Living Witness (42 page)

The cars in front of the police station now included some from the state police. Franklin pressed himself up against the plate-glass window of the Hale 'n' Hardy Tire Shop and watched. There was Dale Vardan, who thought he was God's gift, and a lot of people Franklin didn't know. There was Gregor Demarkian, wearing a good winter coat over what looked like a good winter suit. What was it with these guys, that they never seemed to own parkas, like sensible people. There was Gary Albright. There were half a dozen people from those vans. Franklin hated those vans. He'd seen what they produced, Snow Hill on the news, night after night, the story of a bunch of hillbilly hicks who still thought the earth was flat.

There was a cough behind him, and Franklin turned to see Louise Brooker hovering near a large pyramid pile of snow tires. Why did they have the snow tires out? It was nearly past the snow season—nobody would put snow tires on their car now. Franklin took a deep breath. Louise looked apologetic.

“It's your house,” she said. “It's your sister Lynne. It seems that Marcey—”

“Yeah,” Franklin said. “She was that way when I left. That's why I called Lynne.”

“Yes,” Louise said. “I think you'd better talk to Lynne. She seems to think that Marcey may have, I don't know, may have taken, uh, may need to go to—”

“—the emergency room,” Franklin said.

“Maybe you'd better talk to Lynne,” Louise said again.

Franklin turned back to look at the cars and the vans, at Gregor Demarkian still standing out there in the wind, talking to the newspeople with the cameras set up. Why wouldn't these people wear hats? They didn't wear parkas, they didn't wear hats, they walked around in
the cold and never seemed to catch anything. How did Alice McGuffie put it? It was as if they had a secret, and they wouldn't share that secret with anybody else. People thought Alice McGuffie was stupid, but Franklin Hale knew better.

“Franklin,” Louise said.

“I don't care,” Franklin said. Then he looked up at the ceiling. There was nothing there, except those foam panels they'd put in to help with the noise, but it was as good a place to look as any. He'd told the truth. He didn't care if Marcey lived or died. He didn't care if she went to the emergency room and got caught by every cameraman from New York and Atlanta. He didn't care. It had all been going on and on and on this way for as long as he could remember, and he thought he was done.

“I don't care,” he said again. “I don't care what Lynne does about her. I don't care if the whole town knows about it. The whole town knows, anyway. There aren't any secrets in places like this. I don't care.”

Franklin could hear Louise behind him, shifting from one foot to the other, hesitating, not knowing what to do. He didn't care about that, either. He looked out across Main Street and wondered suddenly what went on in the head of a man like Gregor Demarkian. They said he'd been in the FBI; that he'd met Presidents, if only in an official capacity; that he was going to marry some rich woman from the Main Line who'd gotten even richer writing stupid novels about elves and unicorns. That was the kind of thing Marcey knew. That was the kind of thing she threw in his face at every opportunity.

“You with your crap about how God wants you to prosper,” she would say, spilling lemonade all over the table because she'd taken too much of that stuff to keep her muscles under control. “God wants you to prosper. God wants you to fulfill your dreams. He wants them to prosper more than you, doesn't he? He wants them to get so rich they can swallow you whole.”

“Franklin,” Louise said yet again, sounding desperate now. “Franklin, you've got to—”

“I don't got to do anything,” Franklin said, moving away from the window. “I don't. I don't have to deal with this. Tell Lynne I don't give a shit if I come home and find Marcey dead on the bathroom floor. It's where she wants to be anyway, it's where she's wanted to be for years. I'm going out.”

“You don't really mean this,” Louise said, “you know you don't. If something happens, you'll regret it.”

“No, I won't,” Franklin said, and he made his way through the pyramids of tires to the store's glass front door. Everything about the Hale 'n' Hardy was glass. Everything was display. You had to put things out there and make them look tempting. You had to get people in the mood to buy. You had to go after them, day after day, week after week, with a smile pasted across your face and a tone of voice that said that your customer was the most wonderful human being who ever graced the planet, your customer was God, your customer was so wonderful he couldn't really do without this stuff you were selling him, he ought to buy more of it, he ought to buy more and more of it, he ought to buy so much of it that his garage at home was filled with tires he would never use.

