Living Witness

by Jane Haddam

  “I know a man,” Gregor said carefully, “a priest in the Armenian church, who would say you were wrong.”

  “Wrong about what?” Gary said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s all about how they think we’re all hicks and hillbillies. I mean that’s what it’s all about for the people in the development. And for Henry Wackford, it’s all about how he’s smart and nobody else is. But I know this isn’t an argument about biology, even if Miss Marbledale thinks it is.”

  “So you’ve put all these people on the suspect list? Henry Wackford? Mrs. Cornish? I thought you said all the suspects called themselves Christians.”

  “All of them except Henry Wackford,” Gary said. “And I don’t really think of him as a suspect. Most people don’t try to kill off their allies. But he was there that morning. They were all there that morning. They were all in and around Main Street. Any one of them could have gone up the hill and got to Miss Hadley. So I’ve tried to be inclusive. But mostly it’s just a mess, and there are reporters. Dozens of them. The trial is due to start at the beginning of the week.”

  Gregor looked around. The landscape was getting less and less urban. He thought they might be out by Hardscrabble Road, where the nuns were. He wondered what Sister Beata Maria would think of Intelligent Design, and lawsuits about Darwin. He knew what Tibor thought about it. He wondered again, as he had in John Jackman’s office, if there had ever been a case in which somebody was killed for not being a Creationist, and then he reminded himself, for the thousandth time, that nobody was dead yet.

  Gary Albright was looking much happier. “This is better,” he said. “We’re almost out in the country. I hate feeling all cooped up in between the buildings.”

  3

  In the end, Snow Hill was almost exactly what Gregor had expected it to be. It was not so far north as Holman, the last small town in Pennsylvania that Gregor had spent any time in, and not so high into the mountains. It didn’t feel quite as claustrophobic. It was probably smaller. When Gary parked the truck in front of the modest little storefront that offered a sign saying Snow Hill Police Department, Gregor wondered where all the people were. It was odd to see a town this deserted in the middle of a good weather day.

  He opened his door and got down to the ground as best he could. He felt as if he was climbing out of a child’s jungle gym, something he hadn’t liked to do even as a child. It really was much colder here than it had been in Philadelphia, but he was prepared. He was wearing a heavy winter coat. It was a city coat. Gregor felt it was wrong for the pickup truck, and possibly wrong for Main Street altogether.

  On his feet and solid ground, Gregor took a moment to look around. There were churches everywhere. The most impressive one was all the way down at the end of the street, a big white and stone modern thing that seemed to have several smaller buildings behind it or maybe attached to it. It was hard to tell. There was a diner, called the Snow Hill Diner—not much to go on there. There was a tire dealership. There was what would have been the most impressive church in town fifty years ago, the Episcopalian one, all stone and arches. He checked one side of the street and then the other. There were a few news vans parked at the curb on the other side, but there was no more sign of the people who belonged in them than there was of the people who belonged to the town.

  Gary Albright had come around to see what Gregor was doing. Gregor pointed vaguely up and down the street.

  “Where’s the public library?” he asked.

  Gary Albright looked embarrassed. “We don’t have one,” he said.

  “You don’t?” That went against the grain of everything Gregor knew about American small towns, at least in the Northeast. Small towns always had libraries. In Gregor’s childhood, they had been staffed by women who had desperately wanted an education and been unable to afford one.

  “Did you never have one?” he asked. “That’s unusual for Pennsylvania, isn’t it?”

  “We used to have one.” Gary looked up one side of the street and down the other. “It wasn’t exactly public public. I mean, it was a public library. The town paid for it. But the town didn’t set it up. Miss Hadley’s grandfather did. It was known as the Hadley public library.”

  “And then what?”

  Gary shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe ten years or so ago, the town council decided it was too much money to go on spending. Not all that many people used it, you know. And there were always, well, you know, problems.”

  “Problems?”

  “With books,” Gary said. “And with the Internet. What you could do with them and what you couldn’t. What you could give to children. And then there was some lawsuit somewhere about the Internet, and about libraries not being able to use filters for the porn, or something, and so the town council decided it didn’t make sense to go on with it. Except I think the thing about the Internet was an excuse, really. Nobody could see the point.”

  “Nobody could see the point of books?”

  “People don’t read much anymore,” Gary Albright said. “It’s a fact. It might not be a good thing, but it’s a fact.”

  “What became of the library building?” Gregor asked. “You didn’t just abandon it, did you?”

  “Oh, no,” Gary said. “The thing was, it turned out the town didn’t own it. The way the original agreement was set up, when Miss Hadley’s grandfather turned the running of the library over to the town, it turned out he hadn’t deeded the building to the town. So it reverted to Miss Hadley and her brothers and all that.”

  “What did they do to it?”

  “They rented it to Nick Frapp,” Gary said. He turned around and pointed down the street to the big modern church Gregor had been so impressed with. “They only charge him a dollar a year. It’s part of that big complex of buildings now that the church has got. Anyway, Nick and his people took it lock, stock, and barrel, except they took out the computers. They’ve got computers in the school. They took all the books, though. Even the, uh, objectionable ones.”

