Baptism in Blood

by Jane Haddam

  Then Zhondra Meyer seemed to soften. Rose’s stom­ach twisted and leapt.

  “Come inside for a minute,” Zhondra said. “Come and talk to me. I think there are a few things you ought to know.”

  As far as Rose MacNeill was concerned, she had been waiting for a chance like this for years, and now it was here, where she could almost hold it. She wondered if it would be the way she had imagined it to be, or even better.

  2

  HENRY HOLBORN HAD SEEN the Bellerton Times with the picture of Carol Littleton on it, and bought a copy. He had seen several out-of-town papers, too, including the Raleigh News and Observer, but he hadn’t bought any of those, not even the ones with his own picture on them. In the early days of his career, he had always bought a copy of any periodical that mentioned him, even if the mention was meretricious and awful. Lately he didn’t bother to read his publicity. They all said the same things, these people, espe­cially the ones from the very big cities in New York and California. They all seemed to think that giving your life to God turned you into the equivalent of Bigfoot—a hairy mythical monster who was likely to bite.

  Henry Holborn was standing in the middle of the big room in the basement of Town Hall that served as the office of the Bellerton Police Department, next to the desk Clay­ton Hall was using to do his paperwork. It was exactly one minute before noon, and Jackson had already gone down to lunch. He was probably down at Betsey’s, talking it all over with anybody who would listen, including any stray report­ers who might happen to be around. Henry wished he had Janet with him for this, but she was gone, too, to the mall, to do some shopping.

  “We can’t let the world stop just because you got arrested,” she told him, when he asked her to come with him this morning. “Even if you did get arrested in a just cause. I’ve got three Girl Scout meetings this week and I’m not ready for any one of them.”

  Henry Holborn wasn’t ready for Clayton Hall, not really, but he waited as patiently as he could. This was what was known as carrying your cross with Christ, al­though Henry thought that might be more of a Catholic thing than a Protestant one. He thought he would preach on it one Sunday, when the congregation had had enough of thinking positive thoughts.

  Clayton was hammering away at a computer keyboard with one hand and trying to wrestle legal-sized papers into submission with the other. Henry drew a chair up from one of the other desks and sat down.

  “For the Lord’s sake, Clayton, what all are you doing? We’ve been at this for half an hour.”

  “You’re the one who had to go marching on up to Bonaventura carrying a cross and singing ‘That Old Time Religion.’ By the way, Henry, if that’s what your choir sounds like on Sundays, I think I’ll just skip it.”

  “You’ll skip it no matter what the choir sounds like. And of course they don’t sound like that. The congregation sounds like that. That’s why we have a choir.”

  “Maybe you ought to get yourself some heavenly in­tervention. I’ve heard of tone deaf, Henry, but that was pitiful.”

  “Why don’t we just process this stuff and let me get out of here? I’m not doing myself any good down here and I’m not doing you any good down here, either.”

  “Just following the rules, Henry, just following the rules.”

  “Well, you may be following the rules, Clayton, but you know darn well you’re not going to get me prosecuted for anything on this count. You don’t want to and nobody in town wants you to.”

  “Zhondra Meyer wants me to.”

  “Ms. Meyer has a lot of money, but she’s still just summer people.”

  “Ms. Meyer has a very fancy law firm in New York,” Clayton said patiently, “and I’ve got Gregor Demarkian to worry about, too. We at least have to look like we’re trying to play it straight.”

  “But we are playing it straight, Clayton. This whole thing is ridiculous. What are you going to charge me with?”

  “Trespassing.”

  “There’s a public right-of-way right through the back of that property and there has been since 1866.”

  ”Interfering with a police investigation,” Clayton said. “Obstructing justice.”

  “I didn’t obstruct justice. Not for a minute.”

  “I’m going to have to charge you with something, Henry. That’s just the way things are these days. The time is long gone when we could just patch things up among ourselves.”

  “Do you think that makes the world a better place, Clayton? Because I don’t.”

  “What I think about it doesn’t matter a damn, Henry. The world is the way it is. There’s nothing either you or I can do about it.”

  “There’s something God can do about it.”

  Clayton Hall dropped his papers into a messy little pile on the desk. “Don’t preach God to me, Henry,” he said. “I’ve known you too damn long. I was there the first time you ever went wild, and I’ve got vivid memories of four or five times since then.”

  “I’ve quit since then, Clayton.”

  “I know, and more power to you, but I meant what I said. Don’t preach God to me. Someday I may meet an angel from Heaven with a message to me from the Al­mighty, and him I’ll listen to, but you I won’t, and that’s final.”

  Henry got off his chair and went over to the window to look out on the window well and the feet of the people passing along this side of the building. Everything seemed so normal out there, and yet he knew it wasn’t. Everything seemed so calm, and yet it was about to explode. Clayton might not want to listen to any more talk about God, but it was God who wanted to be heard, and Henry’s job was to make Him heard.

  “Clayton?” he asked. “Do you like this man, this Demarkian?”

  “Yes, I do,” Clayton said. “He has a few things in common with people around here. He can look pretty slow on the surface. He isn’t slow at all.”

