Glass Houses(90)

“The name’s familiar.”

“It should be. He was picked up for questioning when Debbie Morelli was found dead. I helped him out of it. A friend of his, who is a good acquaintance of mine, came to me, and I stepped in for about a second and a half—”

“I remember,” Rob said, “the gay guy. But that was ridiculous; it was a completely bogus arrest. It was—oh, wait.”

“Yes, wait,” Gregor said. “I’d have to check, but I’m willing to bet you anything that that was Marty Gayle letting his feelings about homosexuality run wild.”

“You don’t have to check,” Rob said, “I know. I even remember the arrest.”

“Mr. Mark,” Gregor said, “is in there, with Bennis Hannaford, who is—”

“Well, I know who Bennis Hannaford is,” Rob said, sounding aggrieved. “She’s famous.”

Gregor let this one go by. It was even true, although not true in the same way that the word was used about Elvis, say, or the president of the United States. “Mr. Mark,” he said again, “came up with a very interesting idea. Well, two, actually. The second one was common sense, and one I’m sorry to say I didn’t think of on my own. We’ve spent precious little time investigating the life of Arlene Treshka, the woman whose body Henry Tyder was found near to that started this entire thing. But the other one was more interesting. Do you realize that three of these women—Arlene Treshka, Elizabeth Bray, and Sara-jean Petrazik—were clients of one of your suspects, Dennis Ledeski, and that a fourth, Elyse Martineau, was his secretary?”

“Ledeski,” Rob said. “Wait, I remember. The accountant. He was a suspect for about a minute and a half. I don’t remember anybody saying he was connected to any of the murders, but the one, I think it was of the secretary—”

“I’m pretty much sure nobody did say it,” Gregor said, “because nobody noticed. I got that information from Alexander Mark not two minutes ago, and I saw nothing like it in any of the files I was able to read. Which doesn’t mean the information isn’t there, but if it is, it wasn’t followed up. And now here’s another one. Dennis Ledeski is missing.”

Rob straightened up. “What?”

“He’s missing,” Gregor said. “According to Alexander, he packed up some stuff and some computer discs and disappeared late yesterday. I don’t know how seriously to take that. I don’t know if Alexander has checked, or if he’s just jumping to conclusions, but—”

“But we’d better go find him,” Rob said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Do you think—”

“That he’s our killer?” Gregor said. “No. Alexander Mark says he’s a pedophile. My guess is that in this case, we can trust what Alexander says because Alexander went to work in Ledeskis office specifically to expose him.”

“I’m going to have a migraine,” Rob said. “And I don’t get migraines.”

“The thing is,” Gregor plowed on, determinedly, “I doubt if, assuming what Alexander said is true, that Ledeski is the man who killed a small string of these women. Not all of them, mind you, because even with a cursory look at the evidence I can see that these women were not all killed by the same person, but the ones who were would not have been killed by a sexual predator. If Ledeski is a pedophile, then if he resorted to murder two things would be true: first, he’d kill his sexual victims, which I would guess would be very young boys, second, there’d be signs of sexual activity, which there is not in any of the women I would count here as the victims of our killer. You should find the man, yes, please, because you don’t want a guy who gets his kicks forcing himself on eight-year-olds to be out wandering the street. But he’s not going to have killed any of these wx>men. The thing is, though, that Alexander Mark was on the right track. What the detectives in this case should have been working on was the connections between the women, where they existed.”

“All right,” Rob said, “that makes sense.”

“I think first thing tomorrow morning you have to assign some regular-duty detectives to this stuff, specifically to look for connections of any kind. Women who worked together, women who lived near each other, women who belonged to the same health club, anything and everything that might connect them. I have some ideas as to what kind of link is going to be important, but we’ll put that aside until your people collect some information.”

“I’ll get John to get homicide to put a couple of guys on it tonight,” Rob said. “I don’t think he’ll balk, not even at removing Marty and Cord. We should have some stuff for you by the morning.”