Frowning at him, she said, “Aren’t we going in the restaurant?”
“You don’t want coffee. You bring that fax number with you?”
“Of course not, why would I do that?”
“Because my partner told you to get rid of it and you didn’t. So now you will. No copies, nothing.”
“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” she said. She hadn’t started driving yet, since Parker had climbed in.
“You don’t have to see,” he told her, and nodded at the windshield. “Drive on, don’t be conspicuous.”
“This isn’t the way it was supposed to be,” she said, but she put the Infiniti in gear and drove it through the parking area, a moving advertisement for milk.
“We can do it one of two ways,” Parker told her. “We can drive to your place, you go in and get the number, and any copies you made, and bring it out and give it to me. Or you can take me back to my car and I’ll go to your house myself and search a little.”
“Oh, my God, no.” The threat seemed to raise a host of horrible visions in her mind. “All right,” she said. “We’ll go there, I’ll get the number.”
“Along the way,” he said, “you can tell me what this meeting’s about.”
She frowned, not speaking, and steered them out of the rest area and eastward on the MassPike. Up to eighty, along with everybody else, she said, “The policewoman knows I did it.”
“You’re out walking around,” he said.
“She can’t prove I did it, but she knows I did it. She doesn’t know why. Jake’s tried to convince her it was because he wouldn’t come back to me, and that I wasn’t really trying to kill him, I was just trying to make him pay attention to me, but she isn’t sure she buys it. She isn’t dumb.”
“That’s too bad,” Parker said.
Elaine Langen gave him a quick sidelong glance. “Because I am?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “As soon as there’s a robbery, she’ll know Jake was lying, she’ll know we’re both involved.”
“As you say,” Parker said, “she can’t prove it.”
“Maybe she can.” Elaine Langen was very upset. “She’ll know it, and she’ll poke and pry, she’ll look for inconsistencies, she’ll question me and question me, and I don’t know if—”
“Don’t say that,” Parker said.
She looked at him, not understanding. “Don’t say what?”
“Don’t say you’ll cave in and tell this woman everything you know,” Parker told her. “Don’t say that to me, don’t say it to my partner, don’t even say it to Jake.”
“But I don’t—”
“Whichever one of us you say it to,” Parker interrupted, “will kill you.”
She swerved, the car jolting as she stared at him.
“Stay in your lane. You don’t want to attract a trooper.”
“No, I—” She controlled the car, but not herself. Leaning forward over the wheel, staring wide-eyed and openmouthed out the windshield, as though seeing some horror on the far horizon, she said, “How can you say that? How can you just say a thing like that?”
“Because it doesn’t have to happen. I’m giving you advice, Mrs. Langen. You’re in something very deep. It’s over your head out here. You gotta keep swimming. If you don’t keep swimming, you’re gonna drown. No use blaming me for it, or my partner, or Jake. You swim, or you drown.”
“You drown me.”
“Easily. You’re dead before you can worry about it.”
They had reached the exit. She steered the Infiniti down the ramp, and Parker pointed at a diner some distance away. “Pull into the parking lot there.”
“I’m afraid to stop.”
“I don’t have that fax number yet. Pull in.”
She pulled in, switching off the engine, and sat with both hands on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the dashboard. “What now?”
“You were going to say,” Parker told her, “call it off, the cops are too close, they’re suspicious already, we can’t go through with it.”
Blazing up, forgetting to be terrified, she turned her head to glare at him, fingers clutching the wheel even tighter as she said, “That’s right! And it’s true, they are. They’re suspicious, they believe I shot Jake, they don’t really buy the reason Jake gave them, if this robbery happens they’ll know that’s the reason. They’ll just come after me. I don’t know how strong I am.”
Parker said, “Remember you decided, my partner and me, we’re good cop, bad cop?”
She didn’t follow. “Yes?”
“This woman cop you’ve got.”
“Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa.”
“Is she good cop or bad cop?”
“Good, at least so far. I mean, she’s on her own. So there is no bad cop.”
“Yes, there is,” Parker said. “Me.”
The look she gave him turned bleak.
Parker said, “Everything she says to you, every hour she spends on you, just keep reminding yourself. This is the good cop. The bad cop is out there, and he’s not very far away, and he doesn’t go for second chances.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” Her voice now was a whisper, as though all strength had been drained from her.
“The bad cop is nearby.”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Talk to the good cop all you want,” Parker said. “But always think about the bad cop.”
“I will.” Whispered again, this time almost a prayer.
“Good,” Parker said. “Let’s drive to your house, you can get me that fax number and drive me back to my car.”
She nodded, and started the engine.
As they moved out of the diner’s parking area, Parker said, “This is an Infiniti.”
“Yes.”
“That means forever.”
“Yes.”
“Seems worth going for,” he said.
She nodded, not looking at him. “Yes,” she said.
4
Jake’s mobile home was all cleaned up. No dishes in the sink, no clothes on the bedroom floor, no newspapers on top of the water closet. Having knocked once and gotten no response, Parker had let himself in, the flimsy lock on this structure offering not much of a challenge, and now there was nothing to do but settle down and wait.
