Living Witness (33 page)

The door to the meeting room was open. Nick could see through it as he came up the hall. Harve Griegson was there, and Pete DeMensh, and Susie Cleland's brother Martin. A few more steps, and Nick could see Susie, too. They none of them seemed to be doing anything. They were just standing around and looking unhappy.

He got to the door and knocked. Pete jumped. Susie cried out. You would have thought they were all in a horror movie.

“It's just me,” Nick said. “I saw the light.”

“We didn't mean to bother you,” Harve said. “We were just talking.”

“About what?” Nick asked him.

The four of them looked at one another. Susie looked away first, and then looked at the floor. “I know it's not a good thing to gossip,” she said, “but this isn't gossip really. I don't think it is. And it might be important.”

“What might be important?” Nick asked.

The four of them looked at one another again. By now, Susie was blushing brick red.

“Well, here's the thing,” she said. “You can't help but notice it, can you? It isn't as if she's quiet about it. She was screaming her head off for nearly an hour this afternoon. Everybody on Main Street must have heard it.”

“She, who?” Nick asked, although he knew. That was the kind of incident where everybody knew.

“Marcey Hale,” Susie said. “She came down to Franklin's shop and I don't know what she wanted, but she ended up screaming her head off. And then he had to get her home—it must have been terrible for business—so he took her out the back. And yes, I looked. I couldn't help myself. I was worried about her. He was throwing her around as if she were a sack of potatoes, he really was. I thought he was going to end up throwing her on the ground. He looked so angry. And he had the truck back there and he shoved her into it and then he slammed the door. He could have taken off her hand.”

Nick looked from one of them to the other. None of them was willing to meet his eyes, and Susie had taken on that defiant attitude people got when they were forced to admit to they thought something was discreditable. Nick cleared his throat.

“I can see how you'd feel better if Franklin were kinder to Marcey, and more careful about the way he handled her, physically,” he said.
“And if it were one of you, I'd definitely be counseling more gentleness and delicacy than Franklin tends to show to anybody. But Marcey's hard to handle when she gets like that. And it can be hard on a man who has to try to deal with it over an extended period. I take it he didn't break any bones that you could see.”

“It's not what he did with Marcey that's got us worried,” Harve said.

“Really?” Nick said. “Then what does?”

“I know I shouldn't have been looking,” Susie said. “I mean, I should have come on back here to work and let him get on with what he was getting on with. But I was worried, you see what I mean. He shoved her in the car, and he shut the door on her, and then he used that thing he has, the gizmo that lets you lock the doors from the outside.”

“I'm getting one of those the next time I get a car,” Pete said.

“Anyway,” Susie said. “He did that. And then after he did that he left. He walked on around back of us here, right through the Serenity Corner—”

“He came onto our property here?” Nick asked.

“Exactly,” Susie said, sounding suddenly satisfied. “And you can't blame me for watching him then, can you? I mean, it's not like we've got barbed wire and security around the place. We don't mind people coming in most of the time. But what was he doing there? I mean, really. If he wanted to go up to Annie-Vic's place, why didn't he do it on the sidewalk like a normal person?”

Nick leaned back. “He went up to Annie-Vic's place,” he said.

“Well, I assumed so at the time,” Susie said. “Where else would he be going, going up that hill? There's nothing much out there except Annie-Vic's and some other houses here and around, and he wouldn't be going to any of them, would he? And Annie-Vic's is right at the top of that hill, isn't it? And then he was gone a long time. It must have been fifteen or twenty minutes. And now there's this woman, murdered, and murdered right up there. So I don't see what it was I was supposed to think, or what it was I was supposed to do about it.”

 

Gary Albright never wondered, even for a moment, if Sarah would be ready to receive an overnight guest on less than an hour's notice. That was not one of the things anybody had to worry about with Sarah, unless she was truly and significantly ill, and she was almost never that. Gary had had his ideas about what marriage should be like before he ever considered getting himself into it, but he was honest enough about himself to understand that it would be the person who mattered most to him in the end. If Sarah had wanted to go to law school, or to work full-time as soon as the children were in kindergarten, he would have been willing to adjust himself and his life to make her happy. It was his luck that she had wanted for her life what he had wanted for his: a home, and children, and the ease that came with having one person dedicated to taking care of both.

His house was a new one, not in the development—nobody could afford a house in the development on what the town paid its chief of police—but in a row of raised ranches along a leafy and otherwise undeveloped stretch of Route 107. There were five houses on that row, all on the same side of the road, and all of them built to be identical. It was their colors that distinguished them, and now, five years or so since they'd been built, so did some of the additions and oddities their owners had tacked onto them for the duration. Gary's house now had a large, octagonal deck off the back of it. He and his brother-in-law had built it together. It was big enough to serve for an outdoor party with just about everyone he knew. He was hoping it would one day serve as a graduation party for Michael or an after-prom for Lily. He pulled up into the driveway and didn't worry at all about what Gregor Demarkian would think of it. It didn't even occur to him to worry. It was an achievement, buying a house like this, supporting a family like this. Gary expected people to recognize it.

The light was on over the front door as they came in. It was already dark, and what had been a cold day was now a frigid evening. Gary turned the ignition off and got out, waiting for Gregor to get out too
before locking up. The front door opened and Sarah stuck her head out. Seeing them, she came forward all the way onto the front steps and waved.

“Eddie Block called,” she said. “He says don't bother to call him back, but you should know Henry Wackford called and demanded police protection. Honestly, I'd like to protect that man myself.”

“This is Gregor Demarkian,” Gary said.

