Hearts of Sand(60)

“Information about child sacrifice and Satan worship.”

“Information about the powers that be.”

“Why did she go back to Alwych?” Gregor asked.

Ray Guy shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. I didn’t live with her. I didn’t even see her all that often. It wasn’t safe. I think there was somebody there who was having trouble, somebody who wanted to come out and tell the truth, but who was too afraid.”

“And who was that?”

Ray Guy looked away, and in that instant, Gregor knew he was about to lie. “I never knew who it was,” he said. “But she needed a lot of encouragement, and Chapin went back every once in a while to encourage her. But it didn’t work. Chapin died without bringing her over.”

Gregor filed this away in the back of his mind. It was not what he was here for, but there might be better ways of discovering what was going on with this than pounding at Ray Guy Pearce. Besides, it was impossible not to notice that Ray Guy was exhausted. He was much more exhausted than he should have been.

Suddenly, the big man turned away, walked to the couch, and sat down on top of papers and books as if there were nothing there but a seat cushion.

“You can’t be here,” he said, his voice coming out in a whine. “You have no right to enter my house without a warrant. Nothing you find here is going to be of any use to you. You can’t use anything I’ve said. I don’t know why you people keep trying this stuff when you know it will never work. I don’t know why you people haven’t figured out that you have to lose in the end. Evil always loses in the end.”

It was an odd performance, distant and fluctuating. Gregor thought through his options, and then headed for the door.

“You’ll probably have a few visitors in the next few days,” he said. “You have to know that.”

“I’m ready for persecution,” Ray Guy Pearce said, his voice climbing almost to a scream. “I’m ready for persecution. I always have been.”

3

Back in the car, having given Juan Valdez the information that he’d like to be taken back to Alwych, Gregor got out his cell phone and started making calls.

His first was the New York Bureau office, where he was threaded through a dozen offices before he found one that had some direct responsibility for the Waring case. He explained Ray Guy Pearce’s declarations about where Chapin Waring had been for the last thirty years and why she hadn’t been found, and he tried to do it in a way that didn’t make any of the agents over the years sound like rank idiots.

“Hidden in plain sight is always the best way,” he said, desperately trying to sound nonjudgmental. “He said a dozen blocks. That might have been an estimate. You guys should probably do concentric circles until you find where she was. I didn’t get the name she was using, but there will be somebody who disappeared, and that will probably be the one. I don’t think you’ll get lucky enough to have an actual missing persons report. I doubt if she got close to anybody where she was living. It wouldn’t have been safe. And she wasn’t the kind of person who got close to people anyway.”

“Yes, Mr. Demarkian,” the agent on the line said. She sounded very young and very frightened. “Of course. We can probably get people out there today. You said she was living as a Muslim?”

“I said that Ray Guy Pearce reported that she was wearing a hijab when she went out. That doesn’t mean that she was living as a Muslim. And I don’t think it makes sense that she would have been doing that. There weren’t many Muslims in New York thirty years ago. What Muslims there were almost certainly comprised a small community and that community was likely to have been enforcing at least some cultural standards. They would have recognized a stranger as a stranger.”

“Oh,” the agent said. “Yes, of course.”

“He says he doesn’t have the money, and he doesn’t think she had it, either,” Gregor said. “But you need to find where she was living and look. God only knows if it would still be there if she did have it, with whatever place she was living in being empty for weeks. You still have to look. But if she really didn’t have it, and he really didn’t have it, then that presents an interesting problem. Give me about a day, and I can get you probable cause for a warrant to search his house,” Gregor said. “But you might want to put details up there to watch him. Whether that’s going to be any good or not if he’s got the money in the house, I don’t know.”

“Details,” the agent said. “I’ll get right on this. Does Mr. Fitzgerald have a number where he can call you?”