Hardscrabble Road(110)

He dropped down what would have been another line if the paper had been lined and wrote: Where was he getting the prescription medication?

Gregor didn’t mean Drew Harrigan. He knew where Harrigan was getting the prescription medication. He meant Drew Harrigan’s source. It all came down to this: it made no sense to kill Harrigan if you couldn’t be sure that nobody would discover that you were the one feeding him the pills in the first place. That meant that you had to be getting those pills in a way that you believed could not be discovered in almost any circumstance.

They were at Rob Benedetti’s door. Gregor put the little bound book into the inside pocket of his coat and waited until Marbury came around to let him out. This was a car for transporting criminals. The back doors didn’t open from the inside.

Getting out, Gregor looked around, carefully checking for homeless people, but found none. The last few days had made him hypersensitive to an issue he’d never thought about much before, and that made him more than a little uncomfortable to think about now. They went through into the lobby and waited for the elevator. They walked into the elevator and pushed the button for Rob Benedetti’s floor. The building felt deserted, although Gregor knew it couldn’t be. It had to be the time of day.

“Places always spook me when they get like this,” Giametti said.

“Everything spooks you,” Marbury said. “You thought aliens were going to land when the planets aligned.”

The elevator stopped on Rob Benedetti’s floor and they all got out. They walked down to the woman who served as Benedetti’s gatekeeper. She didn’t need to be told who they were. Gregor thought he himself would probably stick in her memory forever, because he was the one she’d had to find after being told there was a body in the back in a shopping cart.

She got Benedetti himself on the intercom, told him they were there, and then turned back to Gregor. “It’s the nuns,” she said. “I can handle anything but nuns. And nuns in habits like that.” She waved her hands in the air. “I thought they stopped wearing habits like that. They’re not anywhere near as scary in ordinary street clothes.”

Benedetti came out and began waving them all into his office. He looked harried and triumphant at once. Gregor did not think this was a good sign. Investigations were not usually aided by investigators who imagined themselves marching through the last act in a Verdi opera.

“Wait until you hear this,” he said, in what was supposed to be a muted tone under his breath, but wasn’t. “Just wait until you hear this.”

The two nuns Gregor remembered from the police station were sitting in Benedetti’s office, their feet flat on the floor, their hands folded in their laps and out of sight under their voluminous sleeves. At least, Gregor thought it was the same two. He was sure about the young one, who was unusual in both her looks and her manner. He admitted to himself that he hadn’t paid attention to the other nun yesterday, and wasn’t paying much attention to this other nun now.

Benedetti waved them all to chairs and sat down on the edge of his desk. “This is Sister Maria Beata and Sister Mary Immaculata. I think we’ve all met.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Benedetti,” Immaculata said. She looked disapproving, but she probably always did.

“Tell Mr. Demarkian what you told me,” Benedetti said to Sister Beata. Then he turned to Gregor. “They came marching in here about forty-five minutes ago and told me the most amazing thing.”

“We didn’t know where else to go,” Beata said. “Our first thought after talking to Reverend Mother was to go to the precinct at Hardscrabble Road, of course, but that didn’t seem to make sense, since it didn’t seem as if anybody there knew anything about this. Then we tried to call you, Mr. Demarkian, but we got your answering machine. We know you have a cell phone number, but we didn’t know what it was.”

“We weren’t sure if there was directory assistance for cell phone numbers,” Immaculata said.

Beata brushed this off. “The thing is, I never would have remembered. I mean, I did remember, in a way, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Even at the time, you see, the man in the red hat looked familiar, but I just thought that was because he came to the barn often. And the odd thing is, he did come to the barn often. Or rather, often enough. At least a couple of times a month this winter.”

“People come in and out,” Immaculata said. “You can never tell with the barn, who will show up and who will not. We have regulars, but there are other people who come and go.”