The third thing he saw was a grossly pathetic smalltime serial killer named Herbert Shasta.
Herbert Shasta was screaming like a stuck pig.
PART TWO
I Am Curious, Demarkian
ONE
1
BENNIS HANNAFORD SOMETIMES GAVE Gregor Demarkian detective novels to read, leaving little piles of paperback books on his kitchen table when he wasn’t looking, wrapping up half a dozen hardcovers in red foil and a bow and putting them under his Christmas tree. Since Bennis was a puzzle addict and not a devotee of the real, Gregor had been introduced to every master detective from Sherlock Holmes to—he couldn’t remember to who, because he hadn’t read them in order. What he did remember was that all these fictional detectives shared the same attitude toward the police, and it was negative. Even his favorite, Nero Wolfe, considered the professional law enforcement community a pack of mental defectives who had somehow gone into competition with him in the solving of unusual murders. Gregor couldn’t understand it. In his experience, the professional law enforcement community was made up of wonderful people—and not only because he’d once been part of it. There had been exceptions, but Gregor thought most of the policemen he had met were smart. They knew what they were doing. They were rarely squeamish about doing it. They had access to a lot of very helpful high-tech equipment. Best of all, they had the authority. That was why Gregor was always happy to see the police in situations like this one. They had the most important kind of authority of all, the right to make people get out of the way and keep them there. By the time the police showed up at Studio C of station WKMB that morning, Gregor would have sold his soul for the ability to tell DeAnna Kroll to go to her room and stay there—and make it stick.
Meeting DeAnna Kroll was the second thing Gregor did after finding Max’s body. The first thing he did was to grab Herbert Shasta by the coat collar and drag him out into the hall, shaking him as he went.
“Who does this man belong to?” he bellowed. “Who does he belong to?”
He didn’t mean belong to, of course. Slavery was illegal and he knew it. He had no doubt, however, that the person he was looking for would know exactly what he did mean. And he was right.
It took no time at all for a short, compactly built middle-aged woman in a prison guard’s uniform to come tentatively out of one of the doors farther up the corridor. She saw a large, angry man manhandling her prisoner and hurried toward them.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait. You can’t—”
“There’s a dead man in there,” Gregor Demarkian said, pointing at the men’s room door.
The middle-aged woman blanched. The people leaning out their doors, watching the show, got very quiet.
The middle-aged woman’s name was Karen Schell. It was on the thick black plastic name tag pinned to her uniform jacket above the breast pocket.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, God. Did he—”
“I don’t think so,” Gregor said.
“No?” Karen Schell looked confused.
Herbert Shasta was blubbering. “His face was smashed in. It was terrible. His face was smashed in.”
“I was in the bathroom,” Karen Schell said, blushing.
Gregor dumped Herbert Shasta on the floor where Karen Schell could get him. He tried to remember how Herbert had murdered his victims, and couldn’t. In the jargon of the trade, Herbert had not been “one of his.” Thank God. He looked up to see Bennis and Tibor at the back of the crowd, looking on. Bennis was trying to move forward. Tibor was holding onto the back of her shirt so that she couldn’t. Gregor motioned to them both.
“Go call the police,” Gregor said. “Don’t call nine one one. Call the chief of police. Tell Tom Reilly you’re calling for me and ask him to send me John Jackman—”
“John doesn’t work out of Philadelphia,” Bennis said quickly. “He works out of Bryn Mawr.”
“He came back. I’m sorry, Bennis. I forgot you knew him. But he’s the best the Philadelphia police force has and I know him. And with a case like this, the politics are such—”
“That you can get anybody assigned you want,” Bennis finished. “That probably isn’t exactly true, Gregor.”
“Call Tom Reilly.”
“Do you think they’ll ever actually carry out a death sentence in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania?”
Bennis spun around and walked away. Gregor sighed. Once, a long time ago, one of Bennis’s crazier siblings had murdered their father, been arrested by John Jackman, been convicted by the state of Pennsylvania, and sentenced to die. This sibling was still not dead, because in spite of the fact that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had a death penalty, it never seemed to be enforced. For Bennis’s sake, Gregor hoped that in this case it would not be. He didn’t have time to think about it now.