Adam Harrison, Joe thought, his first reaction irritation. Still, did it matter, if it got them where they needed to be?
“Thanks,” Joe told him.
“Joe, you, of all people, should know this may take time.”
“I’m just afraid that we don’t have a lot of time. Bigelow, Lori Star…and now Sam. This guy’s gone after three people in less than two weeks.”
“I know, I know, and we’re working it.”
Joe hesitated. “I’ve got one more thing for you. Just a hunch that might prove interesting.”
“What?”
“Pull all the phone records. Say, from a week before Bigelow’s murder until now.”
“All the phone records?”
“For the Ravens. Let’s find out who was calling in, as well as who they called.”
“What will that prove?”
“I’m not sure. I told you, it’s a hunch.”
“You’ve got to be joking. Do you know how big a project that is? The D.A. will have a fit.”
“I’ll bet you know the right people to get it done,” Joe argued.
Raif started swearing, and Joe moved the phone away from his ear.
Finally Raif said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He started swearing again, so Joe thanked him and hung up.
When Joe returned to the table, their food had arrived. He glanced at his watch and ate quickly, and then they were back on the road.
When they reached Richmond just before two, they checked into a bed-and-breakfast Adam had arranged for them. Then Joe and Brent headed back out on the road for the police station and an appointment with Nancy Morton, the widow of the man who had been found strangled in his own wine cellar.
Adam sat down and started setting up his notebook computer and portable printer, and Nikki got out a map and started planning a self-guided tour of Poe’s onetime haunts.
“Stay safe,” he warned them.
“Adam, stop worrying,” Genevieve said. “We’re here, and the murderer is back in New York.”
Her logic was sound, but he frowned anyway. Then Nikki came to her defense. “We’re going to be tourists, Adam. There will be plenty of people all around us.”
Nikki got on the phone and arranged another rental car, and as soon as it was delivered they left for the Old Stone House, now a museum dedicated to all things Poe.
Poe had never lived in the Old Stone House, but he would have passed it in his early days as he walked to school. It had been built in seventeen-thirty-seven, and was the oldest house in Richmond. Inside, they studied the relics of Poe’s everyday life. Furnishings from the home he had shared with his foster parents, clothing, documents, first editions of his work, even a lock of his hair. Genevieve found herself enjoying the museum, despite the stress of everything going on. It was fascinating, beginning to know someone who was long gone but had made such a deep and continuing impression on the literary world, and who continued to influence writers and moviemakers. Visiting sites dedicated to him, walking where he’d walked, made him flesh and blood.
As they walked outside, they heard the words tortured genius and realized that a docent was giving a speech, so they hurried closer to listen to her.
“Poe’s pain began at an early age, when his father abandoned the family, and then he lost his mother before he was two years old. Scholars believe that many of his stories focus on this loss. So often he writes about a beautiful woman, taken far too soon. He felt himself caught between the very real world, in which he was constantly fighting a battle against poverty, and the ethereal world of the dead. John Allan, his foster father, was a stern man. A highly moral man. He never formally adopted Poe, and he meant to make of Poe a man in his own image, one who was responsible, stern and moral. As a result, they fought often.