Chapter 1

I don't often go to meet potential clients, since I don't work enough, or care enough about making money, to make it worth my while. I've got money enough to retire on, and I'm just 42 – going on 43, but that won't be for a little bit yet. I work whenever I take a notion, and when I don't take a notion I don't work. I don't go into the office every day, and when I do I'm as liable to read a book, or look out the window at the Sandia Mountains, as I am to work on a case.

But when I got the call I took a notion, and agreed to drive over. I knew the place by its name, though the name the caller – a receptionist – had given me didn't ring any bells. As I drove east on Montgomery I pondered the notion I'd taken. It wasn't like me to easily agree to meet people who stand for things I abhor. On the other hand I've never been real worried about being foolishly consistent. Yeah, there are things where it's necessary to be consistent, and my morality is one of 'em, but I don't think anyone who knows the actual quote would ever accuse me of having a small mind.

Not being real introspective or analytical, I shelved the wonderment, and looked at the day. It was clear in Albuquerque, but cold, for winter at 5,000 feet isn't a warm thing. It doesn't snow a lot in Albuquerque, though on the eastern slope of the Sandias there's a ski resort, but it does get cold. The winter comes down from Canada, and the earth's tilt on its axis means we get less solar energy, and I bundle up lest I freeze solid. Of all the ways I might like to die, freezing isn't one of 'em.

The cold air, though, was as clear as so much vacuum. Albuquerque's air pollution – which was just an occasional winter "brown cloud" when I moved here in 1992, but is pretty much permanent now – had blown away on a fairly stiff breeze, and it almost seemed like I could see individual grains of mineral in the granite face of the Sandias. I knew that wasn't true, of course – I couldn't even make out the Great Unconformity which divides the granite from its limestone caprock – but such clarity of air makes you think such things. I know about clear air, for growing up in the Mojave Desert I'd seen it every day of my life till I moved to Oklahoma in 1986.

I turned off Montgomery into a shopping center at Wyoming. I found the suite I was looking for, but there weren't any parking places in front, which I hadn't expected and which was fine with me. Now that I knew where I was going, I found an open spot in the midst of a swarm of open spots further out in the lot. I like to park where I don't have to turn sideways to squeeze between cars, and I like to walk, so walking 50 yards or so from my Blazer to the door wasn't a bother at all. Most people won't walk 50 inches if they can help it, and so they park all crammed up next to each other – and whine when a scratch the size of an ameba appears on the paint, too. I once knew a guy who got into a royal tizzy over a dent in the hood, as though all the forces of the universe were conspiring against him. My theory is that if you buy a new car you might as well relax about dings and dents, 'cause they're gonna happen no matter what you do.

With that thought in my mind I got to the door. The lettering on the glass said Planned Pregnancy Center. I mentally sneered at it. Even if I hadn't known what the place did, I'd have been able to tell from the name. But I'd come voluntarily, so I kept the sneer mental as I opened the door.

Inside there was a small waiting room, with standard plastic waiting room chairs, and the standard sign-in counter to my right. I stepped up, where a receptionist in Donald Duck scrubs looked up at me. "I've got an appointment with Dr. Bernard," I told her.

She got on the phone, apparently talked to Dr. Bernard, and asked someone standing around behind her to show me back. I followed the man – his scrubs plain institutional green – back through the hallways, out of the realm of examining rooms, and into a short corridor with wood paneling instead of flat white paint. At least it looked like wood to me; probably it was actually veneer or even vinyl, but Cecelia wasn't with me to set me straight. My wife knows more than I do about more subjects, but one thing she has absolutely no interest in is detective work.

We came to a door, my guide knocked, and at a voice we stepped in. "Dr. Bernard," he said, "Darvin Carpenter's here to see you."

As the guide left, shutting the door behind him, I examined the woman who wanted to hire me. She was perhaps 45, a little older than me, with iron gray hair chopped off short – longer toward the front than the back, in what I can't help thinking of as a "liberal haircut." I don't know why women of a particular political persuasion do their hair like that, unless they want to look unattractive, for I can't think of a more unattractive hairstyle. As far as I could tell she didn't have on any makeup, not that I'm good at that sort of thing. Her eyes were gray, her skin pasty as though she never got out in the sun, and as far as I could tell under her suit and white lab coat she was dumpy and doughy. I wonder, also, why women of a particular political persuasion so often have a particular body type.

"I'm Dr. Patricia Bernard," she said, rising and extending her hand.

"Darvin Carpenter," I said, shaking. "If you don't mind my asking, doctor of what?"