Once, years ago, in the month when his wife Elizabeth had started the last serious agony of her dying, Gregor had stood at the edge of a ditch on the side of a road in rural Massachusetts, looking down at the bodies of five small boys. The picture was more clearly in his mind now than anything he could make himself look at: the arms and legs twisted and entwined; the reinforced toes on the shoes of the Massachusetts state policeman who had driven him out from Boston. While it was happening, it had all seemed very far away. Elizabeth was dying. That was what had been at the front of his mind. Elizabeth was dying and there was nothing they could do about it anymore, no way left to save her, no way left to lie to himself that it would finally turn out all right. He had been, at that moment, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Department of Behavioral Sciences. His job was to hunt and find and capture serial killers. A serial killer had killed those boys—and would probably kill more, given time, given freedom, given opportunity.
Up at the front door, Bennis had finished talking to Hannah and Sheila and old George. She was leading them across the room, toward the window booth and Gregor. Gregor rubbed the side of his face with the flat of his hand and took a deep breath. He had never caught the man who had murdered those boys. Nobody had. Gregor didn’t know if he was still out there killing someplace, or if he had died, or if he had been jailed for something else, or if he had gone dormant, as some of them sometimes did. Donna Moradanyan’s son Tommy was now about the age those boys had been. Watching Tommy flying down the sidewalk on Cavanaugh Street, it struck Gregor every once in a while that he might be in danger.
Of course, Gregor thought now, scooting over on the bench to give old George room to get in, everybody was in danger, all the time. That was the lesson of Oklahoma City. It was the lesson learned daily on every city street in America. There was no real safety and there never would be—not even on Cavanaugh Street.
Old George piled onto the bench and Hannah came after him, shoving Gregor all the way to the window, so that his arm was pressed against the glass. Sheila got in on the other side of the booth next to Bennis, shrugging her mink coat off her shoulders and letting it spread out around her. Bennis kept looking at the coat, as if she wanted to touch it, but was afraid to.
“Guess what I heard,” Sheila announced, waving frantically for Linda Melajian. “Helen Tevorakian’s niece Marissa is going out with a Muslim, and now they both want to convert to Buddhism and get married in a temple in Salt Lake City.”
Gregor thought Salt Lake City was where the Mormons were—but he let that go. Religion made his head ache, and Sheila Kashinian made it ache even worse. He wanted to go over and find out how Tibor was, but it was too early. It wouldn’t have been, in the old days, but lately Tibor stayed up all night watching CNN. Gregor had a terrible feeling Tibor stayed up all night talking to himself, too, but he couldn’t prove it.
I should have made the world safe when I had a chance, Gregor thought, and then flushed bright red. Had he ever thought anything quite so stupid before in all his life? He didn’t think he had.
Linda Melajian held her Pyrex pot of coffee over his cup and raised her eyebrows, but Gregor shook his head.
The way this day was going, the last thing he needed was more caffeine.
2
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Gregor was standing in the small courtyard behind Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church. He could see a light shining through the vines from Tibor’s front window. That, he knew, would be the light in the foyer. Tibor must have gone to bed without doing his usual spot check of the house. Maybe Tibor hadn’t gone to bed at all. Gregor could just imagine how it had been: the darkened living room full of books; the television flickering; the icons propped up on the bookshelves and the fireplace mantel, looking down on it all in that blind wall-eyed way all icons seemed to have.
Gregor shook his head. The sun was hot and hard, even though it was still low on the horizon. He could hear faint sounds of traffic in the distance. He was still right in the middle of the city of Philadelphia, even though it didn’t look like it here. He walked up to Tibor’s front door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. When there was no answer a second time, he got his keys out of his pocket and searched through them for the big clunky old-fashioned one that fit Tibor’s door. He kept telling Tibor how important it was to get some kind of modern security put in. At the very least, in the middle of the city like this, Tibor ought to have a deadbolt and a chain. On matters of security, however, nobody on Cavanaugh Street listened to Gregor Demarkian. He was only the man who was supposed to be the expert.