Chapter 10

Weary or not, Darlia was ready for church in the morning, and so were Cecelia and I. The clock went off on time, and I got out of bed to find Cecelia already done with her teeth and hair. She was buttoning her blouse, and she turned as she fastened the top button and smiled at me. She's got various smiles, all of which weaken my knees; this was the serene, happy smile that means she's completely contented. We didn't say anything, just kissed before I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and comb my hair and scrape off my whiskers. Normally I shave in the shower, skirting the edges of my mustache by feel, but I'd been lazy the night before.

While I was doing all that I heard the room door close, and knew that Cecelia had gone next door to make sure that Darlia was getting ready. By the time they got back, I had my jeans and a fancy shirt on, a white one, with a turquoise yoke that had red cow skulls embroidered on it. Like most of my shirts these days Cecelia had made it, and it fit perfectly – meaning that it was a size too big for me, so that I could breathe and move in it.

Cecelia's shirts and blouses are always two or three sizes too big. Given her build, it's just as well; in a billowing shirt she doesn't look as thin as she actually is, and while I've come to appreciate her muscular narrowness, the fact is that without the bias that colors my eyesight I would probably find her unpleasantly skinny. No, scratch the "probably" – the first time I met her I thought, among other things, that she was way too skinny, and it was only as I came to love her that I lost the consciousness of that. Today the blouse that flared out from her waist was pure white, with small gold roses on the shoulders and at the wrists. Her skirt was long, to the floor, in a royal blue that in the light seemed to have purple highlights in it. She looked like a queen, and the gold clip that she'd caught her hair in added to the impression. Her face, regardless of what you think of its esthetic characteristics, is regal, and she carries herself as straight as a young sapling. I caught my breath at the sight of her; after all these years I still get that clench in my guts that tells me that she means more to me than I can ever find words for.

Darlia was a vision in pink. The pink dress she'd worn last year was now too small, but Cecelia'd made her a new one – as she's been doing every year for five or six years now – and it was also floor-length, with sleeves that came to just above her elbows. She'd braided the hair on her temples, something she'd learned to do for herself just recently, and left the rest free; the braids hung down on her chest nearly to her waistline, and in back the unbraided hair hung equally far. Except for an occasional trim she's not had a haircut since her birth, and doesn't seem to think she'll ever want one – and I must confess that I think it would be a crime to lop off the glory of that hair. She'd woven pink ribbons into the braids, and they trailed down along with the hair, in soft spirals that were just slightly darker than the shade of her dress.

I sat down and pulled on my fancy boots. They're black with brown uppers, and they've got fancy stitching that incorporates my initials. Cecelia got 'em for me a few years back as an anniversary present, knowing that I'd not wear them much but that whenever I did I'd think of her. And I do; to me those boots mean not so much fancy dress as they mean the only people on earth for whom I'll dress up – although my notions of fancy dress wouldn't fly at most functions; I haven't owned a suit since I was a cop, and absolutely will not ever wear one again for any reason. If they put me in one for my funeral I'll climb out of the coffin and give 'em a stern lecture.

We'd decided that today we'd go to the church I'd joined after I became a Christian. Our theology probably wouldn't be an exact match, for although Cecelia's been a Christian since she was 10, we both began doing some serious thinking after about 1991, and on what we call the doctrines of grace we don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with the majority of churches. But we do see eye-to-eye on those things the Apostles' Creed addresses, even though we're not a creedal family, and any church which would agree with that confession of faith we can get along with.

So we'd visit Red Hawk Baptist Church this morning. Our church in Albuquerque doesn't have an evening service, and so we'd not worry about going to church in the evening; there was no point in forming a habit for a month that we'd have to discard for the other 11 months of the year. But at 11 o'clock we were going to be in the pews, and if we didn't get something from the service it wouldn't be because we didn't want to.

And in fact we did. We indeed didn't agree with everything the church stood for, but it's hard to argue with a church that so earnestly points people to Christ, even if the methods aren't what we would choose. Christ is Christ, even if His people aren't always what they – what we – ought to be. We weren't sorry we'd gone.

After we got back to the motel, and I'd changed my shirt and boots, Cecelia pushed me back down into a chair and climbed into my lap. She sat with her back to my chest, and pulled my arms around so that my hands rested, one on top of the other, on her stomach. "Darvin," she said, "would you mind if Darlia and I took the car for the rest of the day?"

