Glass Houses

by Jane Haddam

  “It’s sort of the same only different,” Alison had said. “It’s Portuguese food. It’s a lot like Middle Eastern food. The Mediterranean is a lake.”

  That had made a lot of sense at the time, although Gregor hadn’t been able to figure out why. He was tired, even though he didn’t think he’d done much of anything during the day. The seating hostess came up to him and beckoned him inside. The restaurant wasn’t particularly expensive, or particularly hip, or particularly anything. It was the kind of place academics went when they made enough money to eat out on a regular basis but not enough to eat out in the kind of places Bennis went to when Bennis bothered about eating in a restaurant away from Cavanaugh Street. He had started thinking about Bennis again. He sat down and ordered himself a large scotch on the rocks.

  When Alison came—on time, because Alison was always on time—Gregor was on his second scotch, and he had begun to fiddle with the cell phone to see if he could figure out how he could use it to access the Internet. He knew it was possible to get on the Internet with this phone; he’d just never tried it before. Alison sat down and looked at his drink.

  “Lionel will be here in a moment,” she said.

  Gregor put down the phone. “Did you tell him what this was about?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s very interested. In fact, he’s interested no matter what way it turns out, if Henry Tyder is the Plate Glass Killer or if he isn’t. There’s apparently something called voluntary homelessness, which is something new in research. Not in fact, I suppose. Anyway, he says Henry Tyder is voluntarily homeless.”

  “Yes,” Gregor said, “I can see that.”

  “Did you see Bennis?” Alison asked. “Is that what the scotch is about?”

  “No,” Gregor said, “I didn’t see Bennis. That’s what the scotch is about.”

  “Well, it had to go one way or the other,” Alison said. “There’s Lionel now. Let me go get him.”

  Lionel turned out to be an enormously tall man with a nose that looked like a parrot’s beak. Gregor had never seen something so outsized or so out of proportion. He stood up when the man came to the table. He sat down when the man sat down. He was vaguely aware of Alison introducing them and of Lionel Redstone ordering some kind of wine. Gregor didn’t understand wine. Wine was fruit juice. He didn’t like fruit juice, even when it wasn’t alcoholic. And when it was alcoholic, it gave him a headache.

  The waitress came to take their orders and he ordered something. He thought it had shrimp in it. Lionel Redstone ordered an “ascorda mariscos,” which was the fish-and-bread soup they’d named the restaurant after. He was going on and on about something.

  “So,” he said, finally breaking through Gregor’s fog, “you’ve got to see that Henry Tyder is an interesting man just on the grounds of the voluntary homelessness. If he’s also a serial killer, it will be a bonus. If he’s just been wrongly accused because the police thought he was homeless, and he gets let off now that they realize he’s not, that would be a plus, too. Not a plus for Henry Tyder, you understand. A plus for the research.”

  The waitress was already bringing salads. Gregor wondered how long he’d been fuzzed out. He forced himself to focus. “They’re not going to release him any time soon,” he said. “The police seem pretty convinced that they have the man they’re looking for.”

  “Only pretty convinced?” Lionel Redstone asked.

  Gregor shrugged. “Serial killer investigations are tricky things. There are a lot of false hopes. I’d say that they’re as convinced as they’re ever likely to be in any serial killer case.”

  “And this is because Mr. Tyder is homeless?”

  “No,” Gregor said. “This is because Mr. Tyder confessed. Granted, now, he confessed to police officers without benefit of counsel, and there’s every likelihood that the confession will not be admissible as evidence in court, but he did confess. Police officers and district attorneys tend to take confessions seriously.”

  “And do you?” Lionel Redstone asked. “Do you take the confession seriously? Do you think Henry Tyder is the Plate Glass Killer.”

  “No,” Gregor said.

  “Oh, my,” Alison said, “that really didn’t sound convincing.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Lionel said.

  Gregor had finished his scotch. He hadn’t touched his salad. He didn’t like salads. Bennis was always trying to get him to eat them.

  “Well,” he said carefully, “here’s the thing. There’s something just wrong about Henry Tyder.”

