Jeffery Deaver - Edge

I told her, “Language, some of her behavior. I found out about her hospitalizations. There were two, right?”

Joanne barked a cautious laugh. “You know about those?”

“My associate looked into anything that might be relevant. Suicide attempts? That’s what I deduced from the report.”

Joanne nodded. “The doctor said more of a gesture than an attempt. She’d been dumped by her boyfriend. Well, not even a boyfriend. They’d only gone out for six months or so but she was ready to move in, have his babies. You know the drill, I imagine.”

Her voice faded and she was looking me over, as if maybe I didn’t know the drill. Ryan had probably told her I was a single man with no children.

She continued, “A note, a little overdose. The second time, same thing. A bit worse. Different man. I wish she’d get as obsessed about going to therapy as she gets about lovers.”

I glanced up the hall and then asked softly, “Was it Andrew who hurt her?” I tapped my arm.

Joanne’s eyelids fluttered. “You’re good…” She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t know. He has hurt her, in the past. He put her in the hospital once. She claimed it was an accident. They always do that, abuse victims. Or she says it was her fault. This time she was pretty convincing that some guy knocked into her. But I just don’t know.”

“And the forwarded mail? She broke it off with Andrew and moved in with you?”

Joanne caught her reflection in an old, scabby mirror and looked away. “That’s right. Andrew’s got a lot going for him. He’s talented, he’s handsome and he thinks my sister’s talented. Or at least he tells her she is. But he’s also jealous and controlling. He convinced her to quit her day job and move in with him. That lasted a couple of months. He was mad at her all the time but when she moved out he got even madder. Thank God we were in the area; she had someplace to go when she bailed.”

Maree, who’d been born Marie and never officially changed her name, duBois had learned, also had been the subject of some runaway reports, filed with local police, when she was in her teens, and a few drug and shoplifting charges, which had been dropped; it seemed the boys she was with had coerced her to join them. They’d tried to set her up to take the fall.

None of this was relevant to my job or to the conversation we were having, though, and I said nothing about it.

“So you do your homework, do you?”

“For the job? Yes.”

After a moment Joanne, who didn’t seem to joke anymore than I did, gave me a brief smile. “What’d you find out about me?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. DuBois’s research on Joanne had revealed a thoroughly unremarkable life. She’d been a responsible student, grad student, statistician and homemaker. She was on the PTO at Amanda’s school. The only incidents that rose above, or descended below, the four decades of routine were in themselves not unusual: for instance, a backpacking trip abroad before grad school-the high point of her younger days, I imagined-and a serious auto accident years ago that required some months of physical therapy.

“I found out that you’re the one I don’t have to worry about.”

The smile dissolved. Joanne held my eye. “You’d make a good politician, Corte. Good night.”

AT 11:00 P.M., after making rounds inside the house, I stepped outside and settled into a nest of fallen leaves. I began scanning the property with a Xenonics SuperVision 100 night vision monocular. They’re very expensive but the best on the market. We could afford only three in the department and I’d checked out the last one earlier today.

This was normally the work done by a clone but I believed that even we shepherds should get our hands dirty on the job regularly. Abe’s philosophy, of course-a belief, you could say, that killed him.

I was concentrating on looking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. I found my shoulders in a knot. I was breathing hard. I began reciting silently to myself: rock, paper, scissors… rock, paper, scissors …

Lulled by the flow of moon shadows from the slowly moving clouds, I began to relax. After forty minutes, my fingers numb and arm muscles shivering from the chill, I headed inside.

In the shepherd bedroom I unsnapped my Royal Guard holster and took a bottle of Draw-EZ from my gym bag. I massaged some of the gel into the natural-colored leather, now tanned as a beloved baseball glove. The smooth side fit against my skin, the rough facing outward. I didn’t really need to work on the leather-I’ve timed my draws and they’re acceptable-but I found it relaxing.

When I was through, I took care of business in the bathroom and then rolled into the lumpy old bed, blinds drawn, of course, though the odds of a shooter emerging from the glorious line of old oaks to pump a round into the room were pretty slim.

The window, though, was open a crack and I could hear the faint unfurling sound of the wind and the softer rustle of the water over the falls a half mile away.

I’m lucky because I can sleep almost anywhere, nearly on command. Which I’ve learned is particularly rare in my job. Not surprisingly, my principals suffer from insomnia. I knew I’d doze off soon but at the moment I was pleased to lie in bed, fully clothed, though minus shoes, and stare at the ceiling. I was thinking: Who’d lived in this house originally?

It had been built around 1850. I supposed it had been a farmhouse, with much of the land devoted to oats, corn, barley-staples, not the designer crops you see nowadays. I had an amusing image of a working-class nineteenth-century family kicking off supper with an arugula and spinach salad.

Though the property hosted ten thousand trees now, I knew the vista back then from Mathew Brady’s and others’ photographs. Much of what was now woods in Northern Virginia had been open agricultural land around the time of the Civil War.

Great Falls had been occupied early by the Union Army. This area wasn’t the scene of any major battles, though nearly four thousand troops met briefly at what was now Route 7 and Georgetown Pike, in December 1861, resulting in about fifty dead and two hundred wounded. It was considered a Union victory, though most likely because the Confederates saw no strategic point in occupying an area where they weren’t greatly supported, and they simply walked away.

More than any other area in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Great Falls had been a place of mixed sympathies. Those favoring the Union and those the Confederacy were often neighbors. Here, “brother against brother” was not a cliché.

I knew this from reading history-another one of my degrees-though I’ve also learned a lot about world affairs and conflict from playing board games. I enjoy those games that re-create famous battles, which are almost exclusively of American design. The Europeans prefer economic and socially productive games, the Asians abstract. But Americans love their combat. Among the games I have are Battle of the Bulge, Gettysburg, D-Day, the Battle of Britain, the Siege of Stalingrad, Rome.

Some people I’ve met through the gaming community shunned them, claiming they were disrespectful. But I believed the opposite was true: that we honor those who died in the service of their country by remembering them however we can.

Besides, who wouldn’t admit that rewriting the past has a deep appeal? I once utterly defeated the Japanese military at a game based on Pearl Harbor. In my world, the Pacific campaign never happened.

My thoughts kept returning to the family who’d lived here when the house was new. It had been a large clan, I assumed; many children were the rule then. The seven bedrooms could easily have accommodated the offspring plus an older generation or two.