Fountain of Death(23)

It was, Gregor thought, less like a doctor’s office than the command post for an army under siege.





2


BY THE TIME PHILIP Brye got back from the theater, still wearing his white lab coat and one surgical glove, Gregor Demarkian was established in the office’s sole shabby club chair, bolstered by a plastic foam cup full of instant coffee and a cheese Danish the size of Detroit. He had finished about half the Danish, but it still looked the size of Detroit. He had no idea where Philip Brye bought his pastries, but he wanted to learn.

Philip Brye turned out to be a short man with bad skin and a very bad haircut. It was one of those haircuts that had been cut too closely at the back of the neck, so that the skin there was red and raw and peeling. The skin on the knuckles of Philip Byre’s one exposed hand was peeling, too. Coming into the office, Philip Brye stripped off his remaining surgical glove, opened the top of a bright red wastebasket, and held his other hand out to Gregor.

“I would have been more careful about washing up,” he said blandly, “but I didn’t actually touch anything in there except a clipboard. I take it you’re Mr. Gregor Demarkian, America’s greatest living detective.”

“Well,” Gregor said, “I’m Gregor Demarkian, anyway.”

Philip Brye laughed and coughed and took a seat on the edge of his work table. “I’ve been checking out your publicity on and off since last night. You look like your photographs, oddly enough. People almost never do. I take it Tony’s gotten you into a lot of trouble.”

“It looks that way,” Gregor agreed.

“He got the psychic into a lot of trouble, too. He probably didn’t tell you about the psychic. That was last year, over a child murder we had—nasty piece of work and quite straightforward, really, except that Tony saw a way to grab himself some publicity, and he took it. And took it and took it and took it.”

“Did the psychic do any good?”

“No. She put a good face on it, though, especially the way Tony got her played up on the six o’clock news. Murderer turned out to be the kid’s stepfather, which is what we expected. It usually is.”

“Stepfathers specifically?” Gregor asked curiously. “Not fathers or uncles or brothers?”

“Stepfathers and boyfriends,” Philip Brye answered. “Especially with eleven- and twelve-year-old girls. It’s practically a syndrome. I take it child murders were out of your field of expertise at the Bureau.”

“Those kinds of child murders were. I worked on a couple of serial murder cases with child victims.”

“Oh, lovely.”

“I retired,” Gregor said. “At the first possible opportunity.”

Philip Brye coughed for a moment. “I keep telling myself I’m going to retire at the first possible opportunity, too,” he said, “but I probably won’t. I figure I’m addicted to this place. Did Tony tell you anything at all about what happened to Tim Bradbury?”

Gregor nodded. “He was poisoned. With arsenic. But not where he was found, because there were signs of a vomiting episode in his throat but none in the vicinity of his body, even taking the word vicinity loosely. No sign of a sickness episode on the grounds, in the garage, or in the house at the Fountain of Youth Work-Out Studio—”

“Do you know to take that with a grain of salt?” Philip Brye asked sharply. “Tony and his people aren’t always exactly thorough. The evidence of an episode might have been cleaned up, and they might not have spotted the cleanup.”

“That had occurred to me.”

“Good.”

Gregor went on. “The body was found in a small area of evergreen bushes next to the Fountain of Youth Work-Out’s back door. It was naked, and there was no sign of the clothing Tim Bradbury might have been wearing at the time he died. He had been dead at least an hour when he was found. I think that’s it.”

Philip Brye considered this. “That’s all? Nothing about Bradbury himself? Nothing about his people? Or his background?”

“No.”

“Nothing about—the kind of speculation that’s been going on since Tim showed up dead?”

“Tony sent me some newspaper clippings,” Gregor said. “They contained a few theories.”

“I’m sure they did. They weren’t the theories I was thinking of.” Philip Brye jumped off the edge of his work table, wheezed, then walked over to his single, overstuffed file cabinet. The cabinet was so overstuffed, none of the drawers would close. “I suppose it figures,” he said. “Tony never tells anybody anything interesting if he can help it. Still, it’s a little raw.”