What he couldn’t do was sit around here any longer. He’dbeen feeling awful for months, and worse than awful ever since he’d gotten back from Christmas break. Now that he felt like himself again, he saw no reason at all to watch life pass him by as a badly reported fifteen-second clip on Headline News.
Chapter Three
1
Gregor didn’t see Liz or Jimmy on his way out of the hospital and didn’t spot them from the cab as he was making his way back to Main Street, although he did look out for them. He didn’t trust Mark on this particular thing. He’d have trusted him to keep his mouth shut and to back him up in a fight—not that he ever got into physical fights these days; the popular culture image of law enforcement in the United States was ridiculous to tell the truth, but Gregor had been sixteen once himself. He knew that gleam in the eye when he saw it. Mark was bored, and there was nothing more dangerous on this planet than a sixteen-year-old boy who is bored.
Since there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and since he had more to do to finish up here than he liked, Gregor put it out of his mind as soon as he got out of the cab in front of Barrett House. He would have gotten out in front of Hayes, but although the worst of the traffic jam had been cleared, there were still vans parked there. They came accompanied by little knots of men and women standing around with nothing to do. They were here only on the hope that, this close to the crime, something else would happen. Gregor always wondered what these people wanted to happen. Didn’t they think one murder was enough? Maybe they expected the perpetrator to reveal himself in a dramatic on-air surrender and the case to be cleared on the spot. Probably they were just hoping for an arrest, Gregor thought. Arrests played well on air. So did perp walks. At least it was something to show and not tell on the evening news.
He walked through East Gate and looked around. This House immediately to his left was Barrett. To his right and a little ahead of him was Ridenour Library. That made the House immediately across the quad Doyle, and the one to the left of that on the same side Martinson. It was Martinson he was looking for. He took his notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket and checked it again. Last night, when he’d finally had time to sit and think after the mess of Edith Braxner’s death, he’d written down everything he needed to know and everyone he needed to talk to. He’d come to the same conclusion he’d come to many hours before, and that had only been reinforced since: there was only one person in this cast of characters who could have done all the things that needed to be done to kill Michael Feyre and poison Mark DeAvecca, and in the end it was the death of Michael Feyre that was the key to understanding what had happened here. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the why of any of it, and without the why he knew he couldn’t get Brian Sheehy to agree to an arrest.
He crossed to the center of the quad and then down the parallel walk to Martinson. He tried opening Martinson’s front door and found it locked. Well, he thought, it would be. There was nothing to stop anybody who wanted to from coming in from Main Street. He found the button for the bell and rang.
It was the middle of a weekday. If nobody had answered the door, Gregor would have put the lack of response down to everyone being out, although he found that rather odd for a day with no classes and a lot of boarding students. He rang the bell again, just for good measure, and was surprised to hear the sound of footsteps and shuffling behind the door. A moment later it was opened, and he was standing face-to-face with a tall man in chinos, a black T-shirt, and a good tweed blazer. The wire-rimmed glasses were, he thought, theperfect touch. Whoever this man was, he could pose for the cover of Esquire in the role of Hip Urban Intellectual.
The man stood very still, watching him. He had steady blue eyes and an expression of bemusement on his face. Gregor couldn’t get past the feeling that he had seen this man before, somewhere, and that the where had not been a pleasant place.
The man stepped back and said, “Mr. Demarkian, I was wondering when you’d show up here. I expect Mark told you about our conversation on the night Michael died.”
“You’re Philip Candor, then?” Gregor said.
“I’m Philip Candor.” Philip smiled, very slightly, and that wave of conviction passed over Gregor again. He had seen this man before. He just couldn’t remember when.
“My apartment’s this way,” Philip said.
Gregor followed him down a narrow hall to the right, thinking as he went that the school Houses had been similarly designed to accommodate faculty and students. Philip opened a door at the end of the hall and ushered Gregor through. This apartment was like the one belonging to Sheldon in Hayes, but far less pretentious, and because of it far more masculine. There were hundreds of books, stacked two deep in all the bookcases and littering all the tables and surfaces. They reminded Gregor of Tibor back on Cavanaugh Street, especially because the books looked read. There was a CD player and a tall stack of CDs in a cheap, plastic revolving case. The CDs included everything from Mozart to Johnny Cash to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Miles Davis.