“Fine,” Gregor said. He pulled out one of the molded plastic chairs and sat down. “Do you think we can cut through the horse manure right away and then get down to business? You two don’t want me here, you don’t think I should be here, and you resent like hell the implication that the mayor doesn’t think you can do your jobs.”
Ray looked more surprised than George Edelson had when Gregor told him to get lost.
Tony looked skeptical. “If you think you can pull bull like that and smooth this over, you’re wrong,” he said. “We know who you are. We know what your reputation is. At least you’re not some kind of frigging amateur. But you don’t belong here. It’s just wrong.”
“I agree,” Gregor said.
“Then you’re going to go?” Tony said.
“No,” Gregor said. “The man who is probably my closest friend on earth has been arrested for murder. He’s behaving like—”
“A world-class asshole?” Ray suggested.
“A something,” Gregor admitted. “A lunatic, maybe. And not like himself. He’s been accused and he’s behaving erratically, and I don’t know why. You think he’s guilty. I don’t. But it doesn’t matter which of us is right. In either case, I’d still want to know what was going on.”
“What bugs me,” Tony said, “is the only reason you think he isn’t guilty is you’ve known him forever and you think he couldn’t do something like this. But you’re wrong. We see it every day. Almost everybody who murders anybody has a pack of relatives and friends who say he couldn’t have done it, no way. People do things nobody would expect them to do. They do them all the time.”
“And if he did this,” Gregor said, “I’ll find out about it. And then I’ll know. But I can’t know if I don’t have the facts.”
“Honest to God,” Ray said. “I’d have thought that video would be enough for anybody.”
“Do me a favor,” Gregor said. “Skip the video for a moment. Explain the times.”
Tony shifted in his seat. He looked a little less rigid. Gregor mentally crossed his fingers.
“All right,” Tony said. “What about the times?”
“Start with the basics,” Gregor said. “The judge was in the courtroom originally? She was in the courtroom when Tibor Kasparian got there?”
“No,” Ray said. “She had an earlier case. She heard that case and she finished early, but they hadn’t brought the Maldovanian kid over yet. They usually bring them all over together, it’s more efficient, but that day there was some holdup. I think it had something to do with the Maldovanian kid and Immigration. Handling finished her first case and couldn’t call the second one, because the kid wasn’t there, so she went to her chambers.”
“Her chambers is the room she was killed in?” Gregor said.
“Yeah,” Tony said.
“And that was when, exactly?” Gregor asked.
“About ten thirty,” Ray said.
“About ten thirty,” Gregor repeated. “And her body was found when?”
“Eleven forty,” Ray said.
“So, we’ve got about an hour and ten minutes where we don’t know what was happening to her.”
“We know she was being murdered, Mr. Demarkian,” Tony said. “I get the reasonable doubt thing, but we definitely know she was being murdered.”
“We know she was being murdered,” Gregor said, “but you know as well as I do that we can’t pinpoint time of death even as close to an hour and ten minutes. The best we can do here is say she was killed between ten thirty and eleven forty, because at one end of that time she was seen alive, and at the other end of that time she was found dead. Do you know who was in the building at ten thirty?”
Tony looked indignant. “Dozens of people were in the building at ten thirty. It’s a courthouse. And it’s a courthouse for juveniles, so there are social workers and child psychologists and I don’t know who else all over the place.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “Let me put it another way. There were security cameras?”
“Some,” Ray said. “Not as many as you’d think. There are a lot of privacy issues with juveniles. So there’s a security camera right at the door, that tells you who goes in and out. And there’s one in the foyer right at the start of everything. And then there’s one in each of the corridors to the right and the left. There’s also one at the end of the corridor to the right, because that’s where the restrooms are.”