As she held his right hand in her left, he did not feel like a cripple for the first time in months. “And so he never remarried?” he asked.
“No, he did not. Neither did I. How about you, David Stafford? Will you remarry?” Her question startled him. “Never again,” he said too quickly, but then he wondered if he really meant that. “I mean, hell, I don’t know that.
Just about every aspect of my life has come apart lately — my career, my marriage, this useless damn arm.”
“Not so useless a damn arm right now, is it?”
He grinned. “No, now that you mention it. I rather like holding hands with you, Gwen Warren.”
She stopped, released his hand, and looked over at him. Her face was partially in shadow, and he couldn’t read her expression. “Then please,” she said softly. “Please stay here with us. I’m afraid of your world and what might happen it if it comes here.”
He remembered Ray’s warning. “If I do that, Gwen, I might be an unemployed ex-cop.”
“Would that be so bad? Is your career going all that well right now?”
He looked down at the ground. The lady had a point there. “You know, as unbelievable as this might sound, I’ve never considered leaving the business. Even after all that’s happened. Maybe I should.”
He looked around at the forest. They had walked almost to the edge of the willow grove. The sounds of the little kids at the barn were filtering through the mass of greenery. “It’s just that I feel I didn’t do anything wrong. Politically dumb, maybe, but not wrong. Not up there, nor down here with this Carson thing. I’ve tried to do the right thing.”
“And do your superiors value that ethic?”
“I thought they did, but now I wonder. I guess I’ve never thought that through. Been too busy being sorry for myself.” — ;..
“Think about it now, Dave.”
One of the kids saw them through the willows and began to call her name.
He wanted to continue their little talk, to explain how he felt about her, but the moment had passed, and she was already moving, calling back to them. He still wasn’t sure: Did she feel something for him? Or was it more a case of her needing him to help them with what might be coming toward their little world? He followed after her, exploring in his mind for the first time the prospect of not being a cop, of doing something entirely different with his life.
He had dinner that evening with Gwen, Jessamine, the little kids, and Mrs. Benning in the communal dining room. They had spent the rest of the afternoon watching the afternoon activities at the barn. Later they had another chance to talk, he of his, life and experiences in law enforcement, she of her many years of building up Willow Grove while pursuing knowledge about the way castoff children communicate with a world that has rejected them. He gained the sense that while she was smart enough to fill her days with commitments, at heart she was a lonely person, a woman who had never quite gotten over the hurt, of her husband’s betrayal. He followed her lead in the i-conversation and did not try to steer it toward how he felt about her. Either she had not noticed or there was nothing there but his wishful thinking.
At dinner the kids were cute, but hardly angels, and the supervising adults had their hands full. He watched Jessamine covertly during dinner, wondering if she could really read minds, if she was reading his mind now. But then he remembered that the person being probed supposedly had to be extremely agitated. He still found it tough to believe. And yet the police literature was full of documented cases where so-called psychics and profilers had led an investigation right to the perpetrator’s front door, and usually after the cops had run into what seemed like a stone wall. This girl looked like every fourteen-year-old girl he had ever seen — a bit awkward, insecure, feigning utter indifference to what was going on around her while simultaneously being keenly interested in how she was being perceived. He wondered what it might be like to peer into someone else’s thoughts, emotions, or memories, and he decided that it might not be so terrific. Such an ability would be the ultimate infraction of the old Washington rule: Don’t formally ask a question if you can’t stand all the possible answers.
After dinner, he found himself alone at the table with Jess while the two women took the little kids upstairs for the nightly battle of getting them to bed. He was finishing a cup of coffee and wondering when Sparks would call. She made a pretense of reading a book, but she was watching him when she thought he wasn’t looking. On an impulse, he asked her how she liked school, forgetting for a moment that she did not speak. She signed briefly, then pulled over a pad of paper and a pen and began writing. “Boring,” she wrote. “They think I’m stupid.” “The kids, or the teachers?” he asked.
“Some of both,” she wrote. “I’m not dumb.” He almost asked her why she did not speak, but then he remembered what Gwen had said about her background. It occurred to him that here was his chance to ask her something he really did want to know.
“Jess,” he said, “do you remember the man at the airport?”
She frowned and did not immediately respond. But then she nodded.
“Gwen told me you sensed that he was a bad man. That he frightened you.”
She was watching him very carefully now. Another slow nod.;..
“Can you write down for me why you think he was a bad man? Did he do something bad?”
She began signing to him, then stopped when she remembered he could not understand. She picked up the pen, put it down, and then picked it up again. The sounds from upstairs were diminishing. Dave wondered what Gwen would do or say if she knew this conversation was going on.
“Killed someone,” she wrote. Then she shivered.
Lambry? He wondered. “Is that the only thing he did?”
She shook her head, and started to write a reply, then stopped. She took out another sheet of paper, scrunched up her face in concentration, and then began to draw instead. From across the table, he was able to recognize the cylinder immediately. She drew confidently, quickly, almost expertly. It was as if the image on the monitor in the Army trailer was reappearing right here on the dining room table. She pushed the drawing across to him, then signed again.
He took the piece of paper and looked at it. This drawing was a hell of a lot better than the one Gwen had shown him. She tapped the pen on the table, and he pushed the paper back across to her. “Very bad thing,” she wrote, and then underlined that several times.
“Yes, you’re absolutely right, Jess,” he said. “It’s a weapon. An Army weapon. I think that man stole it. I’m trying to get it back.” This drawing is almost perfect, he thought. So where the hell had that crude drawing come from? Jess was already scribbling another question.
“Is something coming?” she wrote.
He felt a chill when he read that question, but he was saved by the sounds of Gwen coming back down the stairs. The girl put a finger to her lips, grabbed the piece of paper, and hid it in her book. She had turned around in her chair by the time Gwen came back into the room.
Stafford finished his coffee while trying to clamp down on a feeling of apprehension. He didn’t know which bothered him more: her question—”Is something coming?”— or the fact that she had asked it. Damn!
Carson sat at the control booth in the security control room. He was wearing slacks, a business shirt without a tie, tennis shoes, and a light windbreaker. He hadn’t been able to wait any longer, and he had gone ahead and made the call. The man at the other end of the line had obviously been waiting. Carson had given Tangent’s man directions to the DRMO, then told him to park out front and look for an envelope on the front door of the admin building.