Baptism in Blood(117)
“But if that was the case,” Minna Dorfman asked, “why couldn’t they be the ones who killed the baby, just the way Ginny Marsh swears they did?”
“For all the same reasons that the police didn’t arrest them in the first place,” Gregor said. “Because they didn’t have any blood on them anywhere. Not even a trace. Because they weren’t in the right places at the right times. Because they were always together.”
“And Harrow?”
“Harrow,” Gregor said, “keeps disappearing from places. As far as I can tell, nobody remembers him being in the study at all before the hurricane, but he was surely there afterward, and his wife was there the whole time. If we talk to her, I’ll bet anything she’ll say they came up to the camp together.”
“Unless she lies for him,” Minna Dorfman said.
“No chance,” Clayton Hall told her.
“The most important thing here,” Gregor insisted, “is that Harrow was present when the baby died—however she died—and everything he has done since then has been to hide his involvement in that death. Everything. Including the deaths of Carol Littleton and Zhondra Meyer.”
“Why did he kill Carol Littleton? I thought you said she was off with these other women during the storm. She couldn’t have seen him with the baby if that were the case.”
“I don’t think she did see him with the baby,” Gregor said. “I think she might have seen him with his girl, or, even more likely, with some of the paraphernalia of goddess worship. One of the other women who went up to the circle of stones during the hurricane, Stelle Cary, told me that Carol showed up for the ceremony very late and that she came running out of the house all upset just before they left for the clearing.”
“And think that’s when she saw Stephen and his girlfriend?”
“I think that’s when she saw Stephen and something.”
“I think that’s a little vague to be going on with,” Minna insisted. “You need more details than you’ve got before you can do what you want to do here, Mr. Demarkian. And what about Zhondra Meyer? Did she see him with his girlfriend, too?”
“Zhondra Meyer knew all about Stephen’s girlfriend,” Gregor said. “That’s obvious from the picture. And I think she may have known all about his flirtation with goddess worship. If you want details, Ms. Dorfman, what we ought to do is go over there, to the rectory, and ask him.”
“Without a lawyer,” Minna said. “Without giving him a warning.”
“There’s no need for warnings yet,” Clayton Hall said. “We don’t want to arrest him. We only want to talk to him.”
“He doesn’t have to talk to us without a lawyer present.” Minna shook her head. “He doesn’t have to give us the time of day.”
Gregor got up from the desk he’d been sitting on. “But he will,” he said. “He will. He’s desperate to talk. That’s why he wrote that note.”
Minna got up, too, and walked across the room to the window. She clasped her hands behind her back and said, “All right, let’s say we go over there. We knock on the door or we ring the bell. Then what?”
“Then I can do the talking,” Gregor said.
Minna Dorfman nodded. She still had her back to them. The flat brown thinness of her hair was plastered against her skull like wet rubber. Her hands were mottled with liver spots before their time.
“Yes,” she said finally. “Mr. Demarkian, I expect you could do the talking. Have you been formally deputized?”
“No,” Clayton Hall said.
“Then formally deputize him,” Minna Dorfman said. “I don’t want to hear after all this is over that we had some kind of unauthorized personnel on the scene, and that taints all the evidence we got. God help us, if we’re going to go over there and do this, we’re going to do this right.”
2
IF THERE WAS ONE thing Gregor Demarkian would always remember about North Carolina, it was the night. Night here was beautiful when he was sitting on David Sandler’s deck, looking out at the big moon and the black ocean. It was beautiful here, in town, with trees and small gracious buildings all around him, with the heavy scent of night flowers and the solemn chill of coming winter blowing in his face. The Town Hall and the library were dark. Betsey’s diner and many of the Greek revival houses on the side streets were lit up. Sometime while Gregor wasn’t paying attention, twilight had ended.
The rectory of the Methodist Church was lit up like Times Square. There were lights on in all the downstairs rooms that Gregor could see, and some of the upstairs ones. There was a light on on the porch as well. Next door, the church itself was dark, its windows shuttered over to protect it from vandalism and teenagers. Gregor thought the doors were probably locked. He preferred the old tradition in the Catholic Church, maintained so seldom now, because the world had changed so much, of keeping the doors of the church open at all times. So many souls wanted to be saved in the middle of the night. That, Gregor thought, would be an attractive way to believe in God—if he could have believed in God, which he didn’t. He was even attracted, sometimes, to Henry Holborn’s version of Christianity, with its passions and its enthusiasms. He didn’t know what went on in the locked and shuttered Methodist Church from week to week, but he didn’t think anybody’s soul got saved at Sunday services.