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“There was a red knot on his collarbone with two puncture marks in it. I think he was tortured with a stun gun. They made him walk to me and shot him by mistake.”
Her irritation with me had passed; she was looking at the broadening circumstances of the case. “And you saw a plane you think might have been the control center for these guys?”
“I saw the plane. Its purpose is a matter of speculation.”
“We can start checking the hospitals for gunshot admissions, but I doubt the wounded man sought conventional treatment if he’s working for the sophisticated operation you describe. You think these guys work for Timothy Abelard?”
“It’s a possibility. He was a big defense contractor. He’d have the connections.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t want to believe it of Mr. Abelard,” I said.
“Am I developing a hearing defect?”
“I want to believe Mr. Abelard is an anachronism, a decayed vestige of the old oligarchy. All of them weren’t bad. Some of them probably did the best they could with what they had.”
“Hermann Göring loved his mother, too,” she said. “The guy you shot with your forty-five?”
“What about him?”
“You okay with it today?”
“He dealt the play. I identified myself and told him to throw his weapon away.”
“That’s the ticket,” she said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to take a couple of days off, would it?”
I didn’t even bother to answer. My eyes were lidless, staring into hers. She smiled to herself.
“Something funny?” I said.
“Why is it in
any conversation with you I always know what you’re going to say and not say? Why do I even have conversations with you, Pops?”
It was a light moment, reminiscent of the days when she and I were investigative partners and both prone to err on the side of immediate retaliation in dealing with the army of miscreants who like to make life unpleasant for the rest of us. But I knew Helen’s cheerful expression was only a temporary respite from the morgue photos that were still in my file cabinet.
I got up from my chair and walked to her window. Helen’s potted petunias were overflowing in the vase, and down below I could see the trusty gardeners from the stockade trimming the grass around the grotto that was dedicated to Jesus’s mother. I propped my hands on the windowsill.
“Did you want to drink last night?” she asked.
“I thought about it.”
“You think you ought to find a meeting today?”
“I have drunk dreams every third night. They’re not dreams of desire. They’re nightmares.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“Wanting to drink is not really wanting to drink. It’s like a desire to cup your hand over a candle flame and snuff it out.”
She stood next to me and touched my arm. I didn’t want to look at her. Two or three women lived inside Helen’s skin, and one of them was not only androgynous but had no erotic parameters. “Slow down, bwana. We’re going to avenge those girls. I give you my word.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead. I felt her fingers on top of my wrist, felt them run along the hairs on the back of my hand and rest on my knuckles. Then her fingers moved away from me, and in the silence I could hear her breathing.
“I think there are two sets of killers in this case, two sets of interests, and two sets of motivation,” I said.
She didn’t reply until I was forced to turn and look into her face. Her gaze was steady and curious, her head tilted slightly to one side, her mouth red, her cheeks somehow leaner than they were a few minutes earlier. “What do you base that on?” she asked.
