Baptism in Blood (23 page)

Zhondra Meyer seemed to have made up her mind about something. She straightened up and brushed hair out of her eyes. “I don’t think any of the women here are going to do much talking to the police, this time,” she said. “We did a lot of talking to the police last time. Obviously, some­body is trying to persecute us. And the police are doing absolutely nothing about it.”

“You know,” Gregor said, “it might have nothing to do with persecution. It might be a simple case of opportu­nity. It’s very secluded out here.”

“It’s very secluded in half a dozen places in Bel­lerton. Murders aren’t happening there.”

“From what I understand, the first murder didn’t hap­pen here.”

“Ginny said it did. Not that I have much respect for Ginny, because I don’t. But she said it did.”

“That doesn’t make it so.”

“It does make for a lot of trouble, Mr. Demarkian. Police all over the grounds. Everybody’s privacy being in­vaded. I don’t think half of this would have happened, half of this poking and prying and fussing, if we had been some more respectable organization, like Henry Holborn’s church.”

“A murder investigation is a murder investigation, Ms. Meyer. There are procedures that must be followed. There are things that must be done.”

“I don’t believe the same procedures have to be fol­lowed when the suspect is O. J. Simpson instead of some nobody street hood hanging out on Hollywood and Vine.”

“I’m not saying there are no inequities in the sys­tem,” Gregor said. “I’m simply saying that there’s a bot­tom line here. There are certain things that have to be done, no matter who you’re dealing with. There are certain ques­tions that have to be asked. There are some things, Ms. Meyer, that just can’t be gotten around.”

Zhondra Meyer flicked imaginary lint off the bottom of her silk T-shirt. She hadn’t been looking at him through most of this conversation. She wasn’t looking at him now. She was staring into the clearing at the circle of stones and the men doing their work around it.

“You know,” she said, “most people think gay people are marginal. Especially lesbians. They think we have no money, and no clout, and no resources. That’s why they think we’re easy targets.”

“Ms. Meyer, I don’t believe a single person in the entire state of North Carolina thinks you have no money or no clout or no resources. Who and what you are have been shouted through every media outlet from
North Carolina
magazine to
60 Minutes.
That was you, I think, that I saw profiled once on
60 Minutes.
”

“That was me,” Zhondra said. “But I think you’re wrong anyway. I think it becomes something worse than a habit. It becomes a conviction in the blood. I think I’ve put up with it for as long as I have any intention of putting up with it. If Clayton or any of the rest of them are looking for me, you can tell them I’ve gone back up to the house.”

“What are you going to do?”

Zhondra Meyer smiled her little cat smile. It made her face look feral. “I’m going to do what I should have done in the beginning, Mr. Demarkian. I’m going to call my lawyers in New York and make sure they get somebody down here to raise holy hell. There are very few things that are more satisfying in this world than being extremely rich when somebody is trying to push you around. I think it’s time I took advantage of my advantages.”

“Somehow,” Gregor said, “this doesn’t sound like the Zhondra Meyer of the American Communist Party.”

“It’s called the Communist Party U.S.A. And you’re wrong, Mr. Demarkian. This is very much the Zhondra Meyer of the Communist Party. But that is hardly the point. Tell Clayton that if this place isn’t cleaned up when he goes, I’ll sue him for what it costs me to get it cleaned. Good afternoon, Mr. Demarkian. I’m in a hurry.”

It wasn’t afternoon yet. It was barely eleven o’clock in the morning. Gregor didn’t mention it. Zhondra was walk­ing away from him, down the path and out through the clearing. A couple of the media people started toward her and then stopped. Even the reporters could sense that she wasn’t going to be gracious and forthcoming this morning. The photographers didn’t care so much. Gregor counted three separate minicams aimed in Zhondra’s direction. He felt every flash that went off in the dark of the trees.

Zhondra Meyer disappeared into the shadows. Gregor looked back at the knot of women and noticed that none of them was talking. They all looked pasty and a little ill, each and every one of them, whether they were wearing makeup or not. Gregor felt cold. The air was nippy. He should have worn his sweater.

He got his mind off his sweater, picked Clayton Hall out of the crush of police officers standing around the stone circle, and headed in that direction.

