Deadly Beloved(76)

“I’ve read all about you in the paper,” she told Gregor with satisfaction. “And Mr. Jackman talks about you all the time. Mr. Jackman is a really superior police detective, don’t you think?”

What Gregor Demarkian thought was that John Jackman was a hell of a lot more than this young woman would be able to handle, but he didn’t say so. He grunted a vague, all-purpose assent and wondered why it was that Jackman’s support people never seemed to last from one of his visits to the next. Gregor understood the turnover in front-line people—the desk sergeants, the patrolmen. As a rule, Jackman didn’t work in wonderful neighborhoods. He didn’t have wonderful people coming into his office to visit him. After a while the desk sergeants had to get tired of being shot at and screamed at and the uniformed patrolmen had to wonder if it wouldn’t be an easier life working bunco. It was the rapid turnover of clerks and secretaries that bewildered Gregor. Did they all fall in love with Jackman and not get their love returned? Did they all go to bed with him only to realize that fun was all he was interested in? Did he give them too much typing? What?

The door behind the clerk opened and John Jackman came out, his coat thrown over his shoulders like Apollo’s cape in the Rocky movies. The clerk glowed at him. The middle-aged woman holding the door for him beamed with motherly affection that didn’t quite strike the right maternal note. Gregor had the uncomfortable feeling that given half a chance, maternal instinct could turn into something much hotter with very little effort at all.

“Gregor,” John Jackman said.

“Put your coat on,” the middle-aged woman told Jackman. “There’s going to be a storm out there.”

The coat was a raincoat, but even so. It was June. It was going to be hot as a sweatbox any minute now. Gregor raised an eyebrow at John Jackman; John Jackman shrugged.

The clerk at the desk grabbed something from next to her phone file and held it up.

“Look,” she told John Jackman. “My sister’s wedding pictures came in last night. Didn’t I tell you she had the most outrageous dress in the history of creation?”

Wedding dresses did not seem to Gregor to be the kind of thing John Jackman would be interested in, but watching women around John was like watching men around Bennis, and Gregor found it easier just to ignore the whole thing. He started back toward the metal detectors, sure that John would follow him.

“I’ll look at the pictures when we get back,” John was telling the clerk. “We’ve got an appointment with a congresswoman.”





2.


When Gregor Demarkian was still an active agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he had far and away preferred to interview people in their own homes rather than in their offices or a neutral setting. A home said a lot about state of mind and general psychological makeup. What was more, it was a safe place to most people, which was why it was also a place where people got careless. In the case of Congresswoman Julianne Corbett, unfortunately, they had no choice. According to her secretary, Ms. Corbett kept a residence in her congressional district, but she no longer actually lived there—or she wouldn’t, soon, because she was moving to Washington. She also kept an office in the district, but Gregor was under the impression that this wouldn’t be her real office for very long either. That one would be on Capitol Hill. What was it about getting elected to public office that made so many people metamorphose into aliens from another planet? Julianne Corbett’s constituent office was in one of those blank-faced office buildings with generic elevators that looked like it could turn itself into a warehouse at a moment’s notice. All the way down the hall to Suite 323, John Jackman was looking at a scrap of paper in his hand and saying, “Tiffany Shattuck. Her secretary’s name is Tiffany Shattuck. Can you believe she has a secretary named Tiffany Shattuck?”

Gregor could have believed she had a secretary named Harry Winston Liebowitz, but that was not a point it seemed useful to make at the moment. He opened the door to Suite 323 and looked inside. There was a bland blue-walled waiting room with a few Danish modern chairs in it and a low coffee table covered with ancient magazines. It looked like the office of a not very well-heeled dentist. At the far end of the room there was a desk. At the desk there was a young blond woman reading a copy of Modern Bride. The magazines must have come out today, Gregor thought. That was the only reason he could think of that they would be all over the place like this.

Tiffany Shattuck put her magazine down and blinked at them. “Mr. Demarkian,” she said. Then she frowned at John Jackman. “You were at the explosion the other night. You’re some kind of policeman.”