Glass Houses(76)

Instead, he sent Delia out for coffee and a tuna fish sandwich and went down the hall to look at the building directory next to the elevators. He had no idea where things were in the maze of buildings that made up Philadelphia’s city government, but he had the idea that evidence clerks would be wherever the evidence room was, and the evidence room would be where the city needed it most—either at Police Headquarters or here with the district attorney. The building directory did not register anything called an evidence room, or anything called anything that might mean an evidence room. In a world where secretaries were personal assistants and janitors were sanitation engineers, you had to be careful.

He went back down to his office and called John Jackman. The woman who answered the phone made no reference to John’s mayoral campaign, probably because it was illegal for her to do it.

“You don’t have to bother John,” Gregor said. “I just need to know where I can find a clerk named Martha Venecki. Or maybe one named Betty Gelhorn.”

“They work in the evidence room. Do you want me to get them for you? I’m sure one of them’s on duty down there. They never leave the place unattended.”

“They run it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Put me through to whichever one you can find.”

There were a lot of clicks and beeps on the phone, and Gregor waited. Rob had been honest. This really was a larger office than the ordinary. Unfortunately, that didn’t actually make it large. He looked into the box he had left on top of the desk. Along with the bits and pieces of paper and cardboard, there were things: a key chain with a picture of the Sacred Heart streaming from the breast of Jesus on the heavy plastic weight; two or three metal lipstick cases, the lipstick inside them partially used; an old Texas Instruments plastic calculator, broken; a single man’s tennis shoe, size fourteen. Were these pieces of evidence? Why weren’t they in evidence bags?

The phone clicked again, and a woman’s voice said, “Martha Venecki here. Is this Gregor Demarkian?”

“This is Gregor Demarkian. Do you think you could answer a few questions for me? I’m having a little trouble making my way through all this material.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Gregor could hear two women talking in the background. They were arguing, but only in the way people did when they were essentially in agreement anyway.

“Mr. Demarkian?” It sounded to Gregor like Martha Venecki’s voice. “Would you mind very much if we asked you a favor? If you want to talk about the material, do you think you could come down here to do it?”

“Down to Police Headquarters?”

“That’s right.”

“Tell him,” a voice in the background said, “I mean, how can we know if it’s really him? We could be talking to anybody.”

“Yes,” Martha said, “well, that was Betty Gelhorn. She—”

“She wrote the summary that’s on my desk.”

“That’s right,” Martha said. “You do see our problem, don’t you? You could be Gregor Demarkian, but you might not be. We can’t see your face. So if you could come down here—”

“They’ve done crazier things,” the other woman said. It was suddenly her voice on the phone. She must have taken the receiver from Martha. “It’s not that we doubt you,” she said. “Mr. Jackman said you were going to be going over the Plate Glass material, and we’re more than willing to help you out. It’s that we don’t trust them, you see. We don’t trust either of them.”

“Give that back to me,” Martha said. “Mr. Demarkian, we really are truly and sincerely sorry. And we’re not worried about our jobs. We’ve been here forever and there are union   rules, and besides Mr. Jackman would never fire us. But we don’t trust them. You know who we mean. Those two. And they can make trouble. So we thought it would be better if you came down here and we could see you, and then we could tell you whatever you needed to know.”

“Tell him we’ll make him some coffee,” Betty said. “And I brought cookies this morning, chocolate-and-peanut butter chip.”

“If you could,” Martha said.

“Then he could see the rest of it,” Betty said.

“There’s more material I haven’t seen?” Gregor said.

“Oh, Mr. Demarkian, not really. I mean, except for the computer files we don’t have the passwords for. There are just other things we don’t know where they’re supposed to belong, which is entirely outside regulations, you understand, because when officers deliver evidence to us they’re supposed to label it so that we know how to file it. Except some of them don’t. Two in particular. If you get my drift.”