by Jane Haddam
“But why two of them?” Eddie Block said. “It looks like they each make, what, three or four shots? Why put one so close to the house?”
“Oh, I know that,” Molly said. “To get the officers to come on back. I’ll bet there are more of these around somewhere, unpopped ones, just in case those two weren’t enough to get the officers to come looking.”
“Very good,” Gregor said. “There were two officers posted guard, both of them had to be away from the front of the house when Shelley Niederman arrived. Our murderer put one of these sets in the woods, then another closer to the house. Our murderer went around one way and the officers came around the other, and a few minutes later Shelley Niederman arrived and headed for the front door.”
“It was an awful risk to take,” Gary Albright said.
“It was,” Gregor admitted. “But there’s a lot of risk taking here. Judy Cornish died because the house wasn’t empty when she went inside. That was a bigger risk than the one with Shelley Niederman. For one thing, there was Shelley Niederman, sitting out there in that Volvo the whole time the murder of Judy Cornish was going on. But it was the only thing that could have been done, under the circumstances, so it was done. And that’s how we got here.”
“And we can make an arrest?” Gary Albright asked.
“Not quite yet,” Gregor Demarkian said. “There’s one more question I need an answer to. After that, you can arrest away.”
3
There was actually more than one question Gregor Demarkian needed the answer to, but those other questions did not need to be answered before they made an arrest. There were always loose ends at the close of cases, always things he had to keep hounding people for after the main action was over. In this case, he would want to know something of what happened to Alice McGuffie after her several hours in jail. He wished he could look inside that woman’s head and see what had finally sparked that small bit of intelligence, the one that made her realize that that picture she had had something important to say. He wondered if she knew what it was that was important there and decided she probably did not. Alice McGuffie’s hatred and resentment of Catherine Marbledale were so deep and so hot, she would have done anything she thought would get the woman in trouble. It frightened him, sometimes, how much bad emotion there was in the world, as if human beings could never completely accept happiness as a state of mind. So much of what went wrong everywhere, so much of crime, so much of violence, so much of murder, was just this: that human beings cared only about other human beings, and half the time that care was expressed as a wish for annihilation.
He wasn’t making any sense, and he knew it. He was tired, and he wanted to get this done in time to catch Dale Vardan unawares. Or something. That was a wish for annihilation, too. Even so, he had a life waiting for him. He had Bennis, and the wedding coming up, and Tibor and Donna and a dozen other people he hadn’t spoken to in days. He had a world where he felt comfortable.
Now he looked up and down Main Street from his vantage point at the police department’s front door and felt suddenly wonderful that he did not live in a place of this kind. The diner was still closed. The mobile news vans looked deserted. Even Nick Frapp’s church complex seemed to be devoid of people for once. In a day or two things would be back to normal here, but Gregor did not think they would be any better. The problem here was the people themselves, and he didn’t think that would change no matter how long Nick worked at changing it. People had to want to change, and even then they usually didn’t.
He crossed the street and went up the block a little to the offices of Wackford Squeers, the faux old-fashioned sign hanging in the air next to the door. Gregor could see through the front window to the empty receptionist’s desk. He wondered why the secretary had quit and where she had gone when she left. He walked up to the front door and opened it. It wasn’t locked. Secretary or no secretary, Henry Wackford was open for business. Gregor supposed he would have to be. Appointments don’t cancel themselves just because secretaries quit.
Henry Wackford’s office door was closed, but Gregor could hear him in there, walking around, talking to someone, or maybe just to himself. There was nobody waiting in the outer room. Gregory looked at the pictures on the walls. They were bland pictures, reception area pictures, nothing that would offend anyone anywhere: There was a scene of horses in a field. There as a landscape of an old mill over a river. Gregor thought he had seen these same pictures in hundreds of places. He thought he might be wrong.
He listened to the talking coming from Henry Wackford’s office and decided there was only one voice. There was no client in there. Henry Wackford was talking to himself.
Gregor went up to the door and knocked. The talking stopped, abruptly. The door was opened. Henry Wackford looked disheveled and sweaty. It made him seem older.
“Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Gregor walked past him into the office. The pictures on the walls here were no less vapid than the ones in the reception area. Here, though, there were the diplomas, the degrees, the awards, and there were quite a few of each. There was a time when Henry Wackford must have looked like the next big thing.
“There was a lot of promise here, in the beginning, wasn’t there?” Gregor asked.
“I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about,” Henry Wackford said. “Christine’s gone and I’m up to my neck, so if there’s something you need—”
“A confession would be nice,” Gregor said. “Gary and his boys ought to be here in a minute or two, and a confession isn’t strictly necessary, since I know who and how and why pretty thoroughly at this point, but a confession would be nice. It saves time.”
“A confession to what?” Henry demanded. “To murdering a couple of women I barely know?”
