Hearts of Sand: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

by Jane Haddam

  Tim got out of the chair.

  “Maybe I should take you to the parade,” Marcie said. “You’re beginning to look a little out of it.”

  “I’m tired,” Tim said. “You were right. I didn’t get any sleep last night.”

  “Let’s go,” Marcie said.

  Instead, Tim headed on back again. When he got to the crime scene tape over the door, he reached past it and opened up so that he could see the little area outside. He could see a lot. There was crime scene tape over the stairs, at the bottom, right in front of him. He couldn’t quite get a look at the top, but he was sure there would be crime scene tape there, too. There was a white chalk outline of a body near the wall. Other than that, the little outside space looked dead.

  Tim felt Marcie come up behind him, and withdrew. He had no idea what it was he had wanted to see.

  “Tim,” she said, more than a little urgently.

  Tim closed the door. “Sorry,” he said.

  “We ought to go to the parade.”

  Tim was still looking at the door. It reminded him of that part of a Harry Potter movie where there was a veil, and when you passed Beyond the Veil, you were dead. But that was not how Kyle had died. He had not passed beyond a veil. He had been knifed in the back and pushed off a retaining wall.

  And he would be forever dead.

  FIVE

  1

  Gregor Demarkian went up to Main Street to see the end of the parade, feeling restless and a little annoyed.

  He stood for a while on Main Street and watched the parade come in. There were floats and marching bands and, of course, virtually the entirety of the Alwych Police Department, pounding away like soldiers on parade. Gregor spotted Jason Battlesea in a uniform so bedecked by medals and ribbons, it might as well have belonged to an Admiral of the Fleet.

  The end of the parade reached the War Memorial in a little rush, the rear being brought up by a group of women in more or less Revolutionary Period costume, all playing flutes. Their music died out only fitfully, and then Evaline Veer, waiting on the podium, cleared her throat.

  She had a sheaf of papers in her hands, and there was a microphone in front of her. Gregor thought she looked like bloody hell.

  He backed away from the crowds and headed back to the police department. There wouldn’t be much of anybody there, but it would be more peaceful than this. He took out his cell phone. Evaline’s voice was booming out over the crowd, but he couldn’t catch any of the words she was saying. He supposed it was one of those speeches every mayor in every town gave at the end of every Fourth of July parade.

  He got to the point where the sound of Evaline Veer’s voice was only thunder in the distance. He punched the speed dial for Bennis and listened to the phone ring. Then the annoying robo voice came on, telling him he was being sent to voice mail.

  By that time, he was almost all the way back at the police department. He waited until he got back to the front doors and then punched the speed dial for Father Tibor. The phone rang and rang again. He went through the sliding glass doors and into the police department’s lobby. The phone sent him to voice mail again. He closed it up and put it back in his pocket.

  At the moment, the entire active police presence in the town of Alwych seemed to consist of a young woman behind the reception counter and a man in plain clothes talking to her. The man was very young and very tense. When Gregor walked in, he straightened up immediately.

  “Mr. Demarkian? It is Mr. Demarkian? I’m Andy—”

  “Okay,” Gregor said. “Did you really come all the way out from New York on the Fourth of July?”

  “I had to,” Andy said. “I know we’ve talked on the phone, but the Bureau is going completely crazy over everything that’s going on in Connecticut. That thing about the crime lab losing its accreditation—that was bad enough.”

  Gregor looked at the young woman behind the desk. “Is anybody here?” he asked. “I was just at the War Memorial—”

  “They’ll be another hour or about that,” the young woman said. “I’ve got everybody’s cell phone numbers if there’s an emergency, but mostly they’re supposed to be in the crowd, listening to the speeches.”

  “I feel like I went down the rabbit hole,” Andy said. “They’ve got a murder, for God’s sake, and the whole police force is listening to speeches and marching in a parade.”

  “It was the other way around,” Gregor said. He turned to the young woman again. “Is there somewhere Andy and I can sit and talk in private?” he asked. “We can talk while we wait for the chief to come back.”

  “There’s an entire building for you to sit and be private in,” the young woman said. “Why don’t you go back down that way and use the third room on the right.”

  Gregor led Andy down the hall as if he knew what he was doing.

  He opened the third door on the right when he got to it and found a small conference room with a round table and six chairs. Andy had a large, bulky briefcase. He put it on the table and opened it.

  “In a way, it’s good I found you by yourself,” he said. “You understand that I can’t tell you very much about the operation we’ve been running.”

  “Of course,” Gregor said. “I don’t expect you to blow your operation.”

  “Well, blowing the operation may be moot. We got a judge out of bed at five o’clock this morning and we should be moving right this minute. I know you think it’s certain that Kyle wasn’t murdered by somebody connected to our case, but we can’t take any chances. If his cover was blown, we could lose a lot of valuable evidence. And we need the evidence. This is the largest case of its kind since the founding of the Bureau. The publicity is going to be insane.”

  “I know what that’s like,” Gregor said. “What I don’t know is what you need from us.”

