“Nobody is punishing anybody for anything,” the sergeant behind the counter said. “Not yet. And nobody is arresting your guy.”
“Who knows who’s doing what to him?” the sister demanded. “You’ve had him in that room for half an hour, completely cut off from me or any other possible help, and don’t tell me he waived the right to an attorney. You know as well as I do that he isn’t competent to make a decision like that. Now, you’re going to go and get him, and let me talk to him, and leave him alone, or I’m going to find a judge and make you release him. And if you don’t think I can do that, you don’t begin to understand where I’m coming from.”
“Mr. Demarkian,” the sergeant said, leaning across the counter to hold out his hand, “don’t mind Sister here. We aren’t giving the old guy the third degree. We’re just trying to find out what happened on the night this Sherman Markey guy died.”
“Are we sure it was Sherman Markey in the hat, then?” Gregor said.
“Not officially, no,” the sergeant said, “but Detective Willis told me to tell you that it’s just a matter of time. We know where the body is. They’ve just got to get to the pathologist and make him move it. So much for finger print databases, but that’s just me. Give us a few seconds here and Detective Willis will be right out.”
“Tell Detective Willis that if he isn’t out a lot sooner than that, I’ll have his balls,” the sister said.
The sergeant frowned. “Nuns didn’t talk like that when I was in school.” “You weren’t holding sick old men against their wills when you were in school.”
A woman appeared from one of the doors behind the counter and called, “Is there a Detective Marbury here? There’s a call for you from the District Attorney’s Office.”
“That’ll be confirmation,” Marbury said.
He walked back to where the woman was waiting for him, and Gregor went back to contemplating the religious sister. He had no doubt at all that she would make good on her threat. She had the look of someone who was used to being taken seriously. The sergeant was ignoring her. Gregor didn’t think that would go on for long.
“Sister?” he said.
“Oh, excuse me,” the sister said. “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Sister Maria Beata of the Incarnation. No, never mind all that. We never use all that except in official documents. In a way, I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can bring some sanity to these proceedings.”
“Maybe,” Gregor said. “Did you see the man who died? The person we think is Sherman Markey?”
“Not really,” Beata said. “Oh, I saw him in passing. He was waiting at the door for the barn to open when I came back to the monastery from doing some business downtown. And I saw him after he was dead. I can’t give you much information about him.”
“Would any of the other sisters have seen him?”
“Most of the sisters don’t actually leave the enclosure to visit the barn,” Beata said. “They’re not supposed to see outsiders at all, except from behind the grille. It’s only Immaculata and me who go out there while the men are there. The monastery used to keep cows, you know, in the old days. Before the city got so built up. It would be against the law now, I suppose.”
Gregor was about to suppose the same thing, when the door at the back swung open again, and Dane Marbury came out, looking sick.
“Listen,” he said, coming up to them. “We’ve got to get out of here. Mr. Demarkian is wanted at the morgue.”
“They found the body?” Giametti said.
“Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
Marbury looked at the floor, and the ceiling, and then at his hands. “They found a body,” he said. “But it isn’t Sherman Markey’s body. They’re pretty sure that what they’ve got is the great Drew Harrigan himself.”
PART TWO
Tuesday, February 11
High 4F, Low –9F
Ours is an era of mass-starvation, deportation and the taking of hostages.
—GEORGE STEINER
It seems clear to me that the will must in some way be united to God’s will. But it is in the effects and deeds following afterward that one discerns the true value of prayer….
—ST. TERESA OF AVILA
And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: “Psst!”
—TERRY PRATCHETT
ONE
1
In dreams the people who should be present are absent, and the people who should be absent…something. The words wouldn’t come. Gregor Demarkian thought that might be because he didn’t have any words. He had a big bag full of something, but it all seemed to be marshmallow Peeps, in every possible color, including purple. He looked out over the vast audience in front of them and realized they were all cynocephali, men with dogs’ heads. He wouldn’t have known what to call them if he hadn’t been talking about it to Tibor just a day or two ago. Maybe some of them were women with dogs’ heads. He didn’t know how to tell, since they all seemed to be wearing identical sky blue jumpsuits. They were all carrying parachutes, too. He knew he couldn’t stop talking, because if he did, one of them would stand up to speak, and assuming he could translate the barks—did cynocephali bark? Tibor hadn’t said anything about that—all he would hear would be another lecture about politics, and it wouldn’t matter whose side the cynocephali were on. Maybe one of them was running for something, mayor, president, dogcatcher. Maybe they had an ideology that told them that if the other side got into office, the world as we know it would be destroyed, all good would be defiled and outlawed, all evil would be installed and mandated. Maybe they were awaiting the end of civilization and the rise of a fascist state, where dogs would be forced to wear collars and jailed if they were caught without them, where they would have no freedom of religion to refuse vaccinations, where they would be required to live with a master or be marked for judicial death.