  Gregor didn’t want to ask what the objectionable ones were. “Is that your church?” he asked. “Is that the one where you and the other members of the board—”

  “Oh, no,” Gary said quickly. “That’s a Holiness Church. The Holy Ghost people. You know. Hill people.”

  Gregor drew a long blank, and then it hit him. “The people who handle rattlesnakes,” he said. “And drink poison, and that kind of thing? But I thought that was an Appalachian thing. I thought that was—”

  “Hillbillies,” Gary said. “Exactly right. That’s what they are. Hillbillies. You’re in Appalachia, almost, in Snow Hill. We’re right on the edge of it. Except that Nick Frapp has this thing going. He got them to build that church. And most of them don’t live in the hills anymore, or at least not that far from town.”

  “Do they still handle snakes?” Gregor asked.

  “Not on my watch,” Gary said. “It isn’t legal. And it causes a lot of trouble. I wasn’t on the force when they were still doing that. I didn’t get into police work until I left the Marines, and by then Nick was back from that college in Oklahoma and he’d started this. But I remember it growing up, the sirens, the ambulances out of wherever. We don’t have a full service hospital in Snow Hill. People would die, and the police and the fire department and the ambulances would be tied up for hours, trying to treat these idiots and all the time they’d be shooting at you. But it isn’t a problem anymore. Nick doesn’t put up with it and they all listen to Nick. I think they think he’s God.”

  “And is he part of this lawsuit?”

  “No,” Gary said. There was a strange note in his voice, one that sounded half-strangled, so that Gregor turned to look him straight in the face. He couldn’t read anything there.

  “Nick,” Gary said, “I don’t know how to put this. Nick says he thinks public schools should teach whatever the teachers want, or something like that. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, and it doesn’t make any sense to me now. You’ve got to pay attention
to the things your children learn. If they learn the wrong things, they could—bad things could happen to them. Drugs. Sexual diseases. It’s a nasty world out there.”

  “But Nick Frapp doesn’t mind his children learning about it?”

  “Nick’s children don’t go to the public schools,” Gary Albright said. “The church has a Christian school. All the kids from there go to that. It costs money, but if you’re a member of the church, there’s a fund to make sure your kids can go there even if you can’t afford it. They take other kids, too, you know, from families that don’t belong to their church. Not that many other kids go.”

  “Is that because of religious differences?” Gregor asked.

  “It’s because they are what they are,” Gary said. “Hillbillies. The last thing people in Snow Hill want is to be looked at as a bunch of hillbillies. Ignorant, low-rent white trash. At least, that’s what we all thought, when Nick and I was growing up. What I thought. Nick was a hillbilly.”

  “I take it you think he isn’t one now,” Gregor said.

  Gary Albright shrugged. “Nick is Nick. You’re going to want to talk to him. He was here that day that Annie-Vic got attacked. I think he may have been the last person to talk to her while she was still on Main Street.”

  “Really. Did they get along?”

  “Nick gets along with everybody,” Gary said. “He’s one of those people. You’ve got to wonder what he would have been like, if things had been different. If he’d have been born to different people.”

  Gregor had a thought. “Do you get along with Nick Frapp?” he asked.

  Gary Albright stared up the street at the Holiness Church. There it was again, that Marine Corps face, the face you couldn’t read.

  “I think Nick Frapp is some kind of genius,” he said finally. “I just wonder sometimes what it is he thinks he’s doing.”

  FIVE

  1

  Franklin Hale saw Gary Albright drive up, and when he did he stood stock still next to the big plate-glass window that served as the front wall of his shop until Gregor Demarkian got out, too. Everything about Demarkian made Franklin Hale’s skin crawl. There was just something about those people—secular humanists, whatever you wanted to call them. They exuded their snobbery the way skunks exuded smell. Or something. Franklin sometimes found it hard to put together, and he never found anything hard to put together. It was as if they were looking down their noses at you, but it was worse than that. It was as if they expected you to do something. Franklin wasn’t sure what. It all got mixed up in his mind. But he knew the signs, he really did. Gregor Demarkian had all the signs. Franklin was willing to bet that Demarkian listened to “classical music” when he thought people could hear him. Franklin was fairly convinced that nobody listened to “classical music” for any other reason.

  Of course, there were other people who had all the signs, who weren’t secular humanists. There was Nick Frapp. Just what was going on there, Franklin didn’t know. What was Nick Frapp, anyway, but trumped up hillbilly without the sense God gave a good dog? Franklin remembered Nick’s parents, and Nick, too, back in high school. He’d been able to beat the crap out of any of those kids. They hardly got decent food, and all their mothers drank, and their fathers, too, and then there was the religious stuff, which was just plain weird. The world was not the way it ought to be. Franklin was convinced of this. If the world was the way it ought to be, he wouldn’t be standing here worrying about being arrested for pounding the living shit out of Annie-Vic.

  “If I’d pounded the shit out of her, she’d have stayed pounded,” he said out loud.

  “What?”

