Not a Creature Was Stirring(106)

“Engine House. Who’s calling please?”

He sighed. It was Bennis, of course. That’s the way his luck was running today.

Now that Daddy was dead, the person he least wanted to hear about his little secret was Bennis.

Even though she was the only one with enough money to loan him the bail.





FOUR


1


GETTING OUT OF JACKMAN’S car in front of his apartment, Gregor felt like the Complete Television Daddy. Here he was home from work, and everyone in the world was waiting for him. Of course, Television Daddies had wives and children, not priests and pregnant neighbors, but in his cold and weariness the analogy seemed apt. Maybe any analogy would have seemed apt. He couldn’t remember being this cold, or this tired. It was hard enough getting frustrated with God and the universe. At least they were bigger than you were. Getting frustrated with a two-bit idiot who had killed three people and not even been intelligent about it was something else again. In the Bureau, life had never been like this. Once he knew, he did something about what he knew. Now all he could do was explain the whole thing to Jackman, and try not to get physically violent when Jackman said, “No evidence, no motive, no point.”

Jackman’s car rattled and shuddered to a stop. Gregor rolled down his window and twisted his neck until he could see his living room windows. Yes, he had been right, even from a block and a half away. The lights up there were lit, and the two people walking around in front of the windows were Donna and Tibor. He wondered if Lida was up there too, in the kitchen, getting ready to make sure he ate a decent meal for once.

He pulled his head back into the car and got his gloves off the dashboard. He never wore gloves, but he always carried them. Elizabeth had told him to. Jackman was fiddling with the dangling end of his key chain. Actually, it was the department’s key chain. It had a little tag on it with an address that could be used to mail it back to the Bryn Mawr police.

“Don’t tell me,” Jackman said, “you’re still on your Favorite Suspect.”

“You make it sound like we’re reading a murder mystery and we’ve lost the last chapter.”

“We might as well be.”

“It’s nothing so vague.”

Jackman drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Look, I don’t know how long you’ve been harboring this particular suspicion—”

“I told you that. Since just about the time we left Engine House. It occurred to me when I was talking to Cordelia Day. Then I checked it out by talking to the rest of them.”

“God,” Jackman said, “we both say them like we’re talking about giant ants. Gregor, I’m not saying you’re wrong, you understand me? If anything, I’m inclined to think you’re right. Psychologically, it fits. But you could write me the greatest shrink study since the death of Freud and it wouldn’t do me any good. I’ve got to have something solid.”

“Opportunity,” Gregor said.

“They all had opportunity.”

“Means,” Gregor said.

“They all had the means, too. I’ve got half a mind to turn that idiot doctor of theirs in to the drug squad. He prescribes Demerol the way a Jewish grandmother prescribes chicken soup. Now come out and say motive and give me something to hang it on. It would also be nice to have one piece of physical evidence.”

“That piece of tin,” Gregor said.

“We don’t know what it is,” Jackman said. “And it’s probably nothing.”

“We should be sure.”

Jackman sighed. “Gregor, I’ll check it out. I’ll start tomorrow morning and I’ll check into the ground. But you’ve got to understand, I’ve got no more reason to suspect who you want me to suspect than I have to suspect any of the others.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t,” Jackman said. “Not the kind of reasons I need.”

Gregor shoved his gloves into his pockets, opened his door, and got out. His foot went into a white mountain that was all give and no resistance. He pulled it out to find his pants caked with white.

“Listen,” Jackman said, just before Gregor slammed the door shut and cut off conversation, “go to sleep. Get a good rest. We’ll start tomorrow.”

Gregor chinked the door shut and stood on the sidewalk, watching Jackman drive away.

The character of Cordelia Day Hannaford.

That accordion folder full of clippings.

The people who were dead and the sequence they had died in.

It seemed perfectly clear to him.

He turned around, went up the steps, and let himself into the building. Old George Tekamanian’s apartment was dark, so he didn’t knock. He just picked up his meager collection of mail and stuffed it into his coat.