Gary Albright was staring off into the distance. “I know how to run a crime scene investigation,” he said finally. “It might not be up to the standards of a place like Philadelphia, but we do have the equipment and I do know how to use it. That was the plan, all along. That I’d learn how to use it and then use it when the time came, and then all we’d have to do is send the samples to the state police lab. We wouldn’t have to actually call them in here.”
“Well, that’s up to you,” Gregor said. “I thought from the beginning that you might be being a little over scrupulous in removing yourself from the case. If you can place yourself somewhere for sure for the relevant time—”
“You mean if I have an alibi?”
“I mean if you have an alibi,” Gregor agreed. “And we’re lucky in a way, at the moment. We can pinpoint the time within maybe half an hour or so, because that woman over there,” Gregor cocked his head in the direction of the Volvo, “saw the dead woman go into the house and sat there waiting for her every minute until she called the police department. Then she sat some more. This time, we know when the murder occurred almost as surely as if she’d witnessed it herself.”
Gary Albright was still staring off into the distance. There was something about him that was very, very still, so quiet he might almost have been an inanimate object. Even dead bodies exhibit more of an air of movement than Gary did now. He had that open, steady, straightforward look of certain kinds of military people, the ones, Gregor admitted, that he had always liked. Gregor just wished he could figure out what the man was thinking.
Gary Albright moved. It wasn’t really a sudden move, but it felt that way to Gregor, because he wasn’t expecting it.
“The guy they’re going to send from the staties is named Dale Vardan,” he said. “They’ll send him with a partner, but they’ll definitely send Dale. The partner won’t matter. Dale will try to take over the case. You’re supposed to be running it. That’s what I hired you for. Is that clear?”
“It’s perfectly clear,” Gregor said. “I don’t usually run investigations these days. I usually consult for the people who do.”
“I want you running this one,” Gary Albright said. “That really is why I hired you. I want you running it, because I don’t want Dale Vardan running it. If the choice comes down to me or Dale, it’s going to be me, even if I ruin this case completely and get myself fired.”
“I take it you don’t have an alibi for the time in question,” Gregor said.
“I don’t know what the time in question is, yet,” Gary said, “but I don’t have an alibi for most of the morning, so my guess would be no. I’ve been driving around town, trying to think. Annie-Vic. The lawsuit. Even Nick Frapp. They all made me want to think. The world was not what I expected it to be, when I was growing up here.”
“The world is never what we expect it to be when we’re children,” Gregor said. “That’s the nature of childhood.”
“Maybe. But it seems to me that things ought to be arranged better than they are. It seems to me that it should be easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
“I think that’s a very dangerous opinion for anybody in law enforcement to have.”
“Yeah,” Gary Albright said. He looked down at what Gregor knew was his prosthetic leg. “Maybe Dale won’t try to do to you what he’s always trying to do to the rest of us. You’re from Philadelphia. You’re famous. I don’t think you’re a believer. On the other hand, maybe Dale just pulls that stuff on whoever happens to be in the room at the time. Excuse me. I’m going to sit down and make that phone call.”
Gregor watched as Gary pulled away from the car, got the door open, then got in behind the wheel almost as if he had two good legs. It was cold out here in the open, and the milling had reduced itself to men standing in place and stamping their feet. Shelley Niederman was still in the Volvo, waiting, probably, for somebody to tell her she could go, or not. Gregor wondered what this was going to entail. The dead woman had had children, which meant she’d probably had a husband. There would be people to notify. There would be questions to ask. Gary had left the car door open and Gregor could hear his voice on the radio, calling something in to Tina Clay.
A moment later, a man in a paramedic’s uniform came up and introduced himself, sort of. “I’m with the ambulance,” he said. “I was just wondering. That guy over there said you were in charge.”