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Hardscrabble Road(118)

By:Jane Haddam


“Do you think she’ll be there?” Marbury asked. “The day after her boss was killed?”

“I’d think she’d have to be. There’s the network to run. There’s the direct stations. Somebody has to be doing all that.”

Neither Marbury nor Giametti could think of a good objection to that— Gregor himself could think of two—and neither of them seemed very interested in waiting around to be told what to do by headquarters, so they all piled into the patrol car again and started back out into city traffic. By now the day had started for serious, and there were a lot of cars on the road. Gregor wondered whether that hadn’t been part of the reason to choose Hardscrabble Road as the place to meet. It had to be an advantage not to have to dodge gridlock and backups when time was going to be important to you.

But no, that didn’t matter. He was making things unnecessarily complicated. They were pulling up alongside a line of parked cars somewhere in the very center of downtown. There wasn’t anywhere to park.

“We can double-park because it’s us,” Marbury said, “but the department doesn’t like it. You want to go in on your own and let us get this straightened out?”

Since Gregor didn’t need them at all, except as a substitute for real credentials—don’t ask what I’m doing here, I’ve got these nifty uniformed policemen coming with me—he climbed out of the car and went to the pavement. LibertyHeart was not CBS or ABC or Fox. It didn’t have an entire building with an enormous logo sign out front. In fact, it didn’t have a sign out front at all. Gregor finally found it by going into the lobby of the nearest high-rise building and checking the information board. He was spending far too much time these days checking information boards.

LibertyHeart was on the ground floor. He tried to figure out whether that made sense or not, and then decided it did. If they were broadcasting from here at all, all it would take would be some equipment on the roof, and it was a very high roof. He went down the hall until he found a door that finally had a logo on it—the Statue of Liberty inside a heart; this did not bode well for the general level of originality in this organization—and went in. The receptionist at the front desk was distinctly Not Ready for Prime Time. Her hair was pulled back in an elastic band. Her skirt was made of denim.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’d like to see Marla Hildebrande,” Gregor said. “Could you tell her that Gregor Demarkian is out here waiting.”

The receptionist was chewing gum. Gregor half expected her to make some crack about the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot. She just got on the phone and called for Marla Hildebrande instead.

It took no time at all for Marla to come to the reception area and collect him. The receptionist might not be ready for prime time, but Marla definitely was. In spite of the fact that she had obviously been crying, and that she hadn’t had much sleep, she was turned out like an ad for Brooks Brothers women’s suits and made up with the skill of a professional. She could have walked into an interview with Bill Gates or the president of the United States and looked entirely at home.

She held out her hand to him. “Oh, Mr. Demarkian. It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry about last night. I know I wasn’t being coherent—”

“You were fine,” Gregor said. “You were distraught.”

“Oh, dear. I can’t think of that word anymore without remembering the Harry Potter movie. You know, Moaning Myrtle.”

“Mm,” Gregor said. He did not know.

“I didn’t know what else to do but what I did, you see,” Marla said. “I mean, we saw the picture on the screen. And you know how it is with those pictures, you see the pictures when they’re looking for somebody, and then you see the somebody when they pick him up, and the person they pick up never looks anything like the pictures. But the picture looked just like Frank. It was uncanny.”

“It wouldn’t have happened the way it did last night under normal circumstances,” Gregor said. “If you ever make another identification, they’ll just take your information and your contact numbers and that will be it. The district attorney felt, because the case has been so—”

“—Overpublicized?” Marla Hildebrande smiled slightly. “Yes, I know. We used to say around here that everything Drew Harrigan did was overpublicized.”

“Could we go someplace and talk? I’ve got two officers with me, Marbury and Giametti, and they ought to be in soon, but I’d still like someplace we could close the door.”

“Come back to my office. Ginny, please. When the officers get here, send them back.”