Act of Darkness (17 page)

Now he stood under the portico on the front steps of Great Expectations, watching the reflections of lights exploding high in the air but far at the back of his head, watching Carl Bettinger walking toward him and a black-and-white with flashing lights pulling in behind Bettinger’s blue Ford—and it all felt wrong. The sky wasn’t dark enough yet. The reflections that reached him were less like fireworks than feeble sheet lightning. Bettinger wasn’t straight enough. Gregor remembered him as “the man with the perfect posture,” much the way Homer had always reported Achilles to be “brave,” but the Bettinger who was coming toward him was stooped and tense, as if he’d been wound tight for so long he had lost the resilience necessary to keep a shape. Then there was the black-and-white. Gregor knew he was probably projecting—he had to be projecting—but the flashing lights looked angry.

Carl Bettinger reached the steps, walked up them, and stood looking at the wide double doors. They were open because Dan Chester had left them open, but Dan Chester had disappeared. Carl Bettinger seemed to be taking them personally, as if, no matter what else he had to put up with, he shouldn’t have to put up with double doors.

“Nuts,” Bettinger said, and then, “Gregor. Gregor. Hello. I’m sorry. What’s going on around here?”

Gregor Demarkian sighed. Carl Bettinger was ten years his junior. He was, from what Gregor remembered of him, a good agent and (possibly) a good man. That didn’t change the fact that he had no business being here. Whoever was driving the black-and-white had pulled to a stop and cut the motor, but left the lights flashing. Any minute now, he was going to get out of that car, and his partner was going to get out with him, and there was going to be a mess.

“What are you doing here?” Gregor said. “You shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of this place. You know that.”

Bettinger flushed and turned away. “I have an interest in this case.”

The way the case had been described to Gregor, Bettinger couldn’t have an official interest in it. If he did, then somebody wasn’t telling Gregor something. “Even so,” he said. “This is a delicate situation. We have a suspicious death here.”

“I know,” Bettinger said. And then he exploded. “Christ, Gregor, what do you take me for? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be here. I have to be here. You have no idea what’s going on.”

“A sting operation? Domestic espionage? What could possibly—”

“It’s nothing like that.” Bettinger turned slightly. Two men had gotten out of the black-and-white, a uniform and a man who looked liked a western sheriff, but citified. He was wearing a good white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled above the elbows, and the pants and vest to a first-class three-piece suit. Carl Bettinger stared at him longer than he had to and then looked away again.

“I don’t,” he said, “get involved in that kind of thing. You know I don’t.”

“I know you didn’t,” Gregor said.

“This is just a favor I’m doing somebody, Gregor. I should say this is a favor the Director is doing somebody. Nobody wants Stephen Whistler Fox dead. Not now. Not with that act pending. Dan Chester—”

“You’re squinting, Carl. You used to do that when you spent too much time on the computer.”

Carl Bettinger’s flush bleached to the color of ash. “For God’s sake, Gregor, don’t say things like that. What would I be doing on the computer? The Director is very concerned about Stephen Fox—”

“So you tell me. But Carl, it’s not Stephen Whistler Fox who’s dead.”

Carl Bettinger looked miserable. “Could you just tell me one thing?” he said. “Was it murder? Was it suicide? Was it a heart attack? What’s going on here—”

“Wait,” Gregor told him.

The uniform and the man in the vest had reached the bottom of the steps. They started up, the uniform hanging back a little, like a Chinese wife following her husband to market. Gregor moved away from Bettinger, making space. The portico wasn’t small, but it wasn’t as large as it could have been, given the size of the house. At the moment, even with openness on three sides and the doors wide open to the back, it felt damn near claustrophobic.

From out ahead of them somewhere, maybe on the road and maybe already inside the gate, came the sound of more cars arriving: the techies, the medical vans. Gregor felt the dampness under his collar and loosened his tie. With all the excitement, he’d forgotten to notice how hot it still was beyond the reach of Great Expectations’s air-conditioning. Now his whole body felt as wet as it would have if he’d just stepped out of a bath.

The man in the vest reached the top of the steps and stopped. He was a short man, square and muscular, with an incongruously intelligent face, and although he was at least Gregor’s age he had none of Gregor’s flab. He reminded Gregor of Spencer Tracy playing the Clarence Darrow character in
Inherit the Wind,
except that he didn’t look even’ minimally Irish.

