Act of Darkness

by Jane Haddam

  “Mrs. Harte,” he said.

  “I’m not Mrs. Harte,” Victoria told him. “Mrs. Harte is somebody married to somebody named Mr. Harte, and I’ve never been married to somebody named Mr. Harte. At the moment, I’m not married to anybody. And I wasn’t even born with Harte. Where have you been?”

  “As I told Mr. Chester,” Bettinger started.

  Victoria waved that away. “Don’t try to feed me the kind of crap I just heard you feeding Dan, because I won’t listen to it. You’re the one who came to my bedroom—my bedroom, if you remember—and demanded to know everything there was to know about my son-in-law, and about Dan Chester—”

  “What?” Chester said.

  “—and about our dear departed Dr. Kevin Debrett—”

  “What?” Gregor said.

  “—and you told me,” Victoria was going on, unheeding, at full steam, “that it was all because you were interested in protecting my daughter from any kind of scandal. But think about it, Mr. Bettinger, that was three months ago, not one or two—”

  “Oh, Christ,” Bettinger said.

  “And I can count,” Victoria finished up dramatically. “Stephen didn’t start getting those attacks until the first of June. You’ve been sniffing around here for two months longer than that. And then, when my son-in-law is murdered off by that deplorable woman, it takes you forever and a day just to show up at the door!”

  Gregor Demarkian had seen people turn green before, even veteran agents, even FBI investigators with a dozen bloody mob killings lodged forever in their memory banks. He had never seen anyone turn as green as Carl Bettinger did now. Bettinger was destined to get greener. Dan Chester had been angry. Now he was on the warpath.

  “Mr. Bettinger,” he said, “I’m going to have your balls.”

  Gregor thought it was time to put a stop to this. If he didn’t, it would only get worse.

  He crossed the foyer quickly, grabbed Carl Bettinger by the arm, and began tugging him toward the stairs. Then he bowed courteously first at Dan Chester and then at Victoria Harte and said, “Excuse me.”

  “If it turns out you knew about whatever this is too,” Chester said, “I’ll have your balls along with his.”

  Gregor did the only thing he could do, which was ignore him, and got Bettinger onto the first of the steps to the “balcony. Then he got Bettinger up two more. Then he leaned over and whispered in Bettinger’s ear, “Come on now, Carl. Let’s go upstairs and talk about how when Kevin Debrett died you showed up at the door almost before the police did, and when Stephen Whistler Fox died you didn’t show up for two hours.”

  FOUR

  [1]

  GREGOR DEMARKIAN REACHED THE balcony of the second-floor guest wing with the intention of taking Carl Bettinger to Bennis Hannaford’s room, because he had taken everyone else there. That room, after all, was the semiofficial temporary headquarters of the investigation. Because Gregor knew that Bennis Hannaford had killed neither Kevin Debrett nor Stephen Whistler Fox, he wasn’t worried about disturbing any vital piece of evidence there. He was also used to Bennis and the way she arranged her rooms. In the bedroom of a stranger, he might be distracted by the trivial details of a private life. In Bennis’s bedroom, he simply wondered how someone whose rooms were so orderly could have a mind that ran like a Rube Goldberg machine.

  Of course, he had to admit, those Rube Goldberg machines had always worked.

  He got halfway down the balcony and then stopped. On consideration, he did not want to take Carl Bettinger to Bennis Hannaford’s room. Henry Berman had made himself scarce while Gregor was talking to Patchen Rawls, but that was animosity. Henry Berman had developed an instantaneous and unqualified dislike of Patchen Rawls and, with Gregor there to take up the slack, he hadn’t been about to suppress it just to question her. With Carl Bettinger, it would be entirely different. Berman would dearly love to question Bettinger.

  Gregor was stopped almost directly in front of Bennis’s door.

  Policemen were going in and out of it, passing him and nodding, and then scurrying across the balcony to the senator’s room, to prod the medical examiner’s people. Berman was out of sight, but Gregor had not doubt he was going quietly crazy.

  Gregor turned back to Bettinger and said, “One door down. That room is my own. No one will bother us there.”

  “Bother us?” Bettinger looked thoroughly bewildered. He had been looking bewildered since Victoria Harte had started attacking him.

  “I am trying,” Gregor told him, “to be polite about this. I am trying not to involve the local police until they have to be involved. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Bettinger flushed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want.”

  “I thought so.” Gregor opened the door to his own room and waved Bettinger inside. Still untouched by the hands of any maid and further disordered by the kind of quick-and-dirty police search that can only be conducted with the consent of the victim, it was a mess. The bed looked as if it had been writhed in, not slept in. The vanity was covered with the metal debris of the half dozen complimentary travel kits Gregor had picked up over the course of his career and stuffed into his favorite suitcase and forgotten there. The clothes he had slept in the night before were lying on the floor of his closet.

  Bettinger looked all this over more than once and finally sat down gingerly in a chair. He was, Gregor remembered, a neat man, and a little squeamish about dirt.

  “My God,” he said, “that’s a frightening woman. That’s a terrifying woman. That’s a gorgon.”

  “You mean Victoria Harte?”