A few years ago I'd have replied that it was her car, to do with as she pleased – a statement that would be literally and exactly true, but not terribly productive. This time I said, "I don't mind at all, C. Is it something I ought to know about – or that you want me to know about?"

She considered, and then as I looked at the side of her face I saw the corner of her mouth rise in a smile. "I think, Darvin, that we'll surprise you upon our return. And I can, I believe, guarantee that the surprise will be a pleasant one for you."

I rubbed my chin on the top of her head. How does she get so tiny, when she's only a single inch shorter than I am? I don't know, but I rubbed my chin nonetheless – gently, for I had no wish to cause a headache. "Cecelia, you have only every once in a while surprised me when it wasn't pleasant, and never on purpose. You may be a mischievous child, but you're never mean."

"As you would say, child my left foot. I'm less than three weeks younger than you – the difference is closer, in fact, to two weeks than three – and I'm fully as adult as you are. Although," she continued in a musing tone, "if my maturity is commensurate with yours, I must conclude that I am childish in the extreme."

I moved to poke her in the ribs – to turn her gesture against her – but she clamped down and my hand couldn't move. I had to content myself with a smart remark. "Childish you are and shall remain, my love, for I shall never let you get old." Perhaps it wasn't all that smart a remark ... just a wishful one.

"Darvin, I will get old, and you with me – and the fact that we'll grow old together will be one of the joys of my life."

What can you say to that? What can you say to a woman like that? I never know, and perhaps nothing is as good a thing to say as anything. And I have to admit that I can say nothing better than I can say just about anything. So I said nothing, just kissed my wife gently on her kinky hair, and released her to take Darlia on their mystery trip.

While they were gone I broke out my laptop and started organizing my notes – such as they were. I almost never use the laptop, and I'd nearly left it at home, since on the few occasions I've taken it on vacation I've rarely opened it up, even to check my e-mail. But I'd brought it, and now I was glad I had. I don't have it set up just the way I like to organize things for investigations the way I've set up my office computer, where I can navigate between files and cases and whatnot almost with my eyes closed, but a computer is a whole lot better at remembering than I am. And it's a whole lot easier to keep notes organized on a computer than it is if you've got pages of scribbling in no particular order. I don't know how cops did it before computers became ubiquitous ... I don't know how I did it, for that matter.

It's amazing how much there is to organize so that you can have an orderly progression from no information to next to no information. But I wanted to get at least the gist of every conversation I'd had into the computer, so that if something started nagging at the back of my mind about what someone might have said I could look it up. I remember pretty well – it's helpful in my work – but I don't have a perfect memory, and I've found out the hard way that there comes a point when adding a new thing to remember means crowding out something else. I trust my memory – to a point. Beyond that point I'd rather trust the computer. Computers are dumb machines – I mean dumb; if you don't tell 'em to add 2+2 they can't figure out by themselves that they ought to do it – but what they do, they do faster and more tenaciously than people. Of course you've got to be careful; if you tell a computer to forget something, it forgets it – permanently. There've been occasions when I carelessly deleted files I still wanted, and there went all the info. I love the Recycle Bin; I can go into it and restore something I never meant to delete. When I used DOS I didn't have that option, just the UNDELETE command, which usually could recover the file if I did it soon enough, before something else wrote over that bit of hard drive space.

I got busy, the laptop sitting on the table and my fingers carefully negotiating the small keyboard. As I finished each sheet of paper in my little notebook I tore it out and tossed it – but first I double checked to be sure I'd gotten everything I wanted. I didn't want to have to go trash picking to nail one little fact that I'd missed the first time around. After a week's work – well, five days' work – I had a fair amount of negative information, and it took a while to get it all organized the way I wanted it. At last, though, I was done. I considered doing some cross-referencing, but decided not to. Perhaps later, but right now I had worked my brain into a state of numbness that was about to shut my mind down. Only those who've never done it think mental work is no work at all; you can tire your mind out just as surely as you can tire out your body.

I saved everything, got out of the directory I'd created for all this stuff, and shut down Windows. When it said it was okay, I turned off the computer, but left it open on the table. I looked at my watch. It was after three – going on four, actually. I wrote a note for Cecelia, grabbed my hat, and went for a walk.