by Jane Haddam
Gregor nodded. “The advice that Mr. Westervan gave you, was it workable advice?”
Tim Brand shrugged. “It was what I expected,” he said. “The state really doesn’t have a leg to stand on in reclassifying us. If the case goes to court, they will not win it. But if the case goes to court, it will cost us a lot of money we’d be better off spending on the things we do.”
“And Mr. Westervan was going to act as your attorney for this case?” Gregor asked.
“No,” Tim said. “I think he would have, if I’d asked, but it’s not the kind of law he does. I don’t even know if he’s passed the bar in Connecticut. He works in a Wall Street firm. He deals with financial people.”
“Do you have any idea why somebody would want to kill Mr. Westervan?”
“No,” Tim said. “At least, not anybody in Alwych. I’ve got no idea what he was doing on Wall Street, but then, why would somebody from Wall Street come all the way out here to kill him?”
“They probably wouldn’t,” Gregor said.
“I know he seems to have been killed just the way Chapin was, but you can’t tell me he had anything to do with those robberies. The surveillance pictures were everywhere at the time, and the two people responsible were Chapin and Marty. Kyle and I were both much too tall, by half a foot at least. Even Virginia was too tall.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I agree with you.”
“Never mind what you agree with,” Jason Battlesea said. “The congresswoman was here. Do you know what a can of worms that’s going to be?”
Gregor turned and gave Jason Battlesea a long look. He was what he had always been, a reasonably competent man as long as his skills were not subjected to serious stress, and a man who thought politically before he thought forensically or morally. He was obviously scared to death.
“Do you think Congresswoman Westervan murdered her ex-husband?”
“Of course I don’t,” Jason Battlesea said. The words nearly exploded out of him.
“She wouldn’t have,” Tim Brand said. “They liked each other, Kyle and Virginia. They liked each other in high school and they liked each other in college and they got along ever since. He contributed to her campaigns. And the divorce was years ago. It’s not like there are unresolved issues. And she’d be very easily recognized. No matter how discreet she was being, she could never be sure that somebody wouldn’t spot her. I don’t think you stab somebody and then push a body over a wall under those conditions.”
“No,” Gregor said. “I agree with you.”
“It would be a lot better if it was this guy you were all talking about, this Ray Guy Pearce,” Jason Battlesea said. “It would clear the whole thing up, both murders, and we wouldn’t have to bother the congresswoman with questions or get ourselves in the paper being accused of deliberately ruining her campaign for the Senate. Particularly when it turns out she didn’t do it anyway.”
“I could probably get Mr. Demarkian in to see Virginia without too much of a fuss,” Tim Brand said, “as long as he didn’t come accompanied by two patrol cars and a lot of screaming sirens. There’s no reason to make everything a lot of drama if you don’t want to.”
“I’m not making anything a lot of drama,” Jason Battlesea said. “I’m just being realistic here. And realistically—”
“Realistically,” Gregor said, “we should talk to the two young women who found the body. They’re inside the clinic?”
“Yes,” Tim Brand said. “I sent them into the conference room. Marcie will be with them, and so will the policewoman who went with them.”
“Angela Harkin,” Gregor said.
“I just hope she’s empathetic,” Tim said. “Maartje is in her ninth month and stress could bring on labor any minute. I do not want a premature delivery.”
2
Tim Brand led the way back into the clinic and down the corridor to the conference room where he had asked Maartje, Juliette, and Marcie to stay. As soon as they came through the doors, Gregor could hear the hum and bustle of the clinic farther along toward the front. It was not the hum and bustle of work, but of panic and more than a little excitement. Tim Brand heard it, too, and turned to look back at Gregor and Jason Battlesea.
“It really is a light night,” he said. “We have about a third our usual appointments, and I didn’t see a huge line when I came in. They’ve got nothing to do but worry about this.”
“The line’s going to be longer as soon as this gets out,” Jason Battlesea said, “and my guess is that it already is out.”
“That’s my guess, too,” Tim Brand said, looking uneasily up the corridor. He stopped at a door and turned back to Gregor and Battlesea. “Listen,” he said. “Maartje is very pregnant. We’re not entirely, one hundred percent sure, because, like many people who come here, she’s got inadequate medical records, but I think she’s in her ninth month. And the child already has issues. Which means that if you get her too worked up—”
“She could go into labor,” Gregor said. “I’ll try to be careful. But I’d think finding a body would get her more worked up than answering questions.”
Tim shrugged. “You can never tell with pregnant women. I’m Catholic, not fundamentalist. I have no problem accepting the theory of evolution. But I’ve met a lot of pregnant women in my time, and if there’s an evolutionary advantage to the way they behave, I’ll eat dust.”
Tim opened the door, and Gregor looked through it to see the three women sitting around a medium-sized conference table, each with a cup of something in front of her.
“What have you got?” Tim demanded.
The one Gregor supposed was Maartje—because she was so obviously in a late stage of pregnancy—blushed. “Lemon Ginger herb tea,” she said. “And I have in it some honey, which is the kind you told Marcie I should have.”
“Pasteurized,” Tim explained. “You can get some bad forms of food poisoning from honey. You gentlemen want to come in here and sit down?”
