by Jane Haddam
“The colored ones,” the assistant said. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and came out with a small, clear plastic container. “Here you go.”
“Hold this,” Gregor handed the plastic container to the tall one. He was pretty sure by now that the tall one was Kevin O’Shea, but not so sure that he’d risk calling him by name. “I want green ones for the women in this case who are both on my list and who were found in alleys near Green Point buildings. I want blue ones for women who are not on my list and who were found in alleys near Green Point buildings. I want red ones for any women who don’t fit into either category.”
“What about women who are on your list but weren’t found in alleys near Green Point buildings?” Rob asked. “Shouldn’t you have a color for them?”
“There’s no need,” Gregor said. “There isn’t anybody who fits into that category. Now, this break-in we’re supposed to go investigate—that’s a repeat area, am I correct? One of the women was found in the alley right behind it.”
“Yeah,” the tall one said. “That’s Faith Anne Fugate. I read the file this morning.”
“Not the whole file,” the other one said. “You can’t read the whole file; it’s huge. And it’s not in order.”
“But there was a summary at the top,” the tall one said. “That’s a guy named Tyrell Moss, picked up on suspicion when the body of Faith Anne Fu-gate was found in an alley behind his store.”
“And his store is a Green Point building,” Gregor said. “We can confirm that.”
“On the computer,” the tall one said.
“If you could,” Gregor said.
The tall one opened the map across Rob Benedetti’s desk, looked around for a moment, and put the pin in. Its little green plastic top gleamed green in the glare from the overhead light.
“All right,” Gregor said. “What else do we have? The house on Curzon Street, where the skeletons and the older bodies were found.”
The tall one put in another pin.
“Now,” Gregor said, “from what I’ve been able to figure out, there was a guy there, living at that house—”
“Bennie Durban,” Rob said.
“Right, who was picked up on suspicion of one of the others,” Gregor said.
“Rondelle Johnson,” the tall one said. “But she wasn’t found near the house on Curzon Street. She was found in an alley next to the restaurant where this guy works. I’ve got it in my notes, just a minute.” He got a notepad out of the inside pocket of his jacket and rifled through it. “Here it is.”
“Pin, if you would,” Gregor said.
The tall one put in a pin. The first two pins had been close together. The third was a hand’s stretch across the map. The tall one flipped through his notes some more.
“I’ve got a lot of material on this guy,” he said. “He’s missing, did you know that? We went looking for him after the bodies were found, and he’d taken off. He had a roomful of pictures of serial killers up on his wall, the way teenaged girls put up pictures of rock stars. At least that was in the notes. Ed and I haven’t actually gotten a chance yet to see for ourselves.”
Ah, Gregor thought. The tall one had to be Kevin, since he’d just called the other one Ed. “I know about Bennie Durban,” he said. “Granted, he’d be a good man to get a hold of right now. But at the moment—who else do we have? Sarajean Petrazik, she was the first.”
“Behind Independence Hall,” Rob said immediately. “Boy, do I remember that. You should, too, Gregor, if you were here when it happened. You wouldn’t have believed the stink. Articles. Stories on the television news. Doom has come. Americans can’t even visit the place where their country was born without getting themselves killed.”
“Was she a visitor?” Gregor asked.
“No,” Rob said. “She was a court clerk on her day off.”
“And I take it Green Point doesn’t own Independence Hall. Or at least not yet.”
Kevin O’Shea looked through his notes again, then put them down. “I don’t know what Green Point owns and what it doesn’t,” he said, “but they do own apartment buildings and they own some right over there, also some town houses, maybe a block or two away.”
“One of them should border on the alley where the body was found,” Gregor said. “It’s not enough that she just lived in one.”
“Lived in one what?” Rob asked.
“In a Green Point building,” Gregor said. “Alexander Mark went to work this morning and checked on the women who were part of this case and who had been Dennis Ledeski’s clients. Every one of them lived in a Green Point building. But that’s not enough. The bodies should have been found near Green Point buildings. Can you put the pin in over there and then find out what else is around that area besides Independence Hall?”
