Stillness in Bethlehem (42 page)

“Like she gets so intent on what she’s after, she doesn’t see what’s around her,” Bennis said. “All right. But then Dinah Ketchum—”

“Was killed in the only way Amanda could manage it, and right away because she was afraid that Tisha Verek’s death might start Dinah talking. Remember, the Bickerel case wasn’t some remote report of true crime. It happened right in that area of Vermont, and it was an enormous sensation while it was going on. Dinah might not have remembered the deformed ear before she saw the picture, she might not even have known about it, but she would have remembered it as soon as she heard how Tisha Verek died. So Amanda did what she thought she had to do. That’s what Amy Jo Bickerel has always done. What she thought she had to do.”

“What was the second reason?” Bennis asked.

“The second reason was motive,” Gregor said. “The rest of the people on that list of missing pictures had been released from the institutions they’d been remanded to, but Amy Jo Bickerel had not. I checked that out afterward, by the way. It turns out she hadn’t been released, because every time they got close she seemed to go wild, violent and hallucinatory. She’s been doing it for years. But if she hadn’t been released, she must have escaped. And if she had escaped—”

“If she’d escaped, wouldn’t that have been big news in that part of Vermont?”

“Not in that part of Vermont, no,” Gregor said. “Up around Riverton, there it would have been big news. The Bickerel case was old, you have to remember that. The people who remembered it most clearly were old, too. It wasn’t Stuart Ketchum or Peter Callisher who talked to us about Amy Jo Bickerel, even though Stuart was with us when we discussed the missing Bickerel picture in Tisha Verek’s office. It was Franklin Morrison who remembered—and he’s over seventy.”

“All right,” Bennis said patiently. “So that’s why you figured it had to be Amy Jo Bickerel. And you figured Amy Jo Bickerel had to be Amanda Ballard because Amanda was the only one with something physically odd about her that would have been picked up in a picture and made instantly recognizable—”

“Well,” Gregor said, “there was this other young woman, just about the right age, named Sharon Morrissey. She had a white streak in her hair she told me she’d had from birth. I dismissed her because I figured all she had to do to disguise that was to dye her hair.”

“Fair enough.”

“And then there was all that about Riverton and Timmy Hall,” Gregor said. “Amanda Ballard had known Timmy Hall when he was at Riverton. She made no secret of that. Everybody assumed that she’d been up there working with retarded children or in the library or the cafeteria or something, but she never actually said that. In the end, all anybody really knew was that Amanda Ballard and Timmy Hall had both spent a fair amount of time at Riverton, background details unknown.”

“I suppose we ought to be grateful she didn’t kill Timmy.”

“She wouldn’t have killed Timmy,” Gregor said. “She had nothing to fear from Timmy. He was devoted to her—he still is. He wasn’t going to give her secret away. And then, of course, there was the obvious. Since Amanda was the one who worked in the
News and Mail
office, she was the one most likely to have heard Peter Callisher giving Gemma Bury tickets to the Nativity play and to know where those tickets were. Since Amanda lived with Peter Callisher and Peter Callisher was Stuart Ketchum’s best friend, the chances were she had been at the Ketchum farm often enough to know the layout and be able to steal a gun with the smallest possible fuss. Since Kelley Grey had seen her within inches of that stand of bushes just minutes before Gemma Bury must have been killed, she was in the right place at the right time—”

“All that still bothers me.”

“It shouldn’t. On any other night—on any night when there was going to be a serious use of animals—it would have been impossible, but on that first night it was easy. We did it out there together. It’s simple to disappear behind that stand.”

“But how did she get out of there?” Bennis protested. “Kelley Grey saw her at intermission, that’s fine, but then she must have gone into the bushes and waited for Gemma Bury and then pressed the trigger, but if she came right out she might have been seen—”

“She didn’t come right out. She waited until the play was over.”

“What?”

“If Gemma’s death had been discovered immediately, or if the silencer hadn’t worked, she probably would have come right out, because it would have been best to mingle with the crowd. But when nothing happened at all, she waited until the play was over. That was why Kelley Grey saw her at intermission, and Peter Callisher said she’d gone home sick in the middle of it all, but Stuart Ketchum saw her just outside the bleachers
after
the performance was over. Do you mean to tell me you didn’t pick that up?”

“Don’t do this to me, Gregor.”

