Elmore was an emotional trap she couldn't find a way out of. There was the man in Montana; he was married now, but she thought about him all the time. With somebody like that…
She brushed the thought away. That's not who she had.
She turned, circling, crunching through the snow: prison for life. And she got around to the north, and saw the first slinky unfolding of the northern lights, watched as they pumped up to a shimmering curtain above the everlasting evergreens, and decided that she might have to talk to someone about Dick
LaChaise.
''But not quite yet,'' she told Elmore when she was back inside. ''Just a couple of more days-we let it ride. Maybe they'll take off. Anyway, we gotta build a story. Then maybe we talk to old John.''
ANDY STADIC WENT INTO THE LAUNDROMAT AND SAT down. The place smelled of spilt
Tide and ERA and dirty wash water, and the hot lint smell of the dryers.
A woman glanced at him once, and again. He was justsitting there, a well-dressed white man, and had nothing to wash. She started to get nervous. He sat in one of the hard folding chairs and read a two-week-old copy of People. The woman finished folding her dry clothes, packed them in a pink plastic basket, and left. He was alone. He walked over to the door, turned the Open/Closed sign to
Closed, and locked the door.
Stadic watched the windows. A blond-haired hippie strolled by, a kid who might have been the southern boy who'd jumped Daymon Harp. A minute later, a hawk-faced white man walked up to the door, stuck his head inside.
''You Stadic?''
''Yeah.''
''Sit tight.''
Damn right. He'd told them he wouldn't go anyplace private. He'd told them Harp would be watching.
Another minute passed, and then a bearded man came around the corner, Pioneer seed-corn hat pulled low over his eyes. He walked like a farmer, heavy and loose, and had a farmer's haircut, ears sticking out, red with the cold, and a razor trim on the back of his neck. The farmer took his time getting inside.
Stadic recognized the eyes beneath the bill.
LaChaise.
''What the fuck do you think you're doing?'' Stadic said. He wanted to get on top of the guy immediately.
''Shut up,'' LaChaise said. His voice was a tough baritone, and his eyes fixed on Stadic's.
''You don't tell me to shut up.'' Stadic was on his feet, squared off.
LaChaise put his hand in his pocket, and the pocket moved. He had a gun.
''Go for your gun,'' LaChaise said.
''What?'' As soon as he said it, a temporizing word, uncertain, Stadic felt that he'd lost the edge.
''Gonna give me trouble, go for your gun, give me some real trouble. I already killed one cop, killing you won't be nothing.''
''Jesus Christ…''
LaChaise was on top, knew it, and his hand came off the gun. ''Where're the records?''
''You gotta be nuts, thinking I'd give you those things.''
''I am nuts,'' LaChaise said. His hand was back on the gun. ''You should know that. Now, where're the records?''
''I want to know what you're gonna do with them.''
''We're gonna scare the shit out of a lot of people,'' LaChaise said. ''We're gonna have them jumpin' through hoops like they was in a Russian circus. Now quit doggin' me around: either give them to me, or tell me you don't have them.
You don't have them, I'm gone.''
When they'd set up the meeting, by phone, LaChaise had said that if he didn't bring the papers, the next call would be to Internal Affairs.
Stadic let out a breath, shook his head. ''Scare the shit out of them? That's all?''
''That's all,'' LaChaise said. He was lying and Stadic knew it. And LaChaise knew that he knew, and didn't care. ''Gimme the goddamned papers.''
''Jesus, LaChaise, anything else…''
''I'm outa here,'' LaChaise said, turning toward the doors.
''Wait a minute, wait a minute…'' Stadic said, ''I'm gonna stick my hand in my coat.''
LaChaise's hand went back to his pistol and he nodded. Stadic took the papers out of his breast pocket and held them out at arm's length. LaChaise took them, didn't look, and backed away. ''Better be the real thing,'' he said, and he turned to go.
''Wait,'' Stadic said. ''I gotta know how to get in touch with you.''
''We'll get in touch with you,'' LaChaise said.
''Think about it,'' Stadic said, his voice tight, urgent. ''I want you outa here-or dead. I don't want you caught. Anything but that. If they figure out where you're at, and they're coming to get you… I oughta be able to call.''
''Got no phone,'' LaChaise said. ''We're trying to get one of them cellulars.''
''Call me, soon as you get one,'' Stadic said. He took an index card from his pocket, groped for a pen, found one, scribbled the number. ''I carry the phone all the time.''
''I'll think about it,'' LaChaise said, taking the card.
''Do it,'' Stadic said. ''Please.''
Then LaChaise was gone, out the door, pulling the hat down over his eyes, around the corner. Harp came through the back door two minutes later.
''I think three is all of them,'' Harp said. ''I saw the cracker on the street, then a pickup pulls up and this peckerwood gets out-he's new-and the pickup goes off; the driver was probably that other dude.''
''Get the plates?''
''Yeah. I did.''
''See anybody else? Anybody who looked like a cop?'' Harp shook his head. ''Just a couple of kids and some old whore.''
LACHAISE FLIPPED THROUGH A COMPUTER PRINTOUT of the police department's insurance program. Some of it was gobbledygook, but buried in the tiny squares and rectangles were the names of all the insured, their addresses and phone numbers.
''Modern science,'' LaChaise said.
''What?'' Martin turned to look at him.
''I'm reading a computer printout; I'm gonna get a cell phone,'' LaChaise said.
''You go along and things get easier.''
He started circling names on the printout.
SIX
WEATHER KARKINNEN WORE A WHITE TERRY-CLOTH robe, with a matching terry-cloth towel wrapping her hair. Through the back window she was a Vermeer figure in a stone house, quiet, pensive, slow-moving, soft with her bath, humming along with a Glenn Gould album.
She got a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, found a glass and started pouring. The phone rang, and she stepped back and picked it up, propped it between her ear and her shoulder, and continued pouring.
''Yes, he is,'' she said.
Lucas was sitting in his old leather chair, eyes closed. He was working on a puzzle-a tactical exercise involving both a car chase and a robbery.
Lucas had once written strategy board games, had moved them to computers, then, pushed temporarily off the police force, had started a company doing computer simulations of police problems.
He'd made the change at just the right time: His training software did well. Now the company was run by a professionalmanager, and though Lucas still held the biggest chunk of the stock, he now worked mostly on conceptual problems. He was imagining a piece of software that spliced voice and data transmissions, that would layer a serious but confused problem beneath an exciting but superficial one, to teach new dispatchers to triage emergency calls.
Triage. The word had been used by the programmers putting together the simulation, and it had been rattling around his brain for a few days, a loose
BB. The word had a nasty edge to it, like cadaver.
''Lucas?''
He jumped. Weather was in the doorway, a glass of dark beer in her hand. She'd brewed it herself in a carboy in the hall closet, from a kit that Lucas had bought her for her birthday.
''You've got a phone call…''
Lucas shook himself awake, heaved himself out of the chair. ''Who is it?'' he asked, yawning. He saw the beer. ''Is that for me?''
''I don't know who it is. And get your own,'' she said . ''We sound like a TV commercial.''
''You're the one who was snoring in the chair after dinner,'' she said.