Glass Houses(93)

“No,” Jackman said. “As far as I can make out, from the blithering I’m hearing on the other end—”

“They wouldn’t blither so much if you wouldn’t shout,” the African-American woman said, coming in with a little stack of messages. “You scare them to death, and then you wTonder why they act scared.”

“I could fire you, too,” Jackman said.

“As if,” the African-American woman said, and went out.

“She’s the most extraordinary person,” Jackman said. “I’ve met black people who talk ghetto and black people who sound like they were born heir to the throne of England, but she’s the only one I ever met who sounds like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. ”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “We were talking about where he escaped from.”

“Oh,” Jackman said. “Well. He had to go to the bathroom. He poked his head out of the door and told the guard on duty, and the guard took him down to the bathroom. And Margaret Beaufort came along.”

“To the men’s room?” Gregor asked.

“For the walk, I think,” Jackman said. “The guard let him into the bath-room, which is a single room, not a big one with stalls. Henry Tyder closed the door. Margaret Beaufort excused herself and went off down the hall toward the front of the building. And that was that. Ten minutes later the guard got suspicious and forced his way into the bathroom and Henry Tyder was gone, and Margaret Beaufort was long gone because she hadn’t come back from when she’d first excused herself.”

“There was a window in the bathroom?” Gregor asked.

“Yes. Of course,” Jackman said. “I think it’s city code that you have to have windows in bathrooms. I’m not sure.”

“How is the window secured?” Gregor asked.

Jackman sighed. “It isn’t. It’s not a full window. It’s a little sideways thing, like you see for crawl spaces. It would take a midget to get through one of those things, Gregor. I’ve seen them. I was a cop in this city for years.”

“Henry Tyder did get through it though,” Gregor said.

“He must have,” Jackman said. “I don’t know. Maybe the story will be different when they all get down here and I can make them make sense. But that’s what it looks like so far. And I think I’m going to kill somebody.”

“It would be hell on your chances of election,” Rob Benedetti said.

Jackman glared. Gregor ignored both of them. He looked around Jackman’s office for a moment. He’d been in many of Jackman’s offices over the years, and in the cubicles Jackman had worked out of when he’d been an ordinary homicide detective. There was a small Carmelite cross on the desk, unobtrusive enough to be ignored by almost everybody who came in and unusual enough so that most people wouldn’t know it meant that Jackman was one of that very rare breed, an African-American Catholic. There was a picture of his mother and father in a silver frame. They were both dead, and Gregor had always assumed that the picture had been taken for a wedding anniversary. Beyond those two things, everything else in the office was work-related: stacks of papers and folders; the office furniture; the computer; law books, and a hard copy of the criminal code on the shelves against one wall. If Tibor was here, he’d be making noises about how Jackman ought to do something about himself, like settle down and get married.

Gregor turned back to the desk. “So,” he said, “does anything about this strike you as odd?”

“I should hope a jail break strikes me as odd,” Jackman said. “If jail breaks weren’t odd, we’d be in a hell of a mess.”

“No, no. I know jail breaks are unusual,” Gregor said. “I mean does anything about Henry Tyder breaking jail strike you as odd?”

“Well, he’s not Albert Einstein, if that’s what you mean,” Jackman said. “Of course, he could have had help. His sister must have had something to do with this. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have known to take off when she did.”

“Maybe,” Gregor said. “But she’s not exactly Albert Einstein either. It’s the other sister, Elizabeth Woodville, who’s the brains of the operation. No, I was thinking of something else. Henry Tyder in court for the bail hearing. It was unlikely that the court was going to set bail under the circumstances; but what struck me at the time, what struck Russ Donahue at the time, was that Tyder wasn’t exactly cooperating.”

“I don’t think that’s really what was going on,” Rob Benedetti said. “He seemed addled as hell to me. The cardinal archbishop thought he was mentally defective. From all the years of liquor, you know.”