He reached the officers and the body, which was lying half in and half out of the dining room. Here the darkness was absolute, in spite of the two great windows in one wall. There were curtains on those windows, and the curtains had been pulled shut. The dining room table was piled high with books and papers. They looked a mess. The body was so bloody it looked as if its head had been ground into hamburger and left to rot.
Gregor did not bend down to check it out. He had seen enough dead bodies in his day. They had never added a single clue to his investigation. Medical examiners knew about bodies. He knew about crime scenes. He looked at the walls and then at the ceiling. Yes, there was blood on the ceiling. Not a lot of it, but blood. There was blood on some of the papers on the table. There was blood on the single pair of shoes someone had left next to the door that led to the kitchen.
Coming back around to the two officers, Gregor was astonished to see they were still just standing there.
“Isn’t there something we ought to do?” he said gently. “There’s the obvious to consider here.”
“We need to call Gary,” Tom Fordman said. “Gary will know what the procedure is.”
“Gary can’t work on this,” Eddie Block said. “That’s why we have Mr. Demarkian here. Mr. Demarkian is supposed to lead the investigation. That’s what Gary said.”
“We don’t know that he’s supposed to lead this investigation,” Tom Fordman said. “We don’t know if the two things are connected. Annie-Vic and this. Just because this woman is in Annie-Vic’s house doesn’t mean—”
“Of course it means,” Eddie Block said. “She’s in the house and she’s one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, isn’t she? She’s that woman from the development—”
“Wait,” Gregor said.
They turned to look at him as if they were surprised to find him there. This was not a good sign. It was obvious that these two men were not used to dealing with murder, and whatever training they had received hadn’t mentally prepared them to take on something of this kind. Gregor didn’t know where to start. He wondered what had happened when Annie-Vic was attacked. Gary probably got the call and he at least would have been mentally prepared, if only because he had served in combat zones.
Gregor tried to go slowly. “Didn’t you tell me, didn’t somebody tell me, that Annie-Vic has family here, visiting from out of town?”
“That’s right,” Eddie Block said. “A grandniece and a grandnephew. Or a grandnephew and a great grandniece. Or something like that.”
“Do they come from far out of town?” Gregor asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Eddie Block said. “I think one of them is from Chicago.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “Where are they staying now?”
Eddie Block and Tom Fordman looked at each other. Gregor had no idea if he was getting through to them. They looked confused.
“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “I just assumed they were staying, ah, staying—”
“Here?” Gregor suggested.
“They would stay here, wouldn’t they?” Tom Fordman said. “That would be the normal thing.”
“I think so too,” Gregor said. “And that brings us to the question, where are they?”
The two officers looked at each other again. Gregor didn’t really think they were stupid, just inexperienced. Maybe that was a hopeful sign, that there were still small towns in America where people weren’t killing each other often. Still, this was an emergency and he needed to get that across to them.
“Do you mean you think one of the relatives did it?” Tom Fordman said. “But the relatives couldn’t have attacked Annie-Vic. They weren’t anywhere near Snow Hill.”
“Maybe it was one of the relatives who attacked this woman and somebody else who attacked Annie-Vic?” Eddie Block tried.
“Listen,” Gregor said. “This woman has been murdered. She’s in the house of someone she knew—what? Well? Slightly?”
“They’d have to know each other at least a little,” Eddie Block said. “Because they were both plaintiffs in the lawsuit, you know.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “Would you say she knew Ann-Victoria Hadley well enough to be in a position to just walk into her house whenever she wanted to, without an invitation, without being let in?”
“Oh,” Eddie Block.
“Nobody was like that with Annie-Vic,” Tom Fordman said. “You didn’t know her, but you can trust me. She wouldn’t have put up with that kind of thing from anybody. Even the relatives knocked.”