“There’s one more thing,” Gregor said. “That mess last night. What do you know about it? What does anybody?”
“Oh,” Rob said. “I haven’t seen reports on that yet. I’m the last to get anything; you know that. But from what I’ve heard listening around, it was grisly enough but not as bad as we thought at first. There was just one body, and one part. But the body was, well, off, you know. I don’t think the stray hand is going to have anything to do with this. It’s probably been buried for centuries.”
“What about the more-or-less intact body?”
Rob shrugged. “You’re going to have to ask homicide. It was a few months old. It had started to decay. It—”
“Did it have a cord around its neck?”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes, it did. At least I think it did. You really should ask homicide, Gregor. They don’t tell me everything they do.”
“Right now, asking homicide means asking Marty Gayle and Cord Leehan, and that’s counterproductive. Please make sure, or get John to make sure, that they aren’t allowed to contaminate this latest case; because if they do, I’m going to sit down and tear my hair out by the roots. We need a name for this victim, and we need to know something about her. We need to run the same kind of background check, with the same concern for finding commonalities, that we’re running with the rest of them.”
“But that’s not usual, is it?” Rob said. “Serial killers don’t usually have background commonalities with their victims, do they? I mean, all the victims might have red hair, or be gay male prostitutes or something, but they don’t usually have anything in common on a deeper level. Or am I behind the times?”
“No,” Gregor said, “you’re quite right, but we’re not dealing with a proto-typical case of serial murder here, or a prototypical serial murderer. If we were, even Gayle and Leehan couldn’t have screwed things up as badly as they have. No, what we have here are a few—four, maybe, with the woman last night, or five—women who are connected in some way we’re not seeing just yet, both with each other and with one of the suspects. Except that the suspect isn’t the murderer. He’s just the accomplice. But he’s what we’ve got.”
“You know, you’re not making much sense,” Rob said. “This kid has disappeared, this Bennie Durban. He lives in the house where those bodies were found. That’s a connection. And it gets worse. He has a wall covered with pictures of serial killers: Bundy, Gacy, Manson.”
“I know,” Gregor said, “his landlady told me last night. The kid’s an idiot, and he’s very disturbing, and he’s gone. But he’s not who you’re looking for. Or at least, he’s not a serial killer.”
“You’re not being much help,” Rob said. “I mean, you may be being of help to the case, and you probably are, but you’re not being much help to my nerves. We’d better go up and talk to John before he comes down and finds us because he’s going to be in a bad enough mood as it is. This is not the kind of mess you want happening on your watch while you’re running for mayor of Philadelphia.”
Gregor knew. He more than knew. He knew John Jackman’s temper, which was both controlled and legendary. He turned around to go back to the evidence room and tell Betty and Martha that he would be upstairs for a while, when a tiny young woman in extremely high heels came clattering around the corner and down the corridor.
“Mr. Demarkian? Mr. Demarkian? Is that you?”
“I’m Mr. Demarkian,” Gregor said.
“Oh, thank God,” the woman said. She took a deep breath, but didn’t seem to be able to get any air. “You have to come upstairs right away. To Mr. Jackman’s office. Oh, and you too, Mr. Benedetti, we’ve been trying to find you. It’s urgent. It’s very urgent.”
“What’s urgent?” Rob asked.
“Mr. Jackman told me to tell Mr. Demarkian, if he wanted to wait, he told me to tell him that Henry Tyder has just escaped from jail.”
PART THREE
DISAPPEARING WALL
ONE
1
John Henry Newman Jackman was livid. He was also shouting, which Gregor and Rob could hear as soon as they stepped out of the elevator on his floor. John Henry Newman Jackman had one of those voices. He had once sung bass in his church choir. He could have given James Earl Jones some competition on who got to be the voice of God. When he shouted, the walls shook.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Rob said, under his breath.
Gregor agreed, silently. He’d seen John in these moods before. This time, he was a bit hesitant to describe it as a mood. If Henry Tyder had really found a way out of jail, that was a good enough reason to be angry.