Living Witness (23 page)

 

The first impression Gregor Demarkian had when he walked into the Snow Hill Diner and found Molly Trask and Evan Zwicker waiting for him was that the Bureau had begun advancing twelve-year-olds to the rank of agent. The next impression he got was that Evan Zwicker didn't even really look young. He had one of those faces that used to be called “boyish” and that went to seed early and without remorse. At the moment, he looked like an evil and alcoholic college boy. In ten years time, he would look like a troll.

Molly Trask, on the other hand, was definitely young, although not as young as she looked. She had her hair pulled back in a bun, but it didn't really help. It was blond and she was so fair that her eyebrows looked bleached.

Evan Zwicker rose when Gregor came into the diner, which was how Gregor knew for sure who he was. The diner was full of booths with plastic seats, all lined up against the walls. The best ones were against the wall to the street, because those had windows, and Evan and Molly had managed to get one of them. The place was packed with people, yet none of them looked like they belonged here.

“The locals are at the counter,” Even offered, when Gregor came over to sit down. “I don't think that's the usual thing, in fact I know it's not, but with the television crews here they don't have much choice. Our friends in the press always seem to have somebody staked out here to save a seat for the crew.”

“Oh, honestly,” Molly said. “He's always bitching about the press, but I can't see why. It isn't as if they're bothering us.”

“They bother everybody,” Evan said. “I've been around long enough to remember when we could run a case without having the whole thing filmed for ‘Live at Five.' Or whatever. Not that there's much here to investigate.”

“They're here because of the trial,” Molly said, meaning the press. “You can't blame them. Monkey trials are a big thing these days.”

“And does that make any sense?” Evan asked. “I mean, for God's sake. What a thing to sue about. It's totally nuts.”

A waitress came over, and Gregor asked her for a mineral water and a club sandwich. He hadn't looked at the menu, but he'd eaten in dozens of diners like this across the United States, and club sandwiches were always a sure thing. They were a sure thing here, too, because the waitress didn't even blink. She took the order down on the pad and walked away. Gregor watched her go. She was wearing a white polyester-knit dress and big, white, clunky rubber-soled shoes of the kind nurses used to wear when Gregor was much younger. Now nurses wore colored baggy cotton things. Gregor had no idea when that had started. He looked back to Molly and Evan.

“Well,” he said. “I hope I'm not blowing some kind of cover here.”

“We're not working undercover,” Molly said. “We're hardly working, if you want to know the truth. Kevin wants somebody to keep an eye on things, so we're keeping it, but there's not much going on. The most these people seem to want to do to each other is yell.”

“But something was done, wasn't it?” Gregor asked. “This woman, this Ann-Victoria Hadley, was assaulted.”

The waitress came back with Gregor's coffee. Gregor thanked her and pulled it close to him. Under Bennis's influence, he had stopped
loading it up with cream and sugar. Under Bennis's influence, he had also started eating a lot of vegetables. It was a terrible thing what a man would do to get a woman to marry him.

Molly was looking into the depths of her own coffee cup. “Your Miss Hadley was certainly assaulted,” she said, “and we've heard all the talk that it was all about the trial, but Evan and I don't exactly buy it. Not that it's impossible, I suppose.”

“There's this guy,” Evan said. “Local lawyer. Heads the biggest firm in town.”

“He used to be the chairman of the school board before these guys were voted in,” Molly said. “Henry Wackford.”

“The firm is called Wackford Squeers,” Evan said. “Can you imagine that? If I had a firm with a name like that, I'd change it. To anything.”

“Ignore him,” Molly said. “Henry Wackford has been going around telling everybody who will listen that it was Franklin Hale, that's the
new
chairman of the school board, anyway, that he was the one who went after Miss Hadley. According to Henry Wackford, the fundamentalists are evil, violent fascists and they've taken to going after scientists with their guns.”

“Ann-Victoria Hadley was a scientist?” Gregor was surprised.

