Flowering Judas(93)

“Right away. Before he gets up and goes about his business for the day. If we wait for that, we won’t know where to find him.”

“If you don’t wait until he’s up, he’ll probably throw you out on your ear. And what about the project? If we’re both chasing Gregor Demarkian, who’ll run the crews this morning?”

Shpetim shrugged this away. “Andor can take over for a hour. He won’t kill anybody. But a baby is dead. A baby has to be dead because there was that skeleton. You don’t agree.”

“Of course I agree.”

“And something has to have happened to the baby, because the skull was cracked,” Shpetim said. “I saw it as clearly as you did. Cracked right down the side. And yes, I know, you told me. That could have happened after the baby died. But the baby died. And somebody put its body somewhere for the skin to fall off the bones, and then he put the bones in that backpack. And somebody has to do something about that.”

“I know they do,” Nderi said patiently, “but that person doesn’t necessarily have to be you. If I thought you really knew anything, it would be different, but we told the police all we knew and it wasn’t much. The thing just showed up at the site.”

“We didn’t tell them everything we knew,” Shpetim said “We didn’t tell them the things we thought were obvious. When something is obvious, you expect everybody to see it, just the way you do. But they don’t see it. Or I can’t see any evidence that they’ve seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“Two things,” Shpetim said. “First is the timing. The backpack has to have been put there just the night before, and no earlier, because if it had been there even an extra day, we would have found it earlier.”

“I don’t think that’s something they don’t know and we do,” Nderi said. “We came right out and told them that. Twice. That isn’t something new.”

“Yes, yes,” Shpetim said. “But then there’s the new. I really mean new. The backpack was new and so was everything else in it.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

Shpetim tapped his fingers on the table. “All along, everything we’ve heard, Chester Morton always carried a bright yellow backpack. The backpack was the only thing that disappeared when he did. The baby’s skeleton is found in the bright yellow backpack, there was a baby or a pregnancy or something in the Chester Morton case, the backpack must be Chester Morton’s and so it turns out there really was a baby. But, Nderi, that can’t be true.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Shpetim said, “the backpack was new. Brand new. That wasn’t something Chester Morton had had for twelve years. It wasn’t something he had had for twelve days. There were smudges on it because it had been in the dirt all day, but anyplace you could see the canvas was bright, bright yellow. Brand new. And that wasn’t the only thing that was brand new.”

“It wasn’t?”

“The books,” Shpetim said. “There were the books. The ones you had, too, when you went to Mattatuck–Harvey. Current Issues and Enduring Questions. The Everyday Writer. They were there, in the backpack. And they were new.”

“Can you really tell if a book is new just by looking at it?”

“There were no creases in the cover. There were no stains. Nothing was bent back or—or even rifled. It looked like they’d never been opened.”

“You can’t really know that.”

“Yes, I can,” Shpetim said. “I really can. And if I’m wrong, it will only take a moment or two to prove it. They only have to go look at the backpack again. But nobody is looking at the backpack. Nobody is paying any attention to it. It isn’t the baby they’re investigating. It’s the death of Chester Morton. So I think we should tell someone, and the someone I think we should tell is Gregor Demarkian.”

“Just get in the truck and go tell Gregor Demarkian.”

“Yes,” Shpetim said. “Right now. Before it gets away from us.”





SEVEN

1

For Gregor Demarkian, the really odd thing about Shpetim Kika was not that he’d arrived at Gregor’s hotel room at a quarter to seven in the morning, unannounced and apparently knowing the way and room number without having to ask at the desk. By now, that kind of thing was beginning to seem par for the course in Mattatuck. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody knew everything. And everybody went barging around into other people’s private spaces without thinking twice.

What got to Gregor about Shpetim Kika was how much he looked like Fr. Tibor Kasparian, and how much he sounded like him, too. That was odd because Gregor had just gotten off the phone with Tibor, knowing he’d already be at the Ararat and hoping to get more detailed information about what was happening with old George.