Fighting Chance: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian series Book 29) (8 page)

“They kept us all round forever, and they questioned us over and over and over again, and that man, the one in the video, the one who did it, all he’d do was take the Fifth. And then there was my student—”

“Your student?”

“Oh, yes,” Janice said. “That was why I was there. I drove my student. Petrak. Petrak Maldo—Maldonian? I’m sorry. It’s one of those incredibly long East European names and I can never get it right. His brother was having a hearing about something, I don’t know what. Stefan. That’s the brother. He was undocumented and it was Martha Handling he was appearing before. Petrak doesn’t have a car so I offered to drive him. And, all right, I’ll admit it. I wanted to get a look at how she operated.”

“Did you?” Kasey asked.

Janice shook her head. “It turns out that juvenile hearings are closed. Or this one was. They wouldn’t let me in.”

“So you went down to see Martha in her chambers?”

“Oh, no,” Janice said.

The cubicle was invaded by another woman, this one very small and intense. She had cup of tea. “That’ll make you feel better!” she said chirpily.

Then she went out. Janice wondered if she was an intern. Interns were often chirpy.

“Janice?” Kasey said. “How did you end up in Martha Handling’s chambers?”

“It was just an accident, really. There’s this guard at a table near the door, and he told me I couldn’t go in, and there were a lot of other people trying to get in, so he went and talked to them. And there were two halls on either side of the front door without any guards on them, so I just started wandering.”

“Just like that.”

“Yes, of course, just like that. They’ve got to know that themselves, don’t you see, because there really were security cameras everywhere. I could see them the whole time. Except there was something strange some of them. They had paint over the lenses. Little blobs of paint. Can you understand that?”

“It would explain why they don’t have enough security tape footage to know what actually happened,” Kasey said.

“Honestly, it was just so odd. I mean, all the cameras, and the paint, and then I got to the door and her name was on it and I thought I’d just go in and see. And there he was, sitting in all that blood and with that gavel in his hand.”

“And you screamed your head off,” Kasey said.

“Not at the beginning,” Janice said. “At the beginning I just stared at it. I was trying to remember it. It’s like you always told us. Keep as much of the evidence as you can secure. So I did. Except there really wasn’t much evidence that I could get my hands on, but I took some notes. And it was a good thing I did, too, because, well, look at this.”

Janice hiked up her poncho just a little and flipped at the base of her skirt. It was encrusted with something dark and hard, and the dark and hard stuff went up the skirt proper almost to her waist.

“Blood,” Kasey said.

“Her blood,” Janice said. “I have no idea how it happened. It got very crazy and there were tons of people wandering around even before the police got there and there was blood everywhere and the next thing I knew, there was blood on my skirt. And then, well, you know how things get. They just got worse.”

“Did you also post a video to YouTube?”

“Oh! The video! I heard about that, but I didn’t get a chance to see it. A video of that man murdering Martha Handling. They were all talking about it after a while. It’s supposed to be absolutely gruesome. But I thought that was a security tape.”

“No,” Kasey said. “I’ve seen it. The one thing it is almost certainly not is a security tape.”

“Well, I can’t tell you,” Janice said. “I’ve got no idea. But there’s something else. And I can’t help feeling a little guilty. Except not guilty, if you know what I mean.”

Kasey looked unmistakably puzzled.

Janice plowed on: “It’s better this way, don’t you see? Murder is a terrible thing, and that man is a priest on top of everything, but Martha Handling is dead and that means that almost every juvenile defendant in the system is going to be better off. There isn’t another judge in the system that’s as harsh as Martha Handling was, at least not in Philadelphia. So maybe it was a pretty fair trade.”

“A pretty fair trade,” Kasey said.

Janice tossed her head. It didn’t work so well as when she was younger. It had no effect on Kasey Holbrook at all.

“Sometimes,” Janice said, “I think we’re just too polite. We want to act like ladies. Sometimes I think that ending injustice directly is the only thing that will ever work.”

