Wanting Sheila Dead(44)

“Yes, I know,” Gregor said. “What about Lily herself? I understand that the thing with the fingerprints isn’t really all that unusual, but—”

“It’s not unusual for homeless people,” Mortimer said. “They burn themselves. They cut themselves. Sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose. We run into it every winter when the cold hits and we have to try to identify the one or two who always die. Our problem here, of course, is that this Lily woman didn’t seem to be homeless. She was too clean—”

“Yes, I thought about that,” Gregor said. “Maybe Sophie Mgrdchian saw her homeless and took her in.”

“Was Mrs. Mgrdchian like that?” Mortimer asked. “Because I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I am saying that it’s unlikely. Homeless people tend to be scary for reasons other than the ordinary citizen’s prejudices. A lot of them are alcohol or drug addicted, and addicted people are volatile and unpredictable. A lot of them are mentally ill, and they’re even more volatile and unpredictable.”

“That’s what we’re assuming here, aren’t we? That Lily is mentally ill?”

“I guess. But she’s not mentally ill the way homeless people are usually mentally ill. She’s not belligerent. She comes with us when we ask her to. She obedient and mild mannered and not at all violent. She wouldn’t last half a day like that living on the street, not most places in this city. And I’ll tell you what. We’ve never picked her up before.”

“Picked her up?” Gregor asked.

“For causing a public nuisance, or something like that. We do keep records when we have to send the police to get homeless people out of stores or other places where they cause disturbances. A lot of them use the libraries in the winter, and if they stay out of the way and don’t get loud or smell too bad, we don’t bother them. The librarians don’t want us to bother them. But some of them go into libraries and bring up porn on the machines and, uh, well—”

“Masturbate,” Gregor said.

“Yeah,” Mortimer said. “That. They do that. Not the women, usually, though. Or they smell so bad it isn’t possible to get near them. Or they start shouting and threatening people. Mostly people who aren’t there, but still. And we’ve never picked her up for anything like that. Of course, if she was as clean and as quiet as she is now, we wouldn’t have been asked to pick her up, but then she couldn’t have been homeless. She’d have had to have someplace to go to wash.”

“Have you checked the shelters?”

“All of them, and the temporary housing organizations, too. She hasn’t been at any of them. This Lily of yours might have been a homeless person, but if she was, she wasn’t homeless in Philadelphia.”

“I can’t see Sophie Mgrdchian taking in a homeless woman off the street,” Gregor said. “I didn’t know Mrs. Mgrdchian personally, except maybe back when I was twelve, but I know these women. I can see them baking all night and passing out bread to people they think need it, but I can’t see them taking in strangers.”

“My point exactly.”

“So,” Gregor said. “I guess there’s nothing to do but wait for the results of the new set of tests Dr. Halevy has ordered. I asked her if she thought we were going to find foul play, and she wasn’t able to give me an answer. I asked her if she knew what was wrong with Sophie Mgrdchian, and she couldn’t answer that, either.”

“It’s probably going to end up being something natural, or an accident,” David Mortimer said. “But take that stuff. It’s all the test results we have on Sophie Mgrdchian, plus all the search results so far on Lily. If you can make something of them, we’d be glad of the help. I’m sorry we’re not being more efficient.”

“You’re being fine,” Gregor said.

He picked up the papers, and looked at them, and frowned. There really was nothing here. He wished he had something concrete in the old-fashioned sense, like a bullet hole in the ceiling. Then he put the papers down on the desk again.

“Could I ask you a favor?” he said. “Could you get me some information about an incident in Merion.”

“Merion?”

“I think that was where it was. American’s Next Superstar seems to be filming its new season at my wife’s childhood home, and back last weekend there was a shooting at something the show was doing in Merion.”

David Mortimer looked happy. “I know what you’re talking about. A girl we think is called Emily tried to shoot Sheila Dunham in the middle of some filming they were doing, or something. Oh, I can get you a lot on that one. And it’s even got interesting parallels. I mean, this Emily woman isn’t talking, either, last I heard.”