“How will I know who she is? Or will she know me?”
“She’ll probably recognize you on sight,” Tim said. “But you’ll have no trouble recognizing her. She weighs nearly five hundred pounds.”
“Ah,” Gregor said.
“She’s got an absolute crap of an old car. It’s reasonably reliable, but it’s not the kind of thing for Alwych. But nobody will pay attention to it tonight, and nobody who knows her will pay attention to it at any time. She’ll drive you to Virginia’s. She’ll go park somewhere that doesn’t look connected. Then you just text her when you’re done and she’ll come get you. Virginia is waiting for you, and she is more than ready to talk.”
“And you think nobody will know I was there?”
“I think nobody will have a clue,” Tim Brand said. “Trust me. I know Alwych. And I know Alwych on the Fourth of July.”
TWO
1
From the moment Tim had called her to arrange for Gregor Demarkian to visit, Virginia Brand Westervan felt as if she had been shot through with methamphetamine. Everything inside her was speeded up, so speeded up that the fact that Kyle was dead was almost like a dream. The fact of it was there, and it was a raw pain that would not stop aching. But the pain felt old. The ache felt familiar. It was as if all this had happened years and years ago, and hurting had become as natural to her as eating breakfast.
Virginia heard the car out in the parking lot, the edgy humming of it that announced an old and not very well cared for vehicle. She went to the window and looked out. Nobody was out there. There were no paparazzi in the bushes.
She heard a step outside the front door and went to it immediately. She flung it back without bothering to double-check through the peephole. The man who stood in front of her once the door was open was very tall, taller even than Tim and Kyle, and they’d both been six foot three. Virginia stepped back and let him come in. She closed the door behind him and watched him look around the room. She wondered what, if anything, the room said about her.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing at the living room with its deeply cushioned couch and even more deeply cushioned club chairs. “I don’t think I ever thought about the way I furnished this room before. It’s not a place I entertain. It’s usually only me here, or staffers. Sometimes it’s Tim or Kyle. I can’t really picture Kyle dead. He isn’t the sort of person who dies.”
“Everyone dies,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“I know that.” Virginia thought her voice was too sharp. She tried to soften it. “Maybe I just meant to say that he isn’t the kind of person who dies young.”
Gregor Demarkian took a seat on one of the chairs. He sank into its cushion like a lead weight sinking in pond water. He looked a little disconcerted.
Virginia took her seat on the edge of the couch. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Before we start getting into things, tell me how he died.”
“It’s a little too early to know exactly how he died,” Gregor said. “There will have to be an autopsy. He apparently died by being stabbed in the back with a kitchen carving knife.”
“Like Chapin,” Virginia said.
“Possibly,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Or possibly somebody was just hoping to make it look like Chapin Waring’s death. Killers do tend to be creatures of habit. They do the same thing over and over again if they kill more than once. On the other hand, copycats are common, if for no other reason than because a copycat killing often throws the police off the real scent. We’ll have to see.”
“Tim said he’d been pushed off the wall at the back of the overflow parking lot at the hospital.”
“Again,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Apparently.”
“I know,” Virginia said. “Apparently. For God’s sake, who would want to do something like that? If it wasn’t for Chapin, you’d assume this was a random mugging. Except we don’t have muggings in Alwych. Not even on the Fourth of July.” She walked away. “You want to know about my visit to Tim. Well, we do visit every once in a while. Sometimes he comes to see me, and sometimes I go to see him. It’s a little complicated. You’d be amazed at how many people—my supporters and his—think we shouldn’t speak, because we’re on different sides of the abortion issue. We’re supposed to hate each other. Except I don’t hate him. I’ve known him, quite literally, all my life.”
“What made you decide to visit him tonight?”
Virginia shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about him. I’m running for Senate. There were the inevitable clashes because the Saint of Alwych who is my own twin brother wouldn’t endorse my run. I didn’t expect him to, of course, but the press make a big deal of it. It annoys both of us. Anyway, I was there, and my night was mostly free—”