by Jane Haddam
“Right,” Bennis said.
“And then there’s Tibor, too. Maybe getting him away from here will help. Maybe if he has something else to do with his time besides sit around and brood about domestic terrorism and the disintegration of the American soul, he’d snap out of it and be Tibor again.”
“He’s got an entire church to run,” Bennis pointed out. “And he’s running it. He’s got a school to run, too. I know he’s been depressed, Gregor, but he really hasn’t withdrawn from the world. He’s been right in there the way he always has been.”
“No.” Gregor shook his head. “Not the way he always has been.”
“I think you’re kidding yourself,” Bennis said. “I think this has less to do with Tibor than it has to do with yourself. I think you’re using Tibor as some kind of cover.”
“As a cover for what?”
The plate glass front door of the Ararat swung open. Bennis and Gregor looked up. Old George Tekemanian was limping in on unsteady legs, followed by a bustlingly important Hannah Krekorian and an over-made-up Sheila Kashinian. Hannah was gray-haired and plump and dowdy and downtrodden looking, in spite of the fact that she had to have at least a couple of million dollars. Sheila was wearing a three-quarter-length mink coat dyed into candy pink and lime green stripes, God only knew why. God only knew why Sheila Kashinian did anything. Old George looked embarrassed to be with her.
“That’s an interesting outfit,” Bennis Hannaford said, sipping at her coffee at last. “I wonder where she managed to find it.”
“Maybe she had it made custom.”
“Sheila doesn’t do custom. It takes too long. If we ask old George over here, do you think we’ll get Sheila, too?”
“We’ll probably get Sheila no matter what you do.”
“True.”
Bennis swung her legs out of the booth and stood up. She was a small woman, no more than five four and no heavier than a hundred and five pounds, but sitting down she had a more commanding presence. Gregor watched her stride across the restaurant and stop where old George was standing just inside the front door. Hannah and Sheila crowded in, wanting to hear—whatever.
Out on Cavanaugh Street, the sunlight looked brittle, like cheap glass. Gregor could see the front of Lida Arkmanian’s big five-story town house, its front door sporting a wreath of pink and blue ribbons in spite of the fact that Lida was away and likely to stay away for a while. Mara Kalikian had just had a baby, and Bennis and Donna Moradanyan were having a party for it after its christening next Sunday. Her, Gregor thought. A party for her. The baby was a girl. Maybe Bennis was right to say that this whole thing about going to North Carolina was really about himself, and not about Tibor. Sometimes these days, he seemed, to himself, almost as distracted and out of focus as Bennis.
Once, years ago, in the month when his wife Elizabeth had started the last serious agony of her dying, Gregor had stood at the edge of a ditch on the side of a road in rural Massachusetts, looking down at the bodies of five small boys. The picture was more clearly in his mind now than anything he could make himself look at: the arms and legs twisted and entwined; the reinforced toes on the shoes of the Massachusetts state policeman who had driven him out from Boston. While it was happening, it had all seemed very far away. Elizabeth was dying. That was what had been at the front of his mind. Elizabeth was dying and there was nothing they could do about it anymore, no way left to save her, no way left to lie to himself that it would finally turn out all right. He had been, at that moment, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Department of Behavioral Sciences. His job was to hunt and find and capture serial killers. A serial killer had killed those boys—and would probably kill more, given time, given freedom, given opportunity.
Up at the front door, Bennis had finished talking to Hannah and Sheila and old George. She was leading them across the room, toward the window booth and Gregor. Gregor rubbed the side of his face with the flat of his hand and took a deep breath. He had never caught the man who had murdered those boys. Nobody had. Gregor didn’t know if he was still out there killing someplace, or if he had died, or if he had been jailed for something else, or if he had gone dormant, as some of them sometimes did. Donna Moradanyan’s son Tommy was now about the age those boys had been. Watching Tommy flying down the sidewalk on Cavanaugh Street, it struck Gregor every once in a while that he might be in danger.
Of course, Gregor thought now, scooting over on the bench to give old George room to get in, everybody was in danger, all the time. That was the lesson of Oklahoma City. It was the lesson learned daily on every city street in America. There was no real safety and there never would be—not even on Cavanaugh Street.
