'No problem,' he said.
'No problem?'
'I said I was sorry, pal. I didn't see you.'
'That's funny. I didn't hear you,' I said.
He started to turn away, then his chest expanded and his stomach flattened, as though he were abandoning a useless protocol, and he faced me squarely with his left foot slightly forward, the right foot at an angle behind it.
'You have a reason for staring at me?' he asked quietly.
'Not in the least.'
He glanced back at Mary Beth's closed door. 'Have a good evening. Best way to do that, don't let it get complicated,' he said. He raised his finger and eyebrows at the same time, then walked down the stairs.
She was in her uniform when she let me in. There were pools of color in her cheeks and her voice had a click in it when she spoke. She began straightening couch pillows and magazines that didn't need straightening, her back turned to me.
'I'm sorry to be in a rush. I have to be on duty in twenty minutes,' she said.
'That guy's a fed.'
'What, he threw a badge on you?'
'No, he's a self-important clerk who thinks arrogance and being a cop are the same thing.'
'You don't like them much, do you?'
'He shouldn't be here. If I
can make him, other people will, too.'
'I have to go, Billy Bob.' She removed her gunbelt from the closet shelf and began strapping it on her waist. She tucked her shirt inside the belt and kept her eyes on her fingers and the cloth as it tightened under the edge of the leather.
I waited until she raised her eyes again. 'You have a personal relationship going with this guy?' I asked.
'I don't have to tell you these things.' Then I saw her cheeks sink, as though she were disturbed by the severity of her own words.
'He's putting you in jeopardy. I don't like him. That offends you?' I said.
She picked up her purse from the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. Her face was turned away from me. She pressed her fingers against her temple.
'I'm leaving and I don't have any more to say. Do you want to walk to the parking lot with me or stay here?'
'Somebody's trying to run Garland Moon out of town. Because of something he knows. But he doesn't know what it is.'
She stared at me blankly, her freckled face like a young girl's, suddenly empty of all other concern.
Temple Carrol was sitting in a deerhide chair in my office when I arrived the next morning.
'I found our man,' she said.
'How?'
'He told the guys in the emergency room he fell from a paint ladder through a glass window. They reported it as a knife wound.'
'Why didn't they believe him?'
'Somebody had done a number on him earlier. A paramedic said he looked like he'd been drug by a rope.' She propped her chin on her fingers and waited for the recognition to show in my eyes.