Flowering Judas (28 page)

He got off his seat and wandered back toward the hall with the restrooms, not because he needed to use one, but because he was just tired of sitting there doing nothing. He caught Sue Folger's eye as he went, and she nodded to him. Then she went to take his place at the front desk. Kyle thought he could ask her anything he needed to know about what was going on and she would tell him, with additions.

In the men's room, Kyle walked into a stall and bolted the door. He put the lid of the toilet down and sat, stretching his legs out in front of him. There was no other man left in the station as far as he knew. He still felt as if he needed protection from something or somebody.

He put his head back and closed his eyes. He had well and truly hated Chester Morton, back in the days when he had known the man. He had hated Chester Morton because Chester had been Darvelle's main squeeze, and he was in love with Darvelle himself. He had hated Chester Morton because Chester was loud and obnoxious and a regular pain in the ass whenever they had classes together. But mostly, he had hated Chester Morton because Chester always seemed to be standing between him and wherever it was he wanted to go. It was as if he and Chester had lived parallel lives, always going in the same direction, but Chester always got there first.

Of course, that wasn't the direction Kyle was going in any more, but he didn't know if that mattered.

3

Howard Androcoelho was willing to admit that he'd done the wrong thing in bringing Gregor Demarkian into this case. He was willing to bet that there were small town heads of police from one end of America to the other who had felt the same. The problem was that it was impossible to bring in any outside investigator and be sure of getting what you wanted. In this case, Howard had only wanted someone to come in and tell him that of course Chester Morton had committed suicide. There was no other way Chester Morton could have gotten up on that billboard. Nobody could have dragged him up there to throw him over the billboard either as a squirming murder victim or a dead weight. The whole idea was ridiculous. Now it was bad enough that it turned out somebody had thrown him up there, and as a dead weight. It was worse that things were happening that seemed to be totally insane, as if people were deliberately doing things to make the situation more complicated. That was the real problem with bringing in a “Great Detective.” A Great Detective was a focal point for cameras and the press. Where cameras and the press congregated, nutcases went to work to make themselves famous.

Howard reminded himself that he did not know for sure that anybody was out there trying to make himself famous. Then he pulled his car into his marked space behind city hall and cut the engine. He was not ready to go back to central station yet. He was not ready to deal with police work. He was really not ready to talk to Gregor Demarkian. Demarkian was beginning to sound as if he were out of patience, and Howard thought that was more than a little outrageous.

He got out of the car and stood for a while, catching his breath. He was so heavy now he had trouble breathing except when he was sitting down. It was hot, too, ridiculously hot for any time in September. Little pinpoint rivulets of sweat kept starting under his chin and making their way down his neck. Beyond the City Hall parking lot, the town of Mattatuck was mostly loud. Too many people were leaning on their horns. Too many people were revving their engines.

Howard went around to the front of the building and in the front door. He could get in the back—he was an authorized person—but he didn't feel like ringing the bell and waiting for somebody to come and get him. He didn't feel like making this visit. He went across the foyer to the elevator, got in, and pressed the button for the second floor. City Hall was a pretty building, built back in the Thirties when everybody seemed to be trying to do something about Public Works. They cared about what they built in those days. They wanted to make the government majestic.

On the second floor, Howard got out of the elevator and walked down the long corridor to the mayor's office. He let himself into the anteroom and said hello to the receptionist there. She was not somebody he knew. Marianne seemed to go through receptionists the way Howard went through Philly cheese steak sandwiches. He gave the girl his name and waited until she'd announced him. He thanked her when she told him he could go in.

He was, he thought, keeping his manners glued on, which was a good thing. There had to be something wrong with letting the people at large know that their police commissioner was panicking.

Howard opened the door to Marianne's office and found her sitting behind her desk, dressed in one of those perky pastel suits she thought was “professional” for a woman in an important political position. Howard was a little surprised that she was still mayor of Mattatuck. He'd expected her to run for the state legislature, and then maybe run for Congress, or for lieutenant governor, or something like that. The Marianne who had been his partner all those years ago had always had ambition.

He closed the door, got the spare chair from against the wall, and sat down. Marianne kept the spare chair just for him. It had no arms, so there were no issues about whether or not he'd fit.

Marianne was waiting for him to get settled. He got settled. It bought him a little time.

“Well?” she said finally.

Howard gave her a long look and then shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “It's hard to tell what's going on.”

“Well, something must be going on,” Marianne said. “This sort of thing doesn't happen naturally. Or maybe I mean habitually. For God's sake, Howard. Somebody's treating that body like a prize piece in ‘Hide-the-Treasure.' There's got to be a reason for it.”

“I was thinking maybe the only reason for it might be Gregor Demarkian,” Howard said. “Maybe he attracts this sort of thing. People who want to see themselves on
American Justice
or
City Confidential
or one of those shows, so they do crazy stuff to make the case seem more interesting.”

“You can't tell me you think it's not interesting,” Marianne said. “You can't tell me you still think Chester Morton committed suicide.”

“I still think that's what makes the most sense,” Howard said. “And Demarkian doesn't think that's completely crazy, either. He said that one of the possible explanations would be that Chester Morton committed suicide someplace where he'd get somebody's attention, and then that somebody decided to get out from under. The psychology of it works, too. It wouldn't be crazy to think that people would be so traumatized by finding the body there that they wouldn't think to look into it any farther.”

“You don't think it would be crazy to think that?”

“No, it wouldn't be,” Howard insisted. “I mean, Marianne, for God's sake, it's just what we all did. We didn't ask Gregor Demarkian in here because we thought there was more to this case than Chester acting like the punk ass he was. We called him in because Charlene wouldn't shut up. And all we expected him to do was come on to the scene, declare the thing an obvious suicide, and get us out from under.”

