Conspiracy Theory(113)

“It’s not because he considers me better than the police,” Gregor said patiently. “It’s about perspective. And, of course, about setting the terms of the debate. That’s what Michael Harridan does, you know. He sets the terms of any debate he’s in, and the fact that nobody ever sees him only makes that outcome more certain. It’s amazing the way that works.”

“I now have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe I don’t either,” Gregor said.

They had pulled into Cavanaugh Street. It was very late in the afternoon, almost evening, and the storefronts had begun to light up in the gloom. Ohanian’s had a sandwich sign propped up on the sidewalk in front of its door, advertising stuffed grape leaves and something Gregor couldn’t make out. The Ararat was still in its daytime mode, with all its lights blazing. When the dinner hour officially arrived, Linda Melajian would dim all the lights and put candles out on the tables. It was, Gregor thought, a perfectly ordinary, unassuming neighborhood, six or seven blocks of town houses and small apartment buildings and stores, of no interest to anybody but the people who lived on it. The car moved forward, and it began to be impossible to ignore the gaping hole where Holy Trinity’s facade used to be.

“You all right?” John Jackman asked.

“I’m fine,” Gregor said. “Get that picture over to Andrechev’s place, as fast as you can, today if possible. All right?”

“All right.”

“Then get me what you can on the forensics for Steve Bridge, as soon as you can. I need to know what kind of gun it was. Because he can’t be carrying a rifle around with him.”

“It’s almost certainly going to be a rifle,” John Jackman said.

“Oh, yes, I know. I know the murders were all done with a rifle. I’m just convinced they couldn’t all have been done with the same rifle. And rifles are a problem. Because they’re not like handguns. You can buy a handgun on any street corner in America. Rifles are a little harder to get.”

“Well, you know, Gregor, we’re not talking about an Uzi here. I don’t think we’re going to find that Steve Bridge was killed with a military assault weapon. I don’t know what they’ve got in Lower Merion, but I saw the wound here, close up, closer up than I ever want to see another one, and I’ve seen a lot of wounds in my life. And I don’t think—”

“No,” Gregor said. “Neither do I. That isn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“I meant that wherever it is he’s getting these guns, it can’t be the way people usually get guns they don’t want traced to themselves. It’s the guns, you know, that I can’t figure out. He must have used at least two different ones. The question is, where is he getting them?”

“Maybe he has them,” John Jackman said. “We don’t register all weapons, after all. If he’s using small rifles, he may have had them for years, for deer hunting, whatever. There probably wouldn’t be any record of the sale, or of his possession of them. If he’s been keeping them under the bed for years, how would anybody know he had them?”

“But he hasn’t been keeping them under the bed for years,” Gregor said. The limousine stopped short in the street, next to several parked cars. It would be wrong to say that Jackman’s driver double-parked, since he didn’t kill the engine, but the effect was the same. Gregor got his gloves out of his pockets. “Never mind me,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Just, get that picture to An-drechev and see if he can identify it. And get me the lab results on those bullet wounds. Do we know if there were any bullets found on or near the body?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, maybe we’ll have a little luck for once. They do have the bullets found at the scene at the Tony Ross murder. I don’t know about the murder of Charlotte Ross, but my guess is that they found those too. It will be interesting to see if they match.”

“I thought you said they wouldn’t match,” John Jackman said.

“I said that at least two of them wouldn’t match,” Gregor said. “It’s possible that the ones from Tony Ross’s murder would match the ones from Charlotte’s, or that the ones from Charlotte’s would match the ones from Steve Bridge’s. But unless Mr. Harridan can walk on water and raise the dead, he couldn’t have committed all three of those murders with the same weapon.”

“Why not?”

“Because on the night of the party, he couldn’t have gotten a rifle onto the Ross property to save his life, and he didn’t have the time or the opportunity to hide one there earlier and come back and get it when he wanted to use it. It would have been too risky, anyway. They were doing security sweeps right and left. There’s only one place he could have gotten the weapon to kill Tony Ross, and he had to get hold of it on the night of the murder.”