Act of Darkness (29 page)

“There isn’t—”

“Carl.”

Bettinger flushed again. “There isn’t anything I can tell you about an ongoing investigation of Dr. Kevin Debrett.”

Gregor Demarkian sighed. Carl Bettinger sounded stubborn. What was worse was the fact that Bettinger had apparently forgotten everything he ever knew about Gregor Demarkian. Maybe Carl thought Gregor was getting old enough to be senile. Gregor put his hands on his knees and said, “Carl, listen to me. I was with the Bureau for twenty years. I know how you work and I know why you work. The first thing I thought of, when you first came to me about this business with Senator Fox, was that you were lying to me. That was the first thing, Carl.”

“But—”

“No buts. Listen. Senator Fox was passing out at cocktail parties. Fine. Now. On the surface it looked like a medical or psychological problem. That would have nothing to do with you. Then there were two other possibilities. In the first place, someone could be making very inept attempts to murder the man. That would have nothing to do with you, either. It would be a matter for the District of Columbia police. The Bureau investigates murders on federal land, on Indian reservations when it is asked, and as liaison in cases of serial murder that have extended over several states. None of that would apply here. The final possibility was that the senator was being sabotaged by a foreign or subversive group. That would have had something to do with you. But that was not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Carl, Carl, Carl,” Gregor said patiently. “What would any subversive group want with Senator Fox? He was on no military or foreign affairs committees. As far as I can tell, he never took any interest in that sort of thing at all.”

“He voted against every military appropriation ever proposed in the United States Senate while he was there,” Carl said quickly.

Gregor shrugged. “So what? So did a couple of dozen other senators. The only way to make a case in that direction is to assume a conspiracy of massive proportions, a conspiracy to kill all those senators, not just one very unimportant one. I’ve still got contacts in the Bureau, Carl. If there had been something like that, I’d have had intimations of it before now.”

“Oh.”

“In case you’re wondering, I can make an argument against a plot by domestic groups as well. The senator was a liberal, but he was a very wishy-washy liberal. If the Ku Klux Klan was going to go after somebody, it would be somebody like Kennedy. Then there was all that nonsense about the Director.”

“That wasn’t nonsense,” Carl said. “The Director really did—”

“I’m sure he did. But he didn’t do it because Dan Chester was his friend, because he isn’t. The Director is a Reagan man. The Republicans think Chester’s poison, and the present administration thinks he’s worse than poison. I suggest that Mr. Chester’s request for help came at a very opportune time. I remember you very well, you know. You always did hate to lose.”

Bettinger looked up and set his jaw. “I don’t lose,” he said. “Not ever.”

“You’d win with less trouble if you’d learn to be straightforward with people who can help you. You’ve been infected with spy fever, Carl. You’ve started keeping secrets that don’t need keeping from people they don’t need to be kept from. When were you attached to Behavioral Sciences?”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are.”

Bettinger sighed. “I was brought over from Organized Crime in January,” he said. “There was this problem, and there had been a couple of other people working on it, but—”

“I know that ‘but,’” Gregor said. “I’ve been involved in it once or twice myself. For future reference, though, you might remember that I not only established the Behavioral Sciences Department, I also established the procedures for that department. I know a serial murder investigation when I see one. And a serial murder investigation is definitely what you’re involved in. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Carl Bettinger said.

“Good,” Gregor said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Given the people you’re talking to, I’d say there were two possible candidates for your suspect. There’s Dan Chester, for instance. It wouldn’t be hard to cast him as a psychopath. He’s got the morals of a Borgia Pope.”

Bettinger smiled thinly. “He’s also got the face of Ted Bundy. Do you remember Ted, Gregor?”

“I considered Mr. Chester for a while,” Gregor said, “but I decided against him. The man was not only running the senator’s career, he was running the senator’s life. Literally. Stephen Whistler Fox was never anything more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. If Dan Chester was killing strangers, he would have to be doing it very close to home. It would have been noticed—not that he was doing it, necessarily, that it was being done. And here is the interesting thing about all this. You are involved in the investigation of a case of serial murder. In order for you to be involved, you had to be called in by a local police department somewhere. Local police departments don’t come running to the Bureau unless they have no other choice, which usually means unless they’re getting such bad publicity they can’t stand it anymore. But here’s the problem, Carl. There has been no such publicity about any such case anywhere or any time in the last year. On a public level, your case does not exist.”

