Conspiracy Theory (40 page)

He walked back up the street, past the Ararat, past the church, to his own front steps. The Ararat was mostly deserted. It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The church was still what it had been when he'd looked at it a few moments before. He thought about buying one of those posters of the Twin Towers lit up at night and having it framed, the way Bennis had had one framed for Tibor. He was in the oddest mood, and not one he trusted. He felt as if he had arrived at the unified field theory of all existence. He knew not only the meaning of life, but the combination code to unlock its intelligibility.

It's a good thing I don't drive
, he thought, letting himself recognize that the mood he was in was very much like being on a drunk. It had been years since he'd been on a drunk, or even been a little bit tipsy. Drinking was the kind of thing you did in the army and then were a little ashamed of afterward, mostly because it was hard not to recognize what an idiot you'd been while indulging. He wondered if things would be different if young men were required to go into the army as a matter of course, the way the men of his own generation had been. He wasn't really in favor of a peacetime draft, or of any draft. He wasn't sure that a draft did much of anything for the country except give the worst of its leaders the means to wage war when no war was necessary. Still, he wondered what would have become of Michael Harridan if he'd had to spend two years practicing military discipline, in an environment where, in the best cases, there were neither distinctions nor excuses. Maybe the answer was that Michael Harridan would have become exactly what he did become. Tim McVeigh had been in the military. It hadn't recruited him to the defense of civilization.

John Jackman's car pulled onto Cavanaugh Street—not the official limousine this time, but the black Cadillac two-door he kept for personal use. It was a tribute to Jackman's finely tuned political sense that it was a Cadillac and not a Mercedes. Gregor grabbed the passenger-side door as soon as the car began to ease up along the curb. He had the door open and was climbing inside before Jackman had actually stopped.

“What's the matter?” John said. “We can't go up to your place and talk in peace?”

“I'm too antsy for my place.”

“How about the Ararat?”

“For Christ's sake,” Gregor said.

John pulled the keys out of the ignition and dropped them in his pocket. “I never understand you when you get like this,” he said. “Why not just tell us who it is and get it over with? Let our guys pick him up, or let Lower Merion pick him up—”

“I don't have the faintest idea where he is this morning,” Gregor said. “But what I said to you on the phone holds. I'm ninety-nine percent certain. I want to clear up the other one percent. Did you bring what I asked you to?”

“A picture of Kathi Mittendorf, a picture of Susan what's-her-name, and four more pictures to create a diversion, yes. You could have waited for this, you know. I told you yesterday that I would get the boys on it and I had gotten them on it, they were just—”

“Doing business as usual,” Gregor said. “Yes. I know. I'm not criticizing. I'm just in a hurry. What about the rest of it?”

Jackman reached inside his coat and took his notebook out of his pocket. “One, yes, Ryall Wyndham owns stock in Price Heaven. It's registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and he votes in stockholder elections. Oh, and he's taking a bath. A big one. He bought at a hundred and two. The stock is now trading at seventeen. There's no indication he got out in time on any of it.”

“Excellent,” Gregor said. “What about Anne Ross Wyler?”

“Lower Merion did that one. Sent that guy, Frank—”

“Margiotti.”

“Yeah, him. Sent him out there in the middle of the night last night. Not to Lower Merion, he was already there, but out to the Ross estate. Did
not
go over too well with the eldest daughter, Marianne. Anyway, Margiotti found the guard and showed him the picture. He ID'ed it. Sort of. It was dark. He was busy—way busier than he should have been. Like that. But we got a tentative positive that it was Mrs. Wyler in at least one of the cars. He doesn't specifically recall which one. He doesn't really remember what the woman calling herself Virginia Mace Whitlock looked like.”

“In other words, that one's a wash,” Gregor said. “Of course he can identify Anne Wyler. She was Tony Ross's sister. She was probably on the premises a number of times. All right. I don't think that will matter too much. I wasn't really convinced he'd have noticed her anyway. She must have done at least a little to disguise herself, since there was always the chance he'd recognize her then. I just hate not having the loose ends tidied up. What about the clothes?”

