He’d approached the abduction the way he once would have planned the treatment of a severely disturbed patient: every detail meticulously considered. He’d stolen the writing paper from Megan’s room in Bett McCall’s house. He’d spent hours in her room-when the mother was working and Megan was in school. It was there that he’d gotten important insights into her personality: observing the three Joplin posters, the black light, the Marquez book, notes she’d received from classmates laced with words like “fuck” and “shit.” (Matthews had written a breakthrough paper for the APA Journal on how adolescents unconsciously raise and lower emotional barriers to their therapist according to the doctors’ use of grammar and language; he’d observed, during the session that morning, how the expletives he’d used had opened her psyche like keys.)
He’d been careful to leave no evidence of his break-in at Bett McCall’s. Or in Leesburg-where Dr. Hanson’s mother lived. That had been the biggest problem of his plan: getting Hanson out of the way for the week-without doing something as obvious, though appealing, as running him over with a car. He’d done some research on the therapist and learned that his mother lived in the small town northwest of Washington, D.C., and that she was frail. On Wednesday night Matthews had loosened the top step leading from her back porch to the small yard behind her house. Then he’d called, pretending to be a neighbor, and asked her to check on an injured dog in the backyard. She’d been disoriented and reluctant to go outside after dark but after a few minutes he’d convinced her-nearly had her in tears over the poor animal, in fact. She’d fallen straight down the stairs onto the sidewalk. The tumble looked serious and for a moment Matthews was worried-if she died
Hanson might schedule the funeral around his patients’ sessions. But he waited until the paramedics arrived and noted that she’d merely broken bones. After Hanson had left a message canceling her regular session Matthews had called Megan and told her he was taking over Hanson’s patients.
Now Matthews started the Mercedes and switched cars-parking Megan’s in the space his had occupied-and then sped out of the parking lot.
He took his soul’s pulse and found his mood intact, There was no paralysis, no anger, no sorrow dishing up the fishy delusions that had plagued him since he was young. The only hint of neurosis was understandable: Matthews found himself talking silently with Megan, repeating the various things he’d told her in the session and what she’d said to him. A bit obsessive but, as he’d occasionally said to patients, So what?
Finally, he turned the Mercedes onto the entrance ramp to I-66 and, doing exactly fifty-eight miles an hour, headed toward the distant mountains. Megan’s new home.
4
The woman walked inside the house of which she’d been mistress for three years and paused in the Gothic, arched hallway as if she’d never before seen the place.
“Bett,” Tate said.
She continued inside slowly, offering her ex-husband a formal smile. She paused again at the den door. The Dalmatian looked up, snarling.
“Oh my, Tate…
“Megan gave her a bone. She’s a little protective about it. Let’s go in here.”
He closed the den door and they walked into the living room.
“Did you talk to her?” he asked.
“Megan? No. Where is she? I didn’t see her car.”
“She’s been here. But she left. I don’t know why.”
“She leave a note?”
“No. But her house keys’re here.”
“Oh. Well.” Bett fell silent.
Tate crossed his arms and rocked on the carpet for a moment. He walked to the window, looked at the barn through the rain. Returned.
“Coffee?” he asked.
"No, thank you.”
Bett sat on the couch, crossed her thin legs, clad in tight black jeans. She wore a black silky blouse and a complicated silver necklace with purple and black stones. She sat in silence for a few moments then rose and examined the elaborate fireplace Tate’d had built several years ago. She caressed the mortar and with a pale pink fingernail picked at the stone. Her eyes squinted as she sighted down the mantelpiece. “Nice,” she said. “Fieldstone’s expensive.”
She sat down again.
Tate examined her from across the room. With her long, Pre-Raphaelite face and tangle of witchy red hair, Betty Susan McCall was exotic. Something Virginia rarely offered-an enigmatic Celtic beauty. The South is full of temptresses and lusty cowgirls and it has matriarchs galore but few sorceresses. Bett was a businesswoman now but beneath that façade, Tate Collier believed, she remained the enigmatic young woman he’d first seen singing a folk song in a smoky apartment on the outskirts of Charlottesville twenty-three years ago. She’d performed a whaling song a cappella in a reedy, breathless voice.
It had, however, been many years since any woman had ensnared him that way and he now found himself feeling very wary. A dozen memories from the days when they were getting divorced surfaced, murky and unsettling.
He wondered how he could keep his distance from her throughout this untidy family business.
Bett’s eyes had disposed of the fireplace and the furniture in the living room and were checking out the wallpaper and molding. His eyes dogged after hers and he concluded that she found the place unhomely and stark. It needed more upholstered things, more pillows, more flowers. new curtains, livelier paint. He felt embarrassed.
After several minutes Bett said, "Well, if her car’s gone she probably just went out to get something."
“That’s probably it.”
Two hours later. no messages on either of’ their phones, Tate called the police.
The first thing Tate noticed was the way Konnie glanced at Bett. With approval.
As if the lawyer had finally gotten his act together: no more young blondes for him. And it was damn well about time. This woman was in her early forties, very pretty Smooth skin. She had quick eyes and seemed smart. Detective Dimitri Konstantinatis of the Fairfax County Police had commented once, “Tate, whv’re all the women you date half your age and lemme guess. a third your intelligence? If’ that. Why's that. Counselor?”
Konnie strode into the living room and stuck his hand out toward her lie shook the startled woman's hand vigorously as Tate introduced them. “Bett, my ex-wife. this is Konnie Konnie’s an old friend from my prosecuting days.
“Howdy.” Oh, the cop’s disappointed face said, so she’s the ex. Giving her up was one bad mistake, mister. The detective glanced at Tate. “So, Counselor, your daughter’s up ‘n’ late for lunch, that right?”
“Been over two hours,”
“You’re fretting too much, Tate.” He poked a finger at him and said to Bett, “This fella? Was the sissiest prosecutor in the commonwealth. We had to walk him to his car at night.”
“At least I could find my car,” Tate shot back. One of the reasons Konnie loved Tate was that the lawyer joked about Konnie's drinking;
he was now in recovery-no alcohol in four years-and not a single soul in the world except Tate Collier would dare poke fun at him about it. But what every other soul in the world didn’t know was that what the cop respected most was balls.
Bett smiled uneasily.
Tate and Konnie had worked together frequently when Tate was a commonwealth’s attorney. The somber detective had been taciturn and distant for the first six months of their professional relationship, never sharing a single personal fact. Then at midnight of the day a serial rapist-murderer they’d jointly collared and convicted was sentenced to be “paroled horizontal,” as the death row parlance went, Konnie had drunkenly embraced Tate and said that the case made them blood brothers. “We’re bonded.”