Parker turned to her.
“You got all weird looking.”
“Nothing. Just thinking where we’ll stop for the night.”
Hannah continued to gaze at her for a moment.
The deceptions had been coming more frequently lately. Small, but a lie is a lie...
On either side of the road were forests of black trees and fields of dying grass and of corn and wheat stubble. The mile markers appeared and vanished. She thought of calculus, whose name camefrom the Latin word for “little pebble,” and referred to the practice in ancient Rome of using small stones to measure distances. Of all the mathematical disciplines, Allison Parker loved this one the most and she used it daily in her job.
Hannah was less animated now; she would have sensed her mother’s mood. Parker accelerated slightly along the deserted two-lane highway. The sun was gone. Clouds were low in the fragrant autumn evening and moved fast, a continuous blanket. Wind tugged leaves from branches and swirled them downward, where they swirled yet again in the vehicle’s turbulent wake.
“It’s spooky,” the girl said.
It was.
“I’m tired. How much farther?”
Allison Parker didn’t have an answer for that. All she knew was that every mile she put between the two of them and Jon Merritt felt like a gift.
23
The detective was young, with short-cut hair that clung close to his scalp, not unlike Shaw’s, though brown. He wore black slacks and a blue shirt, and a red and black tie hung down from the open collar, a look that Shaw never understood.
Dunfry Kemp’s physique was triangular and his muscled arms tested the cotton of his shirt. He’d been a wrestler, Shaw’s sport in college.
Presently on the phone, he glanced up with a blink as Shaw sat down in the only free chair. The other two were filled with paperwork. His nod of greeting was a burdened one.
Kemp’s office was on the Ferrington Police Department’s second floor, along a lengthy corridor devoted, signs explained, to Investigations and to Administration. The cubicle, though, might have been a storeroom. Stacked on his desk and against the green walls and on the brown carpet and on two-thirds of the chairs were battered folders, manila and brown accordions. Must have been two hundred. Piles of loose papers too. A whiteboard was on the wall—it was a flowchart about the investigation into the Street Cleaner serial killer, the faces of the victims.
Kemp disconnected and asked, “And it’s...?”
A woman in a blue uniform brought in two more folders. Kemp eyed them with dismay.
“Colter Shaw.”
“You work for Marty Harmon. Security?”
It was close enough.
“That’s right.”
“And this’s about...?”
Another bee buzzed into the office and deposited yet more folders. No wonder the kid was having trouble finishing sentences. A whisper: “Oh, man.”
Shaw picked up the narrative. “I’m trying to locate Jon Merritt’s wife and daughter. I understand you caught the case.”
Kemp looked at Shaw out of the corner of his eye. Nothing deceptive about this. It seemed to be just his natural angle of gaze. “Fact is, being honest, I normally wouldn’t talk to a civilian, but the captain said it’s for Mr. Harmon. And I don’t know if you know but he’s sort of saving the city.”
“The water.”
“Yessir. But fact is thereisno case really. Jon justtalkedabout hurting her.”
“Killing her,” Shaw corrected and noted that the detective had used Merritt’s given name.
“But he was lawfully discharged and didn’t commit any overt acts. That’s the key word. Overt.”