by Jane Haddam
“I even brought a clean uniform.”
Darvelle headed back toward the kitchen. She’d make pasta and garlic bread. It would be simple and it wouldn’t take a lot of time. She would not think about that whole week after Chester was reported missing, after everybody had begun taking it all seriously. She would very definitely not think of the very night, and herself standing in the door of Chester’s trailer while the rain poured down outside and she knew Kyle was waiting for her at the side of the road.
FOUR
1
Gregor Demarkian did not know what disoriented him more: the fact that he had a hired car and a driver named Tony Bolero, or the fact that the first thing he saw when he walked into the lobby of the Howard Johnson in Mattatuck, New York, was his own face on the front page of the local newspaper.
The car and the driver made him feel odd in the way that Bennis’s ideas often made him feel odd. The woman had been born and raised rich, and it seemed that that made a more permanent impression than the ten years she’d spent poor and disinherited. She was rich again—richer than her brothers who had not been disinherited—given the fantasy novels and all that, and she spent money in a way that Gregor, who had been brought up poor in a tenement, never could.
He had no idea what the car and driver cost, just as he had no idea what the renovations on the townhouse were going to cost. There were things he thought it better not to ask about. It did occur to him that, if he had asked about the cost of the car and the driver, he might have been able to stage a fight and avoid this trip. It interested him that he had not thought of it until he was already here and past complaining.
His face on the front cover of the newspaper was less disturbing to think about. The newspaper was the Mattatuck Republican American, and the other person on the front page was Sarah Palin. Gregor bought a copy on his way through the lobby and looked it over as he waited at the reception desk. Tony Bolero followed behind with the bags, both Gregor’s and his own. That was another thing about the expense of the car and the driver. The car and the driver had come up from Philadelphia. The driver had to be fed and housed for however long this was going to take.
The headline said: ANDROCOELHO CALLS IN EXPERT FROM PHILADELPHIA. It was a very bad headline. There ought to be some school newspaper editors could go to to learn to write headlines. Maybe there was, and Gregor didn’t know about it.
Bennis had been very clear about her motives when she’d hired the car and the driver.
“George is stable,” she’d said. “You heard the doctor say that himself. He’s not going to die tonight, or tomorrow night. He’s not going anywhere for awhile. You’re not going to do anything for anybody hanging around here making the doctors nervous.”
“He’s old,” Gregor said. “I wouldn’t want to be away if he, if he—”
“Died? Gregor, for God’s sake, you can usually get the word ‘died’ out of your mouth without flinching. George has got Martin here. He’s got Angela. He’s got the children. They don’t need you hovering around, either. And no matter what you think, your presence in George’s hospital is not going to be what will keep him alive, if he gets through this. You do not have magic powers.”
“I know I don’t have magic powers,” he’d said—but then, of course, he’d only been half serious. It wasn’t that he thought he had magic powers for good. It wasn’t that he thought he could keep old George alive. It was that he thought he had magic powers against—not evil, exactly. Maybe “against ill.” There was a part of his brain that was convinced that if he went away, the very fact of his going away would cause all kinds of …
It was an idiotic way to think, and Gregor Demarkian knew it. He looked down his face on the front page of the newspaper again. His face was above the fold. Sarah Palin’s face was beneath it. That said something, but he wasn’t sure what.
“I’m going to leave these here and go out and get the big suitcase,” Tony Bolero said, waving at the pile he’d made of the luggage.
Gregor said, “Okay.” Then he went over to the briefcase and picked it up. It was the briefcase Bennis had bought him for his birthday, or Christmas, or sometime, a few years ago. It was made by Coach in beautiful black leather, and he hadn’t asked what it cost, either.
He put the briefcase on the reception desk and looked up to find a young woman there, looking very neat and professional and young. She was smiling in that way people did when they were required to smile all the time, for business purposes.
“Can I help you?” she asked him.
Gregor suddenly wished Tony would come back, or that he’d brought Bennis along with him. “Gregor Demarkian,” he said. “I think I have a reservation. In fact, I think I have two.”
The young woman did not stop smiling. “Two,” she said, tapping away at a computer. “Let me look that up.” She tapped and tapped. Gregor looked at the caption under his picture. It read:
GREGOR DEMARKIAN, NATIONALLY RENOWNED CRIME CONSULTANT, WILL AID MATTATUCK POLICE IN MORTON HANGING MYSTERY
Everything was capitalized, as if it were a headline instead of a caption. Gregor’s head was beginning to hurt.
“Here it is,” she said. “It’s two rooms, connecting, but you don’t want the connecting door unlocked? Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s no problem, then. We have everything set up for you. If you’ll just sign here,” she passed along a registry book, “and let me have your credit card.”
Gregor handed over his credit card just as Tony came back in with the big suitcase. It was the one Bennis had packed for him herself.
“You never know what to bring,” she’d told him. “You pack six pairs of underwear and five pairs of socks and think you have everything you need. And don’t forget, the driver does errands. He can run out to the laundry if you need him to.”
