Baptism in Blood(93)

People seemed to be snapping right and left around Henry Holborn these days, and if the Devil wasn’t respon­sible for it, he didn’t know who else it could possibly be.





Six


1


IT WASN’T AS EASY to get in to see Ginny Marsh as Gregor had hoped it would be. Clayton Hall called for him from one of the desks in the police department and then put him on the phone to talk to the young lawyer in Charlotte who had agreed to take the case. He had expected hostility, or at least aloofness. No matter what the papers said Gregor Demarkian was going to do in Bellerton, what he was do­ing was working with the police. Instead, he got a polite voice with the second district drawl of the trip, sounding curious. It also sounded tired. The lawyer’s name was Su­san Dunne, and Gregor thought she must work too hard and sleep too little. Everything she said had that dazed quality to it, as if she found it difficult to concentrate even on emergencies.

“I looked you up when I found out you were in Bel­lerton, working with the police,” she told Gregor, yawning into the phone. “You’ve had a very interesting life.”

“Have I?”

“Reading about you is like watching that old Perry Mason television show. The real murderer is never the mur­derer the police already arrested. Real life is almost never like that, you know.”

“Real life is the only life I’ve got, Ms. Dunne. Do you believe Ginny Marsh killed her baby?”

It wasn’t the kind of question a lawyer had any right answering about a client. Susan Dunne said, “What inter­ests me about this case is that the police have far less to go on than they think they have. I mean, it isn’t an incriminat­ing factor against Ginny Marsh as an individual that in other cases of this kind it has happened, maybe even fre­quently, that the mother killed the child.”

“No,” Gregor agreed, “it isn’t.”

“Sometimes the police seem to have made up their minds, Mr. Demarkian. Sometimes they seem to be already seeking the death penalty.”

“I’m surprised Ginny Marsh is still in jail.”

“So am I,” Susan Dunne said. “You wouldn’t believe what the court system is like where you are, talking about cro—”

“Cronyism?”

“I didn’t say any of this.”

“I wouldn’t repeat it.”

“Even so.”

“Would you mind telling me where you’re from, Ms. Dunne?”

“I’m from New Orleans.”

“Ah. And where did you go to law school?”

“I went to Yale. I went to Yale College, too, if you have to know. What is all this about? Are you worried that Ginny doesn’t have adequate representation?”

“No. I wanted to confirm my impression that you were not a small-town woman.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’ve heard that one. Small towns run differently from other places. Well, they shouldn’t. And my client, who has not been formally charged with the murder, should not be sitting in the town jail just because the judge knew the town attorney in high school.”

“I didn’t say she should.”

“It’s hard to tell just what you’re saying, isn’t it, Mr. Demarkian? All right. Let’s do it this way. I’m due to come down to Bellerton tomorrow morning. Let’s meet in the main foyer of Town Hall at nine o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Assuming you’ve got the permission of the police, I’ll bring you down to talk to Ginny.”

“Thank you. And I do have the permission of the police.”

“I’ll stay with you the whole time you do talk to her.”

“All right,” Gregor said.

“No matter who it is you are or who you think you are, this time you’re working with the police, and I can’t have my client talk to you without an attorney present. I’m the attorney. I intend to be present.”

“I understand that, Miss Dunne. I find it entirely com­mendable.”

“All right, then. As long as you do. And you must also understand that I may cut off some of your lines of questioning. Just because you think they’re interesting doesn’t mean I’m going to think they’re in the best inter­ests of my client.”

“Of course.”

“I wish I trusted this more, Mr. Demarkian. I wish I trusted you more. But I don’t.”

“Do me a favor,” Gregor said. “Over the time be­tween then and now, think about something for me.”

“What?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. A number of people I’ve talked to here have come up with the same thesis. They don’t think Ginny Marsh murdered her child, and they don’t think she helped anyone else kill it or that she’s covering up for her husband or a boyfriend. When she says she had nothing to do with it, they believe her.”