Fighting Chance(78)

“Your priest has been running around like an idiot, doing God knows what,” Mark said. “Do you honestly think he’d do that to protect somebody who was involved in bribery? It makes more sense to go with what the police think and assume he killed the woman because he wanted that kid out of her court. Out of it and not likely to go to juvenile detention for two years. Or more.”

This was, unfortunately, true. If Tibor was not guilty of murder, then he had to be protecting someone, he had to be diverting the blame. Gregor had had a vague inkling of that from the beginning, but it had come up against a wall of logic. The wall said that it was not likely that Tibor would shield a murderer. Tibor was not an idiot. He knew why that would not be a good idea.

But if the murderer were a child, or close to a child, if he was just a “kid” starting out … there might be a possibility there.

“And if you think the kid didn’t have it in him,” Mark Granby said, “let me disabuse you of the notion. He’s as cold as ice. And he means what he says. And he’d thought it all through. He’s got that cell phone hidden away somewhere, and he’s going to hold on to it until I deliver. I didn’t tell him I almost certainly couldn’t deliver, because I didn’t want him giving that damn thing to the police, but he knows what he wants and he knows what to threaten. And then there’s the other thing.”

“What’s that?” Gregor asked.

“He’s got that cell phone,” Mark Granby said. “He says he picked it up on the floor where somebody dropped it, but does that make any sense to you? It was Martha Handling’s cell phone. The only people who would have taken it out of the murder room were people who knew what was on it and wanted to get it away before the police found it. And virtually all of those people are people involved in the bribes, or the actual killer, looking for some kind of edge.”

Gregor thought that Mark Granby didn’t know that cell phone was probably the one on which the video had been made. If it was the one on which the video had been made, then—then what? Then the video was staged. He’d already considered that. And it was just possible that Tibor would stage something like that to protect a kid. Just possible.

But was Petrak Maldovanian a kid? He was over eighteen.

“All I can tell you,” Mark Granby said, “is that he was in this office, and he had Martha Granby’s throwaway cell phone. You can take it from there.”

Gregor had no idea where to take it. He wanted to talk to Petrak Maldovanian, but after making a few tries at finding him, he realized it wasn’t going to happen. Sophie Maldovanian had no patience with the entire project.

“He should be at school,” she told Gregor, “and if he’s not there, he should be at work. The Ohanians have him lifting boxes and that kind of thing while Mary Ohanian’s ankle heals up. But don’t ask me if he’s gone either place, because I just don’t know. He’s like the Flying Dutchman, that kid is. You never know where he is or what he’s doing, and he doesn’t know it himself.”

Sophie gave Gregor Petrak’s cell phone number, but when Gregor had called it, he was sent directly to voice mail. Maybe Petrak was at school or work and had turned the phone off so he would not be interrupted.

It was after that that Gregor thought about Stefan, and started the round of phone calls that ended with his standing in the foyer of JDF. The place was barren and old, just slightly dirty around the edges, and it had the most depressing aura Gregor had ever experienced. Did they really bring kids to a place like this? Kids as young as seven ended up in juvenile hall. Kids who had done … what?

Gregor had never thought very much about juvenile crime. He was vaguely aware that juveniles could go to jail for actual crimes, but could also go to jail for things that were not crimes for adults, like skipping too much school or being too obviously and consistently sexually active at too young an age. There was something arbitrary about the whole thing. Some kids who were sexually active, even kids who gave birth at twelve or thirteen, got help from the state to set up homes for themselves and their children and accommodations from the schools so that they could stay to graduate from high school. Others got sent to jail. Gregor didn’t know why the decisions were made, or even by whom.

The policewoman at the entry desk apologized when she ran him up and down with one of those metal detecting wands and then made him empty his pockets and walk through a metal detector as well. “We really aren’t being melodramatic about all this,” she said. “We have constant problems—you really wouldn’t believe them. The threat of violence is the worst, of course, but it isn’t the most common thing. It’s contraband that’s the most common thing. Marijuana. Pills. Anything they can use to commit suicide.”