The Right Jack

'But I knew Fred, too. Why wasn't I killed?'

'You said you were never in SDS. You weren't close to anyone in the group except your husband,' Sigrid said. 'He might not remember you.'

'People change in sixteen or seventeen years, Val,' said Nauman.

Sigrid flipped through her earlier notes. 'Flythe told me he graduated from a now defunct college in Michigan. Carlyle Union. Does that ring any bells?'

'No.'

'He also said that he's guided several tour groups around Europe. Did you and Professor Sutton ever travel overseas?'

'Sure, but not with any tour group. We always rented a car and poked around on our own.'

'What about some of the others who were supposed to have been killed in that Red Snow explosion? Could Flythe be any of them?'

'That I can't help with at all.' Val shook her head. 'Fred and Brooks Annw ere the only two from McClellan as far as we ever heard. There was a black girl from the Panthers whom we'd met at one of the rallies, but I think her body was definitely identified. Oh, and there was a kid-what was his name? Victor? Victor Earle! He was with Red Snow near the end, but he wasn't in the lake house when the rest were killed. We heard he was in Canada or Sweden.'

'What happened to him?'

'They couldn't prove he'd taken part in the bombing of that day-care center and draft board in Chicago, but when he came back to the States in the mid-Seventies, they hit him with drug smuggling and possession of illegal arms or something. I'm pretty sure he stood trial and drew a sentence, though he must be out by now.' She shrugged helplessly. 'I'm sorry. I just can't remember. It was so long ago. Anyhow, Victor couldn't be Flythe. He was much shorter and already starting to lose his hair on top.'

Nevertheless, Sigrid added Victor Earle's name below Tristan Yorke's on her short list. It wouldn't hurt to learn Earle's whereabouts. The odds weren'tf avorable that he was involved; still, he might recognize Flythe or be reminded of someone who looked like Flythe. And it wouldn't hurt to ask for Fred Hamilton's prints either. They had to start somewhere. Sooner or later, surely something would connect if Sutton were the intended target.

They discussed the possibilities a few minutes more and might have talked even longer except that the door opened abruptly and a sobbing little boy hurled himself across the room and flung himself onto Val's lap. His face was swollen with sleep and his hair was as rumpled as his striped pajamas.

'I want Daddy to come home,' he cried. 'I don't want him to be dead. I want Daddy to come home!'

'So do I, Jacky,' his mother murmured brokenly, smoothing his dark hair, so like hers. 'So do I.'

The rain had subsided to a