Living Witness(26)

Gregor knew her as well as he wanted to know her. The woman scared the pants off him. He looked over again at the young man at the computer. “Why does he look familiar?” he asked.

“Because,” John said, now nearly pushing Gregor into the office, “he’s one of Tyrell Moss’s boys. Father Tibor introduced me to Tyrell Moss. Tyrell Moss introduced me to this kid, and the next thing we know, we’re rehabilitating him.”

“He’s got a sheet?”

“He’s got several. About the size of War and Peace. Including one armed robbery and six years in juvie for a gang fight. Don’t worry about it. We look good giving troubled kids a second chance, and Cynthia makes sure he doesn’t get out of line. She made him get his tattoos removed. And there were a lot of them.”

“I always thought it must hurt to get tattoos,” Gregor said.

“It hurts worse to get them off,” John Jackman said. “Come inside. Sit down. Let us talk to you. Get rid of that awful coat. You’re not going to get married in that coat, are you?”

Gregor considered telling John that if he really wanted to run for President one day, it might be a good idea to go a little lighter on the Armani everything, but it was the kind of comment there was really no point in making.

He allowed himself to be shoved into the middle of John’s very large office. The door shut behind him. He looked around and saw that a young man—not so young as the one in the outer office, and white instead of black—had gotten to his feet and was waiting politely. The young man had been sitting on a big wing chair at one side of what was probably called a “conversational grouping.” John Jackman had a desk, but it was over on the other side of the large room, near the windows that looked out on the city. The “conversational grouping” was in the middle of the room. It consisted of two wing chairs and two small couches around a glass-topped coffee table. The coffee table had a tray on it, with a cups and saucers and spoons and everything else needed to actually have coffee.

The young man was so still, Gregor didn’t notice it until the last minute: a prosthetic leg. The young man did not seem to pay attention to it.

“Ah,” John said. “Let’s get the introductions done. Gregor Demarkian, this is Gary Albright. He’s the chief of police of Snow Hill, Pennsylvania, which is a little town—”

“About an hour’s drive north,” Gregor said. “I know.” He had his attention on the young man. “Army?” he asked, pointing to the leg.

“Marines,” Gary Albright said. “But that’s not what happened to the leg. The only time I got wounded in the Marines, some idiot got drunk and threw his boots at me. Gave me a black eye that lasted for a week.”

“Yes,” John Jackman said. “Well. Sit down, won’t you? Both of you? Gary here has a problem, and he thought you might be able to help. It’s a case of attempted murder.”

“It may be murder any time at all,” Gary said. “She’s an old woman, the woman who was attacked. I can’t believe she’s lasted this long, under the circumstances. She was pretty badly beaten up.”

“If you need help with a homicide investigation, wouldn’t you normally just go to the state police?” Gregor asked. “Haven’t you had a homicide investigation before in Snow Hill?

“We’ve had several,” Gary Albright said. “There’s drugs up where we are just the same as anywhere else. And domestics. We get a lot of those. But these circumstances are different, and I don’t like the statie I’ve got to deal with on this kind of thing.”

“What makes the circumstances so different?” Gregor asked.

Gary Albright was sitting down by then. The prosthetic nature of his leg was more obvious when he was sitting, because it settled at an awkward angle. Gary Albright smiled.

“Well,” he said, “there the little problem of me. I’m one of the chief suspects.”





2




There was something about this man that went farther than the obvious military experience. There was something calm and centered and straightforward about him that was also, in an odd way, innocent. Gregor’s mind rebelled at the word. Most people used “innocent” when they meant naive, and he was willing to bet almost anything that Gary Albright was not naive. No, what he had was not a lack of experience or sophistication. What he had was . . .

There was no word for it. Gary Albright was sitting across the glass-topped coffee table, waiting, quiet, still. That waiting stillness was part of the thing that Gregor couldn’t put a name to. The man was not fidgety. He was not nervous. He was just waiting.