Free Bleeding Hearts by Jane Haddam

building. It was close enough so that Bennis could now get a good look at the tall man in the coat who seemed to be taking up Hannah Krekorian’s night. They were coming back from somewhere again, which meant they must have been out together in the meantime, but Bennis didn’t bother about that. She got up as close to the edge of the church’s property as she could, so that she had a clear look at the man’s face.
    That was when she got a very rude shock.
    “Good God,” she said. “Where did Hannah pick him up?”
    Father Tibor tapped her on the shoulder. “Bennis? Will you come to the apartment for some coffee? We need to pay you back for all you have done.”
    Bennis was still staring at the man. He had taken Hannah’s key now, the way well-brought-up men used to do when she was younger, and he was opening the building’s front door. He hadn’t changed at all since the last time Bennis had seen him. He didn’t have a touch of loss or grief in his face.
    “Bennis?” Father Tibor asked again.
    “Yes,” Bennis said. “I’m coming. Just a minute. I’ll be right there.”
    Paul Hazzard, Bennis thought.
    Paul Hazzard with Hannah Krekorian.
    Just wait until Gregor Demarkian hears about this.

Part One
Hearts and Flowers…

One
1
    G REGOR DEMARKIAN HAD BEEN living on Cavanaugh Street for something over two years, and in that time he had developed a routine for what he thought of as his “normal” days. “Normal” days were days when he was not involved in any extracurricular murder case, or traveling, or being hauled off from one place to another to “consult” with people Father Tibor Kasparian thought needed his advice. “Normal” days were normal in spite of the fact that there were fewer of them than of the other kind. It was odd how that worked. Gregor had sworn at enough alarm clocks in his time to believe that he ought to have loosened up and done away with schedules completely, now that he was retired. Instead, he might as well have been back in Virginia, coming in every morning to the Department of Behavioral Sciences. That was what Gregor Demarkian had done his last ten years with the FBI. First he had organized and then he had run the Department of Behavioral Sciences, which had the job of conducting federal searches for interstate serial killers. During the decade he spent in the FBI before that, he had done all sorts of things, none of which he would now describe as “normal.” It was enough to make him wonder about people—and even about himself. His schedule was as rigid now as it had been when he’d held a mandatory staff meeting every Monday through Friday at eight A.M.
    These days, what Gregor held every Monday through Saturday at seven A.M. was breakfast at the Ararat Restaurant. He would have held it there on Sunday too, but the Ararat wasn’t open then. The Melajians, who owned it, went to church on Sunday mornings. Some of the people Gregor usually met for breakfast went to church on Sunday mornings too. Father Tibor Kasparian had to, or there would be no liturgy for the rest of Cavanaugh Street to attend. Old George Tekemanian hadn’t missed a Sunday since the day he was married. He had been twenty-three then and was well over eighty now. Even Bennis Hannaford went most weeks, in spite of the fact that she’d been brought up Protestant Episcopal and not in the Armenian church. Only Gregor stayed away consistently. He wasn’t sure why. He had nothing against religion. He had nothing against hearing Tibor preach and listening to the choir sing the kyrie eleison. He even believed in God on and off, depending on how his life was running. When it went badly, he tended to think there was an almighty out there, determined to get him. No, no. It was none of the usual things. It was just that church somehow didn’t seem—right—to him.
    The seats are hard, Gregor told himself now. They hurt to sit in for even a little while, and the liturgy goes on for hours and hours, and before