Franklin stepped out onto the sidewalk. The vans were still in place, but the cameramen were packing up. Gregor Demarkian had finished talking. People all over the country, maybe even people all over the world, would have heard him speak.

The wind was coming down Main Street like a bowling ball in a bowling alley. Franklin realized he'd forgotten his parka and his hat.

 

Gary Albright had never seen an impromptu press conference or a press conference of any kind, from behind the scenes. He decided that the process interested him very much. If this had been a formal press conference, there would have been a table with microphones. Since this was just off the cuff, Gregor Demarkian had made a point of standing still and with his hands at his sides. The trick was to assume
an air of authority, to look like someone official, which Gregor Demarkian definitely was. Dale Vardan was also someone official, but he never looked it. He always came off as if he were intimidated by the reporters. The art of looking like you were not intimidated would be a good one to learn.

The reporters had not been interested in asking Gary questions, and Gary had not minded. He was not someone who needed to be front and center. He was not interested in being famous. He watched Gregor Demarkian talk, and then he watched the cameramen put their equipment away, and then he looked up and saw Franklin Hale coming at him across the street.

“Franklin,” he said.

Franklin brushed past him. None of the reporters or camera people noticed him. Gary was glad of that. He went into the police station the way he would have gone into the Snow Hill Diner, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if the last thing on his mind was doing something important. Gary thought that maybe it was not important. It was hard to remember that other things were going on in Snow Hill these days besides the murders. Maybe Franklin had had a shoplifter in his store. Maybe Marcey had been caught stealing stuff again from the IGA.

Gary looked at the vans. They were nearly all packed up. The reporters were wandering down the street toward the diner. He wondered what their lives were like at home. Sarah probably knew something about it, from women's magazines, but it was not the kind of story he paid attention to. He didn't really pay attention to much except sports and the presidential elections. Even the Congress and the Senate couldn't hold his attention for long, although he'd been interested enough when he'd had Rick Santorum to vote for. Men like Santorum didn't last long in politics. Godly men didn't last long at anything that required them to be popular. That was what Christ had promised. He would bring not peace, but a sword, and His disciples would have to suffer and die for His sake. That was something Gary did understand. It was why he had liked the Marines as much as he
had. It was not that he wanted to suffer—nobody wanted to suffer. But he knew that the Suffering Servant was the only one that counted.

It really was too cold out here, much too cold, and there was another woman dead. Gary gave one last look around—he had no idea what he was expecting to find, but he was always expecting to find something—and then went into the station. The big anteroom was crowded, because there were so many staties wandering around, doing nothing useful. Gary had to push people to get to the counter.

Franklin Hale was standing at the counter by himself, pounding on it a little. “I want to talk to Gregor Demarkian,” he was saying. “I don't give a shit who you think you are. I want to talk to Gregor Demarkian.”

“Gregor Demarkian,” Dale Vardan said.

That was when Gary realized that Franklin was not actually alone. It was just that Dale was shorter than Franklin and than most of the men around him. There had once been a rule that all state policeman had to be at least six feet tall. The idea was that a man had to be at least six feet to be able to intimidate without actually, deliberately intimidating. Sheer physical presence was a useful weapon in keeping the peace. That rule was gone now, though. It had made it practically impossible to “diversify” the state police. Women were almost never six feet tall, and Latinos weren't very often. Gary hated the whole idea of “diversity,” the whole idea that superficial things like race and gender should count more than ability and talent in deciding who would get hired to do a job.

“I want to talk to Gregor Demarkian,” Franklin said again.

There was something in the sound of that voice that Gary didn't like. Franklin could get—odd—sometimes. Gary was sure that Franklin never did drink to excess, and equally sure that he never took drugs, but every once in a while it was as if Franklin caught drunkenness and drug addiction just from talking to Marcey on the phone.

