Hearts of Sand(26)

“But you just said you did.”

“I didn’t recognize her the first time. About five years ago. She was out on Beach Drive that time, just walking along the side of the road with a dog. And when I went by her, the first thing I thought was that these people ought to stop walking their dogs on the road. It could be dangerous. And then there was something about her that just bothered me. So I looked back in the rearview mirror and slowed down a little. And she looked familiar. And she gave me a bad feeling. But I couldn’t figure out why, and so I sped up and just kept going. But the more I’ve thought about it since the murder happened, the more I’m sure. That was Chapin Waring on the side of the road. It had to be.”

3

Chapin Waring was not standing on the side of the road when Gregor climbed back into the perfectly ordinary car with its ridiculously uniformed driver and headed to the Alwych Police Department. The drive back through Alwych was about as interesting as the first drive through it had been. Juan Valdez didn’t speak English, and Gregor wasn’t even sure he knew much about the area. Beach Drive was still an empty landscape of big houses and wide lawns. If women did walk their dogs here, they weren’t doing it now.

This time, when he passed the Waring house, he knew the property from Darlee’s description. He asked Juan Valdez to slow down, and the driver did so. Either his passive English vocabulary was better than his active one, or he had some reason not to want to talk to the people he drove.

Gregor peered up the long drive as they went slowly by. It was gravel all the way up to where it went out of sight between the trees.

“Wasn’t there a fire?” Gregor asked.

Juan Valdez said nothing. He didn’t even look into the rearview mirror to acknowledge that Gregor had said anything. Gregor looked through his notes and found nothing that helped him out. He took one last look down the drive as they glided all the way past. The landscape showed no signs of a traumatic fire.

They drove to the end of Beach Drive and then began meandering again through town.

The police station was a plain, squat brick building with a low band of windows that ran in an uninterrupted line across its facade. Valdez pulled into a parking space right in front of the front door. Gregor got out and looked around. There were four patrol cars sitting in a line a little farther down the building. There were six civilian cars on the other side of the lot.

The front door opened and out came a short, squat man in a business suit that looked as if it had been custom-tailored for someone else. He was a youngish man without being really young. He was also bone-cold bald.

The man came forward, squinting. “It’s Gregor Demarkian. I recognize you from TV. I’m Jason Battlesea,” he said, coming forward with his hand held out. “They called me to tell me you’d arrived. We’re very glad you’re here. I hope you found the accommodations acceptable. If they’re not, we can always put you up in the Radisson on Route 7, but it’s a bit of a drive.”

“The accommodations are fine,” Gregor said. He shook Jason Battlesea’s hand. It was a mechanical process. There was the contact. There was the shake. Then Jason Battlesea dropped his arm as if it were a dead weight.

For a moment, they stood there in the bright summer air. It was as if neither of them knew what to do next.

“We do know about the FBI,” he said finally. “And we’re not going to complain. They’ve got legitimate interests in all this, and we know it.”

“But?” Gregor said.

Jason Battlesea looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think you can just assume that, because the victim is Chapin Waring, the murder has to belong with the FBI.”

“There were two people killed in the last robbery,” Gregor said.

“But this murder happened here,” Jason Battlesea said. “It happened in Chapin Waring’s old childhood home. It happened in a town where one of her sisters still lives. It happened in the town where she grew up and got to be—like she was, which was a first-rate spoiled brat and a world-class bully. Chapin Waring always had a lot of enemies in Alwych.”

“The kind of enemies who would hold a grudge for thirty years?”

“I don’t know,” Jason Battlesea said. “I don’t even know if it’s been thirty years. We don’t know where she’s been. She could have been anywhere. She could have been here.”

“Fair enough,” Gregor said.

“I suppose Darlee’s been on to you about how she saw Chapin Waring in town five years ago.”

“She said something about it.”

“Well,” Jason said, “once you’ve been here for a couple of days, you’ll realize one thing. She’s not the only one who thinks she’s seen that woman wandering around on and off over the years. We’ve got an entire file of sightings in the office. We passed every single one of them on to the FBI, except Darlee’s, of course, because she didn’t say anything about it before last week.”