He sipped his coffee and watched her over the arc of the cup rim.
She managed a smile and sniffled. “But what you say is true-blood relationships mean something. Yesterday was harder than I anticipated.”
“Identifications of homicide victims are never easy,” he said.
She nodded. “But it’s over.” She drew a deep breath and smiled with a brightness that startled him.
They talked for several hours after that, about everything but Nora Noon and what had happened to her. They talked about each other. Fedderman learned that Penny had backpacked through Europe after college and wanted to return someday to Paris. Penny learned that Fedderman had been a widower for years but still awoke some mornings reaching across the bed for his wife.
Fedderman was still halfway convinced he was working. You never knew, he told himself, when something seemingly unrelated would strike a chord and prove useful.
“Why did you leave Florida?” she asked.
“It was paradise at first, but I got tired of it. So I came back here to do what I’ve done all my life.”
“Try to find the bad guys?”
“Find them and take them down,” Fedderman said. A little romance and excitement wouldn’t hurt here. He was getting his footing.
The waiter came over and refreshed their drinks. Penny dropped her soggy tea bag back in her cup and played with the tag and string, as if she were carefully maneuvering a tiny fish she’d just hooked.
“You never did answer me when I asked about what you did,” Fedderman said. “I’ll bet it’s something interesting. Maybe even dangerous.” He didn’t want her to think he was bragging too much, what with his taking down the bad guys remark.
“I’m a librarian.”
“Seriously?” He sat back and stared at her, immensely pleased, as if he’d never before laid eyes on a real librarian.
“I’m seriously a librarian. At the Albert A. Aal Memorial Library on East Fifty-third Street.”
“Right here in New York?”
“Uh-huh. I carpool in from New Jersey.”
“That explains it. You’re obviously smart.”
“Because I carpool?”
“No, no, the librarian part.”
“Ah,” she said, and sipped her tea. “I’m impressed that you’re impressed.”
“What exactly does a librarian do these days?” Fedderman asked. “I mean, what with all the electronic readers and such?”
“Sometimes I think we mostly sit around and wait to become obsolete,” she said. “People still do read paper and print books, and a lot of them. But once we computerized our system, librarians started becoming less necessary.”
“Damned computers,” he said.
“They must make your job easier.”
“Like they make yours easier.”
“I bet all those rich widows in Florida were always after you,” Penny said.
Fedderman fought hard not to blush. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
She fiddled around with her tea bag some more.
“I believe that if I were a rich widow, I’d notice you,” she said.
He smiled. “I’d be honored to be noticed.”
They sat silently for a while, Fedderman looking at Penny, and her staring in the direction of the window but obviously looking inward. The sun coming through the glass laced her streaked blond hair with highlights and lit up her eyes. Pensive eyes. So calm and considering.
Fedderman realized it didn’t really matter what they talked about. They were for some reason comfortable in each other’s presence. Dinner wouldn’t be a bad idea, he decided. A date.
“What are you thinking about?” Fedderman asked.
“The Dewey decimal system.”
“I miss it, too,” Fedderman said.
20
Hogart, 1991
Willis from the Quick Pick convenience store heard the screaming as soon as he stepped outside into the hot night. He knew right away the screams were coming from the woods behind the store.
He folded the LIVE BAIT sign he’d come outside to bring in and laid it on the concrete near the door. Would there be more screams?
The night was quiet now. He stood with his arms dangling limply at his sides, his head cocked to the left so as to bring his good ear into play, listening for sounds other than the buzz of insects in the woods and up around the pump lights.
The next thing he heard that was louder than the cicadas was a roar. It was uncertain and stuttering at first, rising and falling. Then, about a hundred yards away, he saw a motorcycle burst from the woods onto the county road. It turned away from him, running without lights until it straightened out and had a level stretch in front of it. It roared louder, as if its spirits were lifted by the black ribbon of road ahead. A big Harley-he could tell by the distinctive sound of its engine.
As it receded from his vision, he studied it in the moonlight. It was a dark-colored bike, ridden by a big hefty guy wearing what looked like jeans and a black T-shirt. He had on a dark-colored helmet. Willis saw long dark hair sprouting out from under it, and it seemed that the guy had a beard.
That was it, the image that stayed with Willis as the lone cyclist passed from moonlight into the darker night and was gone.
Then he heard another scream. A woman. He thought about Beth Brannigan, who’d left the store not that long ago, lugging a paper sack containing a six-pack of beer for her husband, Roy. Fearless young Beth, who might have taken the shortcut through the woods. Roy would be on the other side of the woods watching TV from his beat-to-crap recliner, like he always did when the Cards games were televised. Willis wondered if Roy had heard the screams.
The screams continued, ending in a keening wail almost like an animal would make.
Maybe there were others besides the man on the motorcycle. Maybe whatever was going on in the woods hadn’t stopped.
Willis ran back into the store and snatched the twelve-gauge Remington shotgun from where he kept it propped behind the counter.
After checking the gun to make sure it held shells, he went back outside, locked the store’s glass door, and headed for the woods. He found himself feeling oddly elated as he moved at a fast jog toward the source of the screams, holding the shotgun out in front of him crossways with both hands, the way he’d been trained to do back in ’Nam.
Thirty-two years ago. Not so long a time.
Sheriff Wayne Westerley kept the Ford cruiser’s accelerator flat on the floor during much of the drive to Willis’s Quick Pick convenience store. He wanted to get there before Beth Brannigan’s husband showed up. The big car seemed to chase the converging headlight beams probing the darkness out in front of it.
Roy Brannigan had a temper at the best of times. The fact that he was a religious fanatic didn’t seem to have influenced him to try settling matters peaceably.
Willis had carried Beth into the store before calling the sheriff’s department. When Brannigan arrived there and was told what happened, he might immediately go after his wife’s attacker and trample the crime scene even more thoroughly than Willis probably had, Roy having more at stake.
But Westerley didn’t see Brannigan’s battered old Plymouth anywhere as he pulled the cruiser into the Quick Pick’s gravel lot and parked near the door.
The inside of the store was brightly lighted. When Westerley tried the door he found it locked. It only took a few seconds for Willis to appear inside and open it.
Willis’s thinning hair was hanging over his forehead, giving his face depth and shadow in the overhead fluorescent lighting. He looked distraught.
“She’s in back,” he said.
Westerley had always liked Beth Brannigan. In truth he was kind of attracted to her, maybe especially so because she didn’t deserve a nutcase husband like Roy. A drunken Roy tended to preach all the more fervently and defend his view of the Lord with his fists. Westerley sometimes wondered if he used those fists on Beth.