Hearts of Sand(80)

She thought of Kyle Westervan, dead, with a knife in his back. She saw the knife rise up from the shoulder blade, just as it had when Chapin Waring died.

Then she leaned over the side of the bench and threw up.





THREE

1

When the phone rang at two o’clock in the morning, Gregor Demarkian almost didn’t answer it. He was lying flat on his back on the big bed in his suite at the Switch and Shingle. The idea that anybody would call him at this hour and after the day he’d had was somehow seriously offensive.

The ringtone and the name in the photo ID belonged to Bennis, however, and his marriage was still too new for him to feel all right about not picking up for her.

Of course, his friendship with Bennis had lasted longer than any other relationship in his life except for his first marriage, so there was something to be said for the idea that he’d earned the right to a little slacking off.

He picked up and said, “Hello?”

Bennis chuckled and said, “I knew you wouldn’t want me calling in the middle of the night, but I did call you at least twice before and you didn’t return, and then there’s this news on the CNN Web page about another murder out in Alwych. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t you.”

“It wasn’t me,” Gregor said, yawning. “If it had been me, CNN would probably have said so.”

“Only if they knew,” Bennis said. “I don’t understand how we got along before the Internet and cable news and all the rest of it. Think of all the things that happened before we had all that. The Challenger disaster. The Kennedy assassination.”

“You weren’t alive for the Kennedy assassination.”

“I know, but think about it. Three broadcast television networks and maybe PBS. And that was it. How did anybody ever get any information?”

“There were newspapers.”

“Newspapers come out a couple of times a day and then you have to wait for the next day,” Bennis said. “I got this in real time. Who got murdered?”

“A man named Kyle Westervan. He worked as a lawyer on Wall Street. He was on my interview list, but I never got a chance to talk to him.”

“And is it all part of the Chapin Waring thing?”

Gregor moved a little on the bed. It was a very good bed, and he could feel himself beginning to sink into sleepiness.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “It was a stabbing, like the Chapin Waring murder. I got a look at the knife in the body, and at the knife wound later. If you look at the pictures from the Waring murder, you see the knife in the victim’s back and it’s going slightly downward, if that makes sense. This wound was going slightly upward.”

“I know what that is,” Bennis said. “That’s height. Was Kyle Westervan very tall?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I thought of that, too. Kyle Westervan was tall. Chapin Waring was a little short. And both of the knifings were done from up close—”

“How could they not be done from up close?” Bennis asked.

“A knife can be thrown,” Gregor said. “I’ll admit, I’ve never seen a murder done with a thrown knife. But these weren’t thrown. Whoever it was came right up to the back of both the victims and stabbed. And that’s an interesting point.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Because the murderer would have to be very close up to make it work,” Gregor said. “Whoever this was got right up to the bodies of the victims and then stabbed. Can you imagine letting somebody get that close to you from the back?”

“You do it all the time.”

“We’re married,” Gregor said. “And I can see you allowing it with, say, Tibor, or Donna, or maybe even Linda. But even with people you know on Cavanaugh Street, I think you’d mostly get uncomfortable if they got that close. And that leaves me back where I was. The victims have to know the murderer very well. And the murderer has to be someone who would not cause fear or suspicion in any way, at least for those two people. Has to not cause suspicion in Kyle Westervan even after Chapin Waring’s murder.”

“In other words, someone Kyle Westervan has known forever.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I suppose so. But almost everybody involved in this has known almost everybody else ‘forever.’ Let’s say someone Kyle Westervan wouldn’t suspect of killing Chapin Waring. Or somebody who, even if he did suspect, he wouldn’t feel threatened by.”

“I take it Ray Guy Pearce isn’t the kind of person Kyle Westervan would allow to come right up behind him,” Bennis said.

“I think squirrels would be opposed to Ray Guy Pearce coming up behind them,” Gregor said, “but in this case, it doesn’t matter, because he has an ironclad alibi for Kyle Westervan’s murder. He was spouting conspiracy delusions to several hundred people in a hotel. I never liked him for the Waring murder either, though. It was all wrong. Chapin Waring was his one and only live zoo exhibit, a member of the thirteen richest families willing to tell him that everything he’d ever believed was true.”