“That one we're going to need a search warrant for,” Jackman said. “According to Margiotti, the eldest daughter is a cross between Medea and a nuclear warhead. Anyway, she isn't having any. No police in the house. Nothing. You've got to wonder what these people are thinking sometimes. Her parents are dead, killed within a week of each other, and she won't cooperate with the police? It's a good thing she was well out of town at the time of that first murder, because if I were still on the force in the ordinary way, I'd be ready to suspect the hell out of her right now.”

“Maybe we can make this part a little easier for everybody,” Gregor said. “I don't think it's necessary to send detectives in to do the searching. Ask Ms. Ross to ask her laundress if she's found anything that doesn't belong to the house in the wash. My guess is that we're looking for a black skirt, long, jersey-knit, that kind of thing, something cheap and in a very large size. Also maybe a black cardigan, or some other kind of button-up top, also in a large size, also cheap.”

“So what did Michael Harridan do?” Jackman asked. “Stuff the clothes with pillows so that he looked like Lucinda Watkins?”

“No, of course not. That would have been unwieldy as hell and it would have taken far too much time. He wasn't trying to look like Lucinda Watkins. He was just concerned to wear something dark, so that he couldn't be spotted, and large, so that he'd be well-covered, and belonging to somebody else, so that it couldn't be traced back to him. It was just an accident that Annie saw the clothes and thought she'd seen Lucinda as well. If the two of them had been physically closer or the light had been better, Annie would never have made the mistake. My guess is that there's a little nugget of doubt in the back of her mind even now.”

“There's a little nugget in the back of
my
mind,” Jackman said. “It's not just that you're crazy. It's that every time I have to work with you, everybody is crazy. I hope to hell that this guy has a motive that won't sound idiotic to a jury.”

“He's got the best motive in the world,” Gregor said. “Don't worry about it. And there's always the chance that somebody on Cavanaugh Street will recognize him. He was here, after all. I realized when I was talking to Kathi Mittendorf that he must have planted the bomb in Holy Trinity Church all by himself.”

“Why? I thought you said she was a complete true believer conspiracy nut.”

“She is. But even complete true believer conspiracy nuts have their codes of ethics, and in this case she's got an interior image of herself, and of America on Alert, that tells her quite firmly that they are not the kind of people who bomb churches. I wonder how long it took him to discover what somebody who'd run into these people before would have known all along. They may be irrational, but they're not illogical. They may be some of the most logical people on earth.”

“Right,” Jackman said. “Yes. You've said this before. Lots of times. Over the years. I've always thought it was proof positive you were nuts.”

“I'm not nuts. I'm not nearly logical enough to be nuts. Get those pictures and let's go see Andrechev.”

Gregor popped his door open and climbed out of the car. He hated bucket seats. Jackman got out on the driver's side and carefully locked up. Jackman was always careful about cars. The only reason he didn't park them across two spaces was because he knew how angry it got people and how prone angry people were to scraping the sharp edges of their car keys across the paint of offending cars. Jackman put his notebook back in the inside pocket of his coat. He got the pictures out and held them in his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “Here they are. If he doesn't identify any of them, we're screwed.”

“Don't worry about it,” Gregor said.

He was right too. They went down to the far end of the next block where Krystof Andrechev had his newsstand and, less than three minutes later, came out again, with a positive identification. Andrechev made the identification so quickly, he didn't even have time for his usual struggle with the language. Jackman laid the pictures down across the counter, one right after the other. As soon as Kathi Mittendorf's picture went down, Andrechev picked it up.

“That one,” he said.

To Gregor, all the pictures looked more or less alike, except the one of Susan, which was there only in case he was wrong about which of the two women Harridan used to throw his smoke screens. Jackman put the rest of the pictures down on the counter and insisted on Krystof looking at them all. Krystof looked, but he didn't change his mind. He pointed again and again at Kathi Mittendorf, as if he'd memorized her face.

