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A Stillness in Bethlehem(102)

By:Jane Haddam


“What are we stopping here for?” he asked.

“I want to get out and check something one more time.”

Bennis shut off the ignition. “We might as well go,” she said. “As you should know by now, Mr. Morrison, when the man’s decided he wants to haul ass all over the landscape, there isn’t any stopping him.”

Gregor almost told her to watch her language. Then he remembered that he was trying not to put her under any kind of stress, just in case it was stress that had caused the reading of all those diet books, and maybe even the diet. Gregor certainly hadn’t seen her eating anything today. He climbed out of the car and across to the park proper, between two sections of bleachers that would have to be the ones almost directly across from where he, Bennis, Tibor, Gemma and Kelley had been sitting the night before. He got to the center of the park and decided he was just about right. He was directly across, but a little to the west. He started across the park to the bushes, confident that Bennis and Franklin would follow him.

They did follow him, but when they got to the bushes, neither one of them was in a good mood.

“You’ve been all over this thing a dozen times already,” Bennis complained. “That’s how you found the gun last night, don’t you remember? And that boy from MIT was all over it, too. He took samples. He’s running tests.”

“I know he’s running tests,” Gregor said.

“Well, the lady has a point,” Franklin said. “I don’t think you’re going to find anything here. Not anything that we missed. It was real instructive, watching you and Demp working last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scene gone over in quite that way.”

Gregor almost said “standard Bureau procedure,” but didn’t. That was the kind of remark that made local police departments hate the FBI. He stepped farther into the bushes and picked through the branches, thinking.

“Bennis,” he said after a while, “I want you to come over here. Come over here and stand in the trees.”

“In the trees,” Bennis repeated.

“Put out that cigarette.”

Bennis dropped her cigarette in the snow, made sure it was out, then picked it up and put it in her pocket. Bennis didn’t litter. She walked up to the trees and stood next to them.

“Like this?” she asked.

Gregor shook his head. “Stand in the trees, not next to them.”

“Gregor, they’re not trees. They’re bushes. And they sting.”

“That’s just pine needles,” Franklin Morrison said helpfully. “They won’t hurt you.”

“They are hurting me. And this isn’t a pine tree. These aren’t. I don’t care. Gregor—”

“Farther in,” Gregor said.

Bennis moved farther in, but she looked mutinous. When Gregor insisted she go farther in yet, she started to swear. She also disappeared. Franklin Morrison said, “Hey.”

“You can come out now,” Gregor said.

Bennis reappeared. “I wasn’t in. I couldn’t get any farther in. I went to the side—”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, if you know, what did you put me through it for, Gregor? I mean, honestly—”

“Relax,” Gregor said imperturbably. “Tell me how tall you are.”

“How tall? Five-four.”

“What do you weigh?”

Bennis looked exasperated. “How am I supposed to know what I weigh? I mean, I haven’t been on a scale in years except at the doctor’s, and he’s always telling me I’m healthy as a horse.”

“Guess.”

“Okay, I’ll guess. Maybe one hundred. Maybe one-ten.”

“Maybe one hundred,” Franklin Morrison put in. “She’s too thin. Looks just like my niece in Portland got that anorexia nervosa a few years ago.”

“No one has ever accused me of not being willing to eat,” Bennis said, “except maybe for Tibor who’s been going crazy lately. Gregor, what is this all about?”

“Mostly it was just wishful thinking.” Gregor sighed. “You know why I’m not really the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot? Because faced with a situation like this, Hercule Poirot would have done something. He would at least have had an idea of something to do.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that I know who did it, and why she did it, and how she did it, and I haven’t got a shred of proof of any of it, or a chance in hell of being able to get any, either.”

“She?” Bennis Hannaford asked.

Gregor Demarkian nodded. Franklin Morrison had a look very much like rapture on his face, but Gregor didn’t want to pay attention to that. Apparently, Franklin had just been catapulted into that most exciting of all imaginary detective scenes, the Great Detective’s Perfect Solution.