She really missed the after-work routine, and she realized how much she had been just going through the motions over this past year. She looked over at the single dark town house, one in from the corner, and thought about Elizabeth Walsh, coming home of a Friday evening, settling into her own routine, resigned perhaps to -living alone but probably missing the dashing, young Admiral Sherman, and then falling down the damn stairs and breaking her neck. What a way to end the week, she thought irreverently. Damn, I’ve been in Washington too long.
She wondered about the new guy from NIS, von Rensel.
Bet he could run an effective interrogation, she mused. All he would have to do would be to stand up and stretch a couple of times and I’d sing like a bird. She checked her watch again. She wasn’t quite sure if von Rensel was supposed to be her partner in this matter or just a backstop. She would have to find out how well he knew his way around town and the Pentagon. Mccarty had mentioned something about his having worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Von Rensel was completely different from Sherman, who was a tall, dark, and handsome type, if ever she had seen one-the picture of a Navy success story. Right. Here he was, in his first year as a flag officer and involved, however tangentially, in a Fairfax County homicide investigation.
Congratulations of! that fine promotion, Admiral, sir; may we have a few minutes of your time?
She looked at, her watch again. Eight more minutes. He would probably drive up at the stroke of seven. She wondered again about Elizabeth Walsh, what she had looked like. And why there was not even a mention of a family in the admiral’s biography. What had he said at the meeting with the police-that he had told her from the start that he did not want to get married? No, he had said “remarry.”
“I did not want to remarry, ever.” So he had been married once. She wondered about all that vehemence. A flare of headlights in her mirror announced his arrival, and she got out of her car.
“Commander,” he said formally.
“Admiral Sherman,” she replied, nodding. She had almost saluted. He locked his car and they went across the street. As they approached the corner town house, its front door opened and a short elderly lady with bright white hair came out and down the stairs. She met Sherman at the sidewalk.
“Tag,” she said emotionally. They embraced for a MOMENT, then stepped apart so that Sherman could make introductions. Mrs. Klein looked over at Karen and nodded a greeting; then she looked back at Sherman with an unspoken question on her lips.
“Commander Lawrence is a Navy lawyer,” he explained.
“She is going to try to find out what the police have found out. I want to go into Elizabeth’s house. I still have a key.
When we’re done, I’d like to come back and talk to youunless you want to come with us?”
“No, Tag,” Mrs. Klein said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go in there anymore-The police have been there.
They just took down all that awful yellow tape this morning.
This is just so terrible. I can’t believe it happened. I miss her so much.”
“I know, Dottie. I do, too. We won’t be, long. I just had to come see.
I’m having a hard time accepting all this.”
Mrs. Klein kept shaking her head from side to side. She fished a handkerchief out of her sleeve. “I just don’t understand. Why her? She was so young. And such a good person. It doesn’t make any sense. But you go ahead. I’ll make us some coffee.”
“Thanks, Dottie.”
Mrs. Klein walked back up her front steps and went inside. Sherman produced the key to the adjacent town house and went up and unlocked the front door. The mailbox was stuffed with what looked like mostly junk mail, - with m ore on the foyer floor, and he gathered it up before stepping inside. Karen followed him in. He turned on the light in the front hall. The air was slightly musty, with a faint hint of perfume.
Karen looked around while he turned on some more lights. Fairly standard town house layouq carpeted stairs on the left going up to the second floor. A hallway straight ahead, leading back to the kitchen, and a spacious living room to the right. She noticed that the living room was devoid of the clutter of everyday life, which meant that, like many city commuters who lived alone, Elizabeth Walsh had Orobably lived in her kitchen. She followed him back through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen, which had a breakfast nook overlooking a walled garden in back. He was walking around the kitchen, turning on every light. She had been right: The kitchen table was stacked with mail and magazines, a phone, and Day-Timer book; there was a small and very cluttered desk and a television.
“It even feels empty,” he said, sweeping his eyes around the room. Karen felt like an interloper. “Yes, it does,” she said. “I can wait in the living room, if you’d like, Admiral.”
No,” he answered quickly. “No. I’m not sure why I’m doing this. I guess I don’t really believe it yet.” He looked at a door next to the refrigerator. “That goes downstairs.”
Karen didn’t know what to say to that. After a minute of looking around the kitchen again, he went over to the door, opened it, and flipped on the light.
“What’s down there?” Karen asked, already pretty much knowing the answer.
“Finished basement: family room, fireplace, wet bar.
Storage rooms, utility room.”
“And the laundry?”
He turned to look at her with a peculiar expression on his face. “Well, no, not really. I mean, yes, there’s a laundry room down there. But she didn’t use it. Couldn’t see the sense of hauling clothes up and down two flights of stairs, so she had one of those over/under was I her-dryer units put in upstairs about a year after her divorce.”
She frowned, remembering his reaction when the policeman had mentioned laundry. “So why was she carrying a laundry basket full of clothes?”
“Yes,” he replied, frowning. “Why indeed?”
He turnedaway and started down the stairs, with Karen following reluctantly behind him, unsure of what they would see down there. He flipped on a second light switch at the top of the stairwell, which turned on recessed overhead lights downstairs. He stopped halfway down when he saw the chalk outline of a human figure on the carpet below, just beyond the landing. No mistaking what that was, she thought as they resumed their way down the stairs. Karen noticed that the stairs were steep but fully carpeted, with handrails on either side. There was a long green scrape mark on the left side wall about halfway down, and a dent in the wallboard that had been circled in chalk.
The basement smelled faintly of chemicals, and she saw traces of what she’assumed was fingerprint powder here and there around the room. While Karen waited on the next to the last step, the admiral stepped around the chalk outlin e at the bottom of the stairs. He appeared to be trying not to look at it. The outline did not appear Karen to be to . large enough h to contain a human. But she remembered how Frank had looked in the CCU, his sleek lobbyist figure shrunken into the metal bed, nested among all those ominous tubes and hoses, as if to make himself small for the dangerous journey that was coming. There was an empty green plastic laundry basket parked on one end of the couch. Next to the basket, there was a pile of clothes in a tagged clear plastic bag. A second, smaller plastic bag held a pair of slippers.
Sherman walked over to the couch and examined the bags.
“This really doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said finally.
“Are those her slippers?” Karen asked, pointing to the second bag.
Tag looked at the other bag, then looked harder. Then he swore.
“What?” Karen asked.
She hated those slippers. She never wore those slip lxrs. I I
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, damn it. I bought them for her. Christmas present, two years ago.
They were too big, wrong style, wrong all the way around.
Even the soles were too slippery for the carpet in this house. She made a joke out of it to protect my feelings, but it was one of things, before we really knew each other, just a dumb present. But the thing is, she never wore them. If they found her wearing those slippers, something’s way out of whack with this picture.”
Karen followed the admiral out of the house ten minutes later. She had decided to wait in her car while the