C
LAYTON HALL LOOKED NOT
only tired, but exasperated. The corpse was gone, the tech men were doing their jobs, but everything still seemed to be confusion. Gregor picked up the air of chaos as soon as he got in the middle of the uniforms. Nobody challenged his right to be there. He would have been flattered, but he had a feeling that the explanation was not what he would want it to be. These policemen didn’t recognize him. They just knew by looking at him that he was not a reporter—mostly, of course, be­cause he was so obviously too old.

Clayton Hall was standing off to the side a little, talk­ing to a man in blue jeans and a white lab coat. The lab coat was unbuttoned down the front, showing a plain white shirt and a fancy Western vest, leather with carvings and studs. Gregor seemed to remember having been introduced to this man when he’d first arrived. This was the one pri­vate doctor in town, the one who worked as a medical ex­aminer in the few cases that required it.

“It’s not that we’ve got a lot of murders in Bellerton,” Clayton had explained at the time. “We don’t. What we have is a lot of drunks splattered across the high­ways on Saturday nights.”

Gregor thought that that was probably an exaggera­tion. How many drunk driving deaths could a small town have in a single year? Then he remembered all the tourists who came to Bellerton in the summers and changed his mind.

Clayton Hall was shifting from one foot to the other. Gregor walked up beside him and waited.

“Let me try to get this straight,” Clayton was saying. “She wasn’t killed here. And you’re sure of it.”

The man in the white lab coat looked exasperated himself. “What I’m trying to say,” he said, in the first truly pronounced drawl Gregor had heard since coming to North Carolina, “is that her throat wasn’t cut here. Her throat was cut before she was dead—”

“You’re sure of that.”

“Yes, Clayton, I’m sure of it. It doesn’t take a state police tech lab to figure that out. What it takes a state police tech lab to figure out is whether she died from hav­ing her throat cut or whether there was some other reason.”

“Why in hell would there be any other reason?” Clay­ton demanded. “There looks like there’s a gouge four inches deep in that woman’s neck—”

“More like one and a half—”

“Whatever. Enough. Getting her throat cut like that would have been enough to kill her.”

“Yes, it would have, but that still doesn’t mean that’s what she died from. We can’t know what she died from until we get the lab to check what has to be checked. What I’m trying to get across here, though, is that you’ve got this problem for the second time. The baby wasn’t killed here. This woman wasn’t killed here. You’ve got to figure out what it is about
here
that makes it so damn popular for—I don’t know what. Misdirection, maybe.”

“But the baby never was here,” Clayton said. “Ginny said she was here.”

“Yeah, well, there’s one more thing you better think about. Far as I know, Ginny’s been locked up in the town jail for weeks now. She wasn’t out here killing this woman. And if this woman died of having her throat cut, Ginny couldn’t have done it under any circumstances. She isn’t big enough.”

“The woman could have been drugged first,” Gregor said.

The man in the white lab coat turned to him and looked him up and down.

“Oh, Gregor,” Clayton said. “I was wondering where you were. This here is John Chester. He serves as—”

“Coroner when you need one,” Gregor said. “I re­member.”

John Chester nodded his head. “I know who you are, too. The Great Demarkian. The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot. Do you think you can explain to Clayton here the difference between knowing she didn’t have her throat cut here and knowing she was killed here?”

“I think I’ve got it, John. Really. I think I’ve got it.”

“Maybe.” John Chester didn’t sound convinced.

“Where have you been?” Clayton asked Gregor. “I was looking all over for you a little while ago.”

“I was talking to Zhondra Meyer,” Gregor said. “And trying to stay out of the way, too, of course.”

“You don’t have to stay out of the way.” Clayton looked distracted. “I tried to talk to Zhondra a little while ago. I didn’t feel like I was getting through. If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean. I think Ms. Meyer is on the warpath.”

“Really?” Now Clayton looked pained. “Well, it was coming, wasn’t it? I suppose we got off lucky to keep her calmed down up to now. She threatening to call her law­yers?”

“I think she’s already calling them.”

Clayton threw his head back and looked up into the pines. “Well, that just about tears it, doesn’t it?” he said. “All of this and Zhondra Meyer’s New York lawyers. And in the end, she’ll turn out to be right and here we’ll all be, looking like hicks with egg on our faces.”

John Chester looked like he had heard this lament be­fore. “Listen, Clayton,” he said. “I’ve got work to do. Why don’t you drop over to my house this afternoon and we can go over what I’ve got?”

