“And these women who knew Sophie from the neighborhood, they didn’t think anything of it?”
“Oh, no,” Gregor said. “You should see these women. We call them the Very Old Ladies. They’re that. They’d also make Miss Marple look like somebody who can mind her own business. The Very Old Ladies were up in arms in no time, and they were convinced that Sophie was being murdered in her bed. They kept trying to get in to see Sophie, but no one answered the door. Mind you, Sophie was not a social sort. She kept to herself most of the time. It wasn’t necessarily all that odd that she wasn’t talking to people, except that this woman was there. So they came and got me, and I went and rang the doorbell. And when the door opened, there was Sophie, lying comatose on the floor. And there was this other woman, acting as if she had dementia.”
“Did she have dementia?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “She might have had a mild stroke. It was her blood pressure medication she was feeding Sophie Mgrdchian. I think that if we hadn’t gotten there when we did, she’d have shoved Sophie’s body into the basement and gone on living in that house until she started to feel it wasn’t safe anymore. But Sophie would have been dead. I’m going to have Bennis remind me not to turn into a recluse in my old age. It’s a good way to get yourself victimized.”
“And the fingerprints,” Len Borstoi said, “that’s because her prints are on file somewhere. She didn’t want to get caught at this and have it come back that she had a sheet.”
“Well, have you ever known a con artist who started as an old lady?” Gregor asked. “And have you ever known any con artist who worked for forty or fifty years, who never got caught even once? I’d be willing to bet just about anything that this woman not only got arrested a few times, but that she got convicted at least once. But we’ll see how it works out. At the moment, we’re in the position of not having a real reason to hold the woman. Sophie Mgrdchian hadn’t woken up the last time I checked, so she can’t tell us anything. And just yet, there’s no sign there’s ever been a crime. So—”
“It’s like what happened with that Emily Watson,” Len Borstoi said. “We got her in jail, then we checked out the gun and there was no ammunition in it. Did I tell you that before? It wasn’t blanks. There was nothing in it. The gun was absolutely clean. It hadn’t been fired. At all. Ever. So, when push came to shove, there wasn’t a whole lot we could charge her with, and the judge wasn’t going to let us hold her when the charges we did have didn’t amount to much. So, the next thing we knew, she was out on the street.”
“Yes, well. We don’t want the fake Karen Mgrdchian out on the street. If she makes a habit of this, she’s a serial killer as well as a con artist.”
“And our guy here isn’t?”
“No,” Gregor said, “she’s killed only this once. But it was cold as hell. And I wouldn’t like to speculate about what she would and wouldn’t do for the rest of her life.”
“If you can really prove this, she’ll spend the rest of her life in jail.”
“You’re the one who’s going to prove it,” Gregor said. “That’s my usual deal with police departments. I come in. I consult. I go home. They get the credit.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have thought of looking for this stuff if you hadn’t suggested it. I give credit where credit is due.”
“There seems to be some kind of riot going on in Engine House.”
2
Riot wasn’t really the word. The front doors of the house were open. People were spilling out onto the front steps, all kinds of people. Uniformed police officers were backed up against their patrol cars. There were lights on everywhere.
“Damn,” Len Borstoi said.
He pulled the car into the roundabout and stopped it. Gregor looked out the windshield at the action in front of them. Then he opened his door and the noise hit him. Somebody was crying hysterically. Somebody was shrieking. Somebody was just plain yelling, and he knew that voice. That was Sheila Dunham in her best end-the-universe-now mode, reading the riot act to somebody she expected to just lie down and die. Apparently, this time, she was mistaken. Nobody was going to lie down and die.
Gregor got out of the car. So did Len Borstoi and the partner, who finally stopped texting and put his cell phone away. Nobody was paying any attention to them. Gregor looked through the crowd and counted quickly. All the girls seemed to be there. There were also a lot of people from the crew. It seemed odd to him that they would be there this late at night. He saw Olivia Dahl, holding a clipboard clutched to her chest and looking dazed. He saw a couple of people he thought must be the staff for the house. He didn’t recognize them, and they didn’t look like they belonged with a television crew.