  “I need to talk to everybody who was at the scene last night—all the professionals, I mean. I need to go back to the office with a clearer idea of what happened and of whether or not it could be part of what we’re doing.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Gregor said. “Is anybody under investigation in your operation a resident of Alwych, Connecticut?”

  “Half a dozen people are,” Andy said. “This is a bedroom community for New York City. Half the Financial District lives in Alwych or Westport or Darien.”

  “What about people who are not part of the bedroom community? What about the people who live and work here full-time?”

  Andy looked uncomfortable.

  “I’m not asking you for names. It’s just that I’m about ninety-nine percent sure I know what happened here, and why, and the only person the narrative fits is someone who lives and works here.”

  “So,” Andy said. “You think this is all about the robberies.”

  “No,” Gregor said. “I don’t think it’s all about the robberies. The robberies come into it, but only peripherally, only because they provided a catalyst for something considerably less sane. But it’s the only explanation that takes in both murders, and the only one that explains where the money is.”

  “The robbery money?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought you said this wasn’t about the robberies.”

  “It’s complicated,” Gregor said.

  “I’ve got to tell you,” Andy said, “I never expected it to be like this. This is my first really big operation. I’ve been champing at the bit to get one. Now I feel like I just ate glass.”

  “It won’t be that bad on your third big operation,” Gregor said. “Take it from somebody with experience. As soon as Jason Battlesea gets back, we’ll see if we can hook you up with the ME. You may not have any joy, though. The body wasn’t shipped out until late last night. It’s entirely possible that nobody has gotten to it yet.”

  “God, I hate these small towns,” Andy said. “Give me a big city any day, where everybody works twenty-four/seven and you don’t have to factor in parades when you need some forensic answers.”

  Gregor thought th
at there wasn’t much Andy was going to get in the way of answers even if he waited for midnight. But he wasn’t going to tell him that.

  2

  It took so long for Jason Battlesea to get back to the police station, Gregor Demarkian began to worry that he’d gone off to eat at one of the picnics. Andy was not in good shape waiting, and Gregor had no idea how to contact the state medical examiner, or even if the state medical examiner would be willing to talk to him. Andy paced. Gregor got out the big picture book on the Waring case that he’d bought in Greenwich Village and leafed through it.

  It was one o’clock by the time Jason Battlesea came sailing through the door, and he was alone.

  “We’ve deployed everybody we’ve got to keep watch on the crowds,” he said. He unbuttoned his uniform jacket and took it off, leaving all the medals and ribbons in place. He took off his tie. “If you’ll give me a minute, I’m going to go into my office and change.”

  “This is Andy—”

  “The FBI guy,” Battlesea said. “I can smell it on him. Give me a second.”

  Battlesea disappeared into his office, and Gregor and Andy gave each other the kind of look that said “This idiot is practically an amateur.” When he came out, he was wearing khakis and a bright orange T-shirt.

  Jason Battlesea tried to look authoritative. It was difficult for him to do under any circumstances. It was impossible dressed in all that orange.

  “Well,” Battlesea said. “What is it? What’s so important on the Fourth of July?”

  “Solving a murder might be nice,” Gregor said. “Solving two might be even better.”

  “Right now, we just need to be reassured that the murder of Kyle Westervan had nothing to do with one of our cases,” Andy hurried in.

  “Do you have identification?” Battlesea demanded.

  Andy reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his badge. He handed it over and waited.

  Jason Battlesea took the badge in its folder and looked at it. He turned it upside down. He turned it right side up again. Gregor was sure he had no idea what he was looking at. Battlesea closed the folder and handed it back.

  “Okay,” he said. “What is it exactly you think we can tell you?”

  “I suggested that the two medical examiners’ reports might show a resemblance between the two murders,” Gregor said, “and a resemblance would prove to me the two murders were most likely connected, and most likely committed by the same person. And since Andy’s case has nothing to do with the Waring robberies—”

  “Yeah?” Jason Battlesea said. “How do I know it has nothing to do with the Waring robberies?”

  “I don’t work for that division,” Andy said quickly. “I work with the task force on Financial Fraud.”

  “Which doesn’t mean you couldn’t be interested in the Waring robberies,” Jason Battlesea said. “Those were financial.”

  “Those were bank robberies,” Andy said, looking pained. “Robbery isn’t the same thing as fraud.”

  “And how am I supposed to know that Chapin Waring wasn’t involved in financial fraud in this other life she had for the last thirty years? Mr. Demarkian here says she was in New York all that time. New York is where the Financial District is.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Gregor said.

  “I’m not being stupid,” Jason Battlesea said. “I’ve got two murders. They look to be connected. Then, the next thing I know, I’ve got the FBI on my tail, wanting to know everything there is to know, and nobody is telling me why.”

  “I can’t tell you why,” Andy said. “I can only tell you that Mr. Westervan was connected with an ongoing operation—”

  “To hell with that,” Jason Battlesea said.

  Gregor closed his eyes for a moment. This was Bennis’s idea, her best way to calm down when you wanted to strangle someone. It didn’t really work, but it gave him a minute or two to breathe before he had to deal with the craziness again.

