Dear Old Dead (30 page)

Actually, Gregor thought he had already accomplished a good deal. After talking to Julie Enderson, he had made a series of phone calls. Some of them had not worked out as well as he had hoped. It
was
Friday night. A good many of the people he needed confirmations from had gone home. A good many others were in no mood to discuss this matter before Monday. If Gregor had been the police commissioner or still with the Bureau, he might have been able to force the issue. If he had been able to, he probably would have. Now he thought it might be just as well. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t be able to get the information he needed tonight, right away. If he had any luck at all—and any right to call himself both an intelligent man and a detective—he would. What would be the point of upsetting the weekend plans of so many people, when they wouldn’t be definitively needed until the case came to trial? Assuming the case ever did come to trial. Gregor tried to think his way into the mind of this murderer and couldn’t do it. He could never do it. He couldn’t count the books he had read where the Great Detective closes his eyes and
becomes
the man he is stalking. Gregor had never understood those books. If he could become one of the people he stalked, he would be one of the people he stalked. It was one thing to try to think yourself into the mind of a man or woman who had killed in anger or fear, on the spur of the moment, impulsively. Anybody could end up in that position. Gregor even understood the battered-woman defense. If someone four inches taller than you are and fifty pounds heavier beats you bloody every time he’s drunk, and you can’t get a police officer or a judge to do anything about it, then it made perfect sense to Gregor that you would be in enough of a panic when the man was drunk that you’d blow his head off. This was not a battered-woman murder or an impulsive one. This murder had been planned and carried out by a cool head. That Gregor didn’t understand at all.

Hector Sheed had an unmarked police car parked at the curb at the front of the center. Gregor led him out to it, down the front stoop and into the darkness of the street. There were two street lamps directly in front of the center’s two buildings that worked, but the street lamps on the rest of the block were broken. The unmarked police car was surrounded by marked ones. Uniformed patrolmen were leaning against the hoods, waiting to be told what to do.

“The people we want to talk to will be there,” Gregor said, “because I called ahead. We’re going to see Dave Geraldino, the editor-in-chief, and Lisa Hasserdorf. Lisa Hasserdorf edits something called the Lifestyles page.”

“The Lifestyles page,” Hector muttered. “Gregor, what good is this going to do us? What difference does it make?”

“Listen,” Gregor said. They were at Hector’s unmarked car. Gregor opened the door to the passenger side and got in. Then he waved Hector around in a gesture that made it clear he wanted Hector to get in behind the wheel. Hector didn’t move. He stood leaning over Gregor, keeping Gregor’s door opened. Gregor sighed.

“Listen,” Gregor said again. “If you look at the death of Charles van Straadt—and that’s the one you have to look at; the death of Rosalie van Straadt and the poisoning of Robbie Yagger—”

“Assuming it was a poisoning.”

“It was a poisoning,” Gregor said confidently. “Those two cases are much more difficult. The times are too loose. Anything could have happened. But with Charles van Straadt, it’s different. The murder of Charles van Straadt—given when and where and how it was committed—was a very difficult thing to pull off. Hasn’t it occurred to you that it was very odd that Charles van Straadt was killed that night at all?”

“Odd? I wouldn’t call it odd.”

“I would. Look. What have we established up front? Charles van Straadt showed up unexpectedly at the Sojourner Truth Health Center that night. Nobody expected him to come. Therefore, the murderer, seeing Charles van Straadt at the center, decided to take that opportunity to do him in. Right?”

“Right.”

“Right as far as it goes,” Gregor said, “but it doesn’t go far enough. What else do we know about this case? We know that the murder was committed with strychnine. The only strychnine unaccounted for at the Sojourner Truth Health Center came from Michael Pride’s personal, locked medical cabinet in his private examining room. We also know that it is highly unlikely that strychnine or anything else could have been removed from that cabinet after Charles van Straadt was known to be in the center on the night in question except by Michael Pride himself or Sister Augustine. So here’s your first solution. Either Michael Pride or Sister Augustine killed Charles van Straadt.”