  “No, I didn’t think he was slow. But I wonder what he’s really doing down here. Why would a famous man like that want to come to Bellerton?”

  “That’s what he does, Henry. He goes places where there are murder investigators who need an expert to con­sult with. He’s an expert.”

  “And you think he’s here because the murder of Ginny’s baby got so much publicity.”

  “Because of that and because he’s a friend of David Sandler’s. You know, Henry, we’ve been over all this be­fore. Is there some point you’re trying to make here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And that was the truth, Henry thought. He really didn’t know. He was just tired and cranky and worried, and everything seemed to be going wrong. Having somebody like Gregor Demarkian around, a complete stranger who wasn’t tied to them in any way, just seemed wrong.

  “Sit down again now and sign these papers,” Clayton Hall said. “Then we’ll be done and you can go.”

  “All right.”

  “And you tell your people that I expect each and ev­ery one of them who was involved in that nonsense yester­day to come in and see me. And tell them not to think I didn’t see them, because I did. I saw every one of them. And if you talk to Ricky Drake—”

  “I’ll talk to Ricky,” Henry said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Clayton handed Henry a pen. “You attract loose can­nons, Henry. Ricky Drake is one of them. Bobby Marsh is the prince lunatic of all time. You’ve got to understand that if you attract them, you have to control them.”

  “I do control them. God controls them.”

  “If God controls them, He’s doing a sloppy job. Get a move on with the signing, Henry. I want to go to lunch, myself.”

  Usually, when Henry Holborn was in town, he had lunch at Betsey’s just like everybody else. He didn’t think he would do that, today: Loose cannons, Clayton called them. Henry knew boys like Ricky Drake and Bobby Marsh. He had been one himself. It was the other people he was worried about, the quiet ones, the ones who never made any trouble until, wham, one day they snapped, and there you were.

  People seemed to be snapping righ
t and left around Henry Holborn these days, and if the Devil wasn’t respon­sible for it, he didn’t know who else it could possibly be.

  Six

  1

  IT WASN’T AS EASY to get in to see Ginny Marsh as Gregor had hoped it would be. Clayton Hall called for him from one of the desks in the police department and then put him on the phone to talk to the young lawyer in Charlotte who had agreed to take the case. He had expected hostility, or at least aloofness. No matter what the papers said Gregor Demarkian was going to do in Bellerton, what he was do­ing was working with the police. Instead, he got a polite voice with the second district drawl of the trip, sounding curious. It also sounded tired. The lawyer’s name was Su­san Dunne, and Gregor thought she must work too hard and sleep too little. Everything she said had that dazed quality to it, as if she found it difficult to concentrate even on emergencies.

  “I looked you up when I found out you were in Bel­lerton, working with the police,” she told Gregor, yawning into the phone. “You’ve had a very interesting life.”

  “Have I?”

  “Reading about you is like watching that old Perry Mason television show. The real murderer is never the mur­derer the police already arrested. Real life is almost never like that, you know.”

  “Real life is the only life I’ve got, Ms. Dunne. Do you believe Ginny Marsh killed her baby?”

  It wasn’t the kind of question a lawyer had any right answering about a client. Susan Dunne said, “What inter­ests me about this case is that the police have far less to go on than they think they have. I mean, it isn’t an incriminat­ing factor against Ginny Marsh as an individual that in other cases of this kind it has happened, maybe even fre­quently, that the mother killed the child.”

  “No,” Gregor agreed, “it isn’t.”

  “Sometimes the police seem to have made up their minds, Mr. Demarkian. Sometimes they seem to be already seeking the death penalty.”

  “I’m surprised Ginny Marsh is still in jail.”

  “So am I,” Susan Dunne said. “You wouldn’t believe what the court system is like where you are, talking about cro—”

  “Cronyism?”

  “I didn’t say any of this.”

  “I wouldn’t repeat it.”

  “Even so.”

  “Would you mind telling me where you’re from, Ms. Dunne?”

  “I’m from New Orleans.”

  “Ah. And where did you go to law school?”

  “I went to Yale. I went to Yale College, too, if you have to know. What is all this about? Are you worried that Ginny doesn’t have adequate representation?”

  “No. I wanted to confirm my impression that you were not a small-town woman.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’ve heard that one. Small towns run differently from other places. Well, they shouldn’t. And my client, who has not been formally charged with the murder, should not be sitting in the town jail just because the judge knew the town attorney in high school.”

  “I didn’t say she should.”

  “It’s hard to tell just what you’re saying, isn’t it, Mr. Demarkian? All right. Let’s do it this way. I’m due to come down to Bellerton tomorrow morning. Let’s meet in the main foyer of Town Hall at nine o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Assuming you’ve got the permission of the police, I’ll bring you down to talk to Ginny.”

  “Thank you. And I do have the permission of the police.”

  “I’ll stay with you the whole time you do talk to her.”

  “All right,” Gregor said.

  “No matter who it is you are or who you think you are, this time you’re working with the police, and I can’t have my client talk to you without an attorney present. I’m the attorney. I intend to be present.”