“I'm not going to talk to you, Dale, I'm really not,” Franklin was saying. “I don't give a crap who you think you are. I want to talk to Gregor Demarkian. Gregor Demarkian is in charge.”

Gary pushed through the crowd the rest of the way to the counter and took Franklin by the arm. It
was
one of those times, Gary thought. Franklin looked glassy-eyed. Dale Vardan looked like he was going to punch him.

Gary pulled Franklin away. “He's through here,” he said, trying to sound soothing, although that wasn't always a good idea.

Franklin didn't seem to notice. “Asshole,” he said, meaning Dale Vardan. “I know what I want. I'm not an idiot. I want to talk to Gregor Demarkian.”

Gary got the hinged section of the counter open and pushed Franklin through. “Right through there,” he said. “He's using that room next to mine for an office while he's here.”

“That's a broom closet,” Franklin said. “You put the great Gregor Demarkian in a broom closet. What does he think he's so great for, anyway? Why do any of them think they're so great? Where do they come from, these people? Why don't they go the Hell back home.”

Gary pushed Franklin again and they were standing in Gregor Demarkian's makeshift office. Gregor Demarkian was standing behind the desk, looking as if he didn't know what to do next. Gary didn't know, either.

“This is Franklin Hale,” he said, pushing Franklin slightly forward. “He's the chairman of the board of education. He wants to talk to you.”

“My name is on the lawsuit,” Franklin said. “You think it would be the name of the town on the lawsuit, but it isn't. It's
Wackford v. Hale
, because I'm the chairman of the school board, like Gary says. I won it in an election, fair and square. I ran against that son of a bitch, Henry Wackford, and now he pulls this. He's only doing it for spite. He's a spiteful person, Henry is. He's spiteful and he only wants to get his own back, and he's an atheist secular humanist and he has no morality and that's what I wanted to tell you. You need to know that. You need to know what you're up against. Except you're probably an atheist secular humanist yourself. I told Gary he shouldn't bring you here.”

Gary put his hand on Franklin's arm again. “Come on,” he said. “Maybe you ought to go home and rest up a bit. You can tell Mr. Demarkian all this tomorrow.”

“Mr. Demarkian,” Franklin said. “You all sound like idiots, that's the truth. Mr. Demarkian. Who's Mr. Demarkian, anyway? What kind of name is Demarkian? It sounds foreign.”

“It's Armenian,” Gregor Demarkian said, sounding helpful. “My parents immigrated from Armenia.”

“I told you it was foreign,” Franklin said.

“Come on,” Gary said, feeling desperate now.

“Just a minute,” Gregor Demarkian said.

Gary still had his hand on Franklin's arm. He kept it there. He had never seen Franklin be violent, not even with Marcey, but there was always a first time. Gary didn't like the way Franklin looked. It was almost as if Franklin had a fever.

“Just a minute,” Gregor Demarkian said again. “Just let me ask you a couple of things.”

“Ask away,” Franklin said. “I don't have anything to hide. I'm not even hiding that my wife is addicted to that Oxycontin stuff. Everybody knows it. That's the virtue of small towns,
Mr
. Demarkian. There's nothing to hide. Everybody knows your business.”

“It's the accounts,” Gregor Demarkian said. “I've got notes on three accounts. The teachers' union pension fund. The operating budget for the school. And the construction money, the money to put up the new schools complex.”

“That was bullshit,” Franklin said. “New schools complex, like we needed one. That's all these people can think of. Kids aren't learning anything in school, throw some money at it, throw all the money in the world at it. Maybe they're depressed because the don't have a new school. Maybe the teachers need higher salaries. Let me tell you, we had better teachers than they have now and we didn't pay them anything to speak of. What's a teacher, anyway? She's a babysitter most of the time. What's Catherine Marbledale but a stuck-up bitch who thinks she's better than everybody else because she went to college. She didn't
even go to real college. She went to education school.
Education
school. Isn't that a crock?”