“I don’t believe it,” Hector said. “Neither do you. A couple of hours ago, you went through the times convincing me that that wasn’t the way it happened.”

“I know I did. I didn’t believe it either. But once you’ve eliminated those two people as suspects, you’ve got a serious problem. In the first place, you’ve got strychnine and you don’t know where it came from.”

“It could have been acquired earlier,” Hector pointed out. “Maybe even days earlier.”

“And then what?” Gregor demanded. “Carried around in a pocket, night and day, even when the murderer had no use for it? What for? What would happen if the murderer put his hand in his pocket and pulled it out again and there was a little package of poison—”

“It wouldn’t necessarily be recognized as poison.”

“No, it wouldn’t, but nobody could be a hundred percent sure that it wouldn’t. Of course, staff and volunteers have rooms at the center, but those rooms are all above the third floor in the east and west buildings and they’re mostly in the east building. The times still won’t add up. There was no time during that two-hour period when any member of the staff could have run up to the fourth or fifth or sixth floor of either of those buildings and got hold of the strychnine, without their absence being noticed. No, Hector, the strychnine from Michael Pride’s medical cabinet was not used to kill Charles van Straadt. It wasn’t even missing at the time Charles van Straadt was murdered. It wasn’t taken until much later.”

“Later?” Hector was indignant. “When later? We were all over that place later.”

“Hector, be reasonable. Not that much later. First Michael Pride finds Charles van Straadt dying. Then a half dozen people arrive at his office—I saw it happen when Rosalie van Straadt died. People came from everywhere. Well, when Charles van Straadt died, they probably came too. You can check it out, but it has to be true. And that left the emergency room, and especially Michael Pride’s examining room, unattended.”

“Relatively.”

“Relatively was all that was necessary.”

“What about the keys?”

“Michael Pride keeps his keys in his desk in his office on the third floor. The murderer started off in Michael Pride’s office on the third floor. All the murderer had to do was—”

“Get the keys. Get downstairs when everybody else was going up. Dump some strychnine out of Michael Pride’s supply. Go back upstairs when everybody was coming down. Put the keys back again.”

“Entire operation, fifteen to twenty minutes,” Gregor said, “and the police are still a good five to ten minutes from showing up at the door.”

“But where did the strychnine that killed Charles van Straadt come from? Did the murderer bring it in from the outside?”

“That has the same problems as having the murderer steal it from Michael Pride’s supply a few days in advance. Nobody in his right mind carries a batch of strychnine around on his person for days, not even knowing when he’s going to get a chance to use it. I mean, Hector, think about it. Think about the possibility of accident. You’re carrying strychnine in your pocket. You’ve got your mind on something else. You reach for what you think is your packet of aspirin or you’ve got the strychnine in the same pocket with your gum and the packages of both are breached, or—”

“Never mind,” Hector said.

“Listen,” Gregor told him. “The trick here is twofold. One, the strychnine was not difficult to get. It was easy. Two, the only reason Charles van Straadt was killed on the night he was killed was
because the murderer couldn’t afford to wait any longer.
If Charles van Straadt hadn’t shown up at the center that night, bumping into his murderer accidentally, his murderer would have come looking for him. His murderer would have had to. If that wasn’t the case, Charles van Straadt would not have died on the night he did under the circumstances he did. Any other explanation is nonsensical. The timing of that murder was nonsensical.”

Hector Sheed straightened up. “You think it was one of them, don’t you? Victor or Martha? One of them trying to make sure the old man didn’t have time to change his will.”

Gregor leaned over and pulled his car door shut. The window was cranked all the way open.

“Get in and drive,” he said to Hector Sheed. “I told Dave Geraldino we’d be there right away. It’s Friday night.”

“Eight hundred million dollars.” Hector Sheed was shaking his head. “Money. That’s the best motive anywhere. Ninety percent of the cases we get in Homicide, everything from drug killings to women who off their husbands, it’s money money money and nothing else.”

Gregor Demarkian had spent ten years of his life chasing serial killers. In his experience, ninety percent of the time it was sex sex sex and nothing else. This did not seem to be a point worth arguing about at the moment.