“Oh, it’s a lot worse than not knowing them,” Gregor said. “You murdered Shelley Niederman for no good reason at all. It was Judy Cornish who was the accountant before she decided to have children and stop out to raise them. Shelley Niederman was a dance major in college. She wouldn’t have known a disclosure statement from a restaurant menu even if Judy tried to tell her about it. You went to all that trouble. You killed a woman you had no need to want dead. And you hanged yourself when you did it.”
“I’ll repeat,” Henry Wackford said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do,” Gregor said. “You know what your big mistake was? You put Catherine Marbledale’s name on that disclosure form. I suppose you thought it was clever. After all, Miss Marbledale and her sister had just come in to a nice pile of money that nobody knew about, but you did. I wonder how you did.”
“I know no such thing,” Henry Wackford said. “Catherine Marbledale came into money? When? How?”
“About seven years go, I think,” Gregor said. “But you did know this, Mr. Wackford. You had to. It was the only reason to put that woman’s name on that disclosure form instead of making one up out of thin air. The social security numbers didn’t matter. You could have made those up, too. But just so that you know I know, Catherine Marbledale and her sister Margaret won the jackpot in the New Hampshire state lottery. It was a small jackpot, but it was big enough. And New Hampshire is one of only three states in the country that allows winners to remain anonymous, so there was no publicity. But you knew. I don’t know how you knew, but you did, and we can find out how later. We can find out anything if we know what we’re looking for.”
“What difference does it make if Catherine Marbledale won the lottery,” Henry asked. “These murders weren’t about money. They were about religion. And you know it. Those people are dangerous, Mr. Demarkian, and you know it. They’re one step away from being a mob with torches out to burn the heretics at the stake.”
“The difference it makes,” Gregor said, “is that Catherine Marbledale was the one suspect in this case who could not have killed Shelley Niederman under any circumstances and might have had a hard time killing Ju
dy Cornish. But with Shelley Niederman, it’s just impossible. There’s been nothing but trouble up at the school for the last few days. There’s been a fight. There was a sit-in this morning. Miss Marbledale hasn’t been able to run out and get a cup of coffee, never mind set up a meeting with Shelley Niederman, plant delayedaction caps at the back of the Hadley house, and then commit a murder. Never mind the problem with the car. Somebody would have seen her car.”
“Maybe somebody did.”
“But you didn’t need a car,” Gregor said. “It took me a while to get geographically oriented, but you’re right at the bottom of the hill from the Hadley house. All you had to do was go out your back door and go up, on foot. And nobody would have seen you. The buildings would have shielded you from the sight of anyone on Main Street. You called Shelley Niederman and told her—what? That you had information about Judy’s death, but you needed her to confirm it? Or that you had proof of the conspiracy to kill all the supporters of evolution involved in the lawsuit? It doesn’t matter. You just had to get her up there. It didn’t even matter if the cops saw her there. The caps would go off and sound like gunshots. The officers would go investigate. All that mattered was that they didn’t see you, and you were sure that they wouldn’t, the way you had it set up. Are we going to find the caps in your office, in your car, or in your home?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henry said.
“Sure I do,” Gregor said, “and it doesn’t even matter, because Annie-Vic is awake and she’s alert, and there’s a good chance she’ll be able to identify you as the person who beat her up. You left a living witness, and that’s always a bad mistake.”
It was one of those odd moments. Gregor had had a number of them in his career. The air seemed to become almost palpable. It rippled and warped. Henry Wackford had been standing next to his desk. The desk was still piled high with file folders. There were a pair of expensive pens in a brass pen holder. There was a wallet lying out on a green felt blotter.
Henry Wackford sat down.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said again. “You don’t know what it’s like, being stuck out here, living with these people. Welcome to Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. Stupidity is our business, and our passion. We’ve got so much of it, we’re giving it away cheap.”
“The women you killed weren’t stupid,” Gregor said, “and it wouldn’t be an excuse if they were. And you’re not nearly as intelligent as you think you are.”
“I’m intelligent enough to know that I’m not going to give you a confession,” Henry Wackford said. “And I’ve been around the law long enough to know that you’re going to have a Hell of a time proving any of this if I don’t. Reasonable doubt is a wonderful thing.”
“Ah,” Gregor said. “But you keep forgetting. You left that living witness.”
Henry Wackford smirked, and shrugged, and turned away, so that he was looking out his back windows.
There were two state policemen out there, armed.
EPILOGUE
Nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution.
—Theodore Dobzhansky
1
On the day Gregor Demarkian married Bennis Hannaford, the sun was shining, the air was crisp with spring, and forty-two Armenian-American ladies of various shapes and ages were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to make sure there was enough food. It was eight o’clock in the morning. The wedding wasn’t due to start for three hours. The reception wasn’t due to start for four and a half. It didn’t matter. The street had been closed off at both ends, leaving a six-block stretch in between. Police officers had been dispatched to patrol the perimeter so that no incident of any kind could mar the proceedings, except for the ones the guests created themselves. Photographers had taken up their stations on the side streets, hoping to get pictures of some of the people who were supposed to have been invited. This was the greatest thing to happen to Cavanaugh Street since the boys had come home at the end of World War II, and the Armenian-American ladies wanted to be ready.