  “Do you mean he shows signs of mental illness?” Lionel asked.

  Gregor shrugged. “It depends on what you mean by mental illness. Everybody shows some sign of mental illness by some of the more common definitions. It wasn’t that kind of thing I was thinking of. John Jackman—”

  “The Commissioner of Police John Jackman?” Lionel asked.

  “And the one who’s running for mayor,” Gregor said. “That’s the one. Anyway, John said that he was convinced that Henry Tyder had murdered somebody sometime, even if he wasn’t the Plate Glass Killer; and I know what it was that made him think that because you can feel it when you talk to him. But I don’t know that I’d say it was because he’d murdered somebody once. It doesn’t have to be that.”

  “What would it be?” Alison asked. “What kind of things?”

  “I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I’ve only seen him the one time. Maybe my impression would change if I got to know him. And I do intend to get to know him. You have to, in cases like this. But on first acquaintance he just came off as wrong somehow. And that’s the best that I can do. Except that it was like looking at one of those trick pictures. You know, the one with the lady sitting at a vanity mirror and then if you look at it another way, it’s really a skull. Optical illusions.”

  “You think Henry Tyder is creating an optical illusion?” Lionel asked.

  “No,” Gregor said. “I think Henry Tyder is an optical illusion. I don’t necessarily think it’s something he’s doing on purpose. I think it might be something he just is.”

  “You’re making no sense at all,” Alison said.

  “I know,” Gregor said. “I’m doing the best I can. Russ has seen more of him. I don’t know if he’s got the same impression. You should ask him.”

  “Russ is Henry Tyder’s attorney?”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “And I’m officially going to be working for the other side. But you know, movie thrillers notwithstanding, it’s rarely the case that the police and district attorney just don’t care about the truth as long as they get a conviction. It’s not true here. Nobody wants to see this man go to prison if he isn’t the Plate Glass Killer. If anything, they’re desperate to make sure they haven’t made a mistake.”

  “But they don’t think they have made a mistake,” Lionel said, “because of the confession.”

  “Exactly,” Gregor said.

  “Do they realize that people often make false confessions for all kinds of reasons?”

  “Of course they do,” Gregor said. “They’re police officers. They do this all the time. But juries don’t. Juries tend not to be able to see why anybody would make a false confession. Ever.”

  “Ah,” Lionel said.

  Gregor almost laughed. That was the kind of thing a psychologist was supposed to say. Ah. He picked at his salad just as the waitress came back to clear.

  “Go right ahead,” he said, backing away from the plate.

  She gave him an odd look and picked up. Alison and Lionel Redstone had both finished their salads. Gregor thought this was something to do with academia. All the academics he knew liked salads.

  “What are you thinking about?” Alison asked him.

  “Salads,” Gregor said, because it was the truth.

  Alison didn’t look as if she believed him. Gregor was about to say something more on the subject of false confessions and Henry Tyder when the cell phone he had left next to his water glass began to vibrate. In a split second, his mind went c
ompletely, irrevocably blank.

  “You’ve got a call,” Alison said helpfully.

  Gregor picked up the phone, flipped it open, and pushed the tiny button that gave him the display.

  It was his own number at home that came up on the caller identification line.

  FIVE

  1

  Bennie Durban had been watching the news all morning, picking it up at television wall displays at electronics places and in bars. Most of the time, places like that wouldn’t bother with the news no matter what was happening. The last time Bennie could remember there being news absolutely everywhere was on 9/11. But this was local. This was Philadelphia. This was their very own serial killer. If it had been up to Bennie to tell people how to feel, he would have wanted them to be proud. But of course, nobody asked him.