“No,” Evan said. “That's just how these people talk. There's another one. Edna something or the other.”

“Edna Milton,” Molly said.

“That's the one,” Evan said. “She's going around saying there have been death threats against the judge sitting on this case—did Kevin tell you about the judge? Old Ham Folger, for God's sake. A man so self-important he takes himself more seriously than God.”

“Kevin did tell me about that,” Gregor said. “He also said it was a no-go.”

“It is,” Molly said. “There have been no threats against Hamilton Folger. And I mean none. Not even nonviable ones. But according to this woman—”

“Edna Milton,” Gregor said.

“Yes, according to her, the fundamentalists are going to murder Judge Folger unless he flies right and decides the case their way. It's driving us crazy. We can't not check out the rumors when they come. They've got us running ourselves ragged checking out sheer nonsense.”

“And is the nonsense all from one side?” Gregor asked. “It's all the evolution side talking about the Creationism side?”

“Hardly,” Evan said. “There's Franklin Hale. He says Henry Wackford whacked the old lady because he can't get over being voted out. Although why he'd do that, I don't know. You'd think if Wackford was angry about being voted out, he'd go after Franklin Hale. He's the new chairman.”

“And there's a woman named Alice McGuffie; she and her husband own this diner, as a matter of fact,” Molly said. “She says that Henry Wackford did it because he wants to make ‘good Christian people' look bad. She always says it that way. ‘Good Christian People.' As if it were in capitals.”

“Both those claims seem pretty lame,” Gregor said. “They're certainly as lame as the ones the evolution people are making.”

“In general,” Evan said, “you'll find that the evolution side seems, at least on the surface, to have more rational arguments than the Creation side. About who assaulted Ann-Victoria Hadley, I mean. But it's only on the surface. Once you start talking to them, they're all equally crazy. And I, for one, just don't get it.”

“No,” Molly agreed. “I don't get it, either. You'd be amazed at what's going on in this town. Even the children are beating each other up, both figuratively and literally. And over what? It isn't as if the new board actually wanted to stop the teaching of evolution, or even to start the teaching of Creationism—”

“Intelligent Design,” Evan said. “It's not the same thing.”

“It doesn't matter what it is,” Molly said. “All the new board wants is to put a little thing in books saying that some people don't accept Darwin's theory and if you have questions you can go to the library and take out this book. That's it. How many times did you go to the
school library when you were growing up? I honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about.”

“I don't either,” Evan said. “And if you explained all this on the evening news, I'd bet you anything most of the American people wouldn't understand it. It would be a different thing, you know, if they wanted to hold classes talking about God passing over the face of the waters or something, but they don't.”

“Although Franklin Hale probably would like to,” Molly said. “But Evan is right. The way things stand, it really doesn't make any sense. And of course this Miss Hadley was against the idea, and she joined the lawsuit. The whole thing is just ridiculous.”

Gregor's club sandwich came. He looked at the remains of the food on Evan's and Molly's plates. They'd eaten lunch before he got there, which made sense, since he wasn't meeting them for lunch. They'd both eaten club sandwiches, though. Gregor picked up one quarter of his own—like all club sandwiches, the thing was cut into four little triangles—and then put it down again. The bacon looked hard as a rock. The lettuce looked like it had been frozen and was still full of ice crystals.

“
Could
any of these people have committed the assault?” he asked. “Or didn't you check that out?”

“We definitely checked it out,” Evan said. “And the answer is yes. Anybody on either side of the lawsuit
could
have gone up there and whacked the old lady. You'd have to ask the doctors about it to get the specifics, but as far as I can tell, she was found nearly right away.”

“If she hadn't been, she'd have been dead,” Molly said.

“That was mostly a fluke,” Evan said. “But all the people involved were out and about at the time. They were all wandering around Main Street or back and forth to the schools complex or something. So any of them could have done it.”