Carl Bettinger jumped out of his chair. “From that you decide I’m investigating Kevin Debrett? That’s crazy. From that, you should decide I’m not investigating anyone at all.”

“I told you, Carl. I know a serial murder investigation when I see it. You talk to Victoria Harte. You talk to Berman. You have computer eyestrain. What I decided was that there was a class of people who could be killed in such a way that their deaths were not obviously murders, and whose deaths might not be unexpected, or reported. Then I looked at our little group here and decided that Dr. Debrett was the only one among them who had both consistent access to that class of people and a possible—I won’t call it motive, but a possible spark, a possible precipitating event, in his background.”

“I don’t know about any precipitating event.” This time Bettinger was being honest. “I just know—that things are very strange.”

“I’m sure they are. I think I can see the outlines of your case, and it would be making me insane. If it’s any consolation, I also think your serial murderer is dead.”

Bettinger exploded. “They got Bundy,” he said savagely. “They got him. Gregor, I remember the execution. I couldn’t get in—you could have, but I take it you didn’t go—I’d been too far down in that investigation to merit a viewing. I watched the news all that morning on television, though, I remember being so—so damn high. So damn high, Gregor, because for once we had one, pure and simple, case closed and no worries about what some idiotic parole board was going to do ten years down the line that was going to put another ten or twenty people underground. Oh, I know you don’t believe in capital punishment—”

“Let’s say I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I wasn’t sorry to see Ted Bundy die,” Gregor said. “And let’s get back to the subject. I take it I’ve been right so far?”

“You’ve been brilliant.”

“Good. Now, I want to know just one more thing. In these possible serial murders—”

“They’re real enough, Gregor. They’re real enough. I just can’t prove it yet.”

Gregor didn’t tell him that if he hadn’t proved it yet, he might never prove it at all. Kevin Debrett was dead. Gregor started again anyway, out of both compassion and expediency.

“In these serial murders,” he said, leaving out the
possible,
“has there been, at any time, any suggestion of the use of a drug called succinylcholine?”

Bettinger had gone to the window during his tirade on Ted Bundy. He had been looking out on the beach when the last part of their conversation had taken place. Now he whirled around and stared at Gregor in astonishment.

“Good Lord,” he said. “I knew you were good, but you must be some kind of magician.”

Gregor Demarkian was no kind of magician. At the moment, he didn’t think he was much of a detective. He had had his suspicions of Carl Bettinger’s real interest in this weekend from the first. That had been inevitable. He had every right to expect himself to recognize when an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was following Bureau procedure in serial murder cases, because he had written the book on Bureau procedure in serial murder cases. On the other hand, he had every right to expect himself to notice a few other things, too, and those other things had gone right past him. Like a drowning man watching his life pass before his eyes, he could see himself giving a hundred lectures in a hundred different places on the vital importance of staying alert to every nuance of every person involved in any way in every case. He could hear himself telling batch after batch of serious-faced young agents-in-training that it was just as important for them to pay attention to their wives and friends and families as it was for them to pay attention to their work. You never knew when those wives and friends and families might be able to contribute something important, if only a new perspective or an early warning sign of growing agent obsession.

Right.

When he and Carl had finished with their talk, Gregor had sent the agent downstairs to the others, feeling a little sorry for him because he would have to be in close proximity to Victoria Harte. Gregor had also asked Carl to send Bennis Hannaford up. That had been only a few minutes ago. It felt like hours, because during those minutes Gregor had had nothing to think about but Bennis, and he was ashamed of himself. He was ashamed of himself as a friend, because he had not been alive to the signals she had been sending him—or hadn’t been taking them seriously—and he owed her that. He was ashamed of himself as a detective, because this time Bennis had a great deal to contribute to his case, and if he’d been paying attention he’d have known that. Instead, he’d let her fight with Victoria Harte and skitter around Janet as if she were afraid to be seen, without ever thinking once there might be more to it than that Hannaford idiosyncrasy.

