Gene asked his old Army buddy, Donald Albracht, who had also joined the bureau, to help with the operation. Steve Spruill, who would become a friend, was Gene’s contact agent.
As Gene was setting up his undercover offi in Fredericksburg, Margo began to notice that he was taking their old household items, such as the vacuum cleaner and TV, putting them in his offi and replacing them with new ones at the house.
She’d never liked his jewelry business. She didn’t like the way he’d staged the loss of her ring or coerced her into the home relocation scam. And now that he was back working undercover full-time, she was worried that things were going get even worse.
“I just got the sense that he was using undercover operations as his own personal expense account for clothes, dinner, and drinks, creating a lifestyle for himself,” she said later.
Like Margo, many bureau supervisors saw undercover work as potentially dangerous for some agents.
“You’re hanging around with the bad guys, talking the talk. The problem is that you’re trying to act like one of them,” George Murray, Gene’s partner on Nickelride, said recently. “It’s a tricky business that is the reason for many divorces.”
Margo and Gene’s sex life cooled off after Lindsey was born. As the emotional distance between them widened, Gene became more frustrated and short tempered with Margo, who often went to sleep while Gene watched porn in bed next to her.
But they really didn’t fi much because Margo had learned how to avoid confl with Gene and keep the peace between them.
“Gene was very controlling, and I realized I had slowly evolved into having a household where I was doing my best to keep the kids quiet and behaved,” she recalled later. “I didn’t argue with Gene; I did pretty much whatever he wanted. . . . If I did anything that he didn’t like he gave me the cold shoulder. Things had to be his way. I gave up trying to be my own person at home. I was highly successful at work and was a good mother, but I was getting nothing from my relationship with Gene. Frankly, I wasn’t putting anything into it either. I gave up trying. I was sleeping for a couple of years, going through the motions. Days turned into months. I just was numb, thinking I could live my life like that.”
But she couldn’t stay quiet when she saw Gene disciplining Allison in a way that she thought was too harsh. Remembering the premeditated spankings her father had given her and her siblings,
Margo was determined not to let Gene do the same thing to their daughter.
When Allison was about two years old, he gave her a spanking that Margo saw as far too hard for such a small child. About ten minutes later, Margo checked the girl’s bottom and found the red imprint of his four fi and top of his palm still on her right butt cheek. She carried Allison downstairs and showed Gene the marks.
“Don’t ever do this to her again,” she said. Gene just looked blankly at Margo.
Margo had fi begun to admit to herself that her marriage wasn’t going to work, but she still thought she could tolerate the situation until the girls were older. Like her mother, she didn’t want to go through a divorce, she didn’t want to disappoint her family, and she certainly didn’t want to bring on Gene’s wrath.
“I knew how he was when people turned against him.”
Chapter Five
Prolonged Embraces
Margo and John Hess developed an even closer professional and personal relationship after Lindsey was born. Together, they rounded out a trio with instructor Ed Sulzbach, who had worked as an undercover agent and as a serial-killer profi in the Behavioral Sciences Unit.
The three of them were kindred spirits, sharing many of the same views on life and the bureau, although Margo and John used to tease Ed for being such a Pollyanna. While Margo and John taught Interviewing and Interrogation to new agents, Ed waxed poetic about the history and soul of the FBI, about fi , bravery, and integrity, as the bureau’s motto goes.
“We’d just shake our heads,” Margo recalled fondly. “He’s a patriotic God-fearing man who believes there’s goodness and no-bility in everyone, even though he’s seen horror through profi crimes.”
By 1991, Ed had transferred back to the field offi in Richmond, but he stayed in touch with his buddies, for whom the admiration and respect was mutual.
“Margo was willing to speak up if something was wrong,” Ed said recently. “She’s also extraordinarily intelligent.”
On June 17, 1991, Ed showed up at Quantico with a couple of boxes of books and his friend, an up-and-coming novelist named Patricia Cornwell, who, like Margo, had grown up in the South. She went by the nickname Patsy.
Ed had met Patsy a decade earlier in Richmond, when she was a data processor at the Offi of the Chief Medical Examiner,
trying her hand at writing crime novels. Hearing about Ed through the grapevine, she’d called to pick his brain and gain some insight into the criminal mind. They became close friends, and he introduced her to his profi colleagues. Because she’d spent a good bit of time with them doing research for her novels, she wanted to repay them with some free books.
Ed had been talking up Patsy to Margo for six months. He told her a week beforehand that Patsy was coming to Quantico, so she went out and bought Patsy’s fi two forensic thrillers,
Postmortem
and
Body of Evidence
, so that she could get them signed.
Ed introduced the women to each other in an empty classroom, where Patsy had been autographing books.
“This is my great and good friend, Patsy Cornwell,” Ed said. Patsy gave Margo a firm handshake. Margo thought she’d probably never see this woman again, but she did notice that Patsy was attractive and about the same age as she. Patsy’s light-blue eyes were inquisitive, and she had a pretty smile with straight white teeth. She was about fi feet fi inches, slightly shorter than Margo, with short, highlighted blond hair.
“It’s great to meet you,” Margo said, handing her the novels. “Ed has talked so much about you.”
“Maybe you can teach Scarpetta a thing or two,” Patsy said. Margo laughed. “I doubt it, but I look forward to it,” she said.
