Luis had gone back to being uncommunicative. The town, once they got to it, looked like it had always looked. There were no signs of invasion by hordes of salivating celebrity journalists. Grandview Avenue was empty of people and nearly empty of cars. The one or two parked along the curbs were so wet they reminded Gregor of what it felt like going through a car wash.
The police station, when they got there, did not look inundated with reporters. Luis turned off onto Grand Street and pulled into the driveway and back into the parking lot.
Gregor got out of the car and pulled his suit jacket up over his head. He hunched his shoulders and made a run for the front of the building. The asphalt on the driveway was slick, and the pavement that led around to the front was even slicker. He pounded up the steps and hurtled himself in through the front doors.
The vestibule just inside the doors was empty. It was only when Gregor went through the next set of doors—plate glass; even if it was bulletproof glass, it wouldn’t help, because bulletproof glass wasn’t really bulletproof—that he saw that Sharon had had some reason for being worked up. The big reception room was full of people, all on the right side of the counter for the moment, but all restless. Some of them were taking up the long waiting benches that lined the wall. The rest of them were pacing around, not doing much of anything.
When Gregor walked in, one or two of them perked up.
“Mr. Demarkian!” the youngest of them called out. “Have you been called in to consult on the Toliver murder case?”
“No,” Gregor said, quite truthfully. He hit the bell on the counter.
The men on the benches were restless. Gregor wondered why there were so few women. He rang the bell again and held his breath. Finally, Kyle Borden stuck his head out of one of the rooms at the back and looked relieved.
“It’s you,” he said, rushing up to the counter to let Gregor through. “I thought you’d never get here.”
“Then you have been called in to consult on the Toliver case,” the young man said, jumping up to follow Gregor through the opening Kyle Borden had made in the counter, and being pushed back just in time.
“No,” Gregor said again.
Kyle grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along. “This is insane,” he said in a voice so low even Gregor had trouble hearing it. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Sharon is hiding in the bathroom. That’s because I yelled at her.”
They were at Kyle’s office door. He pushed Gregor through it, came through himself, and shut the door behind them. Gregor immediately began to feel claustrophobic.
“What happened to your man out at the Toliver house?” Gregor asked. “I just came from there, and I didn’t see a policeman anywhere.”
“There wasn’t one,” Kyle said. “We don’t have a whole department. That was a part-time deputy I left there yesterday evening and he had to go home at midnight. I didn’t have anybody to assign until this morning, and it isn’t usually a problem, and oh, for Christ’s sake, this is such a mess.”
“I think you can safely assume that your crime scene is now thoroughly contaminated,” Gregor said. “I’d say it was now thoroughly destroyed. With any luck, you got everything you needed last night. When do you get an autopsy report?”
“They’re promising us preliminary findings at noon.”
“All right. There isn’t going to be a whole lot you can do until then, except maybe trace this woman’s movements during the day. And keep your mouth shut. I wonder if any of them will figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“I may be wrong,” Gregor said, “but from what I remember of our discussions yesterday, the woman who died is the same woman who gave Michael Houseman his ride to work on the last day of his life, and would have given him a ride home that same day if he’d been in any shape to come home.”
Kyle Borden had been pacing around the office. Now he stopped still. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It was the first thing I thought of. The question is, will they think of it?”
“How could they?”
Gregor shrugged. “I’ve got to assume that at least some of them have been through whatever newspaper archives exist on the Houseman murder. Granted, those will almost assuredly be the men from the supermarket tabloids, but once the information is out and confirmed, they’ll all use it. Of course, it’s a small detail, or it would have been, in that case. It only becomes important now because Miss Inglerod—Mrs. Barr—is dead. But trust me, in the next day or so, they’re going to go back to those archives and go over them half a dozen times, and eventually they will pick up on it. Even if that particular detail isn’t in any of the newspaper reports, the fact that Miss Inglerod was in that park that night almost certainly will be.”