Baptism in Blood by Jane Haddam Page A

were an unsophisticated man. I spent most of my career chasing serial killers. I’ve seen a lot of blood and badness in my time. I’ve been depressed as hell about it. But this is differ­ent.”
    “Mmm,” Bennis Hannaford said.
    Gregor looked at Bennis’s thick black hair and per­fectly almond-shaped, enormous blue eyes, and signed. Bennis was beautiful and Bennis was bright and Bennis loved Tibor, but she had quit a two-and-a-half-pack-a-day cigarette habit less than a month ago, and lately she just didn’t seem to be mentally home. They were sitting facing each other in the window booth of the Ararat Restaurant. Gregor could look through the tall pane of glass at a bright, hard, cold fall day. It was only five minutes after seven. By seven-thirty, they would no longer be alone. Half the single people on the street ate their breakfasts at the Ararat. Half the married people did, too, when they were fighting with their spouses or not up to cooking anything or just in the mood to see people early. At night, the Ararat was Cavanaugh Street’s main tourist attraction. It got written up in the restaurant section of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Tourists from Radnor and Wayne came in to see what “real Arme­nian cooking” was like. In the daytime, the Ararat resem­bled a diner with eccentric furniture. Hard vinyl floors and inexpensive green wallpaper clashed with tasseled sofa cushions and hand-crocheted antimacassars. As far as Gregor knew, the Ararat was the only restaurant of any kind, anywhere, that used antimacassars on the backs of straight-backed aluminum chairs.
    “Bennis,” Gregor said.
    Bennis dragged her eyes away from the window. She looked unfocused. As far as Gregor knew, she hadn’t done a single hour’s work since she threw her Benson & Hedges menthols in the trash. Even unfocused, she was beautiful. Heading toward forty, she still had not a single wrinkle on her face. Her bone structure was extraordinary: fine but strong, sharp-edged and well defined. She was also a very successful fantasy novelist, but somehow Gregor never at­tached that to her, as part of her identity for him. Her apart­ment was full of papier-mâché castles and plastic unicorns. Her head was full of knights in shining armor and crones with magical powers. Gregor tried not to think about it, the way he would have if she had had something wrong with her that he thought she would find it embarrassing for him to notice.
    “Bennis,” Gregor said again, louder this time.
    Bennis blinked and shook her head. She had a cup of coffee in front of her, barely touched. It had been sitting there barely touched for over half an hour.
    “I’m sorry,” Bennis said. “Excuse me, Gregor. Yes. I know. Tibor. It is worrying.”
    “It’s more than worrying. It’s downright terrifying. We’ve got to do something about this, Bennis.”
    Bennis took a sip of her coffee and made a face. It had to be stone cold. “I thought you’d already decided to do something about it,” she said. “I thought you’d decided to take him with you down to North Carolina. To investigate this child murder case.”
    “I’ve decided to ask him, yes. I haven’t talked to him about it yet.”
    “I wonder if he even knows it’s happened,” Bennis said. “I mean, you’d think, with all the publicity, he could hardly have failed to notice.”
    “Trobriand Islanders know about Ginger Marsh,” Gregor said.
    “Still,” Bennis went on, “the way he’s been—Maybe he has noticed it, and it’s only made everything worse.”
    “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him about it. I haven’t talked to him about much of anything in weeks.”
    “There was the Susan Smith case, too,” Bennis said. “But that was different. And maybe I’m just overreacting here. That didn’t seem to bother him much. Not like the Oklahoma thing.”
    Linda Melajian came out of the door at the back of the room. Gregor waved to her and Linda nodded, holding up a Pyrex pot