Blood in the Water(89)
“Yeah,” Larry Farmer sounded depressed. “God, those guys are badass. Even the women are badass.”
“Did you put out an all-points bulletin? If we’re going to find Martha Heydreich, we’re going to have to make sure we look everywhere.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Larry Farmer said. “We’ve got them putting out notices and I don’t know what, and we’re going to be featured on America’s Most Wanted. I’d never have thought of that. I gave them six different pictures, and I gave even more to the FBI. I don’t understand why she isn’t the easiest person to spot in the world. She’s weird enough looking.”
“And she probably doesn’t look like that now,” Gregor said. “And there’s no real way, from those photographs, to tell what she actually looked like when she was at Waldorf Pines. She might as well have been wearing clown makeup.”
“Yeah,” Larry Farmer said. “Do you think that’s the solution? Martha Heydreich murdered Michael Platte and the other guy and then took off? I guess it would make sense, you know, if we knew who that other guy was.”
“I think the key to solving this problem is finding Martha Heydreich,” Gregor said, “and beyond that, I’m not going to go. Not yet. Right now, I need to find my driver and get myself home.”
“Home?” Larry Farmer said. “Home? Now? But you just got here. We haven’t got anything done!”
“It’s five thirty,” Gregor said, “and I haven’t even had lunch.”
“Okay,” Larry Farmer said, “it got late, but you don’t understand. Ken Bairn is going to have a complete fit. I mean it. He went to all the trouble to get you out here, and—”
“And he’s going to get exactly what he says he wants,” Gregor said. “A solution to this mess. We’ve been out at Waldorf Pines all day. We’ve talked to everybody we could conceivably talk to. Did you send somebody out to talk to Stephen Platte?”
“Yeah,” Larry Farmer said. “I sent Sue Connolly, if you want to know the truth. We don’t have the staff for this kind of thing, Mr. Demarkian. That’s another reason we got you out here. It was you or the state police, and Ken hates it when the state police are brought in. They treat us all like a bunch of hicks. They don’t treat you like any kind of hick. You scare the shit out of them.”
“That’s fine,” Gregor said, “but I’m going home, and I’m going to get something to eat. And I’m going to think for a while. Have a report for me on Stephen Platte when I get in tomorrow morning, and I’ll be early. Oh, and the safe-deposit box.”
“Right,” Larry Farmer sat up. “I forgot about that. I forgot about the safe-deposit box.”
“It belonged to Martha Heydreich,” Gregor Demarkian said. “And I’m pretty sure that when we find it, it will still be full. She couldn’t have gone to empty it after the murders, and I don’t think she emptied it beforehand. We’re going to have to discover the name of the bank. It’s going to matter.”
“The name of the bank?”
“What’s in the safe-deposit box,” Gregor said.
They were coming up on the police station now. Gregor looked out of the car and thought that the entire place seemed to him to be forlorn. He understood Ken Bairn, in an odd way. He understood the need to keep and preserve something that had been yours from childhood. But the days of Pineville Station weren’t numbered. They were over. They had been over long before Waldorf Pines was built. Waldorf Pines was like those machines that kept a body pumping blood and sucking in air long after the body itself had ceased to function. There would be no more places like Waldorf Pines built in Pineville Station. There would be no Pineville Station resurrected into a haven for the not-quite-upper-middle-class.
Gregor’s car was parked in the police station’s parking lot. Gregor got out of Larry Farmer’s police car as soon as it glided to a halt.
“Do the things I told you to do, and I’ll be back,” Gregor said. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning, and I promise you, you’ll be able to arrest somebody this time, and it will be the right person, and it will stick.”
“I don’t see how you can know that,” Larry Farmer said. “I’ve been with you all day. Have people been telling you secrets? I bet they have. I think you ought to tell me everything they said, so that I can at least know what’s going on and report to Ken and Buck. We’re the ones with our asses on the line here. You’re supposed to work for us.”