“Get into the car,” Gregor told Hector Sheed again. “Get into the car and drive.”

Hector Sheed gave the car roof a great slapping whack with the palm of his hand and then ran around the front to the driver’s side.

When he got in behind the wheel, Gregor heard that he was humming.

T
HE NEW YORK
SENTINEL
had its own building off Times Square on Forty-third Street, a tall gray and brown edifice with windows that looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a carved stone frieze surrounding its glass front doors that couldn’t have been replicated now at any price. It also had security. Gregor had known Secret Service operations that had provided less security. The glass front doors were locked and covered at this time of night by an inside metal grate. To get in, a visitor had to ring the bell, stand back on the pavement to be clearly seen on the security camera over the door, and wait to be opened up for. When he was opened up for, he found that the “doorman” was armed. In fact, he was armed like a cowboy, with a belt holster and a .45, and he wasn’t the only one. Gregor counted four other men walking in or through the lobby who were carrying visible weapons. The street outside might be crowded with junkies and juvenile delinquents, street people, and crazies, but everything was safe in here. It would take a small armed force to breach this place.

The “doorman” let Gregor and Hector Sheed inside, nodding at a list he held on a clipboard in his left hand.

“Demarkian and Sheed,” he said. “Mr. Geraldino’s office. Up to the forty-second floor.”

Gregor looked around at all the guns. “Is this stuff legal?” he asked Hector.

Hector shrugged. “It is if they’ve got permits for the weapons.”

“Do they?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Forty-second floor,” the “doorman” said again, more pointedly this time.

No, Gregor thought. You really wouldn’t want to mess with this man, or with any of the others, either. Charles van Straadt did not hire amateurs. Gregor’s real question was whether Charles van Straadt hired mercenaries. And where did he get them?

There were half a dozen elevator doors lined up on the far wall, marked everything from “
1 to 10
” to “
Express to 22—22 to 42
.” As far as Gregor could tell, no single elevator would allow you to stop at each and every floor on the way up or down. Gregor remembered the days when only military installations had elevators like these. Maybe a military installation was what this was.

The elevator was manned. The elevator operator had a holster and a .45 just like everybody else working in the lobby. Gregor got into the elevator car, asked for the forty-second floor, got checked off on another clipboard, and sighed. Hector Sheed was taking it all in stride. Gregor didn’t know what to make of it. Were New Yorkers becoming used to living in an armed camp?

The elevator shot up so fast, Gregor’s ears rang. When it came to a stop at the forty-second floor, it bounced a little and rattled. Gregor didn’t like elevators. He couldn’t keep himself from imagining terrible things happening to them. Cords breaking. Safety systems disintegrating into dust. Once, at the FBI training school at Quantico, an instructor had described in detail the mess that had resulted when an elevator car, broken free of its cables by a small explosion, had dropped thirty stories in its shaft with twenty people inside. Gregor Demarkian had a very vivid imagination. It was so vivid, he could still recall the exact picture that had been emblazoned into his brain with this instructor’s description. He could still see himself lying bleeding in the wreckage. He didn’t like what this building was doing to him. It was making him remind himself of Bennis.

When the door opened on the forty-second floor, they were met again. This man had a clipboard but no visible gun. Gregor did a quick check for weapons bulges and didn’t find any. The man with the clipboard nodded at his list and said, “Mr. Geraldino’s office. Come this way, please.”

Hector Sheed heaved an enormous sigh. “It would be easier to get in to see the president of the United States,” he said, “than it is to get in to see Mr. Dave Geraldino.”

The man with the clipboard didn’t see any humor in this at all. His face remained perfectly blank.

“Mr. Geraldino is a very important man,” he said solemnly. “Come this way, please.”

Gregor and Hector both decided to come this way. It was easier than arguing.

Gregor caught a glimpse through a doorway of the re porters’ bullpen, fully staffed even at this hour on a Friday night. In the middle of the bullpen, a rickety tripod held a blown-up, grainy, black-and-white photograph of Charles van Straadt.