Fighting Chance: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian series Book 29)

by Jane Haddam

  There was no mob hit waiting for him. There were no thick men with machine guns. There was no hired assassin in black spandex with a silencer on his rifle.

  There was only the dead body of a man Petrak Maldovanian knew, but took a few minutes to recognize.

  THREE

  1

  It took Gregor Demarkian three calls to George Edelson—and George Edelson seven calls to people as far away as Harrisburg—to get Gregor into the juvenile detention center to see Stefan Maldovanian. It took that long, and yet Gregor still wasn’t sure why he wanted the interview.

  Mark Granby told Gregor about “the kid,” and the kid had turned out to be Petrak Maldovanian. That gave Gregor not one, but two possible motives for the murder of Martha Handling, both of them more plausible than the motive now on the table. More than that, it gave him a possible explanation for Tibor’s behavior. That was more than anybody had had up to this point, and it was also the weak spot in the prosecutor’s case. What was even better, that explanation did not require Tibor to have killed anyone.

  Still, there were pieces, pieces that didn’t fit, pieces that bothered him. The most logical explanation would be that Mark Granby, or somebody like him, somebody involved in the corruption, had killed Martha Handling before she had had a chance to rat them all out. But even Mark Granby had seen the flaw in that.

  “Your priest has been running around like an idiot, doing God knows what,” Mark said. “Do you honestly think he’d do that to protect somebody who was involved in bribery? It makes more sense to go with what the police think and assume he killed the woman because he wanted that kid out of her court. Out of it and not likely to go to juvenile detention for two years. Or more.”

  This was, unfortunately, true. If Tibor was not guilty of murder, then he had to be protecting someone, he had to be diverting the blame. Gregor had had a vague inkling of that from the beginning, but it had come up against a wall of logic. The wall said that it was not likely that Tibor would shield a murderer. Tibor was not an idiot. He knew why that would not be a good idea.

  But if the murderer were a child, or close to a child, if he was just a “kid” starting out … there might be a possibility there.

  “And if you think the kid didn’t have it in him,” Mark Granby said, “let me disabuse you of the notion. He’s as cold as ice. And he means what he says. And he’d thought it all through. He’s got that cell phone hidden away somewhere, and he’s going to hold on to it until I deliver. I didn’t tell him I almost certainly couldn’t deliver, because I didn’t want him giving that damn thing to the police, but he knows what he wants and he knows what to threaten. And then there’s the other thing.”

  “What’s that?” Gregor asked.

  “He’s got that cell phone,” Mark Granby said. “He says he picked it up on the floor where somebody dropped it, but does that make any sense to you? It was Martha Handling’s cell phone. The only people who would have taken it out of the murder room were people who knew what was on it and wanted to get it away before the police found it. And virtually all of those people are people involved in the bribes, or the actual killer, looking for some kind of edge.”

  Gregor thought that Mark Granby didn’t know that cell phone was probably the one on which the video had been made. If it was the one on which the video had been made, then—then what? Then the video was staged. He’d already considered that. And it was just possible that Tibor would stage something like that to protect a kid. Just possible.

  But was Petrak Maldovanian a kid? He was over eighteen.

  “All I can tell you,” Mark Granby said, “is that he was in this office, and he had Martha Granby’s throwaway cell phone. You can take it from there.”

  Gregor had no idea where to take it. He wanted to talk to Petrak Maldovanian, but after making a few tries at finding him, he realized it wasn’t going to happen. Sophie Maldovanian had no patience with the entire project.

  “He should be at school,” she told Gregor, “and if he’s not there, he should be at work. The Ohanians have him lifting boxes and that kind of thing while Mary Ohanian’s ankle heals up. But don’t ask me if he’s gone either place, because I just don’t know. He’s like the Flying Dutchman, that kid is. You never know where he is or what he’s doing, and he doesn’t know it himself.”