Gregor stood at the window of his apartment and looked down on it all, feeling vaguely put out because he seemed to be expected to go without breakfast. Normally, he would have gone down the street to the Ararat, but the Ararat was closed. It would be open—but not for business—later, because that was where it had been decided that the buffet would be set up and the bar would be in business. This made a great deal of sense, but it played Hell with his routine, and Gregor didn’t like things that played Hell with his routine.
Of course, if that was the case, it was a mystery as to why he was marrying Bennis Hannaford of all people, but he’d given up trying to figure that out years ago.
He pressed his face to the window pane, trying to get a better look at what was going on. He failed. He turned around and went back through his living room to his kitchen. Father Tibor Kasparian was sitting at the kitchen table with Russ Donahue. They both had cups of the coffee that Gregor had made earlier. They both looked unhappy.
“Is this any kind of a mood for you to be in?” Gregor asked them. “I’m getting married in a couple of hours.”
Tibor and Russ looked at each other. Tibor said, “Krekor, this is not coffee. I think maybe it is coal sands.”
“Sands you can extract coal from,” Russ said helpfully.
Gregor went over to the cabinet and pulled out a box. “Bennis left these,” he said, putting the box on the table. “They’re kind of like tea bags but for coffee. You just boil water in a kettle, I’ve got a kettle around here—”
“I’ll get it,” Russ said. “It’s a good thing you’re getting married, Gregor. You could kill yourself with that stuff.”
“Does Bennis make coffee?” Tibor asked.
“I’ll bet anything she knows how to get it delivered,” Russ told him.
Gregor sat down at the kitchen table and took the glass Russ passed over to him. It wasn’t true that his life was going to change radically after today. He and Bennis had been together for years. They didn’t actually live in the same apartment, but they might as well have. Now there was the town house they had bought up the street, so there would be that change, and new furniture, and things like that. But it was all trivial, all of it, except that it wasn’t. Sometimes Gregor wondered why he had been so insistent that they had to be formally married—but he never wondered for long, and he always knew for certain under his skin.
The water in the kettle was boiling. Russ passed out coffee bags. Tibor looked hopeful.
“The whole thing is going to take forty minutes,” Russ said. “They’re planning it like Napoleon just got a re-run at Waterloo. Does this make any sense to any of you?”
It didn’t make any sense to any of them, but the coffee was finally drinkable, so they concentrated on that.
2
They were in Gregor’s living room an hour later, trying to think of things that would keep them from being nervous, when the subject of the case came up. Of course, they would have had far less cause for nervousness if the phone hadn’t been ringing every ten minutes or so, delivering messages so strange they might as well have come from the moon.
“I’m sending Tommy over for the garlic,” Donna, Russ’s wife, had said at one point. “Bennis says it’s in a white mesh bag on top of the microwave. Just give him the whole bag and send him back right away. We don’t have any time.”
“What’s she need garlic for?” Russ had demanded. “She’s helping Bennis dress, she isn’t doing the food. Is she warding off a vampire?”
“And why does it take them three hours to get dressed?” Gregor said. “Bennis can be dressed and out of this apartment in the morning faster than I can. Have any of you actually seen this dress?”
“I haven’t even seen the maid of honor’s dress,” Russ said, “and I paid for that. And there’s something I’d like to know. What kind of a dress costs forty-five hundred dollars, anyway?”
“Bennis’s cost
almost ten,” Gregor said. “It’s a Caroline Herrera. Whatever that means.”
“Donna’s is one of those, too,” Russ said.
“You said you would tell me about the murders,” Tibor said. “We cannot do this, you must know that. We will all make ourselves crazy.”
“Just don’t lose the rings,” Russ said.
Gregor stretched out on the couch. In the end, he thought, women always behaved like women. It didn’t matter if they had been tomboys in their childhoods, or if they had joined the army and spent six years in the military police. Give them a wedding, and they took forever to get anything done and spent hours making up and getting dressed, and had little nervous breakdowns about whether earrings matched or bows were put on straight. Even Elizabeth had been like that, and he had known it, no matter how hard she had tried to hide it. That had been a wedding on Cavanaugh Street, too. It had been a long time ago.
“Whatever are you thinking about?” Russ said.
“I was thinking I’d already been married in Holy Trinity Church, once,” Gregor said. “It’s funny, but I’d never thought of it before. It’s what we should have told Leda and Sheila and Hannah when they were so upset that Tibor wouldn’t marry us in the church. I’ve already been married once in that church. Well, in the old church before it was blown up, but the same one, ah, institutionally. If you know what I mean.”
“To your first wife,” Russ said.
“To my first wife,” Gregor agreed. “A long time ago. Leda and the rest of them would have understood that, you know. They were even there when I married Elizabeth.”
“It’s all right, Krekor,” Tibor said. “We reached a compromise.”
“I know,” Gregor said. “But I never thought of it, and I should have. There’s something—I don’t know—off about the idea, I guess. Getting married twice in the same place to two different people. Even Bennis would have understood it.”
