Living Witness(128)

“Dr. Willard said nothing about a persistent vegetative state,” Gregor said. “And he definitely sounds sure that she’s coming around. Which brings up another issue that cannot be ignored at this point, if you see what I mean.”

Sarah had been bustling around the kitchen, pouring coffee, setting a fork and a spoon and a knife down near the place at the table Gregor was standing closest to.

“Sit down,” she said now. “You’re both ridiculously early. There’s no point in leaving for town at this hour of the morning. There’s nothing you can do there. I can make you some eggs if you want them, Mr. Demarkian. And some bacon.”

Gregor thought fondly of his breakfasts at the Ararat, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast, but he shook his head. “I’m fine with coffee,” he said. “And I think getting in a little early wouldn’t hurt. We really do have to arrange something to protect Annie-Vic now that she’s conscious, because it’s not impossible that she remembers what happened to her. And that means—”

“Oh,” Sarah said, startled. “Oh, no.”

Gary Albright looked a little shocked himself. “I feel like an idiot,” he said finally. “I should have seen that right off. Of course, if she’s awake, he’ll want to come back and finish the job. Or she will. Are you still saying you don’t know if it’s a man or a woman who’s doing this?”

“I’m keeping my options open,” Gregor said.

“I’d better get on the line and get somebody out there,” Gary said. “We may have to ask the state police for this. I’ve only got Eddie and Tom. And I can’t just deputize a couple of people from town. I don’t know who we can trust.”

“If it helps,” Gregor said, “I think I can say that I know for a fact you had nothing to do with it.”

“It helps,” Gary said. “It just doesn’t solve this.”

“I asked Dr. Willard to put a nurse on duty in there until we had time to provide a police guard,” Gregor said. “You’ve got a little while before you have to panic about this. I don’t think anybody knows about this yet, except for us.”

“Don’t believe it,” Gary said. “Lots of people at the hospital have to know, and if they know then their relatives and friends know. Word gets around in a place like this. And I’m not comfortable with just a nurse. She’ll mean well, but she won’t know what to look out for. I mean, whoever this is just killed a woman maybe fifty feet from two state policemen. He’s not stupid.”

“No,” Gregor said, “but in that last case, he was desperate. Maybe he’s been desperate all along. Maybe that’s what I got wrong at the beginning.”

“Give me a second,” Gary said.

Gregor watched as Gary took his cell phone out of his pocket and poked at it. Then he turned to Sarah. She did not look sleepy, and she did not look messy. She reminded him of the mothers on all the television shows of his childhood, the ones who were perfectly groomed all day and all night, no matter what they were doing. At the age of ten, Gregor had been convinced that this was the chief difference between having “real American”parents and having immigrant ones—the immigrant ones were often a mess around the house.

Gary finished up and put the cell phone away. “Okay,” he said. “I managed to bypass Dale completely. He’s apparently at home asleep. The state police are sending an armed guard right away, and they’ll be there twenty-four seven for at least another week. After that, we’re going to have to renegotiate. We’ll have to call the hospital and give them a heads-up.”

“Call the hospital in a minute,” Gregor said. “There’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Or rather, there’s been something I’ve needed to know, and for some reason it just occurred to me that you’d know it, because you’re on the school board. Textbooks and supplies and that kind of thing.”

“Do you mean the school operating budget?” Gary looked confused. “We have one of those. Everybody has to have one of those.”

“Who controls it?”

Gary considered this. “I don’t know if you could say that anybody controls it,” he said. “It’s got a couple of different aspects. There’s a drawing fund. We put a predetermined amount of money in there for specific uses, like chalk and paper and that kind of thing. There’s an account for maintenance and repair. There’s an account for salaries. That kind of thing. Why?”