Hearts of Sand(64)

“I’m not depriving or denying anyone anything,” Tim said. “I am living according to the dictates of my conscience, just as you’re living according to the dictates of yours.”

“And the dictates of your conscience say what? That what women need, what they want, what they hope, what they dream—that all that doesn’t matter? That they’re nothing but broodmares for the social order? That nothing about them is really human except the content of their wombs?”

“We’re not going to get anywhere with this, Virginia. We’ve done it before.”

“I know,” Virginia said.

The cigarette had burned down to the stub. She threw it on the ground and stubbed it out. She was, Tim thought, a very beautiful woman.

“I thought we ought to talk about something else,” Virginia said, sounding more than a little abrupt. “That man is here. Gregor Demarkian.”

“I know,” Tim said.

“I’m not worried about him, exactly,” Virginia said. “I know I didn’t kill Chapin. I’m pretty sure you didn’t, either. And I don’t know who did. If you want to know the truth, it astonishes me that anybody would after all this time.”

“Evaline Veer?” Tim suggested. “That’s the best I’ve been able to come up with.”

“Hope called me,” Virginia said.

“She came here, too,” Tim said.

“She was out of her mind frantic,” Virginia said. “I mean completely out of her mind. She doesn’t—handle things well.”

“No,” Tim agreed.

“I kept thinking she was going to make people think she was guilty of something whether she was or not.”

“She did go and talk to that man,” Tim said. “You know, the one with the books. Knight Sion Publishing, or whatever that was.”

“I can’t see what she had to tell him that he didn’t already know,” Virginia said.

“He paid her a few hundred dollars,” Tim said. “She came and talked to me about it this morning. She said she was feeling guilty about betraying us, and I said I didn’t think it was much of a betrayal. You’re right. There isn’t much the man didn’t already know, and not much he hadn’t published, either. I was glad she had the money. There isn’t much teaching available in the summers. I don’t think she eats right.”

“There wasn’t any need for it to ruin any of us. It didn’t ruin you. Or me. Or Kyle.”

“It ruined Marty and Chapin.”

“Marty is dead,” Virginia said. Then she shivered. “Chapin is dead, too, but it doesn’t feel real to me. I think I’ve been assuming she’s been dead all these years. But Marty—well, I don’t think about the robberies much. I didn’t take part in them, and I didn’t suspect Chapin and Marty did until there was all that fuss on the news. But I do remember that damned accident.”

“I don’t think it would be possible to forget, either,” Tim said. “I remember the screeching noise and then being slammed into the back of the front seat and then being twisted around like a pretzel. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt.”

Virginia took out her cigarettes again, looked at them for a moment, and put them back into her pocket.

“I’d better go,” she said. “They’re probably looking for me.”

“You know I’m not praying that you win your election.”

“I do know,” Virginia said. “And I don’t pray, but I’m not hoping you get out from under the laws of the State of Connecticut. I’m not hoping that you have to close, mind you. I do hope you’re going to see the light.”

“I have seen the light,” Tim said, “and if the state prevails and demands that I hand out the morning-after pill, I will close. I will shut the place down cold and I’ll make it entirely clear why.”

“And everybody will call you a hero for doing it,” Virginia said. “I do have to go, Tim. I have to get back to the fight to make the world safe for selfish, shallow feminists.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“I don’t understand why it’s always all right to shortchange and restrict and disadvantage women,” Virginia said. “Except, on some level, mostly I do. I’ll see you later.”

“Probably sometime next year,” Tim said.

Virginia gave him a little smile and then ran up the concrete steps as quickly and as smoothly as if she really had been still eighteen. Tim watched her go with a feeling that was a lot like pain.





SEVEN

1

Gregor Demarkian’s instructions to the Alwych Police Department did just what he’d expected them to do. They’d made the entire population of the APD headquarters start running around in circles. By the time he arrived back in Alwych, officers and technicians had been dispatched to the Waring house to “fingerprint everything in sight,” as Jason Battlesea put it, and a couple of people had been called in from the state police to help. Gregor had an almost irresistible urge to ask if the state police forensics people had lost their accreditation along with their lab, but he managed to choke it back and then to go over, once more, what he needed them all to do. He had no idea if he would actually be able to get Ray Guy Pearce arrested for something, but he did know he was going to try.