“My name,” he said pleasantly, “is Henry Berman. What I want to know right now is where I can find a man named Gregor Demarkian.”

“I’m Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said.

“Good.” Berman turned to his patrolman, who had made it up the steps by then, too, but was hanging back. “This one,” Berman said, pointing to Carl Bettinger, “is a pain in the butt from the federal government. He’s been calling my office all week, trying to get me to run background checks on everybody he’s ever heard of. I don’t care what you do with him, but keep him out of my hair.”

“But,” Carl Bettinger said.

“Mr. Demarkian and I have work to do,” Henry Berman said. He grabbed Gregor by the elbow and began pushing him toward the house. He pushed them both far enough so that they began to feel the cold of the air-conditioning seeping through the doors. Then he gave one more shove, and Gregor found himself stumbling into the foyer, under the light, out of the dark.

Henry Berman was still out under the portico. He turned to Carl Bettinger and said, “
You
ought to take a little advice.
You
ought to make yourself invisible.
You
ought to disappear. Because if you don’t, I’m going to make you disappear myself.”

Of course, Carl Bettinger didn’t disappear. Gregor didn’t expect him to. He was behaving much too much like a man who wanted to, but couldn’t. The uniformed patrolman wouldn’t have let him, anyway. If this was a murder, there was no way of knowing where Bettinger had been when it happened or what connection he might have to the fact that it had happened. Gregor watched him out of the corner of his eye, and saw that Bettinger first followed him inside, and then tried to melt into the small clutch of people waiting in the living room space. It didn’t quite work. As far as Gregor could tell, of the people inside, only Dan Chester knew who Bettinger was. The rest of them didn’t even want to. Gregor thought they thought Bettinger was a spy.

Out on the drive, the vans were arriving, clattering and screeching, their drivers playing games with their brakes because it was safe here, on private property, where no one would see them. Berman shot a look in the direction of the noise and then turned his attention to the crowd in the living room space. Most of them, Gregor thought, he recognized: Victoria Harte, Stephen Fox, Patchen Rawls, even Janet Harte Fox. On some of them, Berman drew a blank. Neither Dan Chester nor Clare Markey meant anything to him. It was Bennis who caused him the most confusion. He thought she was familiar, but she wasn’t. He thought he ought to know who she was, but he didn’t. He stared in her direction for a full minute and then started to shake his head.

Bennis blushed. “Excuse me. Have we met? I’m Bennis Day Hannaford.”

Gregor winced. Bennis only used her full name like that—Bennis
Day
Hannaford—when she was either very nervous or very angry, and she wasn’t angry. While he had been outside, she had gone through another sea change. Her sea changes were beginning to make him crazy. Upstairs, she had been bouncing off what had happened to her family, reliving the things she was most afraid to face. Now she was jumpy and afraid in an entirely different way, and Gregor didn’t like it. If she’d been anyone but Bennis, he’d have thought she looked—guilty.

If Berman noticed any of this, he gave no indication. At the sound of Bennis’s name his face lit up, and he began nodding his head instead of shaking it. “That’s right,” he said. “I thought you looked familiar. Swords and sorceries.”

“Exactly,” Bennis said.

“There was a story about you in
Parade
magazine one Sunday. Had your picture on the cover. You don’t photograph so well.”

“No,” Bennis said. “I never did.”

“I photograph like an orangutan,” Dan Chester said. “What does that have to do with anything anyway? Who are you people?”

Henry Berman turned his attention from Bennis and focused on Dan Chester instead. Gregor noted with satisfaction that Chester did not seem to be pleased.

“I,” Henry Berman said, “am chief of police of Oyster Bay, Long Island. In case it’s slipped your mind, Oyster Bay, Long Island, is where you happen to be. Who are you?”

“Dan Chester,” Dan Chester said.

“We didn’t set the fireworks off on purpose,” Janet Harte Fox said, her hand reaching automatically to the pins in her hair. “They were contracted for. And then with everything that was going on I just forgot all about them you see and—”

“Stop,” Henry Berman said. “Who are you?”

“Janet Harte Fox. Mrs. Stephen Fox.”

“Fine. I know all about the fireworks, Mrs. Fox. They were arranged by the towns. They’ve been giving my people headaches for a month and now they’re giving them migraines. Which one of you people called me?”

“I did,” Bennis said.

“Fine,” Berman said again. “You called because Mr. Demarkian here asked you to?”