“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m just telling you what happened. I will say something else, though.”

“What?”

“This is why I get so nervous about the expansion of the right to self-defense. I’m not totally against it, mind you. I have read some cases where I think it made perfect sense. There was that woman in Michigan with the husband who beat her. She divorced him. She moved out of town. She contacted police departments and got court orders. He followed her around, showed up on her doorstep and beat her bloody whenever he wanted to, and the police were very negligent in giving that woman protection. So the fact that she waited for him to pass out from vodka before she blew his head off doesn’t bother me at all. I am in full agreement with the acquittal. But.”

“But?”

“Well,” Gregor said, “the problem with instituting such a principle in law is that you don’t know what you’re unleashing. You may have a woman like that woman in Michigan, who is protecting herself in the only way she can. You may, however, have someone like Amy Jo Bickerel.”

“Maybe Amy Jo Bickerel was Amy Jo Bickerel because of what her uncle did to her.”

“Maybe,” Gregor agreed, “but there are two arguments from that premise. In the first place, you have to be careful with it, because in most cases adolescent girls who have been abused do not become violent to other people. They tear at themselves. The other thing has been known to happen, however, so we’ll let that slide. Then you have to look at this: No matter how Amy Jo Bickerel got to be Amy Jo Bickerel, she’s still dangerous. She won’t go to jail even now. She’ll be sent straight back to a mental institution, with any luck one with more stringent security procedures. Whether you’re going to blame her for what she did is not the point.”

“Abuse,” Bennis said pensively.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, exactly. I got a call from Kelley Grey right before I left for church this morning. I think she was trying to find you and you were out somewhere—”

“I was at Ararat having breakfast in peace.”

“Whatever. She said something about you’d want to know, she got Gandy George a place in a program in Boston, and if Candy sticks with it she never has to let Reggie beat her up again, although who all these people are—”

“Candy is the girl who played Mary in the Nativity play. Reggie is her husband that Gemma Bury said beat her—beat Candy—and also Reggie is one of the people with the guns Stuart Ketchum was talking about—”

“Does any of this make actual sense to you?”

“No, Bennis, none of this makes actual sense to me, but I’m used to that. I live on Cavanaugh Street.”

“Right,” Bennis said.

Over at the windows, Lida Arkmanian was standing in front of the grilled shrimp, clapping her hands and dodging Tommy Moradanyan, who seemed to want something that was right behind her.

“The food is all out,” she called. “It is time for all of you to eat. There are tables set up downstairs if you want to sit at tables. There is punch in the punch bowl. Green punch is for children and old people. Red punch is for adults.”

“Green punch, red punch,” old George Tekemanian said, coming up to Gregor and Bennis. “I have brought my rum just in case they try to make me listen to the doctor, who is somebody I don’t need because if I’ve survived this long I have to know more than some boy about how to stay alive. Hello, Krekor, Merry Christmas.”

“Where’s Martin?” Gregor asked.

Old George gestured vaguely into the crowd. “Out there somewhere. With my granddaughter-in-law, who is a very sweet girl but terrible about this health business. It’s all right. I’ve brought my own alcohol. I can get my own cholesterol. I will see you later, Krekor.”

“Just remember not to stuff butter in your pockets this time,” Gregor said. “It melts.”

“You think she’d give up,” Bennis said, meaning old George’s granddaughter-in-law. “She never wins an argument and he’s already eighty-something. And he seems healthy as a horse.”

“He probably is healthy as a horse,” Gregor said. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you healthy as a horse?”

“I’m going to quit smoking for New Year’s,” Bennis said. “I know I do it every New Year’s, but at least—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Gregor told her. “I meant the diet.”

“What diet?”

“The diet you keep trying to go on. What I mean to say is, if you have to go on a diet, do you think you could save me a lot of headaches and go on it in such a way that Tibor couldn’t tell?”

“Gregor, what are you talking about? I’m not on a diet. I couldn’t go on a diet. They wouldn’t let me go on a diet. I’d have to secede from Cavanaugh Street.”

“What about those diet books you were reading in Vermont?”

“Oh,” Bennis said, “those.”

“Yes,” Gregor said, “those.”