  Sophie gave Gregor Petrak’s cell phone number, but when Gregor had called it, he was sent directly to voice mail. Maybe Petrak was at school or work and had turned the phone off so he would not be interrupted.

  It was after that that Gregor thought about Stefan, and started the round of phone calls that ended with his standing in the foyer of JDF. The place was barren and old, just slightly dirty around the edges, and it had the most depressing aura Gregor had ever experienced. Did they really bring kids to a place like this? Kids as young as seven ended up in juvenile hall. Kids who had done … what?

  Gregor had never thought very much about juvenile crime. He was vaguely aware that juveniles could go to jail for actual crimes, but could also go to jail for things that were not crimes for adults, like skipping too much school or being too obviously and consistently sexually active at too young an age. There was something arbitrary about the whole thing. Some kids who were sexually active, even kids who gave birth at twelve or thirteen, got help from the state to set up homes for themselves and their children and accommodations from the schools so that they could stay to graduate from high school. Others got sent to jail. Gregor didn’t know why the decisions were made, or even by whom.

  The policewoman at the entry desk apologized when she ran him up and down with one of those metal detecting wands and then made him empty his pockets and walk through a metal detector as well. “We really aren’t being melodramatic about all this,” she said. “We have constant problems—you really wouldn’t believe them. The threat of violence is the worst, of course, but it isn’t the most common thing. It’s contraband that’s the most common thing. Marijuana. Pills. Anything they can use to commit suicide.”

  “Suicide?”

  “It stands to reason,” the policewoman said. “It’s frightening, coming into a place like this. They don’t think it through. They don’t consider the ways in which the system can help them. They just think they’re looking at the end of the world.”

  Gregor thought that if he had ever ended up in a place like this, he would have considered it the end of the world. This was not a system that seemed to offer any help. It wasn’t one in the foyer, and it didn’t become one when he passed through the locked solid metal fire door into the hallways beyond. This was a system meant to cage in people who were dangerous and unpredictable.

  Another policewoman met him in the corridor. She had a nightstick at her hip and a huge ring of keys on her belt. “Mr. Demarkian?” she asked. “We have instructions from the office of the governor. It’s usually contrary to regulations to allow visits by anyone but the family and the attorney, and except for the attorneys, we don’t usually allow visits outside of scheduled visiting hours. We do understand that this visit is important and may have long-term implications for Stefan’s case, but we do ask you to keep this as brief as you can. It disrupts the routine.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” Gregor said.

  “Not that there’s all that much of a routine,” the woman said. “Dispositions in these cases are supposed to be fairly rapid. We need them to be rapid, because we really can’t handle a full-scale education program here. Clients are supposed to come here for a day or two and then go home, or to a full-service facility. And education is important. Education is the key to making sure that these kids don’t end up in the system forever.”

  “And does that work?” Gregor asked. “Does education stop most of these kids from ending up in the system forever?”

  The policewoman gave Gregor a dry and sardonic look. “No,” she said, “but you’d better understand something else: This one seems to be harmless enough, but there are a fair number of children here who are not.
It may shock you to realize it, but there are children in the system who have committed very serious crimes. Crimes of violence. Even murders. If they’re fifteen, the Commonwealth tries them as adults. If they’re younger, you have to find something to do with them.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Gregor said, but he couldn’t force himself to say anything more encouraging.

  They had come to yet another solid metal door. The policewoman opened it to reveal a tall, cadaverous teenager in a jumpsuit sitting at a laminated table. His hands were not cuffed, but Gregor caught a look at his feet, and saw that his legs were in irons.

  “This is Mr. Demarkian, Stefan,” the policewoman said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  She went out of the room as quickly as she could, and both Gregor and Stefan heard the door click locked behind her.

  Stefan seemed to be in a trance. He stared at the door. He stared at Gregor Demarkian. He didn’t blink. Then, suddenly, he let out a stream of words Gregor mostly didn’t understand.

