Hearts of Sand(71)

“And I was here with her,” Tim Brand said. “I was sitting right over there when she came down the steps and I was sitting right there when she went back up.”

“Did she have anybody with her?” Jason Battlesea asked. “Don’t politicians usually travel around with lots of people with them?”

“No, she didn’t have anybody with her,” Tim said. “There might have been somebody waiting for her up there, but she didn’t say anything.”

“Were you expecting her?” Gregor asked.

Tim shook his head. “I’m never expecting her. She drops in on me about once a year. She’s my twin sister. There’s really nothing sinister in all this.”

“Why would she have come by the route here,” Gregor asked, “instead of by the front door?”

“Because unlike Kyle, she does have to be careful about who sees her going where,” Tim said, and shook his head. “She gets a lot of bad publicity when she comes to the clinic. So mostly she goes to my house. She’s in town for the Fourth. She’s doing something public tomorrow, I think. She decided to stop in and not direct attention to herself by going through the front door. If I hadn’t been down here, she would have come through this door and found me in my office.”

Gregor nodded, and walked over toward the wall where the forensics people were working. There was no access for cars or vans out here. It was an enclosed back space, used mostly for people who worked at the clinic to have somewhere to go when they wanted to take a break. Now there was crime scene tape across the top of the stairs and too many people in the small space.

Gregor went back to Tim Brand.

“I think you’re going to find,” he said, “that Mr. Westervan was killed up there and the body tipped down here. Tipped or pushed. If he hadn’t fallen all that way, he might still be alive. Would most people here have known that tipping a body over that wall up there would land it here, behind the clinic?”

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “A lot of people would have known it, probably.”

“What’s up there, exactly?”

“That’s the overflow parking lot for the hospital,” Tim said. “They’ve got a regular parking lot in the front, and then they’ve got that one if it gets full up. I don’t think it does, very much. They put it in about ten years ago when there was a school bus accident and the place went crazy, with parents coming in and that kind of thing. I doubt if they’ve used it much since.”

“So there’s not likely to be any cars parked there?” Gregor asked.

“Not many,” Tim said.

“Is it well lit?”

“There are security lights around the perimeter,” Tim Brand said. “You can see them if you look up. I don’t know how well lit that makes it. I don’t know if I’ve ever been up there in the dark.”

“You told me before that Mr. Westervan had given you some legal advice recently,” Gregor said. “Would you mind telling us what it was about?”

Tim stared at the sky above him. “If you really think that is why he was murdered, you’re out of your mind,” he said. “We got letters recently from the Office of Health Care Access and the Office of the Health Care Advocate that said we were operating as an emergency room and that as an emergency room, we would have to follow Connecticut law as regards emergency rooms.”

“And?” It was Gregor’s turn to be puzzled.

“And,” Tim said, “in the state of Connecticut, emergency rooms are required by law to provide rape victims with the morning-after pill if they want it. The morning-after pill is an abortifacient. That means it essentially causes an abortion, although a very early abortion. This is a Catholic clinic. We will not provide abortions or abortifacients for any reason. If the state changes our classification from that of a clinic to that of an emergency room, we’ll have to shut down. And yes, Mr. Demarkian, we will shut down under those circumstances. I will not compromise on that.”

Gregor nodded. “The advice that Mr. Westervan gave you, was it workable advice?”

Tim Brand shrugged. “It was what I expected,” he said. “The state really doesn’t have a leg to stand on in reclassifying us. If the case goes to court, they will not win it. But if the case goes to court, it will cost us a lot of money we’d be better off spending on the things we do.”

“And Mr. Westervan was going to act as your attorney for this case?” Gregor asked.

“No,” Tim said. “I think he would have, if I’d asked, but it’s not the kind of law he does. I don’t even know if he’s passed the bar in Connecticut. He works in a Wall Street firm. He deals with financial people.”