"I just want to talk to you, please, nothing else," he said, then took a step forward.

"Don't."

It was then he saw the small automatic in her hand.

"What's that for?" He looked up from the gun and saw her eyes locked on his. If before he had seen fear, he now saw cold resolve. "Put the gun down," he said firmly. "Put the gun on the ground and step back from it."

"You want to send me to the doctor," she said quietly, her stare unwavering. "But you never will. None of you ever will." She paused and he could see her trying to decide something. Then she spoke again, her words deliberate and clearly enunciated. "Never. Ever."

She was still staring at him when she shoved the barrel of the automatic into her mouth and pulled the trigger. There was a loud pop. The back of her skull exploded and her body dropped like a stone to the pavement.

"Jesus, God," Marten breathed in horror and disbelief.

A heartbeat later his senses caught up with him, and he turned in the dark and ran from the scene. In ninety seconds he was in his rental car turning off Dumbarton and down Twenty-ninth Street. Stephenson's suicide was the last thing he had expected and it had unnerved him. It had been an act clearly done out of sheer terror and came about as close to confirming that Caroline had been right as you could get, that she had been murdered. Moreover, it made him believe Caroline's other allegation was true as well, that the plane crash killing her husband and son had been no accident.