“You aren’t going to do anything about what’s happening up front?” Gregor asked him.
“I’ve already been up to look once,” Marcie said. “The line’s getting longer but there’s nothing we can really do anything about yet. When I’m done here, I’ll go ahead and get it organized.”
“And you are?” Gregor asked.
“Marcie Connors. I’m a nurse and the assistant director here.”
“Marcie’s been with me since we opened,” Tim Brand said.
“Were you one of the people who found the body?” Gregor asked.
“Oh, goodness no,” the other young woman said. She would have to be Juliette. “Maartje and I found that thing. I mean, we didn’t actually go out there looking for something. We were going to just sit there and have something with ice in it. Maartje was feeling a little rocky.”
“It was the being pregnant,” Maartje said, looking embarrassed.
Gregor looked the two of them over. “So,” he said. “The two of you went out to the terrace to get some air, and—that was it? You just saw a body?”
“We were going to sit on the wall,” Juliette said. “Everybody does. You don’t have to worry about anything because nobody uses that parking lot up there. And nobody ever comes down the stairs.”
“Of course they do,” Tim said. “I had someone come down the stairs to talk to me not an hour before the two of you went out.”
“Let’s get that straight,” Gregor said. “You came out here—when?”
“Eight o’clock,” Tim said. “Almost exactly.”
“And your visitor came?”
“Right away,” Tim said. “I’d barely had a chance to sit down before I heard the footsteps on the stairs. We talked for maybe ten minutes, if that. Then she left, and I went back inside.”
“Do you know if anybody went out to the back between that time and the time when Maartje and Juliette went out?”
“No,” Tim said.
“I was in and out of the back corridor quite a bit,” Marcie said, “a
nd I didn’t see anybody go out. And Tim was with you, Mr. Demarkian, his office is on the route—”
“We had the door closed,” Tim said.
“Oh,” Marcie said. “That’s too bad.”
“So that was eight to no more than eight fifteen, probably closer to eight ten,” Gregor said. “And Maartje and Juliette went out—”
“It was exactly quarter to nine,” Juliette said. “I checked.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “So we had half an hour to thirty-five minutes. You went right out and headed for the wall?”
“Absolutely,” Juliette said.
“And then what?” Gregor asked.
Juliette looked confused. “Then nothing,” she said. “We went out and we were walking over to the wall and there it was. He was. I mean, it was just lying there.”
“And nobody else was there. In the bushes, or going up the stairs,” Gregor said.
“No, of course not,” Juliette said. “If someone was hanging around, I would have seen him.”
“What about the top of the stairs?” Gregor asked. “Or the space above it? Did you see anybody up there? Did you sense any movement, or hear anything?”
“Not a thing,” Juliette said.
Maartje was shaking her head. “It was very quiet,” she said. “There wasn’t even wind.”
“I think it’s frightening,” Juliette said. “That somebody could have come down into our terrace and stabbed Mr. Westervan like that and nobody even heard anything.”
“It’s more probable that Mr. Westervan was knifed up top, in the parking lot,” Gregor said, “and that he then fell over the wall up there or was pushed. There were what looked like signs of impact on the body and around it.”
“My God,” Juliette said.
“We’ll check it out,” Jason Battlesea said.
“Still, we’re looking at thirty-five minutes,” Gregor said. “That’s not a lot of time.”
They all sat around and looked at each other. A figure from a chair in the corner that Gregor had not noticed before suddenly stirred, and stood up. It was Angela Harkin, in full uniform.
“Maybe it would be a good idea if I went out front and checked on what’s going on,” she said. “I’ve got a uniform, I’ve got a badge, I could probably calm things down.”
“Oh, what a wonderful idea,” Marcie said. She gave Jason Battlesea a look. “You can’t really be thinking of holding these two girls here all night. One of them’s pregnant and the other needs to get home sooner rather than later. She can’t be out all night.”
“I want to go up to the parking lot,” Gregor said. “And we ought to have tech people up there. If he was pushed over the wall, there will be evidence to find.”
“Of course,” Jason Battlesea said. “Of course. Let me go out and check with Held and Mann—”
He rushed out of the room, as if he’d been dying to escape the entire time he was in it.
Gregor and Tim Brand both watched him go.
Then Tim turned to Gregor and said, “Why don’t I go up the stairs to the other parking lot with you? I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”
3
Outside felt like barely controlled chaos. Jason Battlesea had given orders for officers to search the hospital’s overflow parking lot. The crime scene tape had been pulled off the cement stairs. Men were going rapidly up and down.
Gregor surveyed the scene and turned to Tim. “Well?” he said.
Tim nodded. “You’re going to want to talk to Virginia,” he said. “And she’s not going to want to talk to you, but she’s not stupid. She’s going to see the advantage in it. I think I can arrange it.”
“When?”
“Now,” Tim Brand said.
Gregor was surprised. “It’s after ten o’clock,” he said. “In fact, it’s nearly eleven. Does your sister take meetings this late?”
“I’m pretty sure she’ll take this one,” Tim said. “The primary consideration here is discretion. Her best bet is to talk to you when nobody knows she’s talked to you.”
