Bleeding Hearts(94)

“I told my boyfriend when I got back to school,” Sonia said, “but if you mean did I report it to the police or something, no. I don’t think I would have known whom to report it to.”

“You could have charged the man with assault.”

“Maybe. But look at it realistically, Mr. Demarkian. Who was I? Just a screwed-up college senior who had been in therapy for nearly a year. Just one more hysterical woman with mental problems. Paul Hazzard was one of the most successful and respected psychologists in the United States. And there had never been a report like that made against him before.”

“You could have charged him with assault,” Gregor repeated. Then he sighed and shifted on his feet. He had been standing up the whole time Sonia was telling her story. He had been too interested to notice that he was uncomfortable. Now he rocked back and forth and bent his knees. They creaked. “Paul Hazzard,” he said, “is rapidly turning into one of those murder victims you feel it’s just as well that they’re dead. He’s headed straight for that category of murder victims that I would just as soon have killed myself. Is that the only time you ever saw him? The first and the last?”

“You bet,” Sonia said. “It was the first and I made a point of it being the last. There’s all this stuff in the recovery movement about how victims cling to being victims. After you’ve been victimized, you’re supposed to go looking for people to victimize you because that’s the kind of relationship you’re comfortable with. Well, maybe I never really fit the profile. I not only never saw Paul Hazzard again, I never had anything else to do with his organization. Or with the recovery movement in any form. After that afternoon I never even went back to Group.”

Just then Gregor’s phone started ringing. He had instruments in the kitchen and the bedroom, and the ringing came to him in stereo.

“Just a minute,” he told Sonia. “I’m supposed to be going someplace at six-thirty. That may be the man who’s picking me up.”

“Take your time,” Sonia said.





2


Gregor went out into the kitchen and picked up the phone. He looked at the dishes in his sink and the cake on his table and wished he were better at housekeeping. He said hello into the receiver and thought about Sonia Veladian. Gregor didn’t know much about psychology in spite of the fact that the department he had founded and headed at the FBI had been called Behavioral Sciences. He hadn’t given the department its name. He knew how the minds of serial killers worked. He knew whether the serial killer involved was an out-of-control psychotic or the kind of otherwise sane man whose tastes ran to the violent. He also knew something about the mental life of the people he called acculturated psychopaths—the people who had no more conscience than a Ted Bundy or a Jeffrey Dahmer, but who had sense enough not to actually kill anybody. They just went along, taking what they wanted no matter what effect it had on other people. Maybe that was what the recovery movement meant by “getting your needs met.”

On the other end of the line, Russell Donahue’s voice sounded strangled. “Mr. Demarkian? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

Gregor came to. “Yes, Russ. Yes. It’s me. I’m sorry. My mind was wandering. I take it you’re going to be late.”

“I’m going to be right on time,” Russell Donahue said. “I’m headed your way in a patrol car with all the sirens blasting. We’ve got an emergency.”

“What’s an emergency?” Gregor asked.

“Twenty minutes ago Fred Scherrer called the Bryn Mawr police. He reported finding the body of Candida DeWitt, stabbed in the chest and lying dead on the floor of her own living room.”

There was a high kitchen stool against the wall next to the telephone. Gregor sat down on it with a thump, stunned.

“Good God,” he said. “Now what?”

“Now we start all over again from the beginning,” Russell Donahue said, “and I get off this goddamned cellular phone and pick you up. See you in a minute or two.”

“Right,” Gregor said.

He said it to dead air.





Part Three


Cloaks and Daggers…





One


1


PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN the Philadelphia metropolitan area tended to think of the city and the Main Line as one place. In spite of the differences in landscape and architecture and social tone, the Main Line belonged to Philadelphia, and everyone knew it. Away at boarding school and college, teenagers from Radnor and Wayne said simply that they were “from Philadelphia,” and got into the particulars only with people they knew really well. Very social brides announcing their weddings in the Inquirer and The New York Times said that they were the daughters of “Mr. and Mrs. Whomever of Philadelphia and Palm Beach” in spite of the fact that the houses they had grown up in were nestled into fifteen acres in Paoli. In reality, of course, the towns of the Main Line had very little to do with each other and nothing at all to do with the city of Philadelphia, at least in any official capacity. Radnor had its own police department. Bryn Mawr had its own police department. Philadelphia had its own police department. All the police departments cooperated if they really had to. They preferred not to. There was a streak of competitive jealousy running through their relations as bright and strong as a splash of fresh blood on a white cotton curtain in an English murder mystery.