2

When Mark Granby left the courthouse, he started walking in a straight line. He was lucky. He was out and on the street when the first cop cars pulled up, their sirens screaming and their tires squealing and the whole world stopping to watch what they did next. It was one of those moments that no one in their lives is supposed to have. He felt like he was in an action movie. There he was, the villain, right there, standing on the edge of the crowd and watching the chaos unfold.

Mark liked action movies, as far as that went, but he’d never thought they bore much resemblance to reality. Real villains wouldn’t stand around and watch. He was sure of it. Real villains would get their business done and get the hell out of Dodge as soon as possible.

Mark had been standing on the curb when the police cars pulled up because he hadn’t been able to figure out what he was supposed to do next. He did not consider himself a victim. He had done absolutely nothing but find the body and not report it to anybody. That might be against the law, but it wasn’t some kind of big moral deal.

If he ever got stuck having to answer questions about it, that was what he would tell them—that and nothing else. They would never be able to prove anything else, no matter how hard they tried. He was pretty sure they would never be able to prove he was in the room in the first place, unless they were already looking for him. He had left fingerprints. He had left fingerprints everywhere. He hadn’t been able to help himself.

He walked and walked, always going in a straight line, never paying attention to anything he didn’t have to. He had no idea how long he had been walking. He had no idea where he was. The only thing he was sure of was that he hadn’t found it, and if he hadn’t found it, somebody else would.

He had reached the point where he wasn’t really breathing anymore. His chest hurt. He felt as if it were about to crack open. He had never been in really good shape. These days he was in really bad shape, except that he wasn’t all that overweight, at least as overweight as people he worked with.

He came to an abrupt stop near a mailbox and looked around. Given how long he’d been walking, he was sure he was far enough away that nothing about his being
here
could be taken as indication that he had ever been
there
.

“Here” was one of those “mixed” neighborhoods the magazines always talked about when they talked about Philadelphia. There was a McDonald’s on one side of the street and a Starbucks on the other. There was a Panera. There were small shops selling art supplies and other small shops selling drug accessories. In the window of the store with the drug accessories was a big pile of books with the title
Best Bongs.
The bong on the cover had been made out of an eggplant.

Mark had lived in Philadelphia long enough to know that the neighborhoods were only superficially mixed. The great Philadelphia racial divide didn’t ease up for anybody. Standing where he was, Mark could see the patrons going in and out of McDonald’s and the patrons going in and out of Starbucks. All the people going into McDonald’s or coming out of it were black. All the patrons going in and out of Starbucks were white. It was like the entire city of Philadelphia had signed up to be in some kind of racial stereotype enforcement project.

Mark didn’t actually like Starbucks. On the other hand, he was trying very hard not to call attention to himself. He headed into the Starbucks.

All Starbucks looked alike, just as all McDonald’s looked alike. That was the first rule of chain store restaurants. Mark bought some kind of coffee he didn’t understand and headed for a little round table at the back. He took a swig of it right before he sat down. It tasted, as the man said, like goblin piss.

The store was mostly empty except for a few people who had converged at the counter. That was exactly what he needed. He got out his cell phone and called Beth. Beth picked up immediately, she must have seen the caller ID before she’d heard the ring.

“Where are you?” Mark asked her.

“I’m at work,” Beth said. “But it’s all right, really, there’s nobody much here at the moment. Where are you? I’ve been looking at the news, I’ve been looking—they say—”

“Shut up,” Mark said. “I know you say there isn’t anybody around, but there may be somebody you can’t see. Just listen to me.”

“I am listening,” Beth said. “I’m just scared to death. Wasn’t that the woman—?”

“Shut up,” Mark said again.

Beth made a strangled little noise, but after that, there was nothing.

“Listen,” Mark said again. “I’m not exactly in a position to talk, either. I’m in a Starbucks. I don’t know where exactly, but nowhere near the courthouse. The bad news was that I was near the courthouse. In fact, I was in it—”

“Oh, my God,” Beth said. “Oh, my God. I knew it. I just knew it. I kept looking at the Web sites and there she was and there was that talk we had this morning and I just knew—”

“
Shut up.
The bad news is there are security cameras all over that damned place and they have to have some pictures of me somewhere. The good news is that there’s no reason at all for these people to know who I am or to think I’m anything but a regular person in the courthouse to do some business. Got it?”

