Gregor went around again to the center of the deck. It had a small staircase leading down to the path and the green, to make it possible for the people who lived there to get to the golf course without having to go around by the road. He looked around and saw that all the other houses had small staircases on their decks, too.
The standardization made his head ache.
He looked up at the deck. It seemed to be empty, but that might be the angle he was looking at it from. He went to the little staircase and opened the gate. He could see without having to work at it that the gate was for cosmetic purposes only. It would never keep anybody out. He climbed the short half-flight of stairs and came out on the deck proper. It really was bare of everything. There wasn’t even a chair.
“I don’t think you should be doing that,” Horace Wingard called up to him. “You’re on the Plattes’ private property. You can’t do that without a warrant, can you? You should come around and ring the bell at the front door.”
Gregor was sure he should come around and ring the bell at the front door. He wasn’t entirely sure why he wasn’t doing it. What he was doing instead was pacing along the edges of the deck, looking back up the green, looking around the deck again, and feeling entirely without purpose or direction.
He stopped at the very center of the deck and contemplated the drawn curtains across the big sliding plate-glass doors. He remembered when sliding glass doors had been an important badge of status in the suburban world, but he was pretty sure that was a long time ago.
He walked across the deck and stood directly in front of the windows. He leaned in toward the glass to see if he could make anything out through the curtains.
Then he stepped back hurriedly and stared.
A second later, he made the best attempt he ever had at kicking in a door.
PART III
ONE
1
If Bennis had been there, she would have told him, in no uncertain terms, that he should have known better. He was not now, and he had never been, the kind of person who could kick through windows and jump off cliffs. Even at the Bureau, he had spent most of his time in front of a desk. He was good at thinking, and once he’d learned how to use the computer, he was also good at finding things and putting them together. It did him no good to wish he was Indiana Jones.
It was not Gregor Demarkian’s finest hour. His feet hit the glass just as they were supposed to, flat on, but it didn’t matter. The glass didn’t break. He just bounced off it and landed on the deck on his side. He felt a sharp pain go up the side of his left leg. He had a sudden flash of insight that told him just what Bennis would say if he’d done something elderly, like broken his hip. Then he put his hands flat on the wooden decking and forced himself up. It worked.
Gregor was just thinking that he’d dodged a bullet there, and a big one, when he saw Larry Farmer peering through the curtains that covered the plate glass windows.
“Jesus Christ,” Farmer said. Then he began hammering on the plate glass. “Mrs. Platte! Mrs. Platte! What are you doing?”
“Have you both gone crazy?” Horace Wingard demanded. “You can’t break into a house. You can’t break the windows. You need a warrant just to get onto this property, and now you’re doing God only knows what.”
Neither Gregor nor Larry Farmer was listening to him. Gregor, on his feet again, was looking through the plate glass and curtains another time. Mrs. Platte—if the woman inside was Mrs. Platte—was still standing on the chair Gregor had first seen her on, but she was no longer holding the noosed rope in her hands. Instead, it swung as if there were a breeze, its shadow clocking back and forth across the kitchen floor like some kind of manic pendulum.
“Jesus Christ,” Larry Farmer said again.
Gregor Demarkian found himself wishing that Larry Farmer could say anything at all besides the cliché of the moment.
Larry Farmer pounded on the plate glass again. “Mrs. Platte,” he yelled. “Come on now, Mrs. Platte. Open up.”
Horace Wingard charged at the sliding glass doors, got a look himself at what was going on inside, and then backed away.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
Inside the house, Eileen Platte had turned to look at them, or at least to look at the sounds coming from her deck. To Gregor, she looked dazed and unsure of herself, as if she’d forgotten what she set out to do.
Eileen Platte steadied herself on the cabinets. The chair she’d set up for herself was right next to the longest of the kitchen counters. The rope was wrapped around the kitchen chandelier. It was not the most coherent suicide plan Gregor had ever seen.
Larry Farmer started to move as if he were going to try breaking down the glass doors just as Gregor had, but Gregor held him off. In the kitchen, Mrs. Platte was still moving, very slowly, very slowly, but moving.