Gregor looked at the stairs. They were empty. Tim started off and Gregor followed him.
He got to the top and stepped off into the large, dark parking lot. There were many more people up here than Gregor had expected from what he had been able to see from below. There were the tech people Jason Battlesea had sent up, but there were also spectators, drawn by the police lights and the clutch of law enforcement officers.
Gregor shook his head. “There is going to be nothing discreet about this,” he said.
“You need to go into the hospital and through the emergency room to the emergency room entrance,” Tim said. “I’ll arrange to have you picked up by somebody who nobody will be looking at, and I’ll arrange to have Virginia let you in when you get to her place. But it’s got to be right now.”
“Yes,” Gregor said.
Tim Brand walked off to a completely empty part of the overflow lot and took out his cell phone.
Gregor watched a state police van pull up with its sirens blaring and its lights whirling. These would be the state forsenics experts.
The tech crew worked as if they knew what they were doing, and Gregor was grateful for that. He moved in a little closer and saw one of the Alwych uniforms tell a statie that he was not to be stopped. He got close to the wall and looked over. There were still a lot of people down there, measuring, testing, talking too loudly.
The back door of the clinic opened and two men came out carrying a gurney. It was obviously time for the body to be gone.
Gregor saw Tim Brand walking back across the parking lot and started in his direction. Tim stopped not halfway to him and beckoned him to come on.
Gregor came. When he got to Tim, they were mostly in the dark, and mostly out of earshot of everybody else, official and unofficial.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Tim said. “You’re going to walk around to the front of the hospital. There’s no other way for you to get in. If you try the back door, about a hundred alarms are going to go off. You’re going to go in through the hospital’s ordinary front door, and then you’re going to go down the wide corridor to your left. At the end of that corridor there will be another door, actually a set of swinging doors. That’s the side entrance to the emergency room. You’re going to go through there, and your ride will be waiting for you in the waiting room.”
“My ride?” Gregor asked.
“Her name is Hope Matlock,” Tim said. “Hope is probably on your list of people to talk to. She was part of Chapin’s group, and she was in the car on the night of the accident. Maybe you could kill two birds with one stone.”
“How will I know who she is? Or will she know me?”
“She’ll probably recognize you on sight,” Tim said. “But you’ll have no trouble recognizing her. She weighs nearly five hundred pounds.”
“Ah,” Gregor said.
“She’s got an absolute crap of an old car. It’s reasonably reliable, but it’s not the kind of thing for Alwych. But nobody will pay attention to it tonight, and nobody who knows her will pay attention to it at any time. She’ll drive you to Virginia’s. She’ll go park somewhere that doesn’t look connected. Then you just text her when you’re done and she’ll come get you. Virginia is waiting for you, and she is more than ready to talk.”
“And you think nobody will know I was there?”
“I think nobody will have a clue,” Tim Brand said. “Trust me. I know Alwych. And I know Alwych on the Fourth of July.”
TWO
1
From the moment Tim had called her to arrange for Gregor Demarkian to visit, Virginia Brand Westervan felt as if she had been shot through with methamphetamine. Everything inside her was speeded up, so speeded up that the fact that Kyle was dead was almost like a dream. The fact of it was there, and it was a raw pain that would not stop aching. But the pain felt old. The ache felt familiar. It was as if all this had happened years and years ago, and hurting had become
as natural to her as eating breakfast.
Virginia heard the car out in the parking lot, the edgy humming of it that announced an old and not very well cared for vehicle. She went to the window and looked out. Nobody was out there. There were no paparazzi in the bushes.
She heard a step outside the front door and went to it immediately. She flung it back without bothering to double-check through the peephole. The man who stood in front of her once the door was open was very tall, taller even than Tim and Kyle, and they’d both been six foot three. Virginia stepped back and let him come in. She closed the door behind him and watched him look around the room. She wondered what, if anything, the room said about her.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing at the living room with its deeply cushioned couch and even more deeply cushioned club chairs. “I don’t think I ever thought about the way I furnished this room before. It’s not a place I entertain. It’s usually only me here, or staffers. Sometimes it’s Tim or Kyle. I can’t really picture Kyle dead. He isn’t the sort of person who dies.”
“Everyone dies,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“I know that.” Virginia thought her voice was too sharp. She tried to soften it. “Maybe I just meant to say that he isn’t the kind of person who dies young.”
Gregor Demarkian took a seat on one of the chairs. He sank into its cushion like a lead weight sinking in pond water. He looked a little disconcerted.
Virginia took her seat on the edge of the couch. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Before we start getting into things, tell me how he died.”
“It’s a little too early to know exactly how he died,” Gregor said. “There will have to be an autopsy. He apparently died by being stabbed in the back with a kitchen carving knife.”
“Like Chapin,” Virginia said.
“Possibly,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Or possibly somebody was just hoping to make it look like Chapin Waring’s death. Killers do tend to be creatures of habit. They do the same thing over and over again if they kill more than once. On the other hand, copycats are common, if for no other reason than because a copycat killing often throws the police off the real scent. We’ll have to see.”