“For Christ’s sake,” somebody said. Gregor took a minute to recognize the man as Rob Collins. “What are you doing? You’ve made him bleed.”
“That son of a bitch has no business in this case,” Jack Androcetti said.
“He’s not in the case,” Rob Collins said. “He’s at the college. And he’s got a perfect right to be here.”
Norman Kevic was still sliding away, sliding away. It seemed to be taking place in slow motion.
“Wait,” Gregor said again, this time wondering if he was making any sense at all. A Sister he didn’t know planted herself in front of him and handed him a glass of ice water. He took it and rinsed out his mouth. “Wait,” he said for the fourth time, when the blood was mostly gone. The problem was, the blood came back again. Gregor shook his head.
“That son of a bitch,” Jack Androcetti said again. “I told him to stay out of it I meant for him to stay out of it. He’s going to stay out of it.”
“Stay out of what?” Sister Scholastica demanded, barreling out of nowhere. Nowhere was really a gaggle of nuns. What did you call groups of nuns? Gaggles were for geese. Pods were for whales. Schools were for fish. It was maddening. “I think you’re a jerk and a bully,” Scholastica said, “and if I were you I’d get off this campus now, before you get thrown off. I don’t care if you are the police. This is private property and Church property and all the rest of it. I have half a mind to kick you in the shin.”
“Sister,” the Archbishop said, sounding alarmed.
“Sister is exaggerating,” Reverend Mother General said. “But I know how she feels.”
“You can get suspended for hitting a civilian,” Rob Collins said. “You can get canned.”
The pain was so bad, Gregor couldn’t stand up. He kept gulping down ice water, but it didn’t seem to help. He got down on his haunches and put his head between his knees. He was down there with his eyes closed when whatever happened happened.
That’s how he thought of it later. When whatever happened happened.
He caught only the result of it.
He felt some of his pain ebbing away.
He stood up.
He looked blindly through the crowd at nothing in particular and focused when he detected movement.
The movement was the collapse of Nancy Hare, fatting forward onto Norman Kevic and grabbing his tie in the process, so that Norman looked choked.
Nancy had a shiny thin X-Acto knife sticking out of her side.
Chapter 8
1
NANCY HARE WAS NOT, of course, dead. Of course she wasn’t dead. She’d keeled over from shock, that was all, and Gregor Demarkian knew it as soon as he saw the X-Acto knife sticking out of her side. X-Acto knives were what agents in the Bureau called “secondary weapons,” meaning they could work, but only in aid of something else. The one case he knew of where an X-Acto knife had been the instrument, its blade had been smeared with cyanide. There would have been no chance to smear this blade with cyanide. This was a spur of the moment thing. This was an attempt to distract attention. Gregor didn’t know if it would ever go further than that. Maybe, given enough time, their murderer would home in on Nancy Hare for real—find some more fugu and slip it in Nancy’s breakfast eggs, find a real knife and stick it in Nancy’s back. If Gregor had been this murderer, he would have found it necessary. What’s the point of killing if you can’t get away with it? How can you get away with it if somebody knows what you did? He watched Norman Kevic wriggling around on the floor, half pinned under Nancy Hare’s limp body and being helped very little by the ministrations of Sister Scholastica and Henry Hare. It was hard to tell what Sister Scholastica and Henry Hare were actually trying to do. Maybe they weren’t trying to do the same things. Gregor looked up and across the room and found Sister Agnes Bernadette with her back pressed to a far wall, looking terrified. Then he found Jack Androcetti and smiled. Androcetti was looking from Agnes Bernadette to Nancy Hare and back again, appalled and furious. Even he could figure out what all this meant.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait a minute now.”
“I’ve taken the knife out,” Sister Scholastica said. “Is that what I should have done, Mr. Demarkian?”
“I don’t want anyone asking questions of Gregor Demarkian,” Jack Androcetti said.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rob Collins said.
“Don’t swear in a convent,” the other uniformed officer said.
“This isn’t a convent,” Scholastica said automatically.
Gregor pushed himself through the crowd to Nancy Hare’s side and knelt down. He could smell liquor on her breath, but it was faint. She’d probably had a cocktail to work up her courage to come down here, but that was all. He moved her body gently and saw that she was bleeding badly, but didn’t seem to be having any other trouble of any kind.