Now they were sitting halfway up Hillman’s Rock, at that point in the climb where they would have had to bring the ropes and the pitons out. It was after four thirty and the world around them was getting dark, and cold. After Miss Maryanne Veer had been taken away there had been formalities to go through, and the formalities had gone on forever. Or seemed to. Jack was just beginning to think it was time to light a fire. Chessey was sitting on a small outcrop of rock, carefully sewing a small black patch of cloth onto the edge of his bat cape, where it had torn. He was lying propped up on one shoulder in a bed of leaves. Chessey had on heavy hiking boots and khaki pants and a reindeer-patterned sweater. She looked impossibly sweet and impossibly childish.
“I don’t know,” Chessey was saying, “I think it must have been an accident. No matter what that man Mr. Demarkian said. Nobody would actually go out and try to kill a person like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was so horrible. It makes me sick to think of it even now. Can you imagine doing something like that and then standing around to watch? If someone did it on purpose, they had to have been there to see Miss Veer fall. I was sitting at the table right next to the cash register when it happened. I didn’t see anybody leave.”
“Maybe whoever did it left a long time before that. Maybe it was somebody who worked in the cafeteria, on the breakfast shift or on setup maybe, and they put the lye into a peanut butter sandwich and then walked away home.”
“Not caring who might pick it up or who might eat it? Children eat in that cafeteria sometimes, Jack, when they’ve got faculty for parents and their parents bring them.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what’s happening to you,” Chessey said. “Lately you’ve gotten so—cynical.”
Jack didn’t know what was happening to him lately, either. He just knew it was time to start a fire. There was a wind blowing down from the north that was going straight through the sleeves of his flannel shirt and the sleeves of his thermal T-shirt and the skin of his arms. The down vest he was wearing was no help at all. He sat up and reached for his daypack, where he had matches and kerosene and everything else he needed. There were people in the Climbing Club who insisted on rubbing two sticks together and praying to the Great Spirit for fire and rain, but he wasn’t one of them. That sort of thing exasperated him to the point of madness.
“You know what?” he said. “I think someday I’d like to be like Mr. Demarkian. I’d like to be that kind of man.”
“Fat and old.”
“Something tells me we’re all going to end up fat and old whether we want to or not. No, that’s not what I mean. I mean sure of myself like that, knowing where I’m going. Where I want to be.”
“I didn’t like Mr. Demarkian,” Chessey said. “He made me feel, I don’t know, creepy.”
“Why?”
“The way he looked at me, I guess. Like he could see right through me and listen to what I was thinking. Like he thought I was stupid or vain or shallow or something.”
“You’re projecting. You’re getting your period and going through one of your insecurity phases.”
“Maybe. But I’ll tell you who else didn’t like him, Jack. Your favorite person on earth, Dr. Kenneth Crockett.”
All the sticks he could find were damp. The leaves were sodden. Kerosene or no kerosene, it was going to be a hell of a job to get a fire lit. He made a pile of the best material he could find and dosed it anyway.
“I don’t think Dr. Kenneth Crockett is my favorite person on earth,” he said carefully, “especially not lately. He seems to be metamorphosing into a self-absorbed jerk. And maybe I’m not surprised that he doesn’t like Mr. Demarkian.”
“Dr. Elkinson was surprised. He told her he thought Mr. Demarkian was a spy. I heard him.”
“What do you think he meant, a spy?”
“I don’t have to think anything,” Chessey said. “It’s like I told you. I heard them. Dr. Crockett said he thought Father Tibor was asked to get Mr. Demarkian up here, by the police. He said—”
“Chessey, that’s ridiculous. The police couldn’t possibly know someone was going to try to kill Miss Veer. If they had, they would have stopped it.”
“Maybe. But I can see what Dr. Crockett meant, Jack. I mean, the man knows so much about everything. He doesn’t even have to ask you things and he should have to. About yourself, I mean.”
“He’s a friend of Father Tibor’s. Tibor probably talks to him.”