Silencing Eve

Weber.”
    “What?”
    “We had her address, so we decided to go to her place and look around while you were conducting your interview.”
    “Look around? Are you saying that you burgled her apartment?”
    “Burgled sounds as if we were thieves,” Trevor said. “We had no intention of stealing anything … but information. We did, however, break into her apartment to do that, and breaking and entering is a crime.” He grinned. “So I let Caleb pick the lock. He was amazingly good at it.”
    Caleb nodded in mocking acceptance of the praise. “I thought that was your plan. But you did the photography, and I’m sure that’s not precisely legal.”
    “I couldn’t trust you to do it,” Trevor said. “It requires a steady hand and a certain selectivity. You wanted to whirl through the place like a hurricane.”
    “I can see Caleb’s doing that.” Margaret was staring curiously at them both. “But I believe you were both enjoying it, weren’t you? You’re not at all alike, and yet you found common ground. Interesting.”
    “In breaking into a woman’s house.” Jane stared at them. “Why did you do it?”
    “We both thought whatever Harriet Weber told you should be verified,” Trevor said. “It sounded as if it was going to prove to be an emotional, defensive interview on her part. Was it?”
    “Yes. It couldn’t be anything else. She was talking about her son, whom she’d left when he was fifteen, and a husband who had mentally left her years before in favor of Kevin.”
    “And never seen or heard from either one after that time?” Caleb asked. “What a tragedy.”
    She studied his expression. “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that she had communication with her son, Kevin, until at least the year before his death. Mostly letters. I found several from him in a sleek, black cardboard box that contained a lockbox. It was beneath her bed.” He shot a glance at Trevor. “Which I expertly burgled so that you could photograph the contents of those letters. There was no selectivity there. You photographed all of them.”
    Jane gazed at them in shock. “You’re telling me that she was writing to him?”
    “And he was writing to her. Very affectionate letters.” Caleb paused. “And confiding, very confiding. The ones from Pakistan told her about his link with al-Qaeda. Every now and then, he would tell her about his latest kill.”
    Jane felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. “No.”
    “Yes,” Trevor said. “And some of the details were worse than the ones in his journal. Oh, he said something about how he knew she wouldn’t approve, that she’d told him how dangerous killing the little girls was for him. But he still told her about them. Let her know that the pleasure he got from the kill was nothing compared to his happiness being with her.”
    “Dear God.”
    “He loved her, Jane. If a sicko like him could love.”
    “And she loved him,” Caleb said. “It didn’t matter what he did. It was clear from his letters that she was giving him support and affection all through those years.”
    “But why would she divorce Doane and leave them both?”
    “Perhaps she thought she could resist her love for the boy and was fighting it,” Trevor said.
    Caleb shook his head. “Except that in one of the letters, Kevin was complaining about the necessity for her living apart from him.” He repeated, “Necessity.”
    Jane’s head was whirling. “Okay.” She was trying to get it straight. “Everything she told me today and Venable five years ago were lies. Except that she loved her son and couldn’t bear to turn him over to the authorities. But there was more than that…” She lifted her hand to rub her temple. “Lord, was there more than that. If her supposed new life was all a fraud … Why? And was she also lying about Doane? Was there anything in the letters about Doane?”
    Caleb shook his head. “We didn’t run across anything in the letters, but we were practically speed-reading. You’ll have to go over them again. We didn’t find any other letters or documents with his name on them in the apartment.” He grimaced. “Except the divorce decree. She didn’t lie about that.”
    “What else did you find?”
    Caleb shrugged. “Damn if I know. We were moving so fast that we were pulling and photographing everything in sight. We’ll have to go through the camera roll later and see if we got anything important. Oh, one thing, she told you that she saw