“Yes, Mark, I know, but—”

“Forget the buts. There’s no reason for anybody to know. Even if everything else we were worried about were true, even if she talked to somebody already, even if there’s some kind of federal investigation going on—any of that—it doesn’t matter. I’m not a high-profile figure. I’m not recognizable on sight. If we just shut up and stay shut up, they should never figure out I was ever there.”

“The news sites say they have a suspect in custody,” Beth said. “They say it’s that man, the one who you said was messing with everything. The priest person. He’s going to know who you are, isn’t he? He’s going to be able to tell them about you.”

“At the moment, as far as I know, he’d have nothing to tell them even if he wanted to. I didn’t see him in the courthouse. I don’t see how he could possibly have seen me.”

“Did you get the—the thing? The thing you were talking about?”

“No,” Mark said. “That’s the bad news. I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it.”

“You looked for it? But Mark, how could you have looked for it? Was she there, where you were looking? For God’s sake, was the body there? And that man? What did you do—?”

“I looked around while I had the chance and I got out as soon as I heard someone coming. Try to focus. Did Kaitlyn ever come home?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes, she did. Right after you left this morning. She got herself a tattoo, can you believe that? A little rose thing, it’s not too bad, but it’s right on her ankle, and I can just see where this is going—”

“Is she still home?”

“As far as I know. I told you, I’m at work. But she was just exhausted. And she said she wasn’t going in to school. And I didn’t know what to do about that, because I had to leave to come here, so—”

“I’m not worried about her being out of school. You can write her a note. But I want her home and in and not on the rampage anytime soon. If you don’t read her the riot act, I will. She’s got to keep a low profile. A very low profile. And not just because our personal pet judge is dead.”

“Oh, Mark. But you can’t think—”

“Of course I can’t think,” Mark said. “Kaitlyn has a motive on the surface. I have a big one. It’ll come out in no time that we were fixing things for Kaitlyn—that I was using Admin Services to fix things.”

“Oh, Mark, for God’s sake. If you did something, you could tell me. I wouldn’t tell anybody and isn’t there some thing where wives can’t testify against husbands? But I need to know, Mark, please, I need to know—”

“If there’s somebody out there listening to this, you’ve just hanged me for real. Because you know and I know that nobody is going to want to see that priest convicted of anything, and a whole hell of a lot of people are going to want me dead as soon as any of this gets out. And it will get out. Because I didn’t find it. And that means somebody else will.”

Mark hung up. His coffee was sitting on the table in front of him. He took off the top and looked into what should have been plain black, but instead seemed to be something white that was congealing. He put the top back on and gave up. After he got his other phone call through, he’d go find a liquor store and set himself up for something lethal to drink.

He punched in the code for the office in New York and got himself ready to tell Carter Bandwood that the shit was about to hit the fan.

3

There was almost nothing Father Tibor Kasparian remembered about this day, except the one important thing, the thing that would change everything forever. It was lodged in his brain more firmly than any memory he had ever had. It was stronger than his memory of Anna dying.

It seemed so long ago, Anna dying. Long ago and far away. That phrase kept running through his head, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” But he couldn’t remember who had said or written it. He wasn’t sure why it mattered anyway.

One of the reasons today’s memory was so strong was that it was, in every way, tactile. He could feel the squish of the blood and muscle under his knees as he knelt on the floor. He could feel the wet stickiness on his hands. It had surprised him to realize that he had never been that close to a violent death before. He had witnessed them, but he hadn’t touched them. The touching made all the difference.

After that, there were things he had to do, careful things that had to be done right. He hadn’t finished all of them when that woman had come in, knocking only as a formality. There was something he didn’t know and couldn’t begin to guess. Why did people knock when they weren’t going to wait for an invitation to come in? He did it himself, but he’d never understood it.