“Bennis,” Gregor said.
Bennis dragged her eyes away from the window. She looked unfocused. As far as Gregor knew, she hadn’t done a single hour’s work since she threw her Benson & Hedges menthols in the trash. Even unfocused, she was beautiful. Heading toward forty, she still had not a single wrinkle on her face. Her bone structure was extraordinary: fine but strong, sharp-edged and well defined. She was also a very successful fantasy novelist, but somehow Gregor never attached that to her, as part of her identity for him. Her apartment was full of papier-mâché castles and plastic unicorns. Her head was full of knights in shining armor and crones with magical powers. Gregor tried not to think about it, the way he would have if she had had something wrong with her that he thought she would find it embarrassing for him to notice.
“Bennis,” Gregor said again, louder this time.
Bennis blinked and shook her head. She had a cup of coffee in front of her, barely touched. It had been sitting there barely touched for over half an hour.
“I’m sorry,” Bennis said. “Excuse me, Gregor. Yes. I know. Tibor. It is worrying.”
“It’s more than worrying. It’s downright terrifying. We’ve got to do something about this, Bennis.”
Bennis took a sip of her coffee and made a face. It had to be stone cold. “I thought you’d already decided to do something about it,” she said. “I thought you’d decided to take him with you down to North Carolina. To investigate this child murder case.”
“I’ve decided to ask him, yes. I haven’t talked to him about it yet.”
“I wonder if he even knows it’s happened,” Bennis said. “I mean, you’d think, with all the publicity, he could hardly have failed to notice.”
“Trobriand Islanders know about Ginger Marsh,” Gregor said.
“Still,” Bennis went on, “the way he’s been—Maybe he has noticed it, and it’s only made everything worse.”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him about it. I haven’t talked to him about much of anything in weeks.”
“There was the Susan Smith case, too,” Bennis said. “But that was different. And maybe I’m just overreacting here. That didn’t seem to bother him much. Not like the Oklahoma thing.”
Linda Melajian came out of the door at the back of the room. Gregor waved to her and Linda nodded, holding up a Pyrex pot of coffee with steam coming out the wide open top of it. People were getting used to Bennis’s drifting off. They had started to make allowances for it.
“I don’t think Tibor sees individual cases like Susan Smith and Ginger Marsh as having the same—gravity as what happened in Oklahoma City,” Gregor said. “They lack the political element.”
“There was a story in Ms. about the politics of motherhood,” Bennis said. “They’ve got that kind of political element.”
“These days, everything’s got that kind of political element. That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Linda Melajian had arrived with her pot of coffee. She gave Bennis a new coffee cup and filled it. Bennis didn’t notice.
“Bennis,” Linda said.
“Oh.” Bennis looked up. “Oh, Linda, hi. Could I have another cup of coffee? I let this one get cold.”
Linda took the cup of cold coffee off the table and looked at the ceiling. Bennis didn’t notice that, either.
“It’s not that I think Tibor will be interested in the Ginger Marsh case,” Gregor said. “It’s that I don’t like the idea of going off and leaving him for what could be a solid month. I don’t like the shape he’s in.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“And it’s not like I can count on the people around here looking after him,” Gregor said. “Not lately. Lida’s always off in California—what does she do in California, anyway?”
“Maybe she likes it there.”
“And you’re the next thing to useless these days. If you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Mmm,” Bennis said.
“And old George is much too old to take on this kind of responsibility. He doesn’t get around well enough.” Gregor drummed his fingers against the table. “I don’t really know what I ought to do here. It’s not that I think the Ginger Marsh case will interest Tibor. It barely interests me. If David Sandler hadn’t written me directly, I don’t think I would have paid any attention to it at all.”
“Satanism and witchcraft and child sacrifice?” Bennis looked up, her attention caught at last, frankly surprised. “You must be kidding. It got everybody else’s attention. I’ll bet the trial is going to be enormous.”