  When Bennie saw Henry Tyder’s face for the first time, he stopped dead. Part of it was the thing that had to be expected. The Plate Glass Killer wasn’t some homeless bum whose brain was a mass of mush too far gone to remember how to read a bus schedule. Bennie knew that. People were afraid of bums, but the truth was they almost never caused any serious kinds of trouble. They smelled bad, and they threw up on the sidewalk. They were disgusting and vile. They weren’t violent, mostly, because they didn’t have the energy. Not becoming a bum was one of Bennie Durban’s primary rules for life. It was why he went on working these grub jobs when he could have made more money doing delivery for one of the dealers in the neighborhood. The dealers always wanted you to sample their stuff. Bennie knew what that was about. The dealers wanted you addicted because if you were addicted you cost less money. Bennie didn’t even drink beer. Alcoholism ran in families. His mother had been an alcoholic. Ergo. He giggled a little at the ‘ergo’. Maybe his mother was still an alcoholic. He had no reason to think she was dead. Maybe she was still sitting in the middle of the living room in that stiff, high-backed chair, with both her feet planted on the ground, watching soap opera after soap opera until the bottle of scotch gave out or she did. Her mind had turned to mush long before Bennie left home. It was just that she had his father to cover for her.

  What made Bennie stop and stare was this: he knew Henry Tyder. He didn’t know him the way you’d know a friend. Bennie didn’t have any friends. He hadn’t had any in school, and he didn’t have any now. He knew Henry Tyder all the same because Henry was one of the men who came to the back door of the Underground Burrito when the weather got cold, looking for food. This was one of Bennie’s boss’s pet projects, and it drove Bennie completely around the bend. The bums didn’t cause violence, no, but they caused other kinds of trouble and they brought trouble with them. There was the hygiene problem, and there was the problem of the boys who followed them, waiting for them to pass out.

  Okay. Bennie had to admit it. He had rolled a few drunks in his time. Especially when he was younger, when he was still living at home. It was one of the few things you could get up to as a teenager that didn’t carry five years in jail. He’d been no good at stealing cars, and he’d even then had that rule about not doing things that would make his brain go. Rolling drunks was a surprisingly lucrative hobby, though, even when the drunks you rolled were like Henry Tyder. It was incredible how much spare change these guys could accumulate in a single day.

  Having those bums at the back door was like advertising for muggers. The muggers were there, just out of sight, and they wouldn’t stop with the bums if they saw another easy target in the vicinity. Bennie hated it when Adrian went on and on about how important it was to take care of the “least among us” and then got to fingering that crucifix around his neck as if it were some kind of magic charm. As soon as he started doing that, it was only a matter of minutes before he got into one of those long monologues about his life, about how he had come from Mexico as an illegal wetback when he was only fourteen, about how he had worked the very kinds of jobs Bennie was working now, about how he had saved his money and gone hungry just to put something in the bank every week, without fail. Bennie was sure it was a very uplifting story. Some poor sap who didn’t know any better would hear it and get religion. He wasn’t some poor sap, and he didn’t want to hear it again.

  Still, there was no denying it. Henry Tyder was one of the men who came to the back door in the winter when Adrian put out food. He hadn’t just wandered in once either. He’d been there every single time this year.

  The television he was staring at was in the bar at the Underground Burrito, which was packed to the gills. This was a restaurant, not a place to get boozed up. Eight o’clock was their prime busy time, along with noon, when they got a rush of secretaries out on their lunch hour.

  Bennie wiped his hands on his apron.

  “Bennie,” Adrian said, coming by. “You’re supposed to be working. Stop watching television.”

  “It’s the guy who used to sing,” Bennie said. “Look.”

  Adrian turned to look. He was a short, square man, not fat but almost obscenely muscular, in spite of the fact that Bennie had never seen him work out or heard of him doing it either.

  “It’s the man who used to sing,” Bennie said again, as the news show flashed yet another film clip of Henry Tyder being taken into court to be arraigned. “He used to come to the back door and sing. You’ve got to remember him.”

  “I remember somebody singing,” Adrian said. “In the back, yes. But I don’t recognize his face. Should I? He wasn’t one of the ones who liked to talk.”

  Adrian talked to the bums sometimes. Some of them were weepy. He talked to them about God and the Blessed Virgin. Adrian was convinced that the Blessed Virgin could solve all the problems of the world if people would only listen to her.

