think this Schmidt person killed my husband?”
He said nothing for a moment, considering her, then said, “I don’t know. I’m not trying to avoid the question. I just don’t know.”
“Are the Watchmen involved?”
He thought about the five men in Goodman’s parlor. “I don’t know that, either. My inclination, at this moment, is to think they are not.”
Now it was her turn to consider him. Finally she said, “They are. Somewhere along the way, somehow, they’re involved.”
“I don’t know that,” he said. “I do know that they are running around like chickens over there. Between you and me, I can tell you that Goodman and all of his top people are personally involved in trying to figure out what happened.”
“You talked to him?”
“Tonight, at the governor’s mansion. They’re worried. They believe there’s a conspiracy against them. They believe that your husband was part of it, and that you may be.”
She shook her head, then asked, “Is it safe to walk here? The streets?”
“Sure.”
“So let’s take a walk around the block. I mean . . .” She flushed. “If your leg . . .”
“My leg’s okay,” he said. “Let me get my stick.”
They walked down the back stoop, past her car, out the alley to the sidewalk. She said, “Something happened today. Maybe. Everything was moving so fast, everything is so foggy.”
“What happened?”
“Let me think about it for a minute . . .”
They’d gone to the left, out of the alley. The corner house had an old-fashioned front porch, and a couple was sitting in a porch swing. Jake tapped along with his stick, and the man called, “Is that you, Jake?”
“Yeah, going for a walk. How’re things?”
“Very quiet, when they aren’t ripping up the street on your block. You can hear the jackhammers all over the goddamned neighborhood.”
“Ought to be done in a week,” Jake said. “Then my house will be worth a lot more money.”
“But not mine,” the man said.
“Suck it up, Harley,” Jake said. The woman laughed, and Jake and Madison continued down the sidewalk.
When they were out of earshot of the couple on the porch, Madison said, “I’m telling this to
“Okay.”
They walked along, and then she said, “Lincoln is not—was not—one hundred percent oriented toward women. Sexually.”
“Ah, jeez,” Jake said, and stopped in his tracks.
“It’s not unheard of, even for U.S. senators,” Madison said.
“It could have a bearing on the murder,” Jake said. “It could be a purely personal matter. In fact, if he was romantically active, then there’s better than a fifty-fifty chance . . .”
They were facing each other and she reached out and put a hand on his chest. “Gay doesn’t mean violent.”
“Of course not. But given any kind of secret sex life, and then a disappearance, there’s usually a connection. That’s just the way it is,” he said.
“What, you’re the big crime historian now?”
“No. But I read the papers, for Christ’s sake.”
“If that’s what it is, then it will come out. But that really isn’t the way it is—I know some of his friends, and they’re a good bunch. They’re also very, very private, and very sophisticated. They would not murder anybody over an infidelity.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Jake argued. “All it takes is one crazy guy.”
“That’s not it,” she said. She sounded positive.
“Ah, boy . . .” They turned together and started walking again. Then, “If he was gay, why . . .” He waved his hand, taking her in.
“Did he marry a woman? Because he wanted a political career. All of his family is involved in politics, one way or another, and a conservative Republican gay was not going to get elected in the state of Virginia.”
“That’s not what I was going to ask. Why did
He could see her turn her face away from him, one hand going to her cheek. After a moment, “I wasn’t entirely aware of his . . . preferred orientation . . . when we got married. Also, I was tired of bullshit. Especially from men. I’d been in a long relationship that didn’t work out, and then I did some running around, and finally . . . I was tired of being chased by men who were more interested in my ass than they were in me. And here came Lincoln. He was
