“With a small sharp hatchet,” Gregor said. “At least, that’s what Ms. Beecham told us.”
“I said that was the right kind of thing,” Mike Ingleford said, “but since we don’t have it with us, we can’t know. My best guesses would be a small hatchet or a medium-sized meat cleaver. Went at his hand over and over again. Broke virtually all the bones and came close to severing his fourth finger and his pinkie. It was a sloppy job, by somebody without finesse or patience. If whoever it was had kept his nerve, he could have taken off Jack’s hand and been done with it.”
“And the weapon wasn’t found on or near the body?” Gregor asked.
“Nothing was found on or near the body,” Mike Ingleford said. “The only reason we found Jack is that he stumbled into the Home News Building and Linda found him. She called us as soon as she did.”
Gregor turned to Linda Beecham. “He was conscious when you first saw him?”
“He passed out in front of my eyes,” Linda said.
“You’d better do something about security for this place as quick as you can,” Bram Winder said. He was still standing at the window, but he was no longer leaning against it. He had his back turned to them and was looking out. “This is it,” he said. “The rampaging hordes have arrived.”
Part II
Chapter One
1
It was this—the arrival of the rampaging hordes—that finally made Gregor Demarkian feel old, and then only after he realized that Bram Winder had not meant to be sarcastic. Bram hadn’t even meant to be metaphoric, but there was no time to think about that while the crisis was in progress, and the fact that it was a crisis became clear in no time at all. At first, all Gregor saw out the window where Bram stood pointing was a crowd of people, almost all male, near the hospital’s front portico. Then he realized that the people he could see were visible only because all the space under the portico was already taken. He pressed his face more closely against the glass and tried to see out onto the street beyond. It was difficult. The hospital was set back a little from the road. The best Gregor could get was the edge of a van here and there, and a street where the snow hadn’t been adequately cleared. Maybe snow on Margaret’s Harbor was like street signs in northern Connecticut. Only the people who didn’t belong here worried about it.
Gregor stepped back a little. “Press,” he said. “National press. I take it they’ve decided that Jack here is connected with the murder of Mark Anderman.”
“I don’t think so,” Bram said. “They’d never show up here like this for Jack Bullard, not unless he’d been arrested, and even then you wouldn’t get most of that crowd. It has to be something else. Something must have happened to one of the twits.”
Clara Walsh was at the window now too. “I didn’t hear any sirens. It couldn’t have been an emergency.”
“There aren’t always sirens in an emergency.” Bram turned to Mike Ingleford. “Are you the only doctor here? Is there somebody else on call?”
“I’m the only doctor,” Mike Ingleford said, “but there’s a nurse practitioner in the emergency room. Leslie O’Neal. She doesn’t usually have anything to do. And Tim is on call if we need him.”
Somebody’s cell phone went off. Everybody checked his pocket, automatically, even Gregor. He had no idea why. Bennis had “downloaded” a “ring tone” for him. When his cell phone went off, he got the first few notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. When Bennis’s cell phone went off, it played the first few notes of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”
The sound stopped. Mike Ingleford was staring at his phone. “You were right,” he said. “Somebody’s been admitted to emergency. Leslie wants me down there right away.”
Bram Winder was pacing back and forth in front of Jack Bullard’s hospital bed. “It’ll be Marcey Mandret. It would have to be. There are only three people the nutcases would come out for, and those are Marcey Mandret, Arrow Nor-mand, and Kendra Rhode. And Arrow Normand is still locked up, as far as I know.”
“But it could be Kendra Rhode,” Gregor suggested.
Bram shook his head. “Do you pay any attention to celebrity news? No, I don’t suppose you do. I don’t. The whole thing is stupid beyond belief. But here’s the thing about Ken-dra Rhode, the one thing I think makes her an interesting person. You’ve never seen a picture of Kendra Rhode drunk, or stoned out of her gourd, or sloppy in public. Never. And do you know why?”