“I have to go talk to Donna Moradanyan about some thing,” Bennis said. “I’ll be right back.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER
, Father Tibor Kasparian sidled up to Gregor’s side and pulled on the sleeve of his sweater. Gregor stopped in the middle of eating a piece of
yaprak sarma
Hannah Krekorian had gotten for him and looked down at the small priest’s head. He still looked tired, but he also looked healthy, which was an improvement from the days before they went to Vermont. That he also looked old was something that Gregor had long ago given up worrying about, in spite of the fact that Tibor was four years younger than he was himself.

“Krekor,” Tibor said in a hiss. “Have you asked her? Do you know now why she is on a diet?”

“She says she isn’t on a diet,” Gregor said.

“If she isn’t on a diet, why is she reading these books about how to be on a diet?”

“She didn’t say.”

“This will not do, Krekor, it will not do. This is an emergency. We have to take action.”

“No we don’t,” Gregor said reasonably. “She’s over at the food table, eating through everything in sight.”

“Did you ask her if she was on a diet?”

“Of course I did. You told me to.”

“I told you to find out if she was on a diet, Krekor, not to come right out and ask. You have probably now committed a disaster. You have probably now made her think you think she ought to go on a diet.”

“I think she ought to gain twenty pounds and she knows it. And I’m hungry. I’m going to go back and get something to eat.”

“Always you think about food, Krekor. This is life and death.”

Actually, on Cavanaugh Street, as far as Gregor could tell, everything was life and death—but at least the life part had
yaprak sarma
in it, and flatbread you could dip into thick yogurt sauces, and lots of fresh dill. If Tibor hadn’t looked so worried, Gregor would have left him to stew where he was and done some serious immediate damage to the food supply. Instead, he felt called upon to offer reassurance.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m taking Bennis out for dinner on New Year’s Eve. I’ve got that sweater I bought that I showed you, with the reindeer on it. I’m going to give it to her. It’ll soften her up. Maybe I’ll get her to talk.”

“You are taking Bennis to a restaurant on New Year’s Eve?” Tibor looked interested. “Just the two of you? Alone?”

Gregor Demarkian nearly choked. “Now Tibor,” he warned. “Behave yourself.”

“I do not know what you are talking about, Krekor. I am a priest. I always behave myself.”

“Tibor—”

“I think this is a very good thing,” Tibor said. “You and Bennis, alone in a restaurant, on New Year’s Eve. If you are intelligent, Krekor, you will pick one with not much light and a great many candles.”

“
Tibor
.”

But it was too late. Tibor had disappeared in the direction of the food, and in the direction of the gossip, too, if Gregor was any judge. Tibor was grabbing Lida Arkmanian’s arm and whispering excitedly into her ear.

Oh, well, Gregor thought.

Sweater or no sweater, when Bennis Hannaford heard about this, she was going to kill him.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries

I
T WAS SIX O’CLOCK
on the morning of Monday, May 5, and Norman Kevic was on the air—and in the air, too, in a way, since he’d been flying higher than a stratocumulus cloud ever since he’d snorted four lines of pure Peruvian crystal in the men’s room of the Philadelphia Baroque Rococo Club at five minutes before closing just a few hours ago. Of course, those four lines weren’t the last lines Norm had snorted, just as the Baroque Rococo wasn’t the last club he’d visited. The Baroque Rococo was a gay bar Norm liked to go to just to see if he could get thrown out of it—which he couldn’t anymore, because they knew him. He’d spent the rest of the night in a place called Bertha’s Box, about which the less remembered the better. It didn’t matter, because Norm never could remember what he’d done in Bertha’s, except for more lines. There were always more lines. It was six o’clock in the morning and Norm had to go to work—in spite of the fact that he owned a piece of the station and wasn’t about to fire himself. Long before he’d owned a piece of the station he’d been The Voice of WXVE, the King of Philadelphia Talk Radio, the Man of the Morning. He’d taken three days off with the flu back in 1984 and nearly been lynched. There were heads out there who stoked themselves up all night just to be cruising fast enough to take him in between six and ten. More to the point, there were heads out there who weren’t very stable. Norm’s mail was a steady stream of unidentified flying objects. A dead mouse with a bright purple satin ribbon tied in a crisp bow around its neck. A lifetime subscription to the neo-Nazi rag called
Black Storm Rising: The Truth About the Second World War
. An absolutely awful homemade carrot cake with a flic knife buried inside. The fans would send him anything. They were out there. And they had teeth.