“Sure,” Kevin O’Shea said. He put another pin in.
“Now, Conchita Estevez,” Gregor said. “That’s a Green Point building, I take it. Unless the Tyders own it separately.”
Kevin O’Shea put another pin in, this one well away from all the other three. Rob Benedetti shook his head.
“I can’t believe this,” he said. “I told you that Henry Tyder can’t possibly be the person who committed these murders, not if you think that all the ones on your list were killed by the same person—”
“They were,” Gregor said.
“Then he’s out of it, Gregor. He really is. I don’t know what you’re getting at. And you’re wasting valuable time. That break-in may actually mean something.”
“Oh, it means something all right,” Gregor said, pointing Kevin O’Shea to the name of Elizabeth Bray.
Kevin O’Shea leaned over and put a pin in the map just a slight way away from the one for Sarajean Petrazik.
“Listen,” Gregor said. “The most important thing we know, the most important point in this whole mess, is that Henry Tyder was locked up in rehab when Beatrice Morgander was killed. Not when any one of the women on this list were killed, but when Beatrice Morgander in particular was killed.”
“Why?” Rob demanded.
“Because,” Gregor said, pointing Kevin O’Shea in the direction of Debbie Morelli, “Beatrice Morgander was not found in an alley.”
FOUR
1
Tyrell Moss did not think of himself as an important person. In fact, it was one of the most important principles of the program he had been through, the program that was not really a program all those years ago, that he understand that he was Just Like Everybody Else.
“It’s living in the clouds that kills you,” the Reverend Emmett Walters had told him, when he’d first started going to church. “There’s no air up there. First you go crazy, and then you die.”
Charles Jellenmore lived in the clouds. Tyrell saw that every day. And every day he tried to do something to bring the boy down because if the boy didn’t come down of his own free will, he’d end up crashing into the pavement. Even so, Tyrell understood the impulse. It was one thing to say that you should give up a fantasy world where you were the most important human being on the planet, and everybody owed you deference. It was another to make yourself live in the ordinary day-to-day, when the world held you to be less important than some people’s dogs. It was damned nearly impossible to do if you could see no end to the day-to-day, if the future stretched out before you just as in the past—endless and without change.
Gregor Demarkian was not coming in a squad car, but Tyrell knew which car it was as soon as he saw it. He stood up from where he was sitting on the curb to wait. Charles Jellenmore was already standing. Fie was always standing. He had too much energy to sit.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Charles said, “waiting on some white man, waiting on some white man who isn’t even really the police.”
“Don’t say ‘polees,’ “ Tyrell said automatically. “What is it with you guys today that you all want to sound ignorant? I don’t care what you want to say about my generation; we didn’t sound ignorant.”
“At least you know there was once a revolution in Mexico,” Tyrell said. “You’ve learned something since you’ve been here.”
“I’ve learned you’re crazy,” Charles Jellenmore said.
But he didn’t move. And as the car pulled up in front of them, Tyrell made a mental note of satisfaction that Charles hadn’t dropped the “re” on the end of “you’re.” Tyrell had never imagined how important small things really were all those years ago when he was being more like Charles than he was now.
The car shut off and the doors opened. Four men got out, only two of whom—Rob Benedetti, the district attorney, and Gregor Demarkian—Tyrell recognized. He thought the other two looked like ordinary police detectives. There was a tall one and one who looked just sort of nondescript. That was the kind who would make a good detective. Nobody would be able to pick him out in a crowd or remember him five seconds after he’d left the room.
Gregor Demarkian stepped forward and held out his hand. “Mr. Moss,” he said, “I’m Gregor Demarkian.”
“Oh, I know,” Tyrell said. “I’ve seen your pictures. It’s an honor to meet you. An honor. This here is Charles Jellenmore. He works for me.”