The young woman came back with his credit card and a large manila envelope. In fact, it was a huge manila envelope, and one of the padded ones, as if somebody had shipped him something from Alaska. Instead, Gregor noticed, it hadn’t even been put in the mail. There wasn’t a postage stamp or postal marking on it.
The young woman handed the two things over. Her smile was in place. It never moved.
“You’re that man,” she said. Then she saw Gregor had the paper and pointed at it. “That man. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. Everybody’s been talking about it for a week, though—the fact that they were going to bring you in. It’s really exciting to have you here at Howard Johnson.”
“It’s not really exciting to have me anywhere,” Gregor said. “I mostly just read through papers and organize them.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do more than that. You’re famous. And everybody wants to know, of course, because everybody knows somebody in the family.”
“You mean you knew Chester Morton?”
“Oh, no,” the young woman said. “I was, I think, six when he went missing. Something like that. I don’t even remember it happening. But he had two brothers and a sister, and the youngest brother was in my class in school. John Bishop High School. That’s over on the West side, near Sherwood Forest. You probably think I sound crazy. Sherwood Forest is a part of town. A nice one. The Mortons live over there. So do I.”
“I’m sure it’s very nice,” Gregor said. He wasn’t sure what else he should say.
The young woman got the computer card keys out and put them on the counter. “And, of course, there are the billboards.”
“‘Billboards’? Plural?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t you know there was more than one? His mother put them up everywhere. There’s even one on the interstate near the exit to downtown Mattatuck. I grew up with those signs. My mother says the first thing I ever read out loud was one of those signs. You pass them all the time. Makes you wonder why he chose that one to hang himself from, or for somebody else to—well, you know what I mean. It makes you wonder.”
“I suppose it does,” Gregor said.
&n
bsp; “She’s been all over the news lately, too, you know. His mother, I mean. You have to admire her. She never gave up hope of finding him. It had to be awful, finding him like that, though. Don’t you think? Oh, and the restaurant is open until ten. I hope you enjoy your stay.”
2
There were messages for him, and the big manila envelope. Gregor took the messages and the manila envelope himself and let Tony Bolero bring the luggage upstairs.
“I feel like an idiot,” he said, when they were both in the elevator. “I feel like I should be in one of those movies where everybody is a movie star.”
“I don’t see why,” Tony Bolero said blandly. “Movie stars don’t usually stay at the local HoJo.”
This was true, but beside the point. Gregor let it go. They got to the floor and then down the wide, carpeted hall to the rooms. Gregor found himself wondering why hotel corridors always seemed to be not just empty, but dead empty, as if nothing lived there. They got into Gregor’s room and Tony put the luggage at the bottom of the closer of the two enormous beds. Gregor threw the messages and the manila envelope on the little desk and thought about a friend of Bennis’s who had come to visit for the first time from France, and who had been absolutely astounded at the size of the beds in ordinary American hotel rooms.
Tony Bolero looked around and nodded, Gregor didn’t know at what. “That’s okay for the moment,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go to my room and get organized.”
“I don’t mind at all. You should get some rest. We’ve been driving for hours.”
“Not even two,” Tony Bolero said. “It’s right over the state line. I didn’t like those mountains, though, I can tell you that. And I hated that damned tunnel. But never mind. I just want to unpack.”
“Go unpack,” Gregor said.
“Don’t forget I’m on your phone,” Tony said. “Speed dial nine. Just press the nine and hold it down—”
“I really do know how to speed dial.”
“Mrs. Demarkian seemed to think—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gregor said. “I know what Mrs. Demarkian thinks. Go unpack. I’ll call you when I need you.”
Tony Bolero shrugged, and went back out into the hall, closing the door behind him with a soft click. Gregor spent half a second thinking that if this were a slasher movie, it would be Tony he’d be wise to be afraid of. Then he sat down at the desk and looked through the messages.
There were four of them. They were all from Howard Androcoelho.
Gregor pushed them aside and opened the manila envelope. It was full of photographs, in garish color, of what appeared to be the body during the autopsy. Gregor shuffled through the first few: the lacerations on the neck; the left arm with scratches on it; the piercing holes for a ring in the right nipple.
He got his phone out and pushed 3. Three was Bennis’s speed dial number. Two was Tibor’s speed dial number. Bennis had programmed the phone herself, on the assumption—apparently—that he wouldn’t be able to do it.
Gregor listened to the phone ring and looked at a few more photographs. He had no idea why anybody would have taken this many photographs of an autopsy. And they were such irrelevant photographs. Usually, photographs of an autopsy first covered the parts of the body in sequence so that a record existed of what was there, then covered a few specific details of special significance at close range. Whoever had taken these photographs had been intent on detailing every hair follicle anywhere one appeared. And more.
Bennis picked up her phone and said, “Hello, Gregor. Are you even there yet? You’ve barely left.”
“I’m here and in the hotel. I haven’t called Howard Androcoelho yet. I may not bother. I may turn right around and come right back. How’s old George?”
Bennis sighed. “Old George is as well as can be expected. Honestly, Gregor, you weren’t doing any good here. You were driving everybody crazy. You were getting in the way of the doctors. He’s in the hospital with a bunch of tubes and monitors stuck in him. He’s up and talking. There’s no indication he’s going to drop dead right this minute.”