“That’s right,” Bennis said.

“I don’t see why he should have done that,” Patchen Rawls said. “I don’t see why we need a policeman here. He said there wasn’t anything like blood up there to make you think—”

“Shut up,” Victoria Harte said.

“We’ll find out what’s up there in a minute or two,” Berman said. He stared at the heart-shaped ruby on Victoria’s chest. Then he turned back to Bennis. “Were you the one who discovered the body?”

“No,” Bennis said. “Gregor did.”

“But you were with him?”

“That’s right. Or almost with him. Gregor went into the room, but I didn’t.”

“You didn’t see what was inside?”

“Oh, I saw what was inside, all right. But I stood at the door, in the hallway. It’s a balcony thing. You’ll see. Only Gregor went inside.”

“What happened then?”

“Well,” Bennis said, “I went to call you, and Gregor went to find the others. Then Gregor came back to look at the body again, and I came up to find Gregor. Then we came downstairs.”

“You didn’t see anything unusual?”

“No. And it’s a good thing, too. Nobody ever listens to me.”

Berman let this pass. Gregor didn’t blame him. He’d heard the same complaint himself a hundred times, from Bennis and every other woman he knew. He even supposed the women had a point. That didn’t make their complaint a proper subject of criminal investigation.

“Now,” Berman said, “let’s try to think about times. The time the body was discovered, to begin with. Mr. Demarkian, do you know when that was?”

“Approximately. There was a clock somewhere in the house striking what must have been five thirty—”

“Must have been?”

“A half-hour strike is only a chime, Mr. Berman. It could have been any half hour if that was all we had to go on. It had to be five thirty because I actually saw a clock a little while later, when I came downstairs to knock on Mrs. Harte’s door. At that point it was five minutes before six.”

“Very good. So the body was discovered between five thirty and six. Miss Hannaford’s call came into my office at five forty-seven. You said you came downstairs to make the call. Isn’t there a phone in your room?”

“There’s a phone in my room,” Bennis said. “There’s a phone in every bedroom upstairs as far as I know. But Gregor didn’t want me to phone from there, because he said the whole upstairs would have to be searched. And fingerprinted.”

“The whole upstairs?” Patchen Rawls choked.

“Search Ms. Rawls’s room first,” Victoria Harte said. “It’s so interesting.”

“Right,” Berman said. “Now, the victim. If he is a victim. You said on the phone his name was Dr. Kevin Debrett.”

“That’s right,” Bennis said.

Victoria Harte stirred, majestic and restless. “He was a specialist in the treatment of retarded children. The psychiatric treatment of retarded children. Kevin never did like blood.”

“He liked blood well enough once,” her daughter said. “He used to be an obstetrician. He was mine, the one time I needed one.”

“That was years ago,” Dan Chester said.

“I want to go back to California,” Patchen Rawls said. “I hate it in the East. Everything is so old here. Everything has so much baggage.”

“Miss Rawls,” Victoria Harte said, “is barely out of her cradle. This particular incarnation, at any rate.”

Henry Berman wasn’t interested in incarnations. As far as Gregor could tell, he wasn’t interested in Patchen Rawls. Berman was looking from one end of the open house to the other, at the ceilings, at the floors, at the lack of walls. He was looking at the decor, too, all those mirror-image pictures of Janet and Victoria. There was a puzzled expression on his face that grew more marked the longer and more carefully he looked around him. Gregor sympathized. Great Expectations did that to him, too.

Abruptly, Berman’s tolerance for architectural confusion and mother-daughter solidarity reached its threshold. He snapped his head back so that he was facing the assembled company again, passed his gaze over Carl Bettinger as if Bettinger were a hole in the atmosphere, and said, “You all stay down here. I’m going to take Mr. Demarkian upstairs. When the techies come in, somebody send them up after us.”

Because Bennis and everybody else had been ordered to stay downstairs, the balcony hall was empty when Gregor and Berman got to it. Its doors were still either open or shut, as they had been when Gregor and Bennis had first found Kevin Debrett’s body. The carpeting, now lit only by the unkind glow of track lights that had gone on automatically at the coming of darkness, looked like something that belonged in a Holiday Inn. Gregor found himself telling Berman what it had been like when he and Bennis had arrived: which doors were open, which doors were closed, the strange pair of pantyhose in Bennis’s wastebasket. Berman started out only half-listening, and ended up gaping at Gregor in astonishment.