  “Sorry,” Gregor said. “I was born and raised right here in Philadelphia. I know almost no Armenian at all. I can swear a little. I can say hello and good-bye. I can order food. That’s about it.”

  Stefan looked around the small, cramped room. “They listen to you,” he said. “If you speak in English or even in Spanish, they hear everything you say. I think they do that even when the lawyers are here. They say they don’t, but they do.”

  “If they really do listen in when the lawyers are here,” Gregor said, “you’d have a very good case for a rights violation. That’s not just against the law, it’s against the Constitution.”

  Stefan shrugged. “I don’t think they care about anything,” he said. “They are always smiling at you, except when they’re not smiling, and then that is … more honest. When I first came here, they said I would only have to be here one week, but it is now very much longer. And nobody will tell me anything. Even Mr. Donahue won’t tell me anything. He only says the hearing will have to be rescheduled.”

  “I think that may be all he knows,” Gregor said. “Things are a little disorganized now, and it’s only the third day after. Under the circumstances—”

  “She was an evil woman,” Stefan said. “Everything you heard about her said she was an evil woman.”

  “Had you ever seen her before the day she died?”

  “I never saw her,” Stefan said. “She was out of the courtroom before they brought me in. There was a hearing before mine, and she went away somewhere.”

  “So you’d only heard she was a bad person?”

  “Petrak saw her,” Stefan said. “He didn’t see her in the courtroom that day, but when he heard she was the judge I would have to see, he went to the courthouse and hung around until he saw her. They won’t let anyone into the hearings who are not part of the hearings, so he said he had to wait around a very long time and he only saw her by accident. He said he had to walk around in the corridors and then it was just an accident and he only knew who she was because another woman said her name. He said she was like that woman in Harry Potter.”

  “Woman in Harry Potter?”

  Stefan considered this. “Umbridge,” he said. “Dolores Umbridge. She is an evil woman in the Harry Potter movies. I know there are Harry Potter books, but my English is not good enough for them. And I don’t like to read, even in Armenian.”

  If Tibor were here, he would have staged a fit at that one, but Gregor didn’t bother.

  “So you’ve never seen her,” he said, “and on the day in the courtroom, you were seated at the desk for the defense?”

  “I was seated at a table,” Stefan said. “It was probably the table for the defense, yes. And Mr. Donahue was there. And there were chairs behind us, there was a railing right behind us and there were chairs behind that, and Petrak and our aunt Sophie were sitting in the chairs. We were waiting for the judge and we were waiting for Father Kasparian, because he had promised to come, and to speak for me. But Mr. Donahue was not happy. He did not think there was much hope. He said that this judge sent everybody to jail and sent them to jail for a very long time. I think—”

  “Yes?”

  “I know it is wrong, what I did,” Stefan said. “I am not trying to say it was not wrong. They say that to you here over and over again. You cannot go home from here if you say what you did was not wrong. I am trying only to say that it was a stupid thing, not an evil thing. It was wrong but it was only stupid.”

  “All right,” Gregor said. “From what I’ve heard, it was pretty damned stupid.”

  “There is a boy here who has murdered his mother,” Stefan said. His eyes got that blinkless stare again, the one he’d worn when the policewoman was still here. “He is eight years old and he took a kitchen knife and stabbed her seven times in the throat. He knocked her over and he stabbed her. He talks about it all the time. He talks about the blood and he talks about how awful she was and all the things she did to him, but I do not know what is the truth and what is not the truth. When I first got here, there was a boy who screamed all the time, screamed and said bad words, but they took him away. They said they took him to a hospital.”

  “You do need to get out of here,” Gregor said. “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can. I’ll go ask questions of the people in charge, if you want me to.”

  “I want to go home,” Stefan said. He was over six feet tall, but he suddenly looked as small as a toddler, and as scared. “I want to go to Aunt Sophie’s or to Canada or even to Armenia. I want to go home. I did a stupid thing and it was wrong, but it was not evil. It was not evil.”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “I know that. I think most of the people involved in this know that.”

