Baptism in Blood(29)

“The trial is going to be a nonissue. Give it a couple of more months. They’ll look into all their leads. They’ll do the conscientious investigative probe. Then they’ll arrest Ginger Marsh and she’ll plead guilty.”

“You really believe that.”

“The only difference between Ginger Marsh and Su­san Smith is that Ginger Marsh has a more elaborate sense of the theatrical. Pentagrams and candles and a bloody knife beat a phantom carjacker any day. But they’re just as bogus. And they’re just as cheap. That woman murdered her own child.”

“I don’t think I can remember you being this cynical before.”

“It’s not cynicism. It’s experience. I was in the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation for twenty years. I know these people.”

“Which people?”

“The Ginger Marshes of this world. The Susan Smiths. The Terry McVeighs. There really isn’t much dif­ference, you know. It’s all the same—attitude, I guess you’d call it. The same arrogance. And if you don’t mind my saying so, Bennis, I think that in my old age, I’m get­ting tired of it.”

“You’re not old, Gregor. For God’s sake.”

“I’ll be sixty-one on my next birthday. Any day now, they’ll stop talking about how I’m in early retirement. And like I said, I’m getting tired of it. More tired than you know.”

“Then why do it? You’re not obliged to go down there. The case will go on without you.”

“I know it will.”

“So?”

Gregor shrugged. “David Sandler is a friend of mine. He hasn’t had much experience. He thinks there’s some­thing mysterious in what’s happening down there. If I do what he’s asking me to do, it might ease his mind.”

“Right,” Bennis said.

“And then there’s Tibor, too. Maybe getting him away from here will help. Maybe if he has something else to do with his time besides sit around and brood about domestic terrorism and the disintegration of the American soul, he’d snap out of it and be Tibor again.”

“He’s got an entire church to run,” Bennis pointed out. “And he’s running it. He’s got a school to run, too. I know he’s been depressed, Gregor, but he really hasn’t withdrawn from the world. He’s been right in there the way he always has been.”

“No.” Gregor shook his head. “Not the way he al­ways has been.”

“I think you’re kidding yourself,” Bennis said. “I think this has less to do with Tibor than it has to do with yourself. I think you’re using Tibor as some kind of cover.”

“As a cover for what?”

The plate glass front door of the Ararat swung open. Bennis and Gregor looked up. Old George Tekemanian was limping in on unsteady legs, followed by a bustlingly im­portant Hannah Krekorian and an over-made-up Sheila Kashinian. Hannah was gray-haired and plump and dowdy and downtrodden looking, in spite of the fact that she had to have at least a couple of million dollars. Sheila was wearing a three-quarter-length mink coat dyed into candy pink and lime green stripes, God only knew why. God only knew why Sheila Kashinian did anything. Old George looked embarrassed to be with her.

“That’s an interesting outfit,” Bennis Hannaford said, sipping at her coffee at last. “I wonder where she managed to find it.”

“Maybe she had it made custom.”

“Sheila doesn’t do custom. It takes too long. If we ask old George over here, do you think we’ll get Sheila, too?”

“We’ll probably get Sheila no matter what you do.”

“True.”

Bennis swung her legs out of the booth and stood up. She was a small woman, no more than five four and no heavier than a hundred and five pounds, but sitting down she had a more commanding presence. Gregor watched her stride across the restaurant and stop where old George was standing just inside the front door. Hannah and Sheila crowded in, wanting to hear—whatever.

Out on Cavanaugh Street, the sunlight looked brittle, like cheap glass. Gregor could see the front of Lida Arkmanian’s big five-story town house, its front door sporting a wreath of pink and blue ribbons in spite of the fact that Lida was away and likely to stay away for a while. Mara Kalikian had just had a baby, and Bennis and Donna Moradanyan were having a party for it after its christening next Sunday. Her, Gregor thought. A party for her. The baby was a girl. Maybe Bennis was right to say that this whole thing about going to North Carolina was really about himself, and not about Tibor. Sometimes these days, he seemed, to himself, almost as distracted and out of focus as Bennis.