Wanting Sheila Dead(74)

Once, when Andra was six years old, she had gone with her mother to a neighborhood where all the houses had been abandoned. She hadn’t understood that at the time. She had only known that the houses all looked empty. They had gone up to one of the empty houses and gone inside, and her mother had talked to a man for a long time. Then her mother had grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her in the man’s direction, and then—

But there was no “and then.” Andra remembered what had happened. She remembered exactly, and she remembered that that was the split second when she knew she was going to do something else with her life, that she was going to get up and get out some day. She did not think about the “and then” unless she had to, to keep herself motivated.

What she was thinking about now was what had happened after the “and then.” The man had pulled her dress back down over her body and then pushed and shoved her until they got to the front door. Then he’d opened the door and had almost thrown her down the steps to the street. Andra’s mother was there, sitting on the bottom step of the stoop, so high she couldn’t keep her head up.

“Fuck it,” she’d said, looking at Andra up and down. “Nobody killed you. You’re all right.”

Then there was the sound of a car in the street, and Andra looked up just as something rackety and loud pulled up to the curb. It was full of people, and the radio was on so loud it hurt her ears.

Then one of the doors popped open, and there was a noise, and suddenly there was something right there on the sidewalk in front of her—a dead body, a huge dead body, a man who had to be a million feet long, with his throat cut and the blood pouring out of him.

Andra’s mother had looked up, and blinked, and said, “Fuck it.”





FIVE



1


There was a message from Dr. Halevy on Gregor’s voice mail when he got up the next morning, and it was just the kind of message that was likely to put him in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

“I’m very sorry I couldn’t take your call when it came in,” she said. “I was hoping you could answer the same question. We don’t know who Sophie Mgrdchian’s regular doctor was. The police couldn’t find any information that would help us. We know what medications she is taking regularly because she had one of those plastic pill organizers on her when she came in. As I said before, it wasn’t much. Arthritis, high blood pressure—she’s in pretty good shape for a woman her age, or she was, or we think she was. If someone you know has information on her doctor, though, we’d appreciate it.”

Gregor sat on the arm of the couch and looked at his cell phone. Nothing was likely to put him in a good mood today. He went back into the bedroom and shook Bennis awake.

“Wake up,” he said. “Listen to me for a minute.”

Bennis sat up in bed. She was one of those women who looked good woken out of a sound sleep. Gregor wondered what the evolutionary adaptability of that was. Then again, he didn’t.

Bennis turned on the light and looked at the clock. “Are you all right? Are you not feeling well? Should I call nine-one-one?”

“I want to know if you know how to get into Sophie Mgrdchian’s house.”

“What?”

“Well,” Gregor said reasonably, “there must be a way. I’ve lived on this street long enough to know that none of you has the sense God gave a squirrel when it comes to security. It’s not like you hire outside experts to make sure your places are impenetrable. There must be a way to get into that house.”

“It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“I have an early meeting downtown.”

“But why do you want to get into the house?” Bennis asked. “I mean, what’s the point? That woman isn’t back yet, is she?”

“No, and I don’t know if she’s coming back. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her once they let her out of the hospital. I had a voice mail overnight from Dr. Halevy.”

“Who is—”

“The doctor who’s treating Sophie Mgrdchian at the moment,” Gregor said. “I called her to ask if she knew the name of Mrs. Mgrdchian’s doctor. She didn’t. Mrs. Mgrdchian had a pill organizer on her when she was brought in. That’s how the hospital knows what medication she’s taking. Other than that, they don’t have a clue. Apparently, the Very Old Ladies don’t, either.”

“Oh,” Bennis said. “I remember that. When the paramedics were here. They asked around, but nobody knew who Mrs. Mgrdchian’s regular doctor was.”

“It’s absurd,” Gregor said. “You’d think the whole pack of them would have some Armenian guy they’d been going to forever. That’s how they do things most of the time. Dr. Halevy said the police couldn’t find any information that would help, which means they must have looked. But there has to be something. There has to be an address book. There has to be a refrigerator magnet. Or a cell phone.”