  “It was not evil,” Stefan said again.

  “Try to think of something else for just a minute,” Gregor said. “It may make a lot of difference to figuring out what happened that day. And if we can figure out what happened that day, maybe we can get all this straightened out.”

  “Petrak said that Father Kasparian killed that judge for me,” Stefan said. “He said that Father Kasparian killed that judge because she gave long sentences and the next judge would not and it would be better for me.”

  “Did you see him leave the courtroom the day the judge died?”

  “Everybody left the courtroom the day the judge died,” Stefan said. “Not everybody. Everybody with me. Mr. Donahue went to see if Father Kasparian was outside, and Petrak went out to find them, and Aunt Sophie went out because they were gone so long, and then she was gone long and when she came back she said something had happened but she didn’t know what. And it was all very crazy and it took a very long time, but I couldn’t go anywhere because the police guards were always there. So I just sat at the table and waited. I stared straight ahead so nobody could say I was thinking of something.”

  “And you’re sure you didn’t see anything,” Gregor said. “You didn’t see the judge, you didn’t see anything unusual on any of the people when they came back to the courtroom.”

  “They didn’t come back to the courtroom,” Stefan said. “They went away and it was a long time and then the guards came and took me back here. And I heard people talking about it in the hallways, but nobody told me right away. But Petrak told me later. He said that Father Kasparian was in the room near the body of the judge and he had blood on him everywhere, but everybody else had blood on them, too; there were a lot of people. Even Petrak had blood on him, and his teacher who had given him the ride to the court, she had it all over her. He said there was blood everywhere.”

  “Did he tell you anything about a cell phone? Not his cell phone, but another one?”

  Gregor saw it happen right before his eyes. The blank stare went. The head turned away.

  And suddenly, Stefan Maldovanian could speak nothing but Armenian.

  2

  The call came just as Gregor was getting into a cab outside JDF, and since it was from George Edelson, he took it.

  “I�
��ve just gotten word of something very peculiar,” Edelson said. “Tony Monteverdi and Ray Berle have just caught another murder case.”

  “And that’s peculiar? Murder isn’t all that peculiar in Philadelphia.”

  “The guy the uniforms detained turns out to be somebody you know,” Edelson said. “Kid by the name of Petrak Maldovanian. On the suspect list for the murder of Martha Handling, if there was a suspect list when the DA’s office thinks the case has been solved. Brother of the kid whose hearing was supposed to happen the day Martha Handling was killed.”

  Gregor considered this. “Who was killed?”

  “I don’t know,” Edelson said. “Ray called and he told me about the Maldovanian kid, but he didn’t give me a full report. We should both be glad he called. He said if you wanted to come down and talk to the kid, he and Tony’d wear it. I thought you might want to go.”

  “Did Mr. Berle say if they were interested in arresting Petrak Maldovanian? Do they think he committed the murder?”

  “I don’t know that either,” Edelson said. “Let me give you the address. Go check it out yourself. I’ll bet anything John didn’t think it was going to go this far when he decided to call you in and give you some rope.”

  “John doesn’t think Tibor killed Martha Handling any more than I do.” Gregor fumbled around in his coat pocket and came up with a stub of a pencil and a crumpled envelope. DON’T THROW THIS OUT! the envelope said. YOU CAN SAVE BIG!

  “Go ahead,” Gregor said.

  Instead of an address, Edelson gave a city block and directions to follow the police cars to an alley.

  “I know that sounds crazy,” Edelson said. “But there’s a full-bore police investigation going on. You won’t be able to miss it.”

  “I’ll be one of a hundred rubberneckers.”

  “Nope on that, too,” Edelson said. “Ray’s left word with the guys at the tape to let you through. I don’t suppose there’s a possibility we have a baby serial killer on our hands.”

  “There’s always a possibility,” Gregor said.