He had been sitting on the bed. Now he got up and began to straighten out the room, doing it automatically, the way he had once straightened up to help Elizabeth out when she was in radiation therapy. Outside, the sky was growing ever darker and the music ever louder.

When Bennis knocked—on the door that connected their two rooms, not the door to the balcony—he was folding his worn suit into the raw cotton laundry bag he kept in his largest suitcase for dry-cleaning. Bennis opened up and stuck her head in just as he was pulling the bag closed.

“Gregor?” she said. “I’m sorry. Mr. Bettinger just said you wanted me upstairs, and I assumed—”

“You assumed I’d be where you left me. My fault. Come on in and shut the door.”

Bennis did. “If you’ve got a minute, you should talk to Henry Berman for a while. I think he’s getting a little nervous about something out there.”

“What he’s nervous about is all the time I’m spending in here,” Gregor said, “where he can’t listen in. Never mind. I’ll calm him down later. I want to talk to you.”

“Surprise, surprise.” Bennis grinned. “It’s nice to be consulted once in a while. It’s nice to know you think I have a mind.”

“Mmm. I also think you have a fanny. Sit on it.”

“Why?”

“Because what I want to talk to you about is the affair you had with Stephen Whistler Fox about ten years ago in Washington, D.C.”

“Oh.” Bennis dropped down on the bed in a single awkward movement, her small body half disappearing among the quilts and her face going very white. “Oh, Gregor, I’m sorry. I should have told you, I know I should have, but it was so long ago. And I was afraid if I did tell you, you wouldn’t let me come along. And I wanted to come along. I had to come along. Not just because it was an investigation. Because I couldn’t stand the idea of being in Philadelphia right now. The trial’s turning into a circus and there are always people hanging around my mother’s house, and my mother is so sick she can barely talk, and—oh, it was just one thing and another.”

“I know.”

“How did you know?” Bennis said. “Did somebody tell you? Did Donna Moradanyan?”

“I haven’t talked to Donna Moradanyan since I got here. I have talked to Tibor. About you, Donna, and sex.”

Bennis blushed. “Oh, dear,” she said.

“I’d say it was very wrong of you,” Gregor said, “but at the moment it happens to be very convenient, so I think I’ll let it go. I need some information, and you can give it to me. But next time, Bennis, if there ever is a next time, try not to get Donna so agitated she has to walk off her nerves all over the city of Philadelphia and saddle poor Tibor with a small baby he doesn’t know what to do with.”

“Tibor would talk to it,” Bennis said dismissively, “and somehow or the other it would understand. Gregor, what killed Kevin Debrett and Stephen Whistler Fox? I heard you say something to Berman about curare—”

“No. Forget about the curare for a moment. I knew about your affair with Stephen Whistler Fox because Victoria Harte hinted at it when we got here, and because of that convoluted moral discussion Tibor said you had with Donna. I knew it must have been ten years ago because that’s when you spent significant time in Washington, D.C. You told me that yourself months ago. As far as I can figure out, the senator spent most of his time either there or in Connecticut, and you’ve never said anything about Connecticut.”

“I went to a wedding there once,” Bennis said. “Gregor, listen, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t know he was married when all that started. I really didn’t. I would never have—”

“Bennis, it’s all right.”

“It’s not all right to deliberately have affairs with married men,” Bennis flared. “I’m no Patchen Rawls.”

“I never said you were.”

“And I had no reason to know he was married. He wasn’t wearing a ring. Janet wasn’t anywhere in evidence. Although, I can tell you, when I found out she existed and where she was I nearly killed him—”

“Wait,” Gregor said. He grabbed the chair, dragged it up close to where Bennis was sitting, and sat down in it himself. “Here’s what I want to talk to you about. Janet and where she was then and what else was going on in the senator’s life.”