Living Witness(30)

“A week?” Gregor sat up.

“Car went down a hill, sort of, and they landed at the bottom of it, no communications working, and he’d cracked his leg, that leg, so he couldn’t just stand up and march them all out. And it kept snowing. It stopped and then there was another system that came through. They should all have been dead.”

“And they weren’t? He got the baby out alive?”

“He got the baby and the dog out alive,” John said, “because when push came to shove, when they had to have something to eat or starve, he used what he’d learned in the Marines and took his leg off. And fed it to the them. The dog and the baby.”

“Dear God,” Gregor said.

“I know,” John said. “You don’t know how to respond to it, do you? I don’t. Part of me is sickened beyond anything. Part of me thinks there was something almost impossibly heroic about the whole thing. If he needed something for himself and the baby to eat, he could have killed the dog. I’d have killed the dog.”

“Dear God,” Gregor said again. “That’s an interesting person.”

“Oh, I agree,” John said. “His CO was in my platoon in Vietnam. That’s how he happened to end up coming to me. I talked to Derek about him and Derek had the same kind of thing to say. You don’t know how to take the kid. He’s got an almost superhuman sense of responsibility. He’s completely reliable. He’s very straight in the military sense of the word straight. Not straight as in not gay, but you know—”

“Dudley Do-Right,” Gregor said.

“Yeah, that,” John said, “but not exactly. Dudley Do-Right is a mental defective. I don’t think Gary Albright is a mental defective.”

“No, I don’t either,” Gregor said. He considered the story again, as far as he was able. It was hard to imagine anybody behaving like that. It was especially hard to imagine anybody behaving like that in order to save a dog. “Do you think Gary Albright was incapable of battering this old woman?” he asked.

John shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to say what somebody will do when they lose control, and that’s what it would have had to be if Gary Albright is guilty of this thing. He’d have had to lose control. But there’s a part of me that thinks that if he had done that, he wouldn’t have concealed his involvement. He’d have come right forward and confessed.”

“Of course,” Gregor said, “that’s the perfect cover, if you think about it. It’s so totally unlike you, nobody would suspect, but just to make sure, bring in a hired gun so you can’t be confused of a conflict of interest. What’s his problem with the state police?”

John Jackman shrugged. “Religion, as far as I can make out. Gary Albright is very religious, the guy he deals with in the staties doesn’t like it. Or Gary Albright doesn’t like that the statie isn’t. Or something like that.”

“Does he know that I’m not very religious?”

“I told him you were an out-and-out atheist,” John said. “I was trying to spare you the bother, if I could. Aren’t you getting married in a few weeks?”

“It depends on whether Bennis and Donna can ever finish making arrangements. Bennis thinks it would be a good idea if I went up and helped out. It would get me out of her hair, and everybody else out of mine.”

“So you’re going to go up and do it?”

“I think so,” Gregor said. He stared at the door Gary Albright had left through. “It’s not my usual kind of thing, of course, but it may be any minute or two. I don’t suppose you have any way of finding out what kind of condition this Ann-Victoria Hadley is in.”

“I’ve got phone numbers,” John said. “Tell me the truth. It isn’t Ann-Victoria Hadley. It’s Gary Albright. You can’t get your mind off Gary Albright.”

Gregor’s coat was on the rack next to John’s office door. He got up out of the wing chair and went over to get it.

“Is he married?”

“Gary Albright? I don’t think so,” John said.

“What happened to the baby?”

“I don’t know,” John said.

“It would be interesting to know, wouldn’t it, what went on in that man’s head. It would be interesting to know what this case is really about, too.”

“Somebody bashed in an old lady’s skull.”

“Because she opposed putting something calling ‘Intelligent Design’ in public school science classes?” Gregor said. “Seriously, John, have you ever heard of anything like that happening? We’ve had monkey trials without measure in this country, and nobody’s been killed over one yet. The usual motives are love and money. And Ann-Victoria Hadley has money.”