There were books on a living room table that hadn’t been there before, most of them fantasies about life in medieval castles on other planets—the sister’s reading, it must be. Parker took one of them, read for a while, then stopped reading and merely waited.
He had come here direct from the meeting with Elaine Langen, Dalesia’s original note with his contact’s fax number now in Parker’s pocket. He had a couple of details to settle with Jake, which would have to be through the sister, and then he could go back to Trails End Motor Inne. And there wouldn’t be much to do after that but wait for Briggs to get here, and then the armored cars.
Before they’d separated, Parker had reminded Elaine Langen once more about the handover at the stop sign on the night, while the armored cars were being loaded, when she would let them know which one carried the cash. That was the last piece, and it seemed to him that the woman was cowed enough just to do her job and not make any more trouble.
He waited an hour and a half, and got to his feet when he heard the key in the lock. The sister walked in, looking busy and preoccupied, carrying a plastic bag with a drugstore’s name and logo on it. She saw him as she was closing the door, jolted, recovered, finished shutting the door, and said, “Well. You specialize in scaring the life out of me, don’t you?”
“I need,” Parker told her, “for you to take a message to Jake.”
“Not big on small talk,” she said, apparently to herself. Crossing past him, she said, “Let me put this stuff away. You want coffee?”
“No need.”
She went into the bathroom, came back out empty-handed, and said, “I get it, we’re not gonna be chums. Fine. What’s the message?”
“Wait a minut
e,” Parker said. “When was the last time you hung out with your brother?”
“Grammar school,” she said. “Why?”
“You’re here because he got shot,” Parker said. “You’re not here to be a hostess or something. We’re not gonna take tea together.”
She thought that over, nodding her head. “You’re right,” she decided. “If Jake wasn’t in the hospital, I’d never have met you in my life, and I wouldn’t miss the experience.”
“That’s right.”
“I have the idea,” she said, “he was involved with you and your friends in something he shouldn’t have been, and whoever shot him, I’m glad they did, because now he’s out of it, safe in the hospital.”
“That’s right,” Parker said. “But he can still help.”
“Not to get on the wrong side of the law all over again.”
“He can’t, in the hospital. But he can phone his motel, tell them we got another guy coming in a few days, same deal.”
“I suppose so,” she said, clearly not knowing what the deal was.
“And tell him, we won’t try to get in touch with him until he’s out of the hospital.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Fine.”
He turned away, but she said, “Wait one second, will you?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
She waited, frowning, then abruptly said, “I don’t like Dr. Madchen.”
He watched her face. “You don’t like him?”
“He isn’t Jake’s doctor now, not while he’s in the hospital, but he’s hanging around anyway, and he’s making Jake nervous, and now he’s making me nervous.”
“In what way?”
“I take it,” she said, “he’s somehow part of what you people are doing, or connected with it somehow. And he’s like the nerd kid who just wants to hang around with the big boys, only he drops hints like how it’s really important to him that everything be okay and—”
“Hints?”
“Just to Jake, I think,” she said. “But I mean, in my presence. I guess he figures, I’m the sister, it’s safe. But he’s a needy guy, and he makes me nervous.”
“Thank you,” Parker said. “All of a sudden, he makes me nervous, too.”
“You’ll talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll tell Jake what you said.”
“Good.”
She walked him to the door. “This Dr. Madchen,” she said, “I don’t mean he’s a bad guy or a threatening guy or anything like that. I just mean he’s drawing attention to himself because he’s so needy and uncomfortable.”
“I understand,” Parker said.
“So when you see him,” she suggested, “use your best bedside manner.”
5
A mile from Riviera Park, the rearview mirror in the Lexus showed Parker a battered old tan Plymouth Fury that tugged at his memory. It seemed to be pacing him, hanging two or three cars back in moderate traffic as he drove east across Massachusetts toward the motel. Early afternoon, the thin September sun not yet low enough to obscure his view back there. Who was that?
Elaine Langen’s house, when he’d gone there to get her gun. No other car parked outside when he arrived. The meeting with Mrs. Langen cut short because a “lady policeman” had come to the house. That tan Plymouth Fury parked next to his Lexus when he came around from the kitchen door and drove away.
So she recognized him, too. She was watching Jake’s place, to see what activity might take place there, or she had beat cops watching it. For whatever reason, she connected this Lexus to both the Langen house and Jake’s mobile home. And now she was following, waiting to see where he’d go next.
Nowhere with her. Parker made a few turns, accelerated, decelerated, put himself in positions where he could make abrupt turns across lanes of oncoming traffic, and without raising a sweat, she stayed with him. Sometimes she lost ground, but she never lost the Lexus.
He was just coming to the conclusion that the thing to do was find a railroad station. He could leave the Lexus, and take trains until he was alone, then rent a car and come back. But as he was thinking that, a graceful brown-leather covered arm—it reminded him of a ballerina’s arm move, starting a lift—came out of the driver’s door of the Plymouth and slapped a suction-cup red flasher on the roof.