“Mr. Jellenmore,” Gregor Demarkian said.
Charles looked suspicious, but he shook hands. Tyrell wondered if that was because he’d seen Michael Jordan shake hands with somebody on television. Tyrell had no idea if Charles admired people like Michael Jordan. He was afraid he admired people more like 50 Cent instead.
“I’ve got two of the women around the back making sure nobody gets in the back door,” Tyrell said, “but they don’t need to be there because there’s an officer there already. I think they’re talking to him about church.”
“He’s going to go crazy,” Charles Jellenmore said. “He isn’t even a brother.”
“We’ll go around back in a minute,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Let me ask you a few things first. This is a Green Point building, right? It’s owned by Green Point Properties?”
“Oh,” Tyrell said, “Yeah, sure. I don’t think of it that way is all. I rented it right from the lady herself. From Miss Tyder.”
“Miss Tyder? That’s what she called herself?” Gregor said.
“What? Oh, I don’t know. I just assumed it was Miss Tyder. That’s what Green Point is, isn’t it, the Tyders? And the man is always getting himself in the papers, for being found drunk on the street and that kind of thing.”
“Lately,” Charles said, “he’s been getting himself in the papers for getting arrested for murder and escaping from jail.”
Gregor Demarkian nodded. Tyrell felt relieved. For some reason he was feeling very proprietary about Charles Jellenmore this morning. He wanted him to make a good impression on Gregor Demarkian, they way he would want a son to.
“Have either of you ever seen Henry Tyder in person?” Gregor asked.
“In person on the television,” Charles said.
“He came into the store once about a year back,” Tyrell said. “He didn’t mean nothing by it. He wasn’t looking to cause any trouble. He was just drunk.”
“Did he cause any trouble?” Gregor asked.
“Well, he wandered around for a while, and he’d been out sleeping on the street, so he smelled. He was upsetting the customers. We serve a lot of the church ladies, you know; they don’t like bad behavior. Anyway, I asked him to leave, and he wouldn’t go. He said he owned the place, and he could be in it as much as he wanted. We went back and forth on that for a while, and finally I called Miss Tyder. There are two of them, though. Miss Tyders, I mean. I called and went around the block for a while with one of them and then the other came on and said she’d be down to pick him up. She came, too.”
“And she looked like what?” Gregor asked.
Tyrell looked astonished for a moment. “Oh,” he said finally. “She was a tall woman with mostly dark hair, just some grey streaks in it.”
“That would be Elizabeth Woodville,” Gregor said. “Woodville is her married name.”
Tyrell was momentarily confused, but he recovered. “Oh,” he said. “I see. That didn’t occur to me. The thing is, by the time she came, he was gone. I think he was gone because she was coming. I told him she was coming, and the next thing I knew, he’d taken off. I tried calling back, but he’d already left. And when she got here, I had to apologize. She was very good about it though.”
Gregor nodded. “Did Henry Tyder do anything else when he was here, except wander around and be a nuisance to the customers?”
“Not really. He knocked some stuff off the shelves, but I don’t think that was deliberate. He was just hammered. It couldn’t have been more than ten o’clock in the morning neither. It’s a shame to see that happen. I mean, the Book says riches won’t save you, and that’s true; but he had to have had all the advantages. He could have done something with himself.”
“What about the wandering,” Gregor said. “Did he stay out in the main section of the store? Did he go behind the counter? What?”
“Oh, he went everywhere,” Tyrell said. “We had to pry him out from behind the coffee urn. Nobody’s allowed to go there who isn’t working here because we can’t get insurance for it, and the water’s hot. Scalding hot. He went in the back there for a minute, before I could drag him out. He messed up some of the boxes.”