“But we're not out from under.”

“No, Marianne. I know that.”

“And there are things,” Marianne said. “There's that stupid tattoo, for one thing. And then the body going missing from Feldman's and turning up in that goddamned trailer. Didn't your people search the trailer last night?”

“We sent somebody out to look, yeah,” Howard said. “There wasn't anything there. And somebody would have seen something, anyway. You know what that place is like. It's more alive in the middle of the night than it is in the morning. Nobody could just waltz up there and drag a body into a trailer without being seen. Somebody would have noticed something.”

“But nobody did notice anything.”

“Not that they're telling us,” Howard said. “But you know how that is. We'll keep asking. There may be at least one person in that place that doesn't hate cops on general principles. Or maybe it was one of them that did it. Maybe it was somebody from the trailer park that moved the body.”

“And you don't think he'd be noticed, dragging the body into that trailer?”

“He'd be noticed, but nobody would tell us about it,” Howard said. “They don't like to talk to us. You know that.”

“I know that they don't think twice about running their mouths about their neighbors if they think it's going to cause trouble,” Marianne said. “And you know that, too. They clam up about themselves, but they're more than happy to get the guy next door landed in jail. If they'd seen one of their own dragging a body into that trailer, you'd have heard about it.”

“I didn't hear about it.”

“I know.”

“And the body was definitely in the trailer,” Howard said. “I just saw it, sitting up in an armchair stark naked and going a little to seed after all this time. Gregor Demarkian thinks I put it there.”

“What?”

“Gregor Demarkian thinks I put it there,” Howard repeated. “He won't come out and say it in so many words, but that's what he thinks. He thinks I'm trying to avoid having the state do an autopsy.”

“Well,” Marianne said.

“Yeah, well,” Howard said. “But Christ Almighty, Marianne, if that's what I wanted I could get it done without dragging the body all over hell and gone. Whoever's doing that has got to be some kind of idiot. Maybe he's an alien and he has a teleportation device. At least that would explain how somebody got that body into that trailer without anybody noticing anything. I think I'm going to have a migraine.”

“Well,” Marianne said again.

Howard looked away from her. There were two windows in the far wall. They looked out on West Main Street.

“Well,” Marianne said again.

“Don't tell me,” Howard said. “It was a bad idea to bring Gregor Demarkian into this case. I've already come to that conclusion. But damn it, Marianne. There's absolutely no reason why things should be turning out like this.”

 

FIVE

1

Gregor Demarkian did not spend all night standing watch by the body of Chester Morton—although he thought about it, and he probably would have done it, if he hadn't been able to hear Bennis's voice in his head telling him what an idiot he was. Instead, he went back to his hotel room, set up his laptop, and started running the only kind of searches he knew how to run that might be some help in finding a missing person.

It was Tony Bolero he sent to keep watch over the body of Chester Morton, and he was shocked nearly speechless when he got no interference from Howard Androcoelho.

“They must be embarrassed,” he told Tony. “If I was in Howard Androcoelho's shoes, I'd have screamed bloody murder if anybody had suggested anything like that. Never mind. Go. Sit. I'll get a cab over there in the morning, and then I'm meeting Ferris Cole. I can't imagine that a new autopsy is going to give us any more information than we already have, but by now I want it done just because somebody doesn't.”

Tony had made noncommittal grunting noises and gone off, and Gregor had sat down to his computer again. Then he had taken out his cell phone and called Bennis. Sometimes, these days, he felt as if he'd entered an old-fashioned science fiction movie.

“There's no change,” Bennis said, when he was finally able to make her sit down and talk. “Unless you count a request as change.”

“What request?”

“Well, we finally got his dates straightened out,” Bennis said. “He is about to be a hundred, but not the day after tomorrow, the way we originally thought. It's a week from tomorrow. He wanted to know if you'd be finished with the case by a week from tomorrow.”

“If I'm not, I'll finish it myself by shooting half the people I've met here,” Gregor said. “He wants me to be there on his birthday?”

“He wants a cake. Lida and Angela are arguing about who gets to bake it. I figure that's preliminary to whoever wins arguing with Hannah and Sheila about who gets to bake it. But you get the picture.”

“He wants a birthday party.”

“A hundredth birthday party, yes.”

“Even if he's still in the hospital?”

“The impression I got was especially if he's still in the hospital. But that's been it. He wants a birthday party. But he actually seems fairly well, Gregor, considering. I mean, he's very old, and he's very frail, but he's—himself. If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, yes. All right. I'll make a point of being back for his birthday, if not earlier. Whether I've finished the case or not.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That's not like you,” Bennis said. “You like to finish things.”

“I'm getting old,” Gregor said. “I'm running out of patience. And besides. There's nothing to say that I can't come down there for the birthday and then come back up, if I have to. I like Tony Bolero. He does what I tell him to. He's a good listener. And you're paying for him.”

“Right.”

“I'm going to go back to playing with this computer. I'll talk to you later.”

Gregor put the phone down next to the laptop and thought that this was one of the very odd things about his second marriage. In his first, he and Elizabeth never said good-bye to each other without saying, “I love you.” He and Bennis never said, “I love you,” or barely ever. And yet, Gregor was as sure that Bennis loved him as he had been that Elizabeth had. And he was sure that he loved Bennis as much as he had Elizabeth. Maybe that was age, too, along with the lack of patience. He'd only been half kidding when he'd told Bennis he was getting old.

He applied himself to the laptop. First, he did a Google search for anything and everything having to do with Chester Ray Morton. This time he got a “sponsored link” with a picture from some magazine somewhere. Apparently, the case was beginning to attract some media attention. Gregor wondered if they'd made the “Oddball” segment on Keith Olbermann's show yet. He checked out the magazine and found absolutely nothing he didn't know already.