Chapter 16

After I left Harry's office I drove slowly – and somewhat indirectly – toward the motel. I now had a couple of lines of inquiry to think on – the vague sense that some of the people I'd talked to weren't telling me everything they might have about cops and discounts, and Stryker's attempt at intimidation. It wasn't much, but it was more than I'd had. And that's how investigations go. Maybe somewhere a real life investigator has come into a case and in an hour had about 38 different pieces of conclusive evidence in hand, but I've never met the guy – and I tend to question how likely he is to exist. In my experience you start out knowing almost nothing, and work hard to get a little piece of information, which might or might not lead you to another piece, and so on. Detecting isn't branding calves or digging ditches, but it's not reclining in front of the TV either.

And I like to think that I'm good at getting information out of people...

When I got to the motel I parked next to Cecelia's car and got out. I eased the pistol where it rested on my belt – I still hadn't gotten used to wearing it all the time and everywhere – and looked around. It was early evening, the light slanting on the front of the building. Cecelia was sitting on the sidewalk in front of our room, leaning on the wall. That wasn't surprising – she's as neat and clean as anyone I've ever known, but by preference rather than because she fears dirt – but what did surprise me was her clothing. She had on a pair of jeans with both knees worn out, and most of the blue washed out of them, and a t-shirt with one sleeve ripped off and the other tattered; I remembered the time it got caught in the washing machine. She wears clothes like that only when she's exercising, and I can count on my hands the times she's worn 'em anywhere but the back yard, which is where her weight shed is. Cecelia can relax – like a cat, which is the ultimate relaxation – but she keeps her casual side private. To see her out in public in such a getup was almost unprecedented.

I walked over to her and sat down beside her. I have no qualms at all about relaxing, and though I too tend to keep my most casual side indoors, sitting on the sidewalk was something I just might do anywhere. She leaned against me as I put my arm around her shoulders. I could feel the knob of her shoulder joint, and the sliding of muscle over it as she reached her left hand over and rested it on my belly, above my belt buckle. She moved her hand in a small circle, her palm massaging me gently through my shirt. I squeezed her shoulder and said, "I get the impression you've got something on your mind, mi amor."

"I do, Darvin. I have been here two weeks without working out, and I can feel my tone slipping. I would have asked earlier, but you've been busy – and before you apologize for not thinking of it sooner, I know that being busy is precisely the reason why you didn't, and I understand; I do not hold it against you. But I can't wait any longer; I must find some way to exercise myself or I'll turn into just another skinny flabby woman ... without, probably, the 'curves' they have, since my build is not after that pattern."

"There's a weight room at the station, but that's for the cops, and they don't have any female officers here just now. They ain't no Y in town..." I tried to remember what there was. "I'm coming up blank right now, C, but I'll ask around tomorrow."

"I appreciate it, Darvin. I've been out running already, and I was able to do some elementary exercises along the way, but I miss my weights, and Darlia misses hers – and as you know, she isn't a runner."

Cecelia was right. She's built like a long distance athlete, lean and narrow, but Darlia's strength is of the chunky sort; Cecelia's a wolf, and Darlia's a bear.

My wife's hand now reached up and her finger stroked my mustache from lip to jaw – first one side, and then the other. "Have I mentioned today that I love you so much that I could cheerfully give up everything in order to be with you?"

"Not in those terms, no, but you have told me something with the same gist."

"Then let me say this: If I had to choose between saving the world, and saving you, I would say goodbye to the world."

"Good thing that choice won't come up, eh?"

"I conceive that such a choice is impossible of achievement." I could hear amusement in her voice, though the tilt of her head didn't allow me to see whether she was smiling. "Let me speak more plausibly. You are the entire earthly reason for my life; even my love for Darlia, which is immense, has its roots in my love for you."

Cecelia's the introvert; I'm not good at digging around inside myself. I said, "All I know, Cecelia, is that since I've known you the sun's been brighter, and the sugar sweeter, and the sky bluer, than it was before. And I would sooner walk around blind and insane than live without you."

She placed her palm against my mouth, and I kissed it gently; she moved her palm down to her own mouth. I've seen couples who go for days on end without, as far as I can tell, ever touching each other, and I can't feature how they do it. Cecelia and I need that physical contact. I rubbed my hand slowly down her upper arm, feeling the warm skin and the firm muscle. "You know something, C?" I asked. "If things had gone the way my initial impression of you would have suggested, we'd each not even know whether the other still lived in Albuquerque. It's a good thing that I got past that first impression."

"First impressions are not always infallible, are they? My own first impression of you was, to the say the least, unflattering."

"What was the impression?" Somehow in all our years together I'd never thought to ask, though from things she'd said I knew it wasn't favorable.

"I considered you, as the phrase is, a drugstore cowboy – and a barbarous oaf to boot. I tolerated you only because I needed your services, and you seemed competent as a detective – and even then without Tyrone's recommendation I would never have retained you. I was, of course, acting from ignorance; I had no idea, then, what a gentle and wonderful man hides behind the uncouth exterior."

I grinned down at her. "I got less than no couth, and I'm proud of it."

"Your couth level is indeed quite low," she said, and tilted her head up so that I saw the broad grin. "But where it counts, you have everything I could ever desire. Darvin, I never wasted my time constructing fantasies of an 'ideal man, ' but if I had, a great deal of your character would have been involved. Your appearance is not what I would have desired, but inside—" she thumped me rather forcefully on the chest with her fist "—you are exactly what I wanted, and want, in a husband. No, first impressions are not infallible; in my experience, they are as likely to be wrong as they are to be right."

I rubbed my chin against the top of her head. "If I never was grateful to God for anything else," I said softly, "I'm grateful that He got both of us past our first impressions."

The next morning I was back at the personnel files. Just because I'd put – as Sherlock Holmes might have said – inquiries in motion regarding Paul Stryker didn't mean that I could slack off on the rest of the job. He might, as Harry had said, be just a badge heavy cop who was more explicit than the rest in his dislike for the headhunters. Even if there were dirty cops in Red Hawk, Stryker might be perfectly clean.

Sometimes what seem like glaring clues aren't. Last year I'd looked for a missing husband, and walking through his neighborhood I'd seen at least three different avenues of egress he could have used. I'd filed the information away, and it had never come up again; what he'd done was simply drive away one morning like he was going to work, and never bothered to come home. Detecting isn't a matter of simply collecting information, though that's surely important. You've also got to sort it out, run it through a sieve as it were, and subtract what's important from the mass. And sometimes the only sorting you can do is pragmatic – what winds up helping is helpful, and what doesn't isn't. And you don't know that till you're done. Stryker's attempted roust might be important and it might not. I hoped I'd know one way or the other before I was done, but I might not.

As had become my habit over the past couple of days, I put everything away at noon, and after lunch – I ate at the Dairy Queen again – went out patrolling. I knew why I was doing it; I needed to get out of the building, where I didn't have my accustomed view of the Sandia Mountains, and into the sunlight. I've been an outdoor type my whole life, as my permanent tan shows, and can't stand being cooped up in a room without windows. Even in winter, when it's cold and blowing, I get out once or twice a week for an hour or so; I'd rather come back with my face stiff and my fingers hurting from cold than become a house mouse.