It was hard dealing with grief in a house full of strangers. The FBI agents and the police tried to be unobtrusive, but there was no way to be alone without hiding in her bedroom. Page had been wonderful. He had arrived with the first invasion on Saturday night and stayed Until dawn.
On Sunday, Page returned with sandwiches. The simple, humanitarian gesture made her cry.
"Why don't you go home. Get out of this rain," Page suggested.
They walked away from the grave. Page covered them with the umbrella as they walked up the hill toward Rita Cohen.
"Alan," Betsy said, stopping suddenly, "Can we hold the hearing for Darius tomorrow?"
Page looked surprised by the request. "I don't know judge Norwood's calendar, but why do you want to go to court tomorrow?"
Betsy scrambled for a rational explanation for her request.
"I can't stand sitting in the house. I don't think the kidnapper will call, if he hasn't called by now. If… if this is a kidnapping for ransom, we have to give the kidnapper a chance to contact me. He may have guessed you'd tap the phones. If I'm at the courthouse, in a crowd, he might try to approach me."
Page tried to think of a reason to dissuade Betsy, but she made sense.
There had been no attempt to phone or write Betsy at her home or office.
He was beginning to accept the possibility that Kathy was dead, but he did not want to tell Betsy. Going along with her would give Betsy some hope. Right now, that was all he could do for her.
"Okay. I'll set it up as soon as I can. Tomorrow, if the judge can do it."
Betsy looked down at the grass. If judge Norwood scheduled the hearing, Kathy might be home tomorrow.
Page laid his hand on her shoulder. He handed the umbrella to Rita, who had walked down the hill to meet them.
"Let's go home," Rita said. Rick's family closed around her and followed her to the car. Page watched her walk away. The rain pelted down on him.
Chapter Twenty-eight.
Reggie Stewart sat in his modest apartment staring at the lists spread across the kitchen table. Stewart did not feel good about what he was doing. He was an excellent investigator, but cross-checking hundreds of names on dozens of lists required manpower, and could be done a thousand times more efficiently by the FBI or the police.
Stewart was also concerned that he was obstructing justice. He knew the name of Kathy's kidnapper and he was concealing this information. If Kathy died, he would always wonder if the police could have saved her.
Stewart liked and respected Betsy, but she was not thinking straight. He understood her concerns about the way the police and FBI might act, but he did not agree with her.
He had half-decided to go to Alan Page if he did not come up with something quickly.
Stewart took a sip of coffee and started through the lists again. They were from real estate offices, utilities companies, phone companies.
Some of them had cost him, but he had not considered the price. So far, there were no listings for a Samantha Reardon or a Nora Sloane, but Stewart knew it wouldn't be that easy.
On his second trip through a list of new Washington County phone subscribers Stewart stopped at Dr. Samuel Felix. Samantha Reardon's first husband was named Max Felix. Stewart cross-checked the other lists and found that a Mrs. Samuel Felix had rented a Washington County home the week Oberhurst returned to Portland from Hunter's Point. Stewart called Panglori Realty as soon as their office opened. The saleswoman who handled the deal remembered Mrs. Felix. She was a tall, athletic woman with short brown hair. A friendly lady who confided that she was not completely happy with moving from upstate New York, where her husband practiced neurosurgery.
Stewart called Betsy, but Ann told him she was on her way to court on the Darius case. Stewart realized the opportunity this presented.
Reardon attended all the court hearings in the Darius case. She would probably attend this one and leave Kathy alone.
The house was at the end of a dirt road. It was white, with a porch and a weather vane, a happy house that was the least likely suspect to conceal suffering inside. Reggie Stewart circled around the house through the woods. He saw tire tracks in the front yard but no car. The door to the small, unattached garage was open and the garage was empty.
The curtains were closed on most of the windows, but were open on the front window. There were no lights on inside. Stewart spent twenty minutes watching for any movement in the front room and saw none. If Samantha Reardon lived in this house, she was not there now.
Stewart darted across the yard and ducked into a concrete well at the side of the house. Six steps led down to a basement door. The basement windows were blacked out with paint. If Reardon was duplicating Darius, Kathy would be in the basement. The painted windows reinforced that belief Stewart tried the basement door. It was locked. The lock did not look sturdy, and Stewart thought he could kick in the door. He backed up two steps and braced his arms against the sides of the concrete well, then reared back and snapped his foot against the door. The wood broke and the door gave a little. Stewart braced himself again and swung his leg against the damaged part of the door. It gave with a loud crack.
The basement was cloaked in darkness and Stewart could see inside only as far as the sunlight penetrated. He edged inside and was greeted by state air and a foul odor.
Stewart pulled a flashlight out of his coat pocket and played the beam around the room. Against the wall on his right were homemade shelves of unpainted wood holding a coil of hose, some cracked orange pots and miscellaneous gardening tools. A child's sled, some broken furniture and several lawn chairs were piled in the middle of the floor in front of the furnace. The odor seemed to emanate from the corner across from the door where the darkness was thickest. Stewart crossed the basement cautiously, maneuvering around objects, alert for any noise.
The flashlight beam found an open sleeping bag.
Stewart knelt next to it. He saw encrusted blood where a head would lie and smelled a faint odor of urine and feces. Another open bag lava few feet farther into the darkness. Stewart was moving toward it when he saw the third bag and the body sprawled across it.
The night before the hearing, Betsy was so preoccupied with Kathy that she forgot about Martin Darius. Now he was -all she could think about.
Samantha Reardon was forcing Betsy to choose between Kathy's life and the life of a man who did not deserve to live. The choice was simple, but it was not easy. As sick and twisted as he was, Darius was still a human being. When Betsy let Samantha Reardon into the jury room, she had no illusions about what would happen. If Martin Darius died, she would be an accomplice to murder.
Newspaper reporters surrounded Betsy as soon as she stepped off the elevator. She turned her head to avoid the glaring lights of the television cameras and the microphones as she hurried down the corridor toward judge Norwood's courtroom. The reporters asked the same questions about Rick's murder and Kathy's disappearance over and over. Betsy answered none of them.
Betsy spotted Samantha Reardon as soon as she entered the packed courtroom. She walked past her quickly and hurried down the aisle to her seat. Darius was -already at the counsel table. Two guards sat directly behind him and several others were spread through the courtroom.
Alan Page was just putting his file on the table when Betsy walked through the spectators. He caught Betsy as she entered the bar of the court.
"Are you certain you want to go through with this?"
Betsy nodded.
"Okay. Then there's something we have to discuss with judge Norwood. I told him we would want to meet in his chambers before court started."
Betsy looked puzzled. "Should Darius be there?"
"No. This is between you, me and Norwood. I'm not letting Randy come in with us."
"I don't understand."
Page leaned close to Betsy and whispered, "I know Senator Colby pardoned Darius. The senator sent his a.a. to see me."