Old George piled onto the bench and Hannah came after him, shoving Gregor all the way to the window, so that his arm was pressed against the glass. Sheila got in on the other side of the booth next to Bennis, shrugging her mink coat off her shoulders and letting it spread out around her. Bennis kept looking at the coat, as if she wanted to touch it, but was afraid to.
“Guess what I heard,” Sheila announced, waving frantically for Linda Melajian. “Helen Tevorakian’s niece Marissa is going out with a Muslim, and now they both want to convert to Buddhism and get married in a temple in Salt Lake City.”
Gregor thought Salt Lake City was where the Mormons were—but he let that go. Religion made his head ache, and Sheila Kashinian made it ache even worse. He wanted to go over and find out how Tibor was, but it was too early. It wouldn’t have been, in the old days, but lately Tibor stayed up all night watching CNN. Gregor had a terrible feeling Tibor stayed up all night talking to himself, too, but he couldn’t prove it.
I should have made the world safe when I had a chance, Gregor thought, and then flushed bright red. Had he ever thought anything quite so stupid before in all his life? He didn’t think he had.
Linda Melajian held her Pyrex pot of coffee over his cup and raised her eyebrows, but Gregor shook his head.
The way this day was going, the last thing he needed was more caffeine.
2
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Gregor was standing in the small courtyard behind Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church. He could see a light shining through the vines from Tibor’s front window. That, he knew, would be the light in the foyer. Tibor must have gone to bed without doing his usual spot check of the house. Maybe Tibor hadn’t gone to bed at all. Gregor could just imagine how it had been: the darkened living room full of books; the television flickering; the icons propped up on the bookshelves and the fireplace mantel, looking down on it all in that blind wall-eyed way all icons seemed to have.
Gregor shook his head. The sun was hot and hard, even though it was still low on the horizon. He could hear faint sounds of traffic in the distance. He was still right in the middle of the city of Philadelphia, even though it didn’t look like it here. He walked up to Tibor’s front door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. When there was no answer a second time, he got his keys out of his pocket and searched through them for the big clunky old-fashioned one that fit Tibor’s door. He kept telling Tibor how important it was to get some kind of modern security put in. At the very least, in the middle of the city like this, Tibor ought to have a deadbolt and a chain. On matters of security, however, nobody on Cavanaugh Street listened to Gregor Demarkian. He was only the man who was supposed to be the expert.
He shouldn’t have worried about Tibor sitting alone in the dark. It wasn’t only the foyer light that was on. Through the archway, Gregor could see all four lamps in the living room, all lit. He could see the television, too. That wasn’t lit. He moved carefully through the apartment, holding himself in so that he wouldn’t brush against anything. He was a big man, six four and carrying more than twenty extra pounds. The halls in Tibor’s apartment were narrow and their walls were lined to the ceilings with paperback books. Aristotle’s On Nature, in the original Greek. Mickey Spillane’s The Body Lovers. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, in
the Vatican edition, in Latin. Judith Krantz’s Scruples. Here and there, Gregor found a lightweight book club edition of something or other, mostly steamy sex novels of the throwaway variety. Bennis had given Tibor a membership in the Literary Guild for his birthday.
The living room was empty. The seats of the chairs were all full of books, as usual. The books had dust on them, which they never used to do, before Oklahoma City. Gregor went to the television set and ran his hand along the top of it. That was thick with dust, too. Tibor was supposed to have a housekeeper who came in every couple of weeks or so—the church paid for one—but either she didn’t come or she’d given up trying to make the apartment livable. Tibor being Tibor, he probably sat her down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, got her to talk about all the problems she had ever had in her life, and never let her get any work done at all.
Gregor opened the door to the kitchen and looked in. The lights were all on in there, too, both the overhead and the small ones built in under the cabinets to make it easier to work at the counters. The kitchen table was covered with books, except in one small corner, which had a plate and fork on it, both clean. The sink was clean of dirty dishes, too. There was a straw basket full of apples on the counter next to the stove. The apples looked new and shiny. The basket looked full, as if it had been delivered as a gift and not touched since. Gregor took a deep breath and counted to ten.
“Tibor?” Gregor said finally.