“Is he eating?”
There was a long pause on the line. “Not much,” Bennis said finally. “But you can’t expect him to be eating, can you? I mean, he’s just had a, an event—”
“You know, it might be nice if we could all stop saying ‘event’ over and over again and put a name to this thing,” Gregor said. “I might even be calmer. The man is ninety-nine years old and he’s in a hospital where nobody seems to be able to come to a single straightforward diagnosis of what’s wrong with him. And that makes me nervous, because what doctors do is decide that just being ninety-nine is enough to be wrong with him, and then—”
“Gregor, for God’s sake. The doctor is not Jack Kevorkian.”
“Do you know what I think of Jack Kevorkian? I think he was a serial killer who’d figured out how to get away with it. And I don’t think he was alone. I think there are a lot of doctors and nurses and even orderlies in our system who—”
“Really,” Bennis said. “Really. We don’t disagree on doctor assisted suicide. We don’t even disagree on old George. But you weren’t being any help here, Gregor. You really weren’t. You need to be out of the way and doing something. If anything looks like it’s going to happen, I’ll get right back to you. I’ve even got your driver primed to drive back on a moment’s notice in case of an emergency.”
“Does that driver look to you like the human shell of a Stephen King shape-shifting monster?”
“Gregor.”
“I should never have let Tibor talk me into It. And who names a book It, anyway? This is a big toe.”
“What?”
“I’m looking at autopsy photos,” Gregor said, staring down at the one in his hand as if there was something there to find. “Howard Androcoelho sent them over. They were waiting at the desk when I got here. They’re incredible. Somebody took detail pictures, close-ups, of every square half inch on this guy’s body, and there’s no point to any of them that I can see. The one I’ve got in front of me is of a big toe. There aren’t any marks on it. There aren’t any wounds. There’s nothing to see. It’s just a big toe.”
“Don’t they usually take photographs of the body during an autopsy?”
“They do,” Gregor said, “but they don’t go to this kind of trouble with them. You know what this is? It’s that stimulus money. When I first talked to Howard Androcoelho, he told me they’d gotten a whole pile of stimulus money and they’d used it to get themselves a crime lab, or something like that. So now they’ve got a crime lab and they don’t know what to do about it. I wonder where the nearest really professional lab is. Is there a state lab in New York?”
“How would I know?” Bennis said. “I know you don’t want to admit it, but you sound better already. You’re the kind of person who needs to get work done. That’s all there is to it. Go put your mind to something you can get interested in—”
“This is the fingers of the left hand,” Gregor said. “There’s nothing on them. Nothing. There isn’t even a ring, or indentations saying he usually wore a ring. Nothing. It’s just the hand, sitting there, looking like a hand. Oh, except a little too white for comfort. Did I tell you the guy had piercings? So far, I’ve found the holes for a nipple ring and an actual penis ring, which was lovely. Oh, and he’s got a Death Eater tattoo on the inside of his left arm. I’ll have to thank Tibor for taking me to all those Harry Potter movies.”
“Isn’t that odd, that he had the piercings for a nipple ring and he didn’t have the nipple ring? I mean don’t you have to keep those up or they fill in or get infected or something?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. He flipped back through the pictures until he found the one of the right nipple. He tried to get a good look at the piercing holes. He held the picture up to the light. He turned it sideways. He put it down again.
“Gregor?” Bennis said.
“I’m here.”
&nbs
p; “What is it?”
“It’s a tattoo,” he said.
“You’re not making any sense,” Bennis said. “He got some messages written into his body in a tattoo? What?”
“No,” Gregor said. “No, the first time I saw it, I thought it was—I mean, there aren’t any other tattoos on the chest that I can see so far, and I wasn’t really paying attention, and—”
“Good,” Bennis said. “You sound interested in something. That’s all I ask. I want you to be interested in something that isn’t old George for a while.”
3
If there was one thing Gregor Demarkian had learned in all his years of doing this kind of work, in the FBI and out of it, it was this: It wasn’t a good thing to jump to conclusions, but it was usually the case that things were what they seemed. Either the master criminal was a myth, or he was never caught, and they knew nothing about him. Real-life criminals, the kind that got arrested every day, rarely found themselves thinking straight, even when they thought they were. He could think of maybe three ordinary murders in all his career where the answer hadn’t been screamingly obvious from the first. Serial killers were harder, but only because they picked their victims quasi at random. Although that wasn’t completely true, either. Most of the serial killers Gregor had run into over the years had ended up having a personal connection with one of their victims. The only real question had been which one.
He picked up the photograph again. He held it under the light again. He pulled over the desk lamp so that the light was shining directly at what he wanted to see. There was no doubt about it. There was a tattoo. It was a very small tattoo. It was also a bright, vivid red. He put the photograph down.
Most things were what they seemed. Suicides were suicides. Murders were murders. People killed out of blind rage or jealousy or the need for money or just because it was Tuesday. They did not run around making evil plans to conquer the world. They did run around making plans to get away with what they were doing, but those plans almost never worked.
