A Stillness in Bethlehem(104)

“Then,” Gregor said, “I think she went back through the trees along the stone wall and stashed the gun. She had to do that just to get away from whatever investigation started happening when the shooting occurred. Then she got to her car—”

“Wouldn’t it have been seen?” Franklin asked.

“It depends where she parked it.” Gregor spread out his hands. “I said she was across the road, but I didn’t necessarily mean directly across the road. If she parked another half mile out of town, she could have gotten back into her car and driven off in the other direction—”

“And circled around when she got to Beaverton and nobody would have been the wiser,” Franklin said. “Whoosh.”

“Now I’ve got to indulge in a little speculation,” Gregor said. “I think she came back to town not expecting to do anything else for the day, but when she did she was presented with an opportunity. Dinah Ketchum was doing errands that day. She was walking around Main Street. She was an old woman. I haven’t heard anything said about the way she got around—”

“Stuart drove her,” Franklin said.

“That’s what I would have guessed. Even if it hadn’t been the case, however, there would have been a way. Let me give you a ride. Come with me to the shopping mall and help me pick up decorations. Anything. It would have been easy. But once she saw her opportunity, she had a problem, because she had already gotten rid of the first gun. She couldn’t go back out to the Ketchum farm for another one, so she stole the first one she could think of to get her hands on.”

“But how could she have known what to steal?” Bennis asked. “How would she have known who had guns?”

“Well, if it was this Reggie George person, I think anybody would have known. At least, that’s the impression Stuart Ketchum gave—”

“Anybody would have known,” Franklin Morrison said. “Reggie’s infamous.”

“This Eddie Folier would have been another matter,” Gregor said. “I don’t know anything about him, who he sees, who he knows—”

“He’s Stuart’s friend,” Franklin said, “and that means he’s Peter Callisher’s friend, too, because Stuart and Folier have been together forever, and you don’t get close to one these days without getting close to the other. Oh, and he did a lot of work for those two girls, you know who I mean, Sharon Morrissey and Susan Everman.”

“What about Kelley Grey?” Gregor asked.

Franklin shrugged.

“Whichever,” Gregor said. “My point here is that she got the second gun, drove Dinah Ketchum out to a remote area on the Delaford Road, and essentially performed an execution. Then she stashed the second gun where she stashed the first one.”

“Oh, I see,” Bennis said. “In those bushes where you found the gun today. And when she decided to kill Gemma Bury she just went out there and picked one up. Did she go out there today?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I don’t believe Jan-Mark Verek very much. I suppose he discovered the changes in his wife’s office today.”

“But they could have happened any time in the last two weeks,” Franklin Morrison said. “Yeah, I see how that works. It does sound simple when you explain it.”

“It’s straightforward, rather than simple,” Gregor said. “She’s a very straightforward killer. She always has been. But she’s not very organized and she’s not a master planner. If she had been, she would have varied her style from time to time, just to keep us from getting on to her.”

“She sounds absolutely cold-blooded,” Bennis said. She looked the stand of evergreen bushes up and down one last time and made a face at it. Then she stepped away and began to beat the palms of her hands against her thighs. “It’s cold as hell out here. Couldn’t we all go inside someplace and talk this out there?”

“Just one more thing,” Gregor said, “about how you disappeared to Franklin and me but you didn’t really disappear into the bushes. I think that if Gemma Bury hadn’t been given these two particular seats, our murderer would have found another time and place to get her killing done. On the other hand, these were the best two seats for our murderer’s purpose, because not only was that stand of bushes available to conceal the rifle, but that stand backs up on the passageway for the animals. If you stand where our murderer would have had to stand to fire that rifle and hit Gemma Bury, the only people who could see you would be the people in the passage with the animals. But there wouldn’t have been any people in that passage during the second half of the play last night, because aside from two cows that were wandering around the park for atmosphere, there weren’t any animals in the play last night. It was intermission. People were strolling around. All she had to do was step up to the bushes, fire and walk out by going down the passage. It was only by bad luck that she was seen.”