No siren, but the flasher started its spinning crimson roll, and the bright beams of the Plymouth’s headlights flared alternately left and right, and she accelerated past the intervening cars—they dodged out of the way like rabbits from a coyote—and when she’d reached his rear bumper, a loud-hailer voice, so distorted you couldn’t tell if it was male or female, said, “Pull over on the shoulder.”
He did. The only ID he carried on him belonged to John B. Allen, and was safe. The registration in the glove compartment carried the name Claire Willis, who would be his married sister. There was no bad paper out on either name. If this cop didn’t happen to find the Beretta clipped under his seat—and why should she?—there was nothing in the car to cause him trouble.
He stopped, crunching on the gravel shoulder, and ignored the gawkers as they crept by. Instead, he watched the rearview mirror.
She took her time in there. He could see her, on her radio. Checking the license plate, maybe arranging for backup, if it should turn out to be needed. But then at last she did come out, a tall, slender blonde woman in tan slacks and a short leather car coat, and moved forward toward his car.
A cop walks like a cop. Even the woman cops do it. Women walk as though they have no center of gravity, as though they’re all waifs, or angels, but cops walk as though their center of gravity is in their hips, so they can be very still or very fast. To see that kind of body motion on a woman was strange, particularly on a good-looking blonde.
Parker rolled his window down and looked out at her. Very good-looking. Sure of herself because she was a cop and because she was good-looking. And good at her work—Parker hadn’t been able to lose her.
He said, “Yes, Officer?”
“May I see license and registration, please?”
“Sure. Registration in the glove compartment. Okay?”
She seemed surprised at the question. “Get it, please.” He handed her the documents, and she studied them, saying, “May I ask your occupation, Mr. Allen?”
Fortunately, he remembered what he’d told Elaine Langen that time: “Mostly,” he said, “I’m a landscape architect.”
She raised a brow. “Mostly?”
“Well, it’s seasonal work,” he said, having no idea whether it was or not, but figuring she wouldn’t know either. “The rest of the year, I do other things. Or nothing. Depends how the season went.”
“This is your wife’s car?”
“Sister. My Navigator’s in the shop.”
“And have you had work up in this area, Mr. Allen?”
“It’s done now,” he said. “It was just consultancy, for a Mrs. Langen. I’m not doing the project. You want her address? I have it somewhere.”
“Not needed. Just wait a moment,” she said, and took his license and registration away to her car.
She was curious about him. She knew, from Elaine Langen’s stupid move with the gun, from Jake Beckham, gunshot in a hospital—she knew something was in the air. And all of a sudden, she had the new guy in her territory, connected both to Elaine Langen and to Jake Beckham.
At this point, there was no way for the cop to get a handle on what was going down, but she was curious. She was going to poke; she was going to pry, and all because of Elaine Langen.
Two days. Two days from now this cop, and every other cop for five hundred miles, would know what was going down. Let them know. By then, it wouldn’t matter. Not to Parker, anyway.
She came back. “Mr. Allen, I wonder if you’d open your trunk.”
“Sure,” he said, and got out and did so. He waite
d till she was shining her flashlight in at the trunk, empty except for a folded sheet of blue tarpaulin, and then he said, “Is it all right to ask what this is all about?”
“Just a routine traffic check.”
He laughed at her. “You’ve been dogging me for fifteen miles. I tried to shake you, and I couldn’t.”
She looked at him, no expression. “Do you consider yourself good at shaking cars pursuing you?”
“I guess not.” He shrugged. “I never tried it before, and it didn’t work this time. But the thing is, Officer—”
“Detective,” she said. “Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa.”
“How do you do, Detective. The thing is, it’s pretty obvious you’re just after me, and since I don’t know anything I’m in trouble for, I’m wondering how come.”
Instead of answering, she said, “Thank you,” with a nod, meaning he could close the trunk; so he did, as she moved very slowly around the car, studying every inch of it. She was, he knew, looking for a violation, a broken light or something like that, so she could cite him and then possibly bring him in for further questioning. But there would be nothing to hook on to. He kept the Lexus clean.
Nevertheless, he realized, this car was through. When the detective finished her inspection, he would leave the Lexus, wiped down and key in ignition, in some store’s parking lot where he could walk to a car rental agency. And when he got back to the motel, he’d phone Claire to report the Lexus stolen, get a rental of her own, and think about what car she’d want next.
It was with obvious reluctance that Detective Reversa gave him back his license and registration. “Thank you, sir,” she said.
He nodded. He wouldn’t ask her again, because he knew she wouldn’t answer. He said, “Is that it?”
“Unless you have something you want to say?”
“Only, I’m glad I wasn’t on my way to an important appointment.”
Her smile was cold. “So am I, Mr. Allen.”
She didn’t follow him when he drove away from there, but she didn’t have to. She’d picked up whatever information she was going to pick up, and she knew it. And Parker had picked up a couple of things, too.
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