  “I understand that, Miss Dunne. I find it entirely com­mendable.”

  “All right, then. As long as you do. And you must also understand that I may cut off some of your lines of questioning. Just because you think they’re interesting doesn’t mean I’m going to think they’re in the best inter­ests of my client.”

  “Of course.”

  “I wish I trusted this more, Mr. Demarkian. I wish I trusted you more. But I don’t.”

  “Do me a favor,” Gregor said. “Over the time be­tween then and now, think about something for me.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. A number of people I’ve talked to here have come up with the same thesis. They don’t think Ginny Marsh murdered her child, and they don’t think she helped anyone else kill it or that she’s covering up for her husband or a boyfriend. When she says she had nothing to do with it, they believe her.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What they don’t believe,” Gregor continued, “is that she’s telling the truth about the Black Mass or what­ever it was. And they don’t think she’s mistaken, either. They think she’s lying through her teeth.”

  There was a lot of quiet breathing and coffee drinking down in Charlotte. Finally Susan Dunne said, “I find that interesting, Mr. Demarkian. In fact, I find that very inter­esting. Maybe you’re more right than I want to realize. Maybe she does need a small-town lawyer, a Bellerton law­yer even, just to keep track of all the… permutations.”

  “Nobody can keep track of all the permutations.”

  “Yes. Well. We can go through all this again tomor­row.”

  “Of course. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Oh, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you, too, Mr. Demarkian. I’ll be very glad to get my eyes on you at last. I’ve got to go.”

  “I want to thank you again for the time you’re giving me. You must be a very busy woman.”

  “I don’t think ‘busy’ is the word for it. I look forward to meeting you, Mr. Demarkian, and to discussing Bellerton’s other recent murder. That place is getting to be like Detroit.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I don’t know what I doubt anymore. Good afternoon, Mr. Demarkian. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  This time the phone went to a dial tone. Gregor looked at the receiver for a moment, then put it down. Clayton Hall was sitting on the corner of a desk a few feet away, kicking one heel in the air. Gregor finally realized what it was about the police station that kept striking him as so strange: There were no religious symbols in it. Like many small towns in the South, Bellerton interpreted the Supreme Court’s decisions limiting religious expression in public places very narrowly. If the Supreme Court said you couldn’t have a nativity scene in the middle of the town green for Christmas, then Bellerton wouldn’t have a nativ­ity scene on the town green for Christmas, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t have a perfectly nice creche in the lobby of the Town Hall. If the Supreme Court said that public schools couldn’t hang copies of the Ten Commandments on public school classroom walls, then Bellerton wouldn’t hang copies of the Ten Commandments on public school classroom walls—but more than two thirds of the students in every class would be wearing crosses on chains around their necks, and some of them would show up on the schools’ front walks in the morning, praying in loud voices and holding hands. What Gregor had particularly noticed was the way in which verses from the Bible seemed to be inscribed on plaques and hung everywhere. There was one in the lobby upstairs, and one just inside the front door of the library, too, which Gregor had seen on one of his rest­less excursions around town. The police department, though, was bare. There wasn’t as much as a single cross around Clayton’s or Jackson’s neck. There wasn’t a single Bible on a single desk. There weren’t even any quotes from the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution—fa­miliar tactics, Gregor knew, because the quotes so often had God in them. Clayton Hall was watching him look, kicking his free foot higher and higher in the air.

  “So what is it?” Clayton said. “You didn’t expect her to just let you go in and sit down with Ginny on your own, did you?”

  “No,” Gregor admitted. “That’s all
right. I was thinking about something else.”

  “If you were thinking this place is a dump, I agree with you. Everybody agrees with you. It isn’t going to change anytime soon.”

  “I was thinking this was the only place in town, public property or private, where I haven’t seen a single religious symbol of any kind.”

  “Why should we have religious symbols in the police department? The perpetrators can bring their own religious symbols. They do, too.”

  “I didn’t say I thought you ought to have religious symbols,” Gregor said patiently, “it’s just that, well, to be frank, Clayton, relative to where I come from, this is a very religious town.”

  “Baptist territory,” Clayton said solemnly.

  “Baptist and Assemblies of God and denominations even smaller than that. I was talking about the pervasive­ness of it. It really is everywhere.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t get your point, Mr. Demarkian, but no matter how significant all that kind of thing may seem to you, it’s no big deal to me. I grew up in Bellerton. We used to be a lot more religious than we are now. The Supreme Court used to let us get away with it.”

  “I’m sure they did, Clayton, but the point is—” Gregor drummed his fingers on the desk next to the phone. “Look,” he started up again, “do you think Ginny Marsh saw a bunch of women worshipping the devil in that clear­ing up at the camp?”

  “I think Ginny Marsh saw a bunch of women wor­shipping the goddess,” Clayton said.

  “You think she saw them on the day of the hurri­cane?”

  “I haven’t got the faintest idea. She saw them. If she killed that baby, it could have been weeks before, because all she needed was the excuse, and once she’d seen them the excuse was handy. Even if there hadn’t been anybody out there worshipping the goddess at the time.”