Act of Darkness(88)

[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.”

“Oh.” Bennis dropped down on the bed in a single awkward movement, her small body half disappearing among the quilts and her face going very white. “Oh, Gregor, I’m sorry. I should have told you, I know I should have, but it was so long ago. And I was afraid if I did tell you, you wouldn’t let me come along. And I wanted to come along. I had to come along. Not just because it was an investigation. Because I couldn’t stand the idea of being in Philadelphia right now. The trial’s turning into a circus and there are always people hanging around my mother’s house, and my mother is so sick she can barely talk, and—oh, it was just one thing and another.”

“I know.”

“How did you know?” Bennis said. “Did somebody tell you? Did Donna Moradanyan?”

“I haven’t talked to Donna Moradanyan since I got here. I have talked to Tibor. About you, Donna, and sex.”

Bennis blushed. “Oh, dear,” she said.

“I’d say it was very wrong of you,” Gregor said, “but at the moment it happens to be very convenient, so I think I’ll let it go. I need some information, and you can give it to me. But next time, Bennis, if there ever is a next time, try not to get Donna so agitated she has to walk off her nerves all over the city of Philadelphia and saddle poor Tibor with a small baby he doesn’t know what to do with.”