“This is back in the storeroom?” Gregor said. “Is that the same place that was broken into last night?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tyrell said. “It is. But he only got so far as the front of it when he was in here that time. I went right in and pulled him out. He was a sorrymess. I know there are people who swear by a drink in the evenings, but I’ve never seen alcohol be but a sorrow to anybody.”
“James Bond,” Charles Jellenmore said.
“Excuse me?” Gregor Demarkian said.
“James Bond,” Charles Jellenmore said. “He can drink. He drinks martinis. I tried one once. I like to puked.”
“Why don’t we go around the back,” Gregor Demarkian said. “We don’t want to hold you up too long. You’re probably anxious to open.”
Tyrell shrugged. “Everybody who’d come in this morning is around back with your officer, yakking his ear off. And speculating. By the time this gets around the neighborhood, I’ll have had my whole stock of beef jerky hauled out of here and sold to a pawn shop.”
“They don’t buy beef jerky at pawn shops,” Charles Jellenmore said.
“I’m working very hard here, Charles, not to wonder how you know how a martini tastes or what gets sold in pawn shops.”
Gregor Demarkian started off down the alley to the back of the building, and Tyrell Moss followed him, along with Rob Benedetti, the two detectives, and Charles. Tyrell didn’t like being in this alley anymore, or in the one in the back either, but he had no choice most of the time. And now, as always, he went. The back of the store was just as he’d imagined it was going to be while he was waiting out front. Claretta, Mardella, and Rabiah had been joined by all the rest of the churchwomen in the neighborhood, and they were surrounding the one uniformed officer like a herd of cats surrounding the one lone available mouse. The officer, though polite, looked halfway between nonplused and panicked.
Gregor Demarkian waded into the fray. “Officer,” he said. “You were the officer who came to the scene when the call came in? The one who called us?”
“Oh, yes,” the officer said, relieved to have a little air to breathe, finally. “I got the call about the break-in and came on out. I was talking to, uh, Mr. Moss, and it was revealed he had been a suspect in the Plate Glass Killings, so I thought—”
“He was cleared of suspicion in the Plate Glass Killings,” the district attorney said, “for God’s sake.”
Tyrell almost broke in to tell the man not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but he didn’t have t
o because Claretta Washington said it first, and then the other ladies added their opinions, and the whole scene looked about to ready to get out of control really fast. Tyrell cleared his throat. His speaking voice was one of his greatest assets. If he’d been a different kind of man, he could have been a preacher.
“Fley now,” he said, “there’s no time for this. This is Gregor Demarkian, and this man here is Robert Benedetti, the district attorney. They don’t have the time to waste here.”
“I wouldn’t call it a waste of time striking out against blaspheming,” Mardella Ford said.
Tyrell cleared his throat again.
Gregor Demarkian turned away from the women and went back to talking to the officer. “Did you find evidence of a break-in?” he asked.
The officer shrugged. “Maybe and maybe not. The door wasn’t forced. There weren’t any windows broken. If somebody who got in who shouldn’t have, it would have to have been because somebody left the door unlocked when they left last night. But Mr. Moss says he didn’t, that the door was locked. So I’d guess that the only way this makes sense is if whoever was in there last night had a key.”
“But you do think there was somebody in there last night,” Gregor Demarkian said. “There is some evidence that the place has been disturbed.”
“Sure,” the officer said. “It’s a storeroom. It’s full of packing crates. A few of them were torn open and packages were taken out. Potato chips. Crackers. A container of peanut butter. There were crumbs on the floor, too, as if some-body ate the potato chips there. But it didn’t amount to much, Mr. Demarkian. It can’t be two hundred dollars’ worth of stuff that was taken. If it hadn’t been for thinking I ought to call in because of the Plate Glass connections, I’d have advised Mr. Moss to just let it go and be sure to be more careful about the door the next time. I’ve seen break-ins in this neighborhood. Windows smashed to hell. Entire cash registers ripped out. This was polite, by comparison.”
“And you’re sure that nobody could have forced that door?” Gregor Demarkian said.
