paul Thomas. We agreed to limit the search to Virginia and the states that bordered it. When he asked if that was all, I tossed out the names of Albert Loftus and Kyle Hopper.
“What was that about?” asked Robbie, “I understand asking about Albert, Paul, and the hospital, but what’s with the question about Kyle? He was pretty helpful the other day and seemed to care for some of the older residents of Sweetwater. I thought we decided he wasn’t a serial killer”
“Right now I’m not sure who’s a good guy and who isn’t. Kyle may not be a serial killer, but he’s a player in this little drama, and it pays to know who you’re dealing with.”
As we headed back to the interstate, I told Robbie about the photograph of Abigail’s kitchen showing the cup that Willet had used. She removed the picture from the case file and studied it for a few minutes. “I understand that the cup seems out of place, but I don’t see that it means anything.”
“I don’t see it,” I said, “but I feel it. I think Willet was there the day his sister was killed.”
“You think he killed her?”
“Sort of, but objectively I have no proof that he did or didn’t.”
“Back to something tangible. Let’s say we find Paul and decide that he’s the killer. We just can’t walk up to him, introduce ourselves, and ask him to talk about his mother.”
“Actually, that is—or was—the plan. If we don’t threaten him, we should be okay.”
“I can see you’ve thought this through,” said Robbie. “Basically, if we treat the killer nicely, he will be nice to us.”
“The plan’s a work in progress. Let’s not nit-pick.”
Robbie returned her attention to the case file. I turned on the radio and found a light jazz station. Believing that the conversation had ended, I turned the volume up on the radio, but Robbie reached over and turned the radio off. “Why did you ask me about buying Gloria Strap’s farm?”
The question caught me off guard. “I told you. I just wanted to be certain who my neighbors are if Gloria has to sell.”
“But you can’t be thinking of staying on the farm much longer?”
My silence was met with a cold stare. “I know you thought about this.” She studied me for a moment. “Oh my God! You have thought about it! You have a plan. I don’t understand why you won’t talk to me about it.”
“You know better than I that Reilly had a plan for the farm. His plan failed and people lost money”
“Which means what?”
I went through the scenario I had described to Reggie. Robbie stared at me, stunned into silence.
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “That sounds like so much do-gooder happy talk. So let’s drop it.”
Robbie’s face brightened. “Oh my God,” she said laughing. “That’s such an awesome idea I can’t get my head wrapped around it. I think you’re nuts. So how do you open a poor farm exactly?”
“Not a clue.”
The conversation that ensued was animated, creative, and replete with optimism. As I turned onto the interstate, we were throwing out ideas for providing training to adults, education to children, and a place for animals that had been abandoned or mistreated. We were still lost in our idealistic world when the phone rang.
“I think we found your Paul Thomas,” said Gus, “which is the good news. I’ve got some serious questions about the owners of the Sweetwater Hospital.”
“How serious?” I asked.
“I’m getting a chopper,” said Gus. “I’ll meet you at the farm.”