Living Witness(88)

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Hill people are not pacifists,” Gary Albright said. “You’re looking at a very old and very insular culture there. Up to the point where Nick got all that up and running, the ATF used to lose two or three guys a year up there. They’d disappear and never be found again. There’s probably something like an elephants’ graveyard in those hills somewhere, bones stacked on bones over the course of decades.”

“Do you think one of them would be willing to murder one woman and almost murder another to stop the teaching of evolution in Snow Hill public schools?”

“They don’t go to Snow Hill public schools,” Gary pointed out, “and I can’t imagine anybody committing a murder over that. Not even Alice McGuffie or Franklin Hale, and Alice is mean and Franklin is a nutcase. But I can’t imagine any of the development people committing a murder to keep evolution in the schools, either. It’s not the kind of thing people commit murders about. No matter what they’re saying this week on MSNBC.”

“Funny,” Gregor said. “I was thinking the same thing myself.”

“There’s Dale Vardan,” Gary said. “He’s brought an entourage.”





3




Dale Vardan had not brought an entourage so much as he’d brought a small army, in uniform, that seemed to have nothing to do but wait for his instructions. Gregor Demarkian watched him walk across the now muddy expanse of the driveway with some curiosity. Gary Albright did not seem the kind of man who took a visceral dislike to anybody. Even with people he did not like, Gary tended toward patient forbearance. But it wasn’t only Gary Albright who didn’t like Dale Vardan. The entire Snow Hill Police Department recoiled automatically at the mere mention of “calling in the state police.” Gregor thought it was a lot of energy to expend on a small, thin man who looked too small for his suit.

A moment later, with Dale Vardan literally in his face, Gregor changed his mind. Dale Vardan might be too small for his suit, but he was too big for his britches—which was one of those things rural people were supposed to say, but that Gregor had never heard it from them. Vardan was the kind of man who liked to come right up to your chest and stick his nose into your own, except this time it didn’t quite work, because Vardan was no taller than five four, and Gregor was six four the last time anybody had measured him. Gary Albright was well over six feet, too. Gregor couldn’t imagine that a man like Dale Vardan could intimidate him.

“You’re Gregor Demarkian,” Vardan said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

The trick was not to back up, even instinctively. This was dominance behavior. This was like cats. What Vardan wanted was to take control of the space. Gregor needed not to give it to him.

“I’m Gregor Demarkian,” he said. “Gary tells me your name is Dale Vardan and you’re with the state police.”

“We can take over here now,” Vardan said. “I knew we were going to have to, soon as I heard the first reports on that Hadley woman. These small town police departments, they don’t know what they’re dealing with. They’re not—equipped—to handle the pressure.”

“I don’t think we’re having trouble with pressure,” Gregor said. “And from what I’ve understood so far, the Snow Hill Police Department isn’t interested in having you take over the investigation of anything. What they did was ask for assistance.”

“Uh-huh. Well,” Vardan said, “I’ve been asked for assistance before. They’re out of their depth, that’s what it is. They’ve got some guy running around smashing up people with an aluminum baseball bat, and they don’t know what to do about it.”

“How do you know it was an aluminum baseball bat?”

“It was a figure of speech,” Vardan said. “It could have been anything, just a blunt instrument. I’ll find out what it is, exactly, once I get this investigation organized.”

“And how do you know it was one person,” Gregor said. “And how do you know it was a he? You’re making a lot of assumptions here.”

“You think there are two people running around smashing in women’s faces with blunt instruments?” Dale Vardan demanded. “That’s what you got, you bring it in here from the FBI and the city of Philadelphia? How many times you think that’s going to happen, two people, fifty people, all running around bashing faces in, and all the faces belong to people who are suing the school board?”

“It only has to happen once,” Gregor said mildly.