Hearts of Sand(66)

“Okay,” Battlesea said.

“The second problem,” Gregor said, “is that these guys almost always want guns. And, by the way, I think we’re going to find that was true of Chapin Waring, too, as soon as we find the apartment she was living in. The gun she used to shoot up the mirrors while she was dying is going to be one she brought with her. Not that we’ll necessarily be able to prove it, but I think that’s a pretty good bet. But that’s the thing. They’re running, they feel hunted, and they want guns. Even if they’re smart enough to have given up modern transportation. Even if they’ve gotten themselves to the point where they don’t need to buy gas or tires or spare parts because they’re relying on horse and mule power. They want guns, they want a lot of them, and they want good ones. They’ve got to hunt, and guns are better for hunting game than traps or bows and arrows. But the big reason is that they’re convinced they’re under siege and have to protect themselves from the forces of the United States government. That means they want an arsenal. And if there’s one thing the United States government pays a lot of attention to, it’s indications that some guy or group of guys somewhere is stockpiling a lot of firepower.”

“Didn’t you just say Chapin Waring was stockpiling firepower? Why didn’t they pick up on that?”

“I don’t think she was buying bazookas and Uzis,” Gregor said. “She probably picked up a few Saturday night specials, the kind of thing you can get off the street. And she didn’t need to have bought anything herself. Ray Guy Pearce could have gotten a couple of hand guns for her without raising too much of a profile. The Bureau has been looking into him, on and off, for years, but the general opinion is that the man is a flake and a crank and not particularly dangerous to anything but your sanity. He hasn’t been buying bazookas and Uzis either.”

“But he was out here, right? He was in the Waring house?”

“On and off the whole thirty years,” Gregor agreed. “Chapin Waring gave him a key and the security codes. Which means she had them, at least at the very beginning. I don’t think anybody would have noticed he was there. All he wanted was the photographs. He wouldn’t have stolen the silver or anything obvious that would have triggered a police investigation. And he didn’t take the photograph albums, just in case they might be missed. I think Chapin Waring told him where the albums were in the house. He went in and took whatever photographs he wanted and then put the albums back in place. He got out as quickly as he could. As long as he wasn’t stupid, as long as he was careful to time it, he would have been fine. Just take off down the beach.”

“But how did he get into the house without leaving signs of forced entry?” Jason Battlesea said. “I get you about the first time. Chapin Waring could have given him a key. But after a while, the locks were changed. And they were changed a lot.”

“There are plenty of lock-picking tools that won’t leave much if anything of a trace,” Gregor said. “They’re not very popular, because they take a long time to work. You have to have about half an hour or so to go at it without being afraid of being caught.”

“Well, he couldn’t have used something like that,” Jason Battlesea said. “He couldn’t just hang around, picking a lock for half an hour. Somebody would have seen him.”

“Would they have? If he’d tried to pick a lock on the beach side, then yes, I think there’s a good chance he would have been seen, at least at certain seasons of the year. But the front door is shielded from the road by hedges, and so is the side door that leads to the kitchen. He could have spent all the time he wanted at either of those two without having to worry about being interrupted. He would have parked somewhere on the beach, walked down and come around to the side door or the front door. Beach Drive is as closed off and isolated as any residential road I’ve ever seen. People don’t look out their windows. They don’t spy on their neighbors. They take privacy to an extreme. Did you get one notification that Chapin Waring was anywhere near her house the day she died? Because there’s none in the notes. People saw her all over the place, including on the parts of Beach Drive that are closest to town, but nobody seems to have seen her in the strictly residential area where the house was.”

“Right,” Battlesea said. “But you still don’t think he killed her.”

“No,” Gregor said. “He had no reason to. In fact, he had good reason to want to keep her alive. Technically, he wasn’t harboring a fugitive, and they’d done all the right things to make sure she’d be very hard to find. She’d stayed in a major city, with lots of people around, and in a very diverse area, so that nobody stood out no matter what they were like unless they started behaving outrageously and dangerously. He said she was wearing a hijab, which would have been an excellent way for her not to get seen, even before there was a significant Muslim population in the area. As long as there was something of a population, a hijab would have turned her into somebody nobody really looked at. Most people, when they see a woman in a hijab, look at the hijab, not the woman.”