  “Of course I mean Victoria Harte. She’s the kind of woman who always makes me—never mind. She’s the kind of woman who eats her young.”

  Gregor could have said that Janet Harte Fox did not look, eaten, metaphorically or otherwise. Instead, he went to the window and looked out. The strains of music were stronger now, playing “America.” Along the beach, the flags, the bunting, and the fireworks all seemed to have multiplied a hundredfold. In the weakening light, they looked oddly solemn, like the ritual symbols at a patriotic funeral.

  Gregor came away from the window and sat down on the bed. “Well,” he said. “Let’s talk. To be specific, let’s talk about your ongoing investigation into Dr. Kevin Debrett.”

  “There isn’t—”

  “Carl.”

  Bettinger flushed again. “There isn’t anything I can tell you about an ongoing investigation of Dr. Kevin Debrett.”

  Gregor Demarkian sighed. Carl Bettinger sounded stubborn. What was worse was the fact that Bettinger had apparently forgotten everything he ever knew about Gregor Demarkian. Maybe Carl thought Gregor was getting old enough to be senile. Gregor put his hands on his knees and said, “Carl, listen to me. I was with the Bureau for twenty years. I know how you work and I know why you work. The first thing I thought of, when you first came to me about this business with Senator Fox, was that you were lying to me. That was the first thing, Carl.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Listen. Senator Fox was passing out at cocktail parties. Fine. Now. On the surface it looked like a medical or psychological problem. That would have nothing to do with you. Then there were two other possibilities. In the first place, someone could be making very inept attempts to murder the man. That would have nothing to do with you, either. It would be a matter for the District of Columbia police. The Bureau investigates murders on federal land, on Indian reservations when it is asked, and as liaison in cases of serial murder that have extended over several states. None of that would apply here. The final possibility was that the senator was being sabotaged by a foreign or subversive group. That would have had something to do with you. But that was not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Carl, Carl, Carl,” Gregor said patiently. “What would any subversive group want with Senator Fox? He was on no military or foreign affairs committees. As far as I can tell, he never took any interest in that sort of thing a
t all.”

  “He voted against every military appropriation ever proposed in the United States Senate while he was there,” Carl said quickly.

  Gregor shrugged. “So what? So did a couple of dozen other senators. The only way to make a case in that direction is to assume a conspiracy of massive proportions, a conspiracy to kill all those senators, not just one very unimportant one. I’ve still got contacts in the Bureau, Carl. If there had been something like that, I’d have had intimations of it before now.”

  “Oh.”

  “In case you’re wondering, I can make an argument against a plot by domestic groups as well. The senator was a liberal, but he was a very wishy-washy liberal. If the Ku Klux Klan was going to go after somebody, it would be somebody like Kennedy. Then there was all that nonsense about the Director.”

  “That wasn’t nonsense,” Carl said. “The Director really did—”

  “I’m sure he did. But he didn’t do it because Dan Chester was his friend, because he isn’t. The Director is a Reagan man. The Republicans think Chester’s poison, and the present administration thinks he’s worse than poison. I suggest that Mr. Chester’s request for help came at a very opportune time. I remember you very well, you know. You always did hate to lose.”

  Bettinger looked up and set his jaw. “I don’t lose,” he said. “Not ever.”

  “You’d win with less trouble if you’d learn to be straightforward with people who can help you. You’ve been infected with spy fever, Carl. You’ve started keeping secrets that don’t need keeping from people they don’t need to be kept from. When were you attached to Behavioral Sciences?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Bettinger sighed. “I was brought over from Organized Crime in January,” he said. “There was this problem, and there had been a couple of other people working on it, but—”

  “I know that ‘but,’” Gregor said. “I’ve been involved in it once or twice myself. For future reference, though, you might remember that I not only established the Behavioral Sciences Department, I also established the procedures for that department. I know a serial murder investigation when I see one. And a serial murder investigation is definitely what you’re involved in. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Carl Bettinger said.

  “Good,” Gregor said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Given the people you’re talking to, I’d say there were two possible candidates for your suspect. There’s Dan Chester, for instance. It wouldn’t be hard to cast him as a psychopath. He’s got the morals of a Borgia Pope.”

  Bettinger smiled thinly. “He’s also got the face of Ted Bundy. Do you remember Ted, Gregor?”

  “I considered Mr. Chester for a while,” Gregor said, “but I decided against him. The man was not only running the senator’s career, he was running the senator’s life. Literally. Stephen Whistler Fox was never anything more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. If Dan Chester was killing strangers, he would have to be doing it very close to home. It would have been noticed—not that he was doing it, necessarily, that it was being done. And here is the interesting thing about all this. You are involved in the investigation of a case of serial murder. In order for you to be involved, you had to be called in by a local police department somewhere. Local police departments don’t come running to the Bureau unless they have no other choice, which usually means unless they’re getting such bad publicity they can’t stand it anymore. But here’s the problem, Carl. There has been no such publicity about any such case anywhere or any time in the last year. On a public level, your case does not exist.”

  Carl Bettinger jumped out of his chair. “From that you decide I’m investigating Kevin Debrett? That’s crazy. From that, you should decide I’m not investigating anyone at all.”

