Deadly Beloved(26)

“Gregor?” John Jackman said. “Have you been watching the news tonight?”

“What time is it?” Gregor asked him.

“Go turn on your television set,” Jackman said. “Turn it to ABC. Right away.”

Gregor stood up and stretched the muscles in his shoulders. The digital clock on the bedside table said 5:58.

“Just a minute,” Gregor told Jackman. “I’m going to have to switch phones. I’m in the bedroom.”

“Hurry up.”

Gregor put the phone receiver on the night table next to the base and went down the hall. His living room windows looked across Cavanaugh Street to Lida Arkmanian’s town house. Lida was sitting at the desk in her bedroom, writing something. Gregor picked up the receiver of the living room phone and the remote control from the television set. He said hello to John Jackman and switched the set to ABC. The first thing he saw was what seemed to be a piece of floating black metal. The next thing he saw was an explosion, the bright flash of red followed by the eruption of thick black smoke, the second flash ripping out and rumbling like thunder. The clock in the bedroom must be slow, he thought stupidly.

“Good God,” he said to John Jackman. “What was that?”

“Pipe bomb.”

“Pipe bomb?”

“In a parking garage in West Philly late this afternoon. There was a smaller explosion first and this guy was going by with his video camera, near the university. Anyway, he’d always wanted to get something on the local news and he figured he had a chance and he rushed in and started filming and then the second explosion went off and he damn near got killed. The parking garage attendant was badly hurt. He got his shot though. The kid, I mean. What do you think of that?”

On the screen the smoke had cleared away. There was a picture of a city street with a parking garage in the background. A tall young woman with blond hair and big teeth was talking solemnly into a microphone. Gregor remembered the days when television people tried to make their microphones as small and unobtrusive as possible, invisible, so as not to break the illusion of being part of real life.

“I take it someone died in the explosion,” Gregor said.

“Nope,” John Jackman told him. “Lot of cars got messed up. That was it.”

“Then what are you doing on it?”

“The guy who died died in bed,” Jackman said. “Out at Fox Run Hill. You know the place?”

“One of those gated communities,” Gregor said promptly. “Bunch of people locking themselves up so that the bogeymen don’t get them. Fox Run Hill’s out in one of the suburbs, isn’t it? That shouldn’t be yours either.”

“Man who died out there was named Stephen Willis. His wife put three or four bullets into him with a silenced automatic pistol.”

“It’s still not yours, John.”

“It was the wife’s car that blew up in West Philly this afternoon.”

“Ahh,” Gregor said. “And the wife wasn’t in it?”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“And now you want to know where she is.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Across the street, Lida had finished writing her letter and was licking the flap of an envelope to seal it. Gregor was always telling her that he could see everything she did in there, but she only remembered to close her drapes sometimes.

“Listen,” John Jackman said, “you’ve got to come down and see me tomorrow, okay? I can’t explain all this over the phone.”

“About the pipe bomb and Fox Run Hill.”

“That’s right.”

“Even if things look strange now, John, they won’t necessarily look strange in the morning. It’s only been, what. A couple of hours?”

“Something like that. Not even that. I’m serious, Gregor. You’ve got to come down. Will you do it?”

Gregor thought about Elizabeth’s voice in his kitchen, about kneeling on the floor of his bedroom with his forehead pressed against the front of the bureau, about saying strange things to Bennis Hannaford and not remembering where he had been.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course I will.”

“Good. Make it about nine o’clock. I’ve got a couple of things I have to do.”

“You’ll probably have the whole thing solved before I ever get there.”

“I don’t think so.”

“If you do, I’m going to make you buy me lunch. I’m not going to go hauling all the way down to police headquarters for nothing.”

“It won’t be for nothing. Do you know Julianne Corbett?”

“The new congresswoman? I know who she is.”