A Stillness in Bethlehem(39)
“I’m always worried about Bennis,” Gregor said grimly, “but it doesn’t do any good. She won’t listen. If she insists on going out with brain-addled rock stars and action-movie actors who identify too strongly with their characters, there’s nothing we can do. Do you want to hear about Franklin Morrison or not?”
“Of course I want to hear about Franklin Morrison. It is a difficult problem he had, Krekor. Maybe you can solve it.”
“I can’t solve it by looking at his evidence files,” Gregor said. His razor was full of foam. He turned on the tap and ran the blade under the water. “I’m no good at physical evidence, that’s what I kept trying to tell him. Everybody specializes, Tibor. I specialized in analysis. I don’t know a rifle bullet from Little Orphan Annie.”
“I do not think it is necessary that you know the rifle bullet, Krekor. I think he already knows what he had to know about the rifle bullet. Bullets.”
“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why they were fired.”
“Isn’t this analysis?”
Gregor raised his razor to his face again. “It’s analysis for anybody who knows anything about rifle bullets. Tibor, it’s as if you didn’t know anything about Western literature and you sat down to read Finnegan’s Wake. It can’t be done. You wouldn’t have the context. I don’t have the context here. Anyway, I tend to agree with the Vermont State Police.”
“You mean you think these two deaths were accidents?”
Gregor peered at his nearly naked face, decided it would have to do and reached for the towel. “I don’t see any reason not to think they were accidents—or at least I don’t see any reason but one, and that’s more than a little weak.”
“What is it?”
“Position of the wounds. I’ll have to check the papers, of course, but from what Morrison said yesterday, it sounds as if both bodies had two wounds, one of them in the shoulder and one of them in the neck. I’d like to know if those are common places for hunting-accident wounds. If they’re not, the coincidence is interesting.”
“There now, Krekor.”
“But not interesting enough,” Gregor insisted. “Two different guns. Two different places. Two very different people—and what could the motive be? Nobody seems to have liked this Tricia Verek—”
“Tisha, Krekor.”
“Whatever. Nobody seems to have liked her, and this legal action she wanted to file had everybody mad as hell—even if we give Franklin Morrison both those things, they don’t add up to a motive for murder—”
“Not even the legal action?” Tibor looked surprised. “Mr. Morrison was saying that this Celebration is everything to the town, Krekor. To shut it down would be to make the people here poor.”
“To shut it down would be to make the town operate like all the other towns in Vermont and most other states. If it wanted a new pool for the school gymnasium, it would have to collect taxes to get it. Granted, the way they do it now seems to be both less painful and more effective, but putting the town in the position of having to operate more conventionally does not add up to a motive for murder. Only psychopaths kill in cold blood, Tibor. Everybody else—and that includes wives who murder their husbands for the insurance and plan it all out for six months—everybody else kills under extreme emotional stress. That includes soldiers in war. That’s what all that training is about; it’s like a crash course in autohypnosis to psych the men up for battle. If the men didn’t get psyched, there wouldn’t be a battle. I can’t imagine a situation where somebody would get psyched enough to kill Tisha Verek over something as esoteric as a lawsuit that hadn’t been filed yet and wouldn’t have any effect until a year after it had been filed. And what about the old lady?”
“Mmm,” Tibor said, absent again. “What about the old lady?”
Gregor reached to the hook on the back of the bathroom door, where he had hung his shirt. He pulled the shirt on, buttoned the sleeves, and then went hunting for his belt.
“The old lady,” Gregor repeated deliberately, “was someone named Dinah Ketchum, and she wasn’t the enemy of anybody as far as Franklin Morrison told us, and she wasn’t out to sue the town over anything, either. She was just an old lady. Tibor?”
Tibor was back in the middle of his book again. Because of the way he was holding it, it was impossible for Gregor to see the cover. It was one of those large-format paperbacks, though, which meant it wasn’t a novel by Dick Francis or Judith Krantz or Mickey Spillane, which was what Tibor liked to read for relaxation. Gregor put his hand on the top of the book and forced it down into Tibor’s lap.