  It was Marcey’s voice, coming from behind him. Franklin’s back stiffened. Marcey never came down to the store during working hours. In fact, it was part of their agreement, unstated but adhered to religiously for years. Marcey never came down to the store and she was never sick for church. Those were the only two rules that mattered. Franklin didn’t care about anything else. And yet here Marcey was, hanging on to a stack of tires in a display and on the verge of tears. Marcey was always on the verge of tears.

  “I thought we agreed that you didn’t like to come down here,” Franklin said. He was still looking out the window. Gregor Demarkian and Gary Albright seemed to be talking about something. Gregor Demarkian was looking up and down Main Street as if it were an exhibit in a zoo. Well, that was what those people thought, wasn’t it? They thought that all decent people were exhibits in a zoo.

  “Franklin,” Marcey said.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” Franklin said. “It causes trouble. It upsets the staff. You know that.”

  “But Miss Marbledale called me.”

  “So what?” Franklin said. “Miss Marbledale called me, too. About that damned new school building. Somebody whacked Annie-Vic and now everything is going to Hell.”

  “Well, this isn’t about the new school building, is it?” Marcey said. “It’s about Janey. And it’s not the first time. We’re going to have to do something, Franklin. I don’t think Barbie McGuffie is a good influence.”

  “Of course Barbie McGuffie is a good influence,” Franklin said. “She belongs to our church. Barbie and Janey have been going to Vacation Bible School together for years.”

  Marcey took a deep breath. It was loud. Franklin could hear it. He nearly cringed. There she was, and her voiced sounded as if somebody had fuzzed it up around the edges. Marcey always sounded as if she were talking through velvet. Franklin bit his lip. Gregor Demarkian had gone into the police department building with Gary Albright.

  “I don’t think it’s right,” Franklin said. “Bringing somebody in from outside like that. If you’re going to bring in somebody from the outside, you bring in the state police. That’s what they’re for.”

  “Franklin, please. Janey’s in detention. And it’s all because of Barbie McGuffie. Barbie McGuffie—”

  “Barbie McGuffie is a nice kid who’s being persecuted,” Franklin said. He turned away from the window and looked at Marcey straight on. There was nothing left to look at in the street. He couldn’t avoid it.

  “Franklin,” she said, and she wasn’t near tears anymore. She was crying. “Please. They did something, they wrote something on the back of that girl, that Cornish girl—”

  “We should have a Christian school here,” Franklin said. “A real Christian school. Not that hillbilly version Nick Frapp put up. We should have a place to send Janey so she doesn’t get harassed by people like that.”

  “By Barbie?” Marcey said. “You think Janey is being harassed by Barbie? Maybe—”

  “Of course Janey isn’t being harassed by Barbie,” Franklin said. Marcey’s expression fell, but he ignored it. He ignored the tears that were streaming down her face. He ignored the mess that was happening to her mascara. “It’s that Cornish girl, and all the rest of them. The people from the development. The secular humanists. What right do they have to come in here and tell us how to run our school? They don’t know anything about this town. And they never will know, because they never stay, and you know it.”

  “Oh,” Marcey said. She put a hand up and wiped at her cheek. The gesture smeared black mascara across her face in a wide arching sheet.

  “For God’s sake,” Franklin said.

  He grabbed her arm and headed for the employees’ bathroom. That was the only kind of bathroom he had in the store. He didn’t believe in executive bathrooms, putting himself ahead of his people. It only caused resentment, and people didn’t work as hard. He didn’t believe in customer bathrooms, either, because when you put those in, people came in from off the street just to use them, and they never bought tires.

  There were people in the store and they were looking at Marcey. Franklin got her behind the counter then into the corridor in the back.

  “For God’s sake,” he said again. “You’re making a scene. There are customers out there.”

  “I’m just worried,” Marcey said. “I’m worried about
Janey. I’m worried about you. You tell me it’s all the fault of the secular humanists, but it doesn’t matter if it is, does it? I mean, Janey is in just as much trouble, and you say you’re the chief suspect in a mugging, or whatever that was, you say they think you—”

  “Henry Wackford thinks I did,” Franklin said. He pushed Marcey down on the closed toilet seat and got the door shut and locked behind him. “Sensible people don’t think that. How much of that stuff did you take, for God’s sake? You’re a mess.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcey said. “I’m just worried. And Miss Marbledale called to say Janey was in detention, and I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer. All I ever got was people from the store and they kept saying you couldn’t come to the phone, so I came down here, I had to. You have to see that.”

  “Catherine Marbledale is a secular humanist, too,” Franklin said. “I don’t care what it is she pretends to be. Where did you get them? I thought I had them all locked up.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcey said again, and this time she sounded mulish. That was a very bad sign. That was the worst sign there was. “I had a good reason to talk to you. I did. You shouldn’t tell the people here not to put me through to you. I’m your wife. You’re supposed to talk to your wife.”

  “I didn’t tell them not to put you through to me. I was probably busy.”

  “You’re just lying,” Marcey said, and now her voice had gone from velvet to acid. It never took more than a moment. “You lie to me all the time, Franklin. You shouldn’t do that, and you know it. I had a right to talk to you. I had a real problem. You never want to deal with the real problems. You just want to yell and scream about secular humanists, and in the meantime that poisonous girl is turning your daughter into a—into a something. I don’t know what. But you won’t listen.”