27 Blood in the Water (34 page)

“They announced that they arrested Arthur Heydreich,” Bennis said. “Nothing stopped them from announcing that.”

“Nothing could stop them,” Gregor said, “the man was arrested in full sight of half the mobile news vans in the greater Philadelphia area. The arrest made CNN.”

“I did notice. But I don’t see why they were willing to arrest him when they didn’t have whatever it is that you think they’ve got now. I mean, they’d already arrested him before, and they had had to let him go and drop the charges, so why did they arrest him again when they didn’t have—what is it you think they’re supposed to have had?”

“What I just got in that phone call,” Gregor said.

“Which tells me nothing,” Bennis said. “You’re being very annoying.”

“I’m not being annoying,” Gregor said, “I just want you to think like an intelligent human being. The first thing Larry Farmer ever told me, the one thing both Buck Monaghan and Ken Bairn kept repeating, over and over and over again, is that they couldn’t be blamed for arresting Arthur Heydreich because it looked like it was impossible for anybody else to have committed the murder. And they were right. They were more right than they knew. Just studying the notes, and looking over the site, there really was nobody else who could have committed those two murders. The security cameras were off from ten forty-five to twelve thirty, but that just kept somebody from being caught on tape. That isn’t a quiet time at Waldorf Pines. There were people on the green and there were people in the clubhouse. Arthur Heydreich was in the clubhouse himself. He was seen by half a dozen people. Martha Heydreich and Michael Platte were seen by more than that walking together on the green. Technically, I suppose, the murder could have been committed by anybody who was in the clubhouse between those two times, because the clubhouse is right next to the pool house. But none of those people had any reason I could see for committing two murders. And none of them was completely blank on the time between ten forty-five and twelve thirty. Arthur Heydreich tried to tell me he’d left the club at eleven, and that nobody had seen him, but it’s his unsubstantiated word. And the fact is that people did see him, on and off, just not going from the clubhouse to his own house. He was out and about in all the right places during the time that matters. He was in the club when the cameras must have been turned off. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been in the club when the cameras were turned on again. Granted, it’s not the kind of thing I like. I like solid, hard evidence. I wish somebody had seen him go into that pool house. But I don’t think the prosecutor is going to need that.”

“It sounds on the news like everybody had enough reason to kill everybody in that place,” Bennis said. “Alison Land. Who would have thought it? I don’t see what good hiding was going to do her, though. Those lawsuits were going to go through whether they could find her or not. If she gave Michael Platte twenty-five thousand dollars, I don’t see why she didn’t kill him.”

“She didn’t need to,” Gregor said. “This is Henry Carlson Land’s wife. She has lots of money stashed somewhere. She paid him off to buy herself time. She was going to disappear again. She had the resources to disappear. Why kill somebody and risk being caught if you don’t have to?”

“And Arthur Heydreich had to?”

“He thought so,” Gregor said. “He had a job he liked and did well enough at, but it was at a very conservative firm, conservative in more ways than one. So he couldn’t have a serious scandal, and he also couldn’t be perpetually suspected of having murdered someone, never mind two someones. And yet he knew that if he committed those murders, he’d be the first to be suspected, and he’d probably be arrested. So he needed a way to make sure that once arrested, he would have to be released. And the best way to do that was to let the police think what they would think automatically, let the police arrest him for it, and then make sure that they couldn’t make the charge stick. And the way to make sure that they couldn’t make the charge stick was to make sure there was no way to identify Martha Heydreich’s body as Martha Heydreich. And if you know that much, you ought to know enough to be getting on with.”

“You’re saying that Martha Heydreich was actually a man,” Bennis said, “and either Arthur Heydreich never figured that out, or they were both gay.”

