Glass Houses(14)

Gregor thought about it. “They sound familiar, but I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve read their names in the papers about this case.”

“You never see them together,” Russ said. “It’s not something I noticed before, but I have since I got here trying to represent Henry. They act like they hate each other, and you can’t get them to tell you the same thing. It’s like playing telephone. I heard of them, too, before this. I just can’t figure out why.”

“Maybe we should go back to Henry Tyder,” Gregor said.

Russ sighed. “I’m really not going to let them get away with this. People make false confessions all the time. You know that; they know that; even the cardinal knows that. And in this case, it’s obvious he was asked leading questions.”

“There’s a tape?” Gregor asked.

“Yes.”

“You should be able to get a copy of it or a transcript on discovery,” Gregor said. “Your problem is going to be keeping him from making a guilty plea and having it accepted. Have you found a psychologist yet?”

“I haven’t had time.”

“I know somebody who might be able to put you in touch with one,” Gregor said. He shook his head. “I’m going to need some things, if you could get them for me. Talk to John Jackman; and if he won’t listen to you, I’ll call him myself. I want all the information I can get about the murder of, what’s her name, the maid—”

“Conchita Estevez.”

“Yes. All of it. About her death, his arrest, everything. And everything I can get about this one. In fact, I want everything—”

“About all of them?” Russ said. “Will John Jackman let you have those? Can he?”

“He can if I’m consulting for the department instead of the defense,” Gregor said. “And he will if he’s scared enough. He is running for mayor.”

“I didn’t know,” Russ said, “but I’m not surprised. I expect to see him running for president one of these days.”





3


Gregor expected to see himself run for a psychologist one of these days, and not one who would help Russ Donahue with Henry Tyder. Sitting in the cab on the way back to Cavanaugh Street, a number of things occurred to him, none of them to his credit. First, he realized it had been a very good day. Phillipa Lydgate could have taken his mind off a nuclear holocaust, never mind the problem of Bennis Day Hannaford. Work always made it possible for him to put aside his personal life. He thought back to the time when his wife was dying—long before Cavanaugh Street or Bennis or Alison or even his retirement from the FBI—and wondered if it would not have been so bad if he had stayed on the job, rather than taken leave to look after her. Elizabeth had wanted him to stay on the job. She’d said she wasn’t interested in benefitting from his martyrdom. He was the one who hadn’t been able to make himself do it.

Right now he wasn’t able to make himself take out the slim little cell phone he never used but always carried with him and call Alison at her office. He knew she was going to be at her office because these were her office hours, and she was meticulous about meeting them. That was true even if, as she put it, a student was more likely to sign a chastity pledge than come to a professor’s office hours. Once he’d even gone down and sat with her there, being uncomfortable in a straight-backed wooden chair and drinking coffee she’d brought in from a little place down the street. It had even been an office he’d recognized. In his day this part of the building had belonged to the History Department, and Alison’s particular office had belonged to Prof. Warren Harmon Cole. Gregor remembered Warren Harmon Cole because he’d had a lecture he gave every year on America and the Immigrant Experience, about how immigrants never really melted into Americans and never could.

At the moment Gregor was not so much melted as stranded in a sea of traffic. His meeting with Russ Donahue, Henry Tyder, and John Jackman had lasted just long enough to get him caught in the noon rush. He forced himself to get out the cell phone and look at it. Bennis had given it to him, that was the trouble. She had bought him the first year’s calling plan, too. It had been part of her ongoing attempt to make him “part of the twenty-first century.” On the other hand, he had called Alison on this phone before. He’d even asked her to dinner on this phone before. He had no idea why his level of guilt seemed to be rising these days to the point where he no longer knew what the right and the wrong of it was. Bennis hadn’t so much as left him a note. That was the trouble. She’d picked up and left, disappeared for months, and not even so much as left him a note. How was he supposed to know what she wanted him to do?