2
There was no such thing as a taxi in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. Gregor should have guessed, but he was so used to living in cities the question never occurred to him. Instead, back in his “office” after “lunch” with Molly and Evan—was everything connected to this place going to need to be put into scare quotes?—he went futilely through the yellow pages, trying one car service or another, until he got to the point where he thought it might make sense to pretend he was a funeral.
In the middle of all this, with Gary Albright still missing somewhere in town, both of Snow Hill’s regular officers came in to check on what was happening. Very little was happening, as a matter of fact, in spite of the upcoming trial and the news people with their mobile production units everywhere, and the fights that were breaking out between teenagers over one thing or another. Gregor came out and introduced himself to them. They were not friendly, but they weren’t hostile, either. Gregor supposed that was to be expected.
“It’s not that we don’t want you here,” the one called Eddie Block said. “It’s just that we both have a lot of respect for Gary, and we don’t like the idea that anybody would think he’d beat up an old woman.”
“I’m not sure anybody does think that,” Gregor said. It was only half true, but there was no point in going through all the ambiguities he saw in Gary Albright’s personality with these two men. “I thought it was his idea to bring me in.”
“Oh, it was,” the one called Tom Fordman said. “But that’s the thing. He wouldn’t have had to think of calling you in if it wasn’t for the fact that some people might suspect he—you know. We don’t like it.”
“If Gary was going to go after someone,” Eddie Block said, “he’d do it straight. He wouldn’t sneak up behind them with an aluminum bat. He’d face them straight on and shoot them.”
“And he wouldn’t do that,” Tom Fordman said. “He’s never shot anybody in his life except, you know, maybe in the military.”
“He’d’ve had to shoot somebody in the military,” Eddie Block said. “He was in combat.”
Gregor’s head hurt. They were all out in the big room, which was a good thing. If they’d been having this conversation in his office, they would have sucked all the oxygen from the air by now. Gregor looked around, found a chair, and sat down. It was one of those computer chairs on wheels. He hated chairs on wheels. He was convinced they were going to shoot out from under him.
“All right,” he said. “Let me ask you two a few things. You said hit from behind. That isn’t something I’d heard before. How do you know she was hit from behind?”
The two men looked at each other. They were, Gregor thought, chronologically older than Gary Albright, but they’d had less real world experience, and it showed. Gregor got out of his chair, went back into his office, and got the big thick file Tina had left for him. Then he came back out and sat down again.
“Just a minute,” he said. He flipped through page after page. The file was much too thick. “Here it is. ‘Bruising consistent with a frontal assault,’” he read. “Who did this examination?”
“Somebody out at the hospital, I’d guess,” Tom Fordman said. “That guy Willard, maybe. He’s not from around here.”
“We say it’s the Snow Hill Hospital, but it isn’t, not really,” Eddie Block said. “It’s three towns together. We’re not big enough to have one for ourselves.”
“It’s a private thing,” Tom Fordman said. “You know, not government. It’s got some kind of foundation and they hold fund-raisers and like that, and that’s how we got a hospital you can get to from here. Which is a good thing, because I think the next real hospital is in Harrisburg.”
“Does it have a morgue?” Gregor asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Eddie Block said. “It’s got one of those.”
“How about a medical examiner?”
The two men looked uneasy. “We usually use the state police for that,” Eddie Block said. “There isn’t call for that kind of thing out here, not very much. We get the usual domestics, you know, and there’s always one or two kids a year who kill themselves on drugs or driving drunk.”
“It’s mostly driving drunk,” Tom Fordman said. “Not that we don’t have drug problems, because we do, but drugs are expensive and it’s easier to get liquor. Except last year when we had a couple of meth labs.”