Flowering Judas(127)

“But you have the skeleton of the baby,” Rhonda said. “You have it with you up there.”

“Just the skeleton,” Gregor said. “There was no flesh on the bones. It has to have rotted off somewhere, or been removed somewhere.”

“Oh, God,” Rhonda said.

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Well. And he may have lived somewhere else before, and the evidence we’re looking for might be there instead.”

“I can find out the places he lived.”

“I know. I don’t know if you could get all those warrants,” Gregor said. “And they might not matter anyway. I don’t know how long it takes flesh to rot off a skeleton, and I don’t know if the rotting leaves any evidence behind. But at least have the locals get a warrant and search the place he was living in right before he came back here. Maybe they’ll find something.”

3

It was almost half an hour before Howard Androcoelho came in to say that Kyle Holborn and Darvelle Haymes were sitting downstairs in the “conference room,” which was what Howard called any room with a big table and chairs in it. Gregor filed this away on his mental list of grievances over the preciousness of Mattatuck and followed Howard to the meeting place.

“You’d better stay,” he said, just as they were going through the door.

“Of course I’ll stay,” Howard said, looking startled.

Gregor reminded himself that he would be able to get back to Howard later, and went in to find Darvelle and Kyle sitting so close to each other, one of them might as well be in the other’s lap. Gregor pulled out a chair directly across from them and leaned over the table.

“We didn’t kill anybody,” Darvelle burst out.

Kyle Holborn grabbed her arm.

Gregor counted to five in his head. Then he counted to ten in his head. Then he reminded himself that there was no way to avoid stupid people in police work.

“I know you didn’t kill anyone,” he said, “but what you did do is beyond stupidity, and it’s caused untold trouble for me and everybody in this police department and it might have been the catalyst that got two people murdered. Now, I’m going to tell you what happened. You’re going to tell me if I’m right—and, believe me, I am right—and then you’re going to fill in the details. Got it?”

“You can’t force us to say anything,” Kyle said. “We have the right to have a lawyer present. We have the right to remain silent.”

“By all means, let’s get a lawyer in here,” Gregor said. “Right now, you’re just going to be in the ordinary kind of trouble, but I don’t see why I couldn’t convince Howard here to prosecute you for the stunts you’ve pulled. At the moment, I think I can promise that that will be off the table. There’s just the four of us here. This is the least pressing part of this case and I want it over with. So, take your pick.”

“We didn’t kill anyone,” Darvelle said again, starting to cry.

Kyle Holborn looked away.

Gregor Demarkian waited long enough to make sure Kyle Holborn wasn’t going to ask for a lawyer again, and then he started.

“First,” he said, “Chester Morton decided to come back home. I don’t think the two of you had anything to do with that. And why he decided it doesn’t matter for our purposes here, so I’ll let that slide. But he decided to come back home, and my guess is that he went straight for Ms. Haymes’s house. Am I right so far?”

Darvelle nodded.

“Next question,” Gregor said. “Did he ring the doorbell, or did you just come home to find him?”

“I just found him,” Darvelle said. “And the rest of the stuff. He was—he was hanging, just hanging there, he looked awful. He was just hanging from the lintel, you know, the top of the door to the bathroom, so he was the first thing I saw when I went down the hall. And then there was the other stuff—the stuff.”

“The baby’s skeleton,” Gregor said.

“That and a note,” Darvelle said. “The note was about how he couldn’t live with himself anymore, and all this total crap. It said that we bought the baby together and that I’d killed it and that that was why he’d run away—but it isn’t true. It isn’t true. I never saw the baby. Not ever.”

“No, I don’t think you did,” Gregor said. “He was going to get the baby the last night you two ever saw him, the night of the last English class you all had together at Mattatuck–Harvey Community College.”

Darvelle nodded.

“And that’s what the fight in the parking lot was about,” Gregor said. “It wasn’t just that Chester was harassing you, it was that he wanted you to come take delivery of this baby, which he’d already bought, and you,” Gregor nodded toward Kyle, “didn’t want to see Darvelle in that kind of trouble.”