  “Go in back,” Adrian said. “Go to work. We can talk about the Plate Glass Killer later.”

  Bennie let himself be pushed toward the kitchen. “He came to the door every single time we put food out this year,” he said. “Every single time I’ve been working anyway. And he would sing. Sing and sing. Strange stuff. Stuff I’d never heard of. Harvest moon.”

  They were in the kitchen now. Adrian had come in right after him. The two cooks were working so fast, Bennie was surprised they knew what they were doing. The waitresses looked frazzled.

  “The dentist guy is back again,” Maria said when she saw Adrian. “He stuck his hand up my skirt when I was taking the order, and I got Miguel to cover for me. I mean, for—” The rest was a blur of Spanish.

  “ ‘Shine on harvest moon,’ “ Bennie said. “That’s how it went.”

  The older of the two cooks looked up and sang, “ ‘Shine on, shine on harvest moon. For me and my gal.’”

  “That’s it,” Bennie said.

  Adrian looked nonplused. The older of the two cooks was an Anglo named Mike. Bennie had never understood how he ended up at the Underground Burrito.

  “Why are you singing harvest moon?” Mike said.

  “He used to sing it,” Bennie said. “The guy at the back door. He’d come for food and he’d sing.”

  “Oh, I remember him,” Mike said. “Don’t you remember him, Adrian? He was okay. Didn’t smell too bad. Didn’t get drooly or throw up. What’s the matter? He die of alcohol poisoning?”

  “They just picked him up and charged him with being the Plate Glass Killer,” Bennie said.

  “What?” Mike said.

  “There’s too much distrust in this country,” Adrian said. “These are the Philadelphia police. They’re smart people. They’re not taking bribes. They know what they’re doing.”

  “They just want to make an arrest,” Bennie said. “The city is all upset about the Plate Glass Killer. Nice ladies are afraid to come out of their apartments. They want to make an arrest, and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The way I was the other time.”

  Adrian made a dismissive motion with his hand. “That wasn’t the same thing. They didn’t charge you with being the Plate Glass Killer. They just brought you in and let you go.”

  “He can’t
be the Plate Glass Killer,” Bennie said. “He’s brain damaged. He’s a moron. He sings and he makes no sense. And he pisses in the gutters.”

  “They all piss in the gutters,” Mike said.

  “And none of them can be the Plate Glass Killer,” Bennie said. “Serial killers aren’t like this. They really aren’t. Serial killers have to be smart or they wouldn’t get away with it for so long. Think about BTK. They cops never caught him at all. He turned himself in. If he hadn’t, he’d be at home right now, drinking a beer and laughing his head off at them.”

  “You got to wonder what drives guys like that,” Mike said.

  Adrian shrugged his shoulders. “If they don’t have the right man, they’ll find it out. It’s got nothing to do with us. Go back to work, Bennie. We need dishes.”

  There were plenty of dishes. There were enough dishes to seat the restaurant four times over before they had to wash even one. Adrian went back out to the bar. Bennie opened one of the big industrial dishwashers and started to pull out clean plates and put them into stacks.

  Suddenly, the room around him felt closed in and tight. It was as if the air itself had gotten thicker. The waitresses looked as if they were moving through ether. Mike had his mind on a plate of nachos the size of an extra-large pizza.

  “You know,” Bennie said. “There’ll be another Plate Glass Killing. Just you wait. There’ll be another woman in another alley, and then what will they do? They’ll have their bum in jail. He won’t be out and around to blame it on.”

  Bennie looked around to see if anybody had paid any attention to him, but they hadn’t. They rarely did. He put the stack of dishes onto one of the over-head stainless steel shelves and went back to the dishwasher to unload some more. Here was a question he couldn’t answer. How smart was the Plate Glass Killer, the real one? Was he smart enough to hold back until this Henry Tyder was convicted and sent to jail? Or would that be smart at all? Maybe it would be smarter to kill again, right now, so that his reputation wasn’t ruined by the sight of this pathetic old wino being held up to the general public as the Plate Glass Killer.