There was a grunt from the direction of the pantry. Gregor had to make himself take a deep breath again. He didn’t know what was wrong with him these days. He was always imagining disasters—and he had never been like that, never, not even in the worst of Elizabeth’s dying. Now he was imagining Tibor flat on the pantry floor, out cold, the victim of a stroke or a heart attack. Gregor was a much better candidate for either than Tibor would ever be. Still, Gregor could see it. The dark pantry. The shelves of canned corn and sacks of flour. The smell of carrots and potatoes, still not washed clean of the dirt they grew in.
“Tibor?” Gregor said again.
“I am coming,” Tibor said again, in a perfectly clear and normal voice.
Gregor felt himself blushing for the tenth time that morning. He went over to the pantry and looked in. There was an overhead light, and it was on. There was also a clip-on extension lamp on the table Tibor had set up to work on, the only table in the house that was not so thoroughly covered with books as to be unusable for any other purpose. What this one had on it was a brand-new IBM PC with a four-color display screen and a host of attachments Gregor couldn’t begin to comprehend. Tibor was tapping away and humming a little under his breath. He had a Sony Walkman plugged into one ear. The other earplug was dangling, and through it Gregor could hear the thin sounds of Gregorian chant. He looked at the display screen again. He didn’t know much about computers—in fact, he didn’t know anything; he had been very, very happy to retire from his job before everybody at the Bureau had been required to know how to run one—but he knew expensive when he saw it, and this was very, very expensive.
“Where did this come from?” he asked Tibor.
Tibor took the headphone off his head and laid it down next to the keyboard. “Bennis got it for me. It’s much easier to use than the one in the church office, Krekor. I have no problems with this one at all.”
“That’s good. What are you doing with it?”
Tibor pointed at the screen. “There are things called bulletin boards, Krekor. And discussions. People from all over the world share information. Even people from places like China, where they aren’t supposed to. It’s a wonderful thing.”
“I’m sure it is. What are you sharing information about?”
“Sometimes I talk to people about religion. There is something called CR NET. It is for traditional believing Catholics who want to know more about the Church. I talk on that sometimes.”
“And?”
“There’s a thing called Dorothy L. It’s about mystery stories. Sometimes I talk to people on that, too.”
“And?”
Tibor looked down at the screen again. It was glowing, just like computer screens glowed in science fiction movies. Under the harsh light of the overhead, it looked too oddly, too intensely blue. Tibor looked enormously tired. He was a small man, wiry and much too thin. Years of living badly fed and badly treated had taken their toll on him. Gregor could see the lines in the sides of his face, deep and straight, and the white-skinned scars that wove their way through them. Tibor’s face always looked, to Gregor, as if it should hurt him. Tibor’s body always looked as if it had been wrung out like a piece of laundry by a giant’s hand, and never quite unwound again.
“Who else do you communicate with on that thing?” Gregor asked again.
Tibor’s shoulders gave a mighty shrug. “Yes, yes,” he said. “There are here other people who are interested in the bombing. That is the case. I know you don’t approve of it, Krekor.”
“I don’t think it’s good for you.”
“I don’t think it’s good for anybody, Krekor. How could a thing like this be good for anybody?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, I know. I know. It isn’t what you think, though, Krekor. It is not an unhealthy obsession.”
“There was a week back in May where you didn’t eat for three days straight. At least.”
“That was back in May. I will admit, Krekor, when it first happened, I was distraught. I had reason to be distraught.”
“You were nuts.”
“But that was a long time ago, Krekor. I’m not like that now. I’m just… interested.”
“Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Yes, Krekor. Of course I got to sleep.”
“In your own bed?”
“I fell asleep on the couch. I was reading something. I often fall asleep on the couch, Krekor. I was doing that long before there was a bomb in Oklahoma City.”
“What were you reading?”
Tibor’s arms fluttered in the air. “It was only a periodical, Krekor. It was nothing important.”
“It was about the bombing. Or about the militias. Or something. You were at it again.”
Tibor tapped something into the keyboard, then stood up. A small white marker began to pulse in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.
“I think you make too much of this,” he said. “You worry about me without need. I am concerned, yes, I am worried, but so are a lot of people. It isn’t anything strange. It’s you who are beginning to be strange.”
