Chapter 2

I finished up the list of questions by quitting time. It was harder than I'd expected, knowing how easily – if not smoothly – I interview people in person. But it turned out to be different when I was trying to think of everything I might want to ask, and write it down, instead of letting an interview flow along with the questions coming out of my mouth as they naturally came.

I knew it was too late – by my standards, if not by his – to call Sloan now, so I went ahead and copied it all off the legal pad into a file on my computer, and sent it via the network to Cecelia's machine in the outer office. I'd networked the computers during the four years Marla had been my part-time secretary. I'd hired her right out of high school and kept her until she graduated from the University of New Mexico and joined the Albuquerque Police Department. The last time I'd talked to her she'd still been in the academy, and loving every minute of it.

But it was Cecelia who began to make real use of the network. Instead of printing things out and walking them back and forth, she'd put us on an electronic basis, having us both review and approve documents on the screen before printing them. Sometimes we'd send something back and forth two or three times, getting all the bugs out, before she'd approve it for printing. Her title might be "secretary," and her pay might be part-time, but she'd run her own business early in our marriage, and been an executive before that, and knew what she was doing. I might have to upgrade her to office manager, and downgrade myself to chief cook and bottle washer, before it was over.

When I'd sent her the file I shut down my computer, grabbed my hat off the end table and my gun out of the desk drawer, and walked out to Cecelia's desk. Marla had kept it the way I'd put it – against the front wall, to the left of the door as you're going out, with the computer table to her left. Cecelia had turned the desk so that it sat further out into the room, facing the right-hand wall. The computer table was then at her back if she was sitting at her desk. She'd kept the single straight backed chair Marla had kept by her desk, and which only I had ever sat in – but Cecelia makes more use of it. She's taken to sitting potential clients down in the chair while she finds out whether she thinks I'll want to talk to them, or while she walks back to my office to consult.

Just then she was behind her desk, looking at the photos. She had a file folder open, and some paperwork was in it, nice and neat. But she'd spread the photos out, the one in the center that could have had a title – The Terrified Child. Without intending to, without realizing it, Sloan had very nearly committed a work of art with that one shot. The rest, as far as I could tell, were standard porn shots – if we'd had the entire thing we'd have no doubt seen the standard poses, which have much more to do with those who are looking than those who are involved. But that one photo...

"You took so long, Darvin, that I went ahead and set up the appointment without having the questions in hand."

"Not a problem. You'll find the list on your computer."

"Not just this minute, though." She tapped the one photo with her finger. "If I ever see this girl, I'll know her."

"Yeah, me too. And I intend to see her."

"As do I."

"Where you wanna eat at?" I asked, blatantly changing the subject.

"Blake's will do nicely, beloved. I'll put this away, and we can go." She started shuffling the pictures together, putting The Terrified Child on top. It seemed to be instinctive with both of us.

While she did that, and shut off her computer, I asked, "How does Sandra like the new arrangements?" Sandra is an older woman, who lives on the other side of Inez Park from us. She's been watching our daughter from time to time almost as long as Darlia's been here, and now she had the job, whenever Cecelia spent the day or the afternoon at the office, of picking Darlia up from school and taking care of her till we get home.

"She is enjoying them. It gives her something to do, and of course she loves Darlia as you know."

"And I really don't want to see her dry up and blow away as she gets older. I've seen it too often when people get old enough that they think, and everyone else thinks, the only thing left to do is set on the porch."

"I would agree with you, Darvin," Cecelia said, "but I must voice my complaint regarding your use of the English language. I verily believe that you emerged yesterday from a mountain valley where electricity has not yet penetrated."

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said about me," I told her, and then found her finger in my ribs. I've known her for years, and I still can't dodge that finger. "But you undid it with that stab in the side, so I guess it's back to normal."

"Normal for you, Darvin, is not quite normal for the rest of the world." As she spoke Cecelia took her gun out of her desk drawer. She had no purse to pick up – she's never owned a purse in all the years I've known her, preferring the pockets of her pants or the pockets she sews into her skirts and dresses. She isn't at all masculine, but when it comes to carrying things around she prefers to do it the way most men do.

"Normal people scare me, C," I told her as I opened the door. She flicked the switch to turn off the overhead light, and preceded me out the door. I locked it up, and we went to the elevator, and then down to the lobby. We crossed the parking lot to my black Blazer, which I bought in July of 2006 and have never washed. If nothing else, the crusted dirt makes it easy to find at Wal-Mart.

Cecelia and I settled in, and I set about negotiating the complicated route necessary to get from my office to anywhere else. The building is on the northbound I-25 frontage road between Bogan and McLeod, and it takes an act of Congress to get there, or to get away. But it's got plenty of tenants, for it's a nice building and there are – if you rent the right space – magnificent views of the Sandia Mountains. That view is the reason I've been renting the same office since 1992. I love to sit at my desk, my feet cocked up on the corner, and look out at the mountains. By now it's a habit, but when I first came to town the mountains were a psychological necessity – they blocked off everything to the east, where things hadn't always been pleasant for me.