“Sure,” Clayton Hall said.

Gregor put out his hand and touched John Chester on the arm. “Just a minute, do you mind? Could I ask you one or two more things?”

“If you’re going to ask how I know her throat wasn’t cut here, I don’t want to answer. You shouldn’t need me to tell you.”

Gregor didn’t need John Chester to tell him. He could see, even now and at a distance, that there was no signifi­cant amount of blood anywhere near the circle of stones.

“I just want some intelligent guesses to go on with,” he said. “Do you think it will turn out that she was killed by having her throat cut?”

John Chester nodded. “Oh, yeah. You get a good look at it, you can see she was good and alive when that cut happened. She lost a lot of blood. Her skin is absolutely white. What I’m not so sure of is, whether that was what her murderer intended her to die of, if you see what I mean.”

“No,” Gregor said.

John Chester gestured to the circle of stones. “It bothers me,” he said, “all this concentration on the stones, all this hokey-looking evidence to say that there was some ritual involved.”

“So you don’t think Ginny Marsh was telling the truth when she said she saw devil worshippers kill her baby at a Black Mass?”

“I know she wasn’t telling the truth when she said the baby was killed here,” John Chester said. “It couldn’t have been.”

“Do you think Ginny Marsh killed her baby?”

John Chester shrugged. “I think it’s most likely she did or Bobby did. Her husband, Bobby Marsh, the baby’s father—”

“I know,” Gregor said.

“The common thing is for it to be one or the other, or both of them together. Or a boyfriend, of course, but I don’t know of any boyfriend in this case. You go around and around it, don’t you? All the usual explanations.”

“But Ginny Marsh couldn’t have killed Carol Lit­tleton,” Gregor said. “You just told us that yourself.”

“I know. But Bobby could have. He’s big and strong and dumb enough. Not that I’ve got anything against Bobby Marsh, you understand, he’s just not too bright.”

“The other thing, of course, is that you haven’t an­swered me,” Gregor said. “You didn’t tell me if you thought they did it, either one of them or the two of them together.”

John Chester sighed. “I don’t exactly have an answer for you, Mr. Demarkian. I guess I thought it would all be cleared up by now. Ginny would just—bend under the strain and tell us what happened.”

“Which she hasn’t,” Gregor said.

“She definitely hasn’t,” Clayton Hall said. “If any­thing, she’s getting quieter and quieter by the minute.”

“What about Bobby Marsh?” Gregor asked.

“Mostly he drinks,” John Chester said. “He’s in the bars every night, and out on the road by two in the morn­ing, too. One of these days I’m going to have to scrape him off the highway.”

“Do you think that indicates guilt or innocence?”

“I think it indicates that Bobby and the Reverend Holborn are having their problems again,” John Chester re­plied. “Bobby is a deacon in Henry Holborn’s church. Whenever they’re on the outs, Bobby goes to hell. I think he may be trying to get there literally.”

“Do you think they’ve fallen out over the murder of the baby?”

“No way to tell,” John Chester said.

“Do you think this murder and the murder of the baby are connected?”

“I couldn’t really say. They’d have to be connected at least superficially, though, wouldn’t they? Even if it was just a copycat kind of thing, somebody trying to make us think the murders were connected.” John Chester sighed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help than this,” he said. “It’s just that there isn’t much to go on with all this. And there are a lot of people involved I don’t know. The women who live up here, for instance.”

“And that makes a difference?”

“When you know people, you have a fair idea of what they’re likely to do,” John Chester said. “Not always and not completely. It’s easy to get fooled. Even so, you’ve got some parameters. But with strangers—” He shrugged again.

“Do you think this murder was committed by a stranger? Do you think the murder of the baby was?”

“I think none of this makes any damn sense at all,” John Chester said. “I think—oh, Jesus.”

“What is it?” Gregor said.

“God damn it to hell,” Clayton Hall said. “How did they get in here? I’m going to bust somebody’s ass just for letting them in here.”

“What is it?” Gregor asked again.

There were too many people milling around in the clearing, that was the problem. Gregor had a hard time seeing past the cops and the women. Then he realized he was looking in the wrong direction. It wasn’t the path where the commotion was. The disturbance was arriving from the other direction, from the far side of the clearing, through the thick stand of trees.