“If Arthur Heydreich and Martha Heydreich were a gay couple with Martha in drag, there would have been no reason to murder Martha Heydreich in the first place. And yes, I do know that there have been cases where one spouse has kept her gender identity secret from the other over the course of a very long marriage, but if you look at those cases what you’ll find is that nearly all of them involve a woman pretending to be a man. It would be a lot harder for a man to be pretending to be a woman. If Martha Heydreich was gay and in drag, Arthur Heydreich would have known she was gay and in drag, and there would have been some kind of arrangement. Or, for that matter, Martha could just have come out. Arthur wouldn’t have much trouble finding a job in Philadelphia as a gay man with a partner. And if he wanted to stay at his present firm without being uncomfortable, he and Martha could have murdered Michael Platte and gone on as before. Obviously, then, Martha Heydreich could not be a gay man in some sort of permanent version of cross-dressing.”

“So that means Martha Heydreich was a woman,” Bennis said, “and that means Arthur Heydreich must have done something to tamper with the DNA evidence. But could he do that? Could anybody do that? And how did he light that fire, anyway?”

“He lit the fire by walking into the locker room, lighting a match, and throwing the match on the body, which was already covered with nail polish. He’d done that the night before. Covered it with nail polish. He could light the match because the lights in the locker room were out—he’d broken the bulbs the night before—and because the security cameras in that room were very carefully set not to catch residents without their clothes on. There’d been a flap about that. So all he had to do was to walk in there and toss the match. The cameras wouldn’t have caught anything. And, in fact, given that the cameras caught nothing else and there was no sign of a timer in the debris, that’s the only way the fire could have been started. He killed them both the night before and just left the bodies where he wanted them.”

“Somebody could have come in and found them before he got the fire started,” Bennis said.

“That’s true,” Gregor said, “and if that had happened, he’d have been largely doomed. But it wasn’t too likely. The pool house was undergoing repairs. Michael Platte was supposed to be there guarding it and it was the middle of the night. He did get there first thing in the morning just in case Horace Wingard took it into his head to check the place.”

“And the DNA? How did he tamper with the DNA?”

“He didn’t,” Gregor said.

“But I thought you just said Martha Heydreich was a woman.”

“She was,” Gregor said. Then he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Look at that,” he said, pointing up the street at the brownstone house they lived in. “I think that’s Marty Tekemanian and the nephew. The one who’s coming to be a graduate student at Penn and needs an apartment. Did I tell you that Marty was bringing a nephew?”

“Yes,” Bennis said. “You did tell me that. But I want you to tell me about Martha Heydreich. I want to know—”

But Gregor was already on his way up the street, moving as fast as he could without actually running. He was painfully aware that there was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when he had been able to move much faster.

Behind him, Bennis was hurrying, too. She was also muttering.

2

For some reason that was not immediately apparent, Marty Tekemanian was nervous about showing this apartment to what turned out to be his cousin.

“It’s a beautiful place,” he was saying as Gregor pulled up. “It’s a little musty, but we’ve had somebody in to clean, and we’re having a real do up this coming week. And you can’t ask for a better location. This has to be the safest street in the city of Philadelphia proper. And you’re not all that far from Penn.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” the cousin said. “I mean, considering the rat holes I’ve been looking at lately, it would have to be the pit of hell for me to hate it. You should stop worrying about it.”

“Oh,” Marty said. He looked at Gregor. “Mr. Demarkian. This is my cousin, Steve Tekemanian. Steve, this is Gregor Demarkian. He’s—”

“I know who Gregor Demarkian is,” Steve said, grabbing Gregor’s hand and pumping it. “He’s been all over the news for the past three days. And before that, too. Do you live here? Right in this building?”

“For the moment,” Gregor said.

“Mr. Demarkian and his wife bought a town house at the other end of the neighborhood,” Marty said. “They’re renovating it. When they renovations are done, they’re supposed to move.”

“Assuming the renovations are ever done,” Gregor said.

Bennis reached them. “The renovations will be done,” she said, coming to a halt. “I’m Bennis Hannaford Demarkian. Who are you?”

“That’s polite,” Gregor said. “Aren’t you the one who went to dancing class?”

“I’m Steve Tekemanian,” Steve said. “I’ve read all your books. I think you’re fantastic.”

“I like him already,” Bennis said. “I’ve been thinking. It must have to do with the garden hose.”

“What has to do with the garden hose?” Marty asked.