Later, Margo recalled, “When Patsy shook your hand and she looked you right in your eye, you knew you had all of her attention.”
Back in her offi Margo flipped open the covers to see what the author had written.
In
Postmortem
, she’d written, “To Margo, A real character. Such a pleasure meeting you at Quantico. Warmly, Patricia
D. Cornwell.”
And in
Body of Evidence
, she’d written, “To Margo, Perhaps you can give Scarpetta and Benton a few tips! Warm Regards, Patsy.”
Margo took them home to read, then brought them back and put them on a shelf in her offi
In January 1992, Ed told Margo that Patsy was coming back to Quantico, this time to audit her first weeklong National Academy course, where authors were rarely allowed. Ed asked Margo to make her feel welcome.
Margo found Patsy during a morning break in the Hall of Honor, a squared-off area with a sunken fl , built-in brick benches with seating pads, and walls lined with bronzed plaques of agents killed in the line of duty.
“Hi, I’m Margo Bennett. I don’t know if you remember me,” she said.
“Yes, of course, I remember you.”
“Ed Sulzbach called and asked me to touch base with you to see if you needed anything while you’re here.”
They talked for a few minutes before Patsy had to go back to class. She seemed far more interactive and animated than when they’d met back in June.
One night that week, Margo was working as the on-duty agent, which meant she had to stay in her offi until midnight and in the dorm overnight, so that she could respond to any crisis or medical problem.
Patsy stopped by around nine that night, and they hung out in the Ant Farm, getting to know each other better.
But with all the electricity in the air, this was not ordinary girl talk. As they sat in chairs next to each other, Patsy kept swiveling around and touching Margo’s leg with the toe of her shoe. With only some of the fl lights on, it was about as intimate as an offi at night could be.
Margo saw Patsy as a commanding figure in her pants, tweed jacket, leather closed-toe shoes, and neck tie, which she wore in a Windsor knot. Margo had on her typical work uniform—a long-sleeved blouse, a skirt, nylons, and pumps.
Patsy talked mostly about Patsy. She told Margo she’d gone to Davidson College in North Carolina, where she’d met Charles Cornwell, one of her professors, who was seventeen years her senior. They were married, then he left academics to join the semi-nary and, at one point, was offered a job in Texas.
“She was interviewed by a group of wives from the church, and she told them, ‘I’m not a preacher’s wife,’ and that’s kind of what set her on the path to divorce,” Margo said later. “That’s what made her realize that her life was not heading where she wanted.” Formerly a police reporter for the
Charlotte Observer
and a police department volunteer, Patsy told Margo that she’d published a biography on Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham, before she’d started writing crime novels. She’d failed to get her first few published, but then took someone’s suggestion to try a female protagonist. The new formula worked, and since then, her career had really taken off. She was learning to enjoy success and the luxuries that came with it, buying a nice house and a Mercedes for herself, and also leasing Mercedeses for
her staff.
Patsy said she loved Ed dearly, explaining that she’d drawn on his vast knowledge and experience as an agent and profi to cre-ate two of her male characters. Some of his qualities showed up in Benton Wesley, an FBI profi who worked with her protagonist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Virginia’s chief medical examiner; others ended up in Pete Marino, the gruff but endearing homicide detective who smoked, drank, and solved crimes with Scarpetta.
As they talked, Margo felt the blood coursing through her veins, very aware of the close proximity of her body to Patsy’s. It felt dangerous. Wrong. Thrilling.
But at the same time, Margo also respected and admired Patsy for what she’d accomplished, and that feeling seemed mutual. That part of it didn’t feel wrong at all. In fact, it was quite seductive.
As their conversation progressed, Margo began to pick up that Patsy wasn’t heterosexual, not just from the leg touching, but also
from the way she talked about the women in her life. She could also tell that Patsy had suffered a lot of emotional pain.
“She was very quiet, soft spoken. She seemed to have a lot of hurt in her life,” Margo said later. “She wasn’t clingy or needy; she just was very intense. She seemed to have a lot of depth in her, a lot of experiences.”
Patsy told Margo a story about a woman who used to work for her. After Patsy fi her, she brought something of Patsy’s back to her house and left it on the front step.
“That’s something you’d see in the breakup of gay people,” Margo said to her.
Patsy looked at her with surprise, and Margo could tell she’d hit a nerve. She later decided that Patsy either hadn’t realized how she was coming off or was testing Margo’s reaction.
Patsy also told Margo about a homeless person who’d yelled at her and a friend as they were getting off an escalator in D C.
“He yelled out ‘Butch’ at us,” Patsy said. “It was scary.”
Time fl by. When Margo looked at her watch, it was 11:45 pm. She suddenly realized she had to close up the building, check in with the front desk, and send the late drinkers in the Board Room to bed.
After their lengthy chat, Patsy started calling Margo a couple of times a week. Soon Margo felt comfortable calling her, too.
Initially their phone conversations were brief. They were both very busy. Patsy was doing a lot of book signings, so they’d talk about which city she was in, where she was traveling to next, and what Margo was teaching.
Later that month, Margo and John were visiting with Ed one morning at the Richmond fi offi when he suggested that they drop over to see Patsy. They drove to Windsor Farms, the upscale subdivision where she lived, and sat on her leather couch drinking coffee, eating croissants, and shooting the breeze for nearly an hour.