“Who found Miss Hadley? Does she have servants in that house? Were there people around?”

“No servants,” Molly said, “except for a woman who comes in to clean twice a week. No, it was a woman named Catherine Marbledale
who found her. She's the principal of the high school. She'd gone up there to deliver some papers about something or the other—not the lawsuit, some stuff to do with the school. And it was a good thing. If Miss Hadley had been there for another hour or so—” Molly shrugged.

Gregor looked into his coffee and suddenly realized. He hadn't ordered coffee. He'd ordered a mineral water.

“Huh,” he said.

“He just got it,” Molly said.

“They do that to everybody,” Evan said. “Couple of days ago, this woman who works for Fox had a complete fit in here because she kept ordering mineral water and they kept giving her coffee. We don't think they even have mineral water. At least, we haven't seen it.”

“It isn't on the menu,” Molly said.

Gregor sighed. “I suppose the next thing is to talk to the doctors,” he said. “Is there a guard at the hospital, looking after this woman?”

“Not that we know of,” Evan said.

“She is a living witness,” Gregor said. “If she comes to, she might be able to finger her attacker.”

“True,” Evan said, “but if her attacker is who we think it is—”

“Meaning some local asshole just out for a grab,” Molly said.

“—he's not going to go back after her anyway,” Evan said. “And seriously, Mr. Demarkian, we can't see that it would be anyone else. No matter what kind of trash is being talked around here, there's really no reason to beat the woman up just because she won't resign and the school board wants to put some stickers in some textbooks. And that's about all it comes down to.”

“But I was told that she had money on her.” Gregor asked. “If it was smash and grab, shouldn't whoever smashed've done some grabbing?”

“Maybe this Marbledale woman came by right as the guy was going for that,” Molly said. “Maybe she scared him off. Anyway, you should try to talk to the doctors. They can give you more information than we can. With any luck the old lady will come to, and then you won't have to do anything accept take her statement.”

 

There was no such thing as a taxi in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. Gregor should have guessed, but he was so used to living in cities the question never occurred to him. Instead, back in his “office” after “lunch” with Molly and Evan—was
everything
connected to this place going to need to be put into scare quotes?—he went futilely through the yellow pages, trying one car service or another, until he got to the point where he thought it might make sense to pretend he was a funeral.

In the middle of all this, with Gary Albright still missing somewhere in town, both of Snow Hill's regular officers came in to check on what was happening. Very little was happening, as a matter of fact, in spite of the upcoming trial and the news people with their mobile production units everywhere, and the fights that were breaking out between teenagers over one thing or another. Gregor came out and introduced himself to them. They were not friendly, but they weren't hostile, either. Gregor supposed that was to be expected.

“It's not that we don't want you here,” the one called Eddie Block said. “It's just that we both have a lot of respect for Gary, and we don't like the idea that anybody would think he'd beat up an old woman.”

“I'm not sure anybody does think that,” Gregor said. It was only half true, but there was no point in going through all the ambiguities he saw in Gary Albright's personality with these two men. “I thought it was his idea to bring me in.”

“Oh, it was,” the one called Tom Fordman said. “But that's the thing. He wouldn't have had to think of calling you in if it wasn't for the fact that some people might suspect he—you know. We don't like it.”

“If Gary was going to go after someone,” Eddie Block said, “he'd do it straight. He wouldn't sneak up behind them with an aluminum bat. He'd face them straight on and shoot them.”

“And he wouldn't do that,” Tom Fordman said. “He's never shot anybody in his life except, you know, maybe in the military.”

“He'd've had to shoot somebody in the military,” Eddie Block said. “He was in combat.”

Gregor's head hurt. They were all out in the big room, which was a good thing. If they'd been having this conversation in his office, they would have sucked all the oxygen from the air by now. Gregor looked around, found a chair, and sat down. It was one of those computer chairs on wheels. He hated chairs on wheels. He was convinced they were going to shoot out from under him.