“The solution to the murder,” Bennis said, “which, apparently, everybody in the entire world knows except me, and Gregor won’t tell me. It must have to do with whatever it was he used the garden hose for. Because he used the garden hose. He threw it on that man Walter Dunbar’s deck. And you haven’t said anything about it.”

“I haven’t said anything about it,” Gregor said, “because it wasn’t that kind of important. The garden hose was a deliberate red herring, an anomalous occurrence that he hoped would make law enforcement think twice about any automatic assumption of his guilt. He threw the thing on the deck of the one person in the entire complex who could actually have gotten from his house to the pool house while the security cameras were on without being caught on camera. And by a very nice coincidence, it also happened to be the house of the man most likely to broadcast the event to the world at large. Sometimes, it really is the case that people just get lucky. And it wasn’t necessary for Arthur Heydreich to make his red herring a serious clue. In fact, the less sensible it seemed, the better off he was. That way, he’d have people running around trying to explain something that had no explanation.”

Marty Tekemanian looked pained. Steve Tekemanian looked delighted.

“Are we doing this? Really?” Steve said. “Do people do this around here all the time? That would be great. I mean, it would really be great.”

“Steve is studying to be a forensic pathologist,” Marty said. He looked pained, again. Gregor thought that Marty looked pained far too often.

Bennis just looked exasperated. “This really is annoying of you,” she said. “I get the picture. Arthur Heydreich wanted to murder his wife and Michael Platte because—wait, was it because they were having an affair? Didn’t you say they weren’t having an affair?”

“That’s right,” Gregor said. “They weren’t having an affair. Michael Platte was blackmailing Martha Heydreich the way he was blackmailing a good third of the people at Waldorf Pines.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, either,” Bennis said. “Why kill his wife if she was the one being blackmailed?”

“Oh, I’ve got that,” Steve said, “it’s because he hated whatever it was she was being blackmailed for.”

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “You really are letting this get out of hand, you know. He’s beginning to look smarter than you are.”

“I’m trying,” Bennis said. “Arthur Heydreich killed them both because of whatever his wife was being blackmailed for, and then he left the bodies in the pool house over night and then he went into the pool house in the morning and lit a match and threw it on Martha Heydreich’s body in the locker room because he didn’t want anybody to be able to identify the body as Martha’s because if they did they’d know immediately that he was the one who killed them. And then somehow he switched the DNA—”

“No,” Gregor said patiently. “He didn’t. Didn’t I just get a phone call? And isn’t it the one I’ve been waiting for? And the one I’ve been waiting for was coming from where?”

“Some agency thing with a name that makes no sense whatsoever,” Bennis said. “You said that yesterday.”

“Wait,” Steve Tekemanian said. “I’ll bet I can guess. The National Surgery Registry Database.”

“He is smarter than you are,” Gregor said.

“Maybe he just reads different magazines,” Bennis said.

“The National Surgery Registry Database is a registry of information on people in the United States who’ve had sex change surgery,” Steve Tekemanian said. “It’s very—I don’t know the word we want here. Very careful about what information it gives out. The registry is needed because people who have had sex change surgery can be more liable than people who haven’t to run into certain medical problems in the long term, and almost all of them are taking hormone therapy. So it would be dangerous to do something like blank out all the records of the surgery or of their treatment, but at the same time—”

“At the same time,” Gregor said, “there’s still an enormous amount of negative feeling about people who are transgendered, and especially about people who have had the surgery. Not all transsexuals want people to know they’re transsexuals. That’s why, when the police ran the DNA, they came up blank on an identification. The registry will give out information when they deem it appropriate, but their files aren’t available for the kind of global database search done in a criminal investigation. I’ve been wondering this whole time if Arthur Heydreich knew that, or if he even considered the possibility that there might be medical records out there about his wife. My guess is that he committed the murders too soon after finding out about his wife to have thought it all that far through. And yet he did think it through remarkably well.”

“And if all you have is DNA,” Steve Tekemanian said, “you can’t tell if the person was transgendered or not. A transgendered male’s DNA is just male DNA. There aren’t any genetic markers for transgendering that we know of.”