“Okay,” she said.
Brian shooed Gregor toward the door. “Only thing is, I want to make one thing clear up front. There’s a lot going on with this, but what isn’t going on is a murder. Walter said you understood that, right? We checked into it every way we could, and there’s nothing there that even makes a murder possible. You can see the reports if you want. This one is not a doubtful case.”
“I do understand that,” Gregor said, as he found himself outside on the front steps again. He kept forgetting how dark it got and how early in February in New England. “I haven’t come to investigate a murder. I haven’t come to investigate anything. I came because Mark DeAvecca asked me to.”
“Yeah, the roommate,” Brian said.
“What do you think about the roommate?”
“Serious stoner,” Brian said automatically. “Whacked to the gills practically all the time. Someday he’s going to start convulsing, and then it’s just going to be a matter of whether they get him to the hospital on time.”
They were out on the street again. There was snow on the ground, but even in the darkness it didn’t look soft. “The thing is,” Gregor said, “I know the kid.”
“Don’t you ever think that,” Brian said. “I’ve heard it a million times. Even the ones you know get caught, more often than you’d think.”
“I know that,” Gregor said, “but I’ve also just spent the last hour and a half talking to him. He knows everybody thinks he’s using. He offered to take a drug test.”
“When he offers where he’s likely to get taken up on it, get back to me.”
“I will. It may be soon. I called his mother. When she gets here, she may insist.”
“I don’t get this boarding school thing,” Brian said. “It’s bad enough when they’re eighteen and want to go away to college. Why would you want your kid to go away when he was only fourteen?”
“In this case I think it was the kid who wanted to go away,” Gregor said. “Get out. Be independent. He’s that kind of kid. But the thing is, I did talk to him for over an hour. And the way he is, the way he behaves—yes, I can see the presumption that he’s using. But the more I watched him, the less that seemed like what was going on. I hate to tell you what did seem to be going on.”
“What?”
“Alzheimer’s disease.”
“In a fourteen-year-old kid?”
“He’s sixteen,” Gregor said. “He turned sixteen in January. But yes, I understand. I don’t really mean I think he has Alzheimer’s disease. I meant that if you spend enough time with him, that’s the way he comes off. Not like somebody who’s drugged. He goes in and out of focus, for one thing. He’ll be just fine, and then ten minutes later his mind willstart to wander and his speech will get thick. Then ten minutes later he’ll be fine again. Unless you know of a drug that works on a time-release basis, that doesn’t sound like substance abuse.”
They were suddenly outside a small building close to the street with a plain, plate-glass storefront. If Gregor had had to make a bet on it, he would have said nothing that looked like this remained in the town limits of Windsor. There was gilt stencil lettering across the plate glass: DOHENEY’S RESTAURANT. It looked less like a restaurant than a bar.
“Here we are,” Brian said, opening the glass door to let Gregor go in ahead of him. Doheney’s Restaurant was as dark inside as the street was outside and maybe darker. The few lights were low and concealed behind amber globes. Brian went to the back and slid into a wooden booth.
“I’m impressed,” Gregor said, sliding in on the other side. “I would never have guessed you could find a place like this in this town.”
“There’re still a few of us here from the old days,” Brian said, waving at a waitress. “Those of us who go to Our Lady of Grace instead of the First Unitarian Church. I don’t get Unitarians any more than I get boarding schools. Here’s Sheila. You want a beer?”
Gregor hadn’t had a beer in ten years. “Sure,” he said, “whatever they’ve got on tap.”
“They’ve got rat piss on tap,” Brian said. “Sheila, get the man a Heineken. And get me a hot pastrami on a roll with Russian dressing. You want something like that, Mr. Demarkian?”
“Gregor,” Gregor said automatically. “How about a cheeseburger and fries?”
“Cheeseburgers come with fries,” Sheila said. Then she thought about it for a moment. “Everything comes with fries.”