  “I told you, Carl. I know a serial murder investigation when I see it. You talk to Victoria Harte. You talk to Berman. You have computer eyestrain. What I decided was that there was a class of people who could be killed in such a way that their deaths were not obviously murders, and whose deaths might not be unexpected, or reported. Then I looked at our little group here and decided that Dr. Debrett was the only one among them who had both consistent access to that class of people and a possible—I won’t call it motive, but a possible spark, a possible precipitating event, in his background.”

  “I don’t know about any precipitating event.” This time Bettinger was being honest. “I just know—that things are very strange.”

  “I’m sure they are. I think I can see the outlines of your case, and it would be making me insane. If it’s any consolation, I also think your serial murderer is dead.”

  Bettinger exploded. “They got Bundy,” he said savagely. “They got him. Gregor, I remember the execution. I couldn’t get in—you could have, but I take it you didn’t go—I’d been too far down in that investigation to merit a viewing. I watched the news all that morning on television, though, I remember being so—so damn high. So damn high, Gregor, because for once we had one, pure and simple, case closed and no worries about what some idiotic parole board was going to do ten years down the line that was going to put another ten or twenty people underground. Oh, I know you don’t believe in capital punishment—”

  “Let’s say I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I wasn’t sorry to see Ted Bundy die,” Gregor said. “And let’s get back to the subject. I take it I’ve been right so far?”

  “You’ve been brilliant.”

  “Good. Now, I want to know just one more thing. In these possible serial murders—”

  “They’re real enough, Gregor. They’re real enough. I just can’t prove it yet.”

  Gregor didn’t tell him that if he hadn’t proved it yet, he might never prove it at all. Kevin Debrett was dead. Gregor started again anyway, out of both compassion and expediency.

  “In these serial murders,” he said, leaving out the possible, “has there been, at any time, any suggestion of the use of a drug called succinylcholine?”

  Bettinger had gone to the window during his tirade on Ted Bundy. He had been looking out on the beach when the last part of their conversation had taken place. Now he whirled around and stared at Gregor in astonishment.

  “Good Lord,” he said. “I knew you were good, but you must be some kind of magician.”

  [2]

  Gregor Demarkian was no kind of magician. At the moment, he didn’t think he was much of a detective. He had had his suspicions of Carl Bettinger’s real interest in this weekend from the first. That had been inevitable. He had every right to expect himself to recognize when an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was following Bureau procedure in serial murder cases, because he had written the book on Bureau procedure in serial murder cases. On the other hand, he had every right to expect himself to notice a few other things, too, and those other things had gone right past him. Like a drowning man watching his life pass before his eyes, he could see himself giving a hundred lectures in a hundred different places on the vital importance of staying alert to every nuance of every person involved in any way in every case. He could hear himself telling batch after batch of serious-faced young agents-in-training that it was just as important for them to pay attention to their wives and friends and families as it was for them to pay attention to their work. You never knew when those wives and friends and families might be able to contribute something important, if only a new perspective or an early warning sign of growing agent obsession.

  Right.

  When he and Carl had finished with their talk, Gregor had sent the agent downstairs to the others, feeling a little sorry for him because he would have to be in close proximity to Victoria Harte. Gregor had also asked Carl to send Bennis Hannaford up. That had been only a few minutes ago. It felt like hours, because during those minutes Gregor had had nothing to think about but Bennis, and he was ashamed of himself. He was ashamed of himself as a friend, because he had not been alive to the signals she had been sending him—or hadn’t been
taking them seriously—and he owed her that. He was ashamed of himself as a detective, because this time Bennis had a great deal to contribute to his case, and if he’d been paying attention he’d have known that. Instead, he’d let her fight with Victoria Harte and skitter around Janet as if she were afraid to be seen, without ever thinking once there might be more to it than that Hannaford idiosyncrasy.

  He had been sitting on the bed. Now he got up and began to straighten out the room, doing it automatically, the way he had once straightened up to help Elizabeth out when she was in radiation therapy. Outside, the sky was growing ever darker and the music ever louder.

  When Bennis knocked—on the door that connected their two rooms, not the door to the balcony—he was folding his worn suit into the raw cotton laundry bag he kept in his largest suitcase for dry-cleaning. Bennis opened up and stuck her head in just as he was pulling the bag closed.

  “Gregor?” she said. “I’m sorry. Mr. Bettinger just said you wanted me upstairs, and I assumed—”

  “You assumed I’d be where you left me. My fault. Come on in and shut the door.”

  Bennis did. “If you’ve got a minute, you should talk to Henry Berman for a while. I think he’s getting a little nervous about something out there.”

  “What he’s nervous about is all the time I’m spending in here,” Gregor said, “where he can’t listen in. Never mind. I’ll calm him down later. I want to talk to you.”

  “Surprise, surprise.” Bennis grinned. “It’s nice to be consulted once in a while. It’s nice to know you think I have a mind.”

  “Mmm. I also think you have a fanny. Sit on it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because what I want to talk to you about is the affair you had with Stephen Whistler Fox about ten years ago in Washington, D.C.”