Glass Houses(28)
“Gregor?”
“Sorry. No, it’s not quite accurate and it’s not quite not. He’s a Tyder, old Philadelphia money, and he’s apparently got a ton sitting in trusts. He also shares a house with his sisters—”
“Half sisters,” Rob said automatically. “The women are Owen Tyder’s daughters by his first wife. Henry is the son by the second. First wife was a Day—”
“Ah,” Gregor said. Bennis’s mother was a Day. Was that going to mean that Bennis and this case were somehow related?
“—and the second was, what shall we say, interesting. Started out as a show girl in Las Vegas, put her money in real estate instead of self-destruction, and made a pile, met Owen at some charity thing in Washington, D.C. From all reports the daughters were furious. And still are.”
“Well, that could account for why Henry Tyder doesn’t like to live in his own house,” Gregor said. “But I think it’s more complicated than that. It’s the guilt thing again. He just can’t get past the guilt. I don’t know. For whatever reason, he does spend a lot of his time living on the street. I checked, though. During that last cold snap we had, he was out of sight and into the warm. For all the craziness, he’s shrewd enough when he needs to be.”
“Do you think he’s crazy?”
Gregor considered this. “I don’t know if that’s the word for what’s going on. I think there might be some brain damage. He’s been an alcoholic for years, and a druggie at least sometimes. That tends to have an effect on how well a mind works.”
“But you don’t think he’s incompetent to stand trial,” Rob said.
“You haven’t made it to trial yet,” Gregor said, “and I’m not sure you’re ever going to. He could make it look like he was incompetent to stand trial if he wanted to. And you’d be left wondering, just as I am, if it’s real or an act. This is a very unusual man.”
“Then maybe he could be the Plate Glass Killer,” Rob said. “Serial killers are unusual men. Or at least, they seem so to me.”
Gregor considered this. “Some of them are,” he said. “Bundy was. But most of them seem to follow a pattern, and it’s not a very interesting pattern. Sexual dysfunction. Necrophilia. Even Bundy was a necrophiliac. That odd inability to see the world as if it contained anybody at all except yourself. After you see enough of them, you begin to think of them as a syndrome, with a related syndrome, the symbiotic one, when they do it all with a girlfriend.”
“And make tapes,” Rob said. “I know that. But this isn’t like that, is it? The Plate Glass Killer doesn’t rape them. There hasn’t been a single sign of sexual assault with any of them, and if one showed up we’d wonder if it was done by the same guy. So it’s not the usual thing.”
“No, it’s not the usual thing. And that’s enough to give me pause about the entire case. It’s, literally, unheard of for there not to be a sexual element in a serial killer case. And then there’s the problem Russ has been having with the detectives. Do you know something about that?”
There was an odd little pause on Rob’s end of the line. “Ah,” he said, “Marty Gayle and Cord Leehan. Yeah. They don’t get along too well.”
“And you think that’s a good idea?” Gregor asked. “On a case like this, maybe the most important case on the books at the moment? Russ said something about how he can’t seem to get the two of them into the same room at the same time.”
“Yeah,” Rob said. “I know. It’s complicated, Gregor, and there’s a consent decree and, trust me, we wouldn’t be doing it this way if we didn’t have to. Ask John Jackman. Tell me if you think there’s any chance that Henry Tyder is the Plate Glass Killer.”
“I still can’t tell you if Henry Tyder is the man you want,” Gregor said. “Not on what I have now. The best thing I can tell you is that I’ll sign on if you want. And if I think he is in the end, I’ll say so; but if I think he isn’t, I’ll say so too. And I’m not going to promise not to mention a word to Russ or the defense.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Rob said. “But you were on this case once before, weren’t you? You came in on the side of one of these guys—”
“Alexander Mark,” Gregor said. “Edmund George asked me to. There wasn’t any question there, though. It was just Marty Gayle doing his thing. You’d better watch that guy. He’s a hate crime waiting to happen.”