“Why?” Gregor asked. “Because I care about what happens to you?”
“I am going to make some coffee now, Krekor. You should sit down with me and have some. And I have some yaprak sarma in the refrigerator that we could heat up in the microwave. Hannah Krekorian brought it over last night. You should relax a little, Krekor. It is you who are beginning to be distraught.”
“I came to ask you to go someplace with me,” Gregor said. “To North Carolina. I’ve been asked on a case.”
“You’ve been asked on a case? And you want me to go with you?”
“That’s right. There’s a lot of religion in it. The case, I mean. I thought you could be a kind of expert witness.”
Tibor swayed back and forth on his legs. “You never want any of us to go with you on a case. You never consider it safe. Why do you want me to go with you now?”
“I thought it would take your mind off—all this,” Gregor said. “I thought the change of pace would be good for you.”
“Krekor, if I want a change of pace, I will go to the Bahamas with Lida. When are you supposed to leave for this case?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Tibor said. “Krekor, I am responsible for the church here. For the services on Sunday. For baptisms and funerals. For weddings and religious instruction. I can’t just pick up tomorrow and go off. I would have to make arrangements.”
“You’ve done it before. It’s n
ot that hard to make arrangements.”
“On less than one day’s notice, it’s impossible. Krekor, Krekor, you are not making any sense. You have not made any sense for weeks. It is you I think who needs to see the doctor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gregor said.
Tibor grunted. “I will go now and make something to eat. I will make you at least a cup of coffee. I am being serious when I say I think you should see a doctor, Krekor. I do not think you have been very well for weeks. I have been worried about it.”
“You’ve been worried about it,” Gregor said.
But Tibor was gone. Gregor could hear him in the kitchen, rummaging around in the books and the utensils. There was that breathless rush that meant that the gas on one of the gas burners had been lit. It hadn’t occurred to Gregor that Tibor would refuse to come with him to North Carolina. What was he supposed to do now?
Crash. Splatter. Whoosh. Tibor was making coffee. Tibor was making coffee so awful, no human being would be able to drink it, although Tibor would. Tibor could do this even with instant coffee. Gregor wasn’t sure how.
Gregor looked down at the computer screen. The pulsing white in the lower left-hand corner of the screen said downloading. The machine was making absolutely no sound at all.
I’m perfectly fine, Gregor told himself. I haven’t felt this well for years.
He rubbed the back of his neck reflexively and stretched. He was tense, but he was sure it was just that he was so worried about Tibor. He was jumpy, but that was worry about Tibor, too.
If he had been having nightmares lately, full-scale and out of control—well, there was nobody in the world who knew about that but him, and nobody who was going to.
Two
1
IT WASN’T EASY TO get to Bellerton. There was an Amtrak train to Raleigh—making it unnecessary for Gregor to fly—but after that you were on your own. There were dozens of numbered highways on the map, two-lane blacktops, probably. They were useless if you didn’t drive, which Gregor didn’t. There were dozens of little towns, too. Some of them had names like Hendersonville and Cary and appeared on the map in bold black type. Others had names like Sallow Bridge and Lee Hollow. Were there really places with names like that? Gregor Demarkian was an urban man. He was so urban, in fact, that he had spent almost none of his time in the Federal Bureau of Investigation working in the South. The South was traditional seasoning territory for new special agents, too—or it had been, in those days. There had been a lot of prejudice back in the days when Gregor had first joined the Bureau. You were supposed to be Anglo and Protestant, a “real American,” to qualify. There he had been, huge and hulking, with his odd name and his college degrees. He still had a strongly physical sense of what it had been like to sit in J. Edgar Hoover’s office on the afternoon of his final interview. He could still see the two special agents who had brought him into the Great Man’s presence. The agents were tall and slim in that maddening North European way. Even their bones were elongated and fine. Hoover was something else again. Gregor had known immediately that the man was a raving psychopath. The odd thing was that nobody else seemed to know it. The two special agents had kept their eyes trained on a point somewhere behind old J. Edgar’s head. Gregor had kept his hands folded in his lap, hoping nobody would see how badly his palms were sweating. At that moment, he had wanted to be a special agent more desperately than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He was scared to death that that crazy old man would take it away from him.