“It is not a thing you forget,” he said, “when a woman comes and puts a gun down in front of you and is not for robbing you.”

Jackman picked the pictures up again. Gregor thanked Krystof Andrechev. Jackman and Gregor went outside.

“Now what?” Jackman asked. “You want to go out to see Kathi Mittendorf again?”

“Yes,” Gregor told him. “Absolutely. But I want to make one more stop along the way.”

“As long as it isn't a stop at the zoo,” Jackman said. “If it is, I'm going to be very tempted to have you locked up.”

Gregor said nothing to that, and got back into Jackman's car. It felt good to be doing something, anything, that was not brooding on the evils of human nature.

Gregor Demarkian had no sense of direction, and he never drove, so explaining to John Jackman how to find Henry Barden's town house could have been a challenge. It wasn't because Jackman had been a beat cop in Philadelphia before he'd been a detective there—and in other places—and before he'd risen to the exalted heights of commissioner of police. It also wasn't difficult to find because it was not an obscure address.

“Australian Aborigines have heard of Rittenhouse Square,” Jackman said, as he pulled the car into an open non-spot only feet from Henry Barden's front door. Gregor guessed they were more in the hydrant's territory than outside of it. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

“Somebody I used to know at the Bureau. Do you realize you're illegally parked?”

“I'm on official police business.” Jackman punched the side of his fist against the glove compartment to open it and got out his police parking card. He hung it over the back of his rearview mirror. “Knew in the Bureau, how? He was a special agent or somebody you picked up for bank fraud?”

“He was an analyst with a specialty in subversive groups.”

“Oh, marvelous. Subversive groups. You know how I feel about the FBI and their subversive groups. They thought Martin Luther King was the head of a subversive group.”

“Yes, I know, I agree with you. Henry Barden would agree with you. That's why he ended up quitting. However, he does know a lot about how to analyze and investigate nut groups, real ones. And I see him on and off since we've both been retired. And he's here and is willing to help and probably spent last night drowned in America on Alert paper, so would you like to talk to him or do you want to wait in the car while I do?”

Jackman got out. Gregor got out too, and as he did he saw the door of the small town house open and Henry Barden, short and round and cheery-faced, step out.

“How does a retired FBI agent afford a place like this in Rittenhouse Square?” Jackman asked.

“Family money,” Gregor said. Then he sprinted a little to get to Henry in the doorway.

“Gregor,” Henry said. “Good to see you. This must be your Mr. Jackman. I'd be dead under the paper, except that Cameron agreed to help me out. You've met Cameron, haven't you, Gregor? He came to pick me up that time we went to lunch near Independence Hall.”

“I've met Cameron,” Gregor said.

A young man appeared behind Henry Barden in the doorway, tall and elegant and aristocratic in the extreme, like one of those pictures of the moles in MI-5 at the end of the Kim Philby affair. Henry Barden smiled. “Mr. Jackman, this is Cameron Reed, my partner. Mr. Jackman is commissioner of police for the city of Philadelphia.”

“How do you do,” Cameron said. He did not have a British accent.

“Come in, both of you,” Henry Barden said. “This really has been very interesting, Gregor. I've got to thank you for sending it my way. I don't know if Gregor told you, Mr. Jackman, but since my retirement, I've made something of a hobby of collecting the really far-out conspiracy groups. I probably know more about most of them than the federal government does. It makes me nervous sometimes. Some of them are very paranoid.”

“Some of them are very violent,” Cameron said.

“Yes, yes. I know. Some of them are violent. But most of them aren't. Most of them are just confused, I guess. And fearful. And addicted to magical thinking. Why do you think that is, that so many people are addicted to magical thinking?”

“Because so many people find life hard,” Cameron said, “and can't see any way out of their difficulties.”

“He's a novelist,” Henry said. “A published one.”

“That's just to indicate that I'm
not
some pathetic case he picked up and decided to call his protégé,” Cameron said.