“How do you do, Mr. Demarkian,” Sarah said, holding out her hand for him. “I've got your room all set up for you. It's right downstairs, and it's at the front, so you've got windows on two sides. It is off the playroom, I'm afraid, but the children go to bed early and they're not allowed down there with the television on on school mornings, so you should be all right. Oh, and there's a bathroom just off, and I've set up some towels for you. Oh, and I've left you some pajamas, and some boxer shorts, brand-new ones, still in their package. Gary said you were about the same size, and you are. It's really amazing. When I was growing up, all the men I knew were short, and now the world is full of tall people. You should go down and freshen up a little. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

They were in the front hall now. Stairs led up half a flight to the main level and down half a flight to the lower level. Sarah was leading the way down, to make sure Gregor Demarkian got where he needed to go without getting lost. Gary saw that the playroom down there was empty, which was unusual. The children were usually down there watching videos after they'd done their homework. The playroom had the only television in the house. Sarah didn't approve of televisions in the living room. Sarah caught his eye.

“I've got them up reading that Bible stories book my aunt Evelyn gave them,” she said. “I'll let them come down and watch a video while we're all having supper. They've been fed already. I know you like us to eat together as a family, Gary, but it was getting late and I didn't know when you'd be home.”

“I didn't know when I'd be home either,” Gary said. He looked at Gregor Demarkian, who was looking around the playroom and the
door that led off of it to the spare bedroom. “Why don't you relax for a minute or two and Sarah can call you for supper? Or you can just come up whenever you've settled in.”

“I'll send Michael down with some coffee if you like,” Sarah said. “We do have some beer in the house if you'd like that, but I don't let Michael carry it, so—”

“I'm fine,” Gregor Demarkian said. “I really am. I just need to make a couple of phone calls.”

“Of course,” Sarah said.

“Of course,” Gary said.

Then both moved off, a little awkwardly, leaving The Great Detective on his own. That was how Gary thought of Gregor Demarkian, as The Great Detective, but he hadn't until that moment realized it. He must have been thinking that way about Gregor all along.

They made their way to the upper level in silence. Then Sarah turned and looked down the stairs again.

“Well,” she said. “He doesn't look all that frightening. In fact, he seems very nice.”

“He is very nice,” Gary said, going over to the dining table and pulling out a chair. Michael and Lily were sitting together on the couch, pouring over a book that had ten times as many pictures as words, which was about right for their age. “We ended up having to call in the cavalry,” he said.

“Oh, Gary,” Sarah said. “But why? I thought that was the reason for calling Gregor Demarkian in. So that we wouldn't have to deal with Dale Vardan just this once.”

“We only half-have to deal with him,” Gary said. “Demarkian doesn't seem to like him any more than we do. But we had to do something. This was the second attack—even if it wasn't the second murder—and you know as well as I do that whoever went at Annie-Vic meant to kill her. I get up every morning wishing she'd open her eyes and just tell us who whacked her, and I don't even know if she knows. I don't know if she saw him.”

“Do you think it's true, the kind of things Henry Wackford keeps
saying?” Sarah asked. “Do you think it's really some religious maniac running around killing people just because they believe in evolution? I mean, things happen, don't they? Those people who killed the abortion doctors. That kind of thing.”

“Those people who killed the abortion doctors,” Gary said, “were members of a nutcase organization called the Army of God, and there were about six of them. Can you imagine any of our people here doing that kind of thing? Who? Franklin Hale? Alice McGuffie? How about Holman Carr?”

Sarah smiled. “Okay. Holman probably couldn't kill a spider without that wife of his telling him to. And she wouldn't tell him to, because she'd be afraid he'd get caught, and then who'd pay her bills? But you know, Gary, it's not impossible that one of our own people here—well, it has to be one of us, doesn't it? Somebody is doing these things. And I could see Franklin killing somebody, under the right circumstances.”

“Because that person didn't want Intelligent Design in the public schools?”

“All right,” Sarah said. “What about Alice?”

Gary took a deep breath, and shrugged. “I can see Alice killing somebody. I can even see her saying she did it for religion. I just can't see her actually doing it for religion. We were standing out there at the crime scene and I was thinking about Alice. Alice's Barbie is in the same grade as Mrs. Cornish's daughter Mallory. Apparently, they don't like each other much.”

“I'll bet,” Sarah said.

“Here's the thing,” Gary said. “Things are changing. Ten years ago, Barbie McGuffie could have been a small-town popular girl with everything that entailed and never had a second thought about it until she was forty-five and fat as a pig and suddenly realized she hadn't done squat with her life.”

“
Gary
.”

“But it isn't ten years ago,” Gary said, ignoring the protest. He was pretty sure the children had not heard him say “squat.” “The kids
from the development have a lot more money than our kids do. They have fancier clothes. They've got their sights fixed on going to fancy colleges on the coasts. And they don't care what the Barbie McGuffies of this world think about anything. It changes the dynamic.”

“And you can see Alice McGuffie killing a woman because that woman's daughter is, I don't know, responsible for the fact that it isn't such a big deal around here to be a majorette?”

“I can see Alice killing out of spite,” Gary said. “I can see her doing just about anything about of spite, because spite is what that woman runs on.”

“And she would have tried to kill Annie-Vic out of spite? But why? At least, why now? She's known Annie-Vic all her life. We all have.”

“I know,” Gary said. “I go around and around and around it, and I just don't get it. The only thing Annie-Vic and this Judy Cornish had in common that I can see is that they were both involved in the lawsuit and they were both on the evolutionist side. And it just doesn't make any sense. Because I just don't believe that anybody would kill over something like this, and yet we've got a dead woman, who was in the house of another woman who is nearly dead, and I don't know why that is, either. I don't know the why of anything at all.”

“Does Gregor Demarkian know why?” Sarah asked.

“I hope so,” Gary said. “Because if he doesn't, we're going to have Dale Vardan around our necks for months, and if he doesn't know, he'll just make it up.”