  “If we could just have a copy of the ME’s report on the Chapin Waring murder,” Gregor said as calmly as he could, “just the summary. And if we could just rouse the ME or his assistant or whoever is working on the Westervan case—”

  “Rouse him? On the Fourth of July?” Jason Battlesea snorted. “You’ve got to be out of your mind. Why isn’t the preliminary report enough?”

  “You have a preliminary report from the ME’s office on the death of Kyle Westervan?” Gregor asked.

  “Of course I do. It came in overnight. I’ve got it on the computer and in a fax,” Jason Battlesea said. “I can find it in a minute if you let me.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything about it,” Gregor said.

  “There wasn’t time to tell you,” Jason Battlesea said. “Let me see what I can find. Mike or Jack will have to have a copy around here somewhere.”

  Battlesea disappeared down the corridor again, and Gregor and Andy looked at each other.

  “Jesus Christ,” Andy said.

  “I think this latest one blew all his corks,” Gregor said. “He wasn’t this bad when I got here.”

  “I don’t want his blood type and his Social Security number,” Andy said. “I just want to see if there’s reasonable cause for me to back off for a bit and let you handle it. If the two murders are really as alike as you say, I can hold off a bit and see what happens. But if there’s any indication—”

  “I’ve got them,” Jason Battlesea said, coming back down the corridor again with a sheaf of papers in his hand. “It’s just like I thought it was. Of course, the preliminary is the preliminary. Anything could happen when the autopsy comes back. Maybe the guy didn’t die of the stabbing at all. Maybe somebody poisoned him. But I’m not expecting that, and neither are you.”

  Jason Battlesea took the papers and held them out.

  “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be giving these to,” he said.

  Andy took the papers out of Battlesea’s hand and looked at them blankly for a moment. Then he sat down in one of the plastic-covered chairs and spread them out on the seat of the chair next to him.

  After another moment, he looked up and shook his head. “You can’t tell, can you?” he said. “I mean, there’s a lot of stuff here, a lot of detail, and it certainly looks like the two would have to be connected. But.”

  Gregor held his hand out. “Can I look at those?”

  “Sure.” Andy handed the papers over.

  Jason Battlesea laughed. “You’re not going to get anything out of those that you don’t already know,” he said. “Kyle Westervan was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife. Chapin Waring was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife. Not the same kind of kitchen knife. Westervan got a chopper thin and three times as long. We’ve got the knives in evidence bags.”

  Gregor nodded absently. “The angle-of-entry thing is interesting,” he said.

  “I thought that, too,” Andy said. “What’s all that about?”

  “Angle of entry?” Jason Battlesea asked.

  Gregor waved the papers in the air. “Chapin Waring was murdered by being stabbed in the back by a knife that was going downward when it entered the body,” he said. “That’s in the ME’s final report summary, so I suppose that is a true finding and we can count on it. In the summary of the preliminary on the murder of Kyle Westervan, he was stabbed in the back by a knife going upward as it entered the body.”

  “It could be a lot of things,” Andy said. “You can’t just assume that it was two different murderers—”

  “I don’t assume it was two different murderers,” Gregor said. “I assume it was a result of the fact that Chapin Waring was a small woman and Kyle Westervan was a tall man.”

  “So,” Andy said, “you think the issue is that Chapin Waring was a lot shorter than the person who killed her, and Kyle Westervan was a lot taller.”

  “Chapin Waring didn’t have to be a lot shorter,” Gregor said, “but she did have to be shorter by at least a couple of inches. Kyle Westervan was, I think somebody said, about s
ix-three. He was a lot taller than most people.”

  “You could still have had a situation where the murderer was standing on something at one point and not standing on it at another point. There are ways to do things about height,” Andy said.

  “I agree,” Gregor said. “But you’ve also got to account for the fact that nobody could have made that kind of stab wound—either of these kinds of stab wounds—without behind able to get right up behind the victim. It’s hard to see how that would have been possible if the murderer was carrying around a stepladder or standing on a bucket. And the murderer wasn’t going to get that close from behind unless the victim either didn’t know he was there, or didn’t think he had any reason for distrust.”

  “You keep saying that,” Jason Battlesea said, “but people come up behind each other all the time.”

  “Not like this, they don’t,” Gregor said. “It’s a natural instinct to feel the presence of somebody coming up right behind you, close enough to press against you. And if you look at the ME’s report on Chapin Waring, the murderer would have had to do just that. Come up behind Chapin Waring so that they were practically close enough to spoon. The murderer couldn’t have been more than half a step away. And I think we’re going to find that the same thing is true in the murder of Kyle Westervan. Whoever the murderer is, it’s somebody both Chapin Waring and Kyle Westervan knew, and somebody they both thought they had nothing to fear from.”

  “Which gets us absolutely nowhere,” Jason Battlesea said. “It’s not like that didn’t occur to us before you got here, Mr. Demarkian.”

  “Possibly,” Gregor said. “But Kyle Westervan and Tim Brand knew each other forever in a different way than, say, Kyle Westervan and Caroline Holder.”

  “Why in the name of God would Caroline Holder want to kill Kyle Westervan?”

  “I could think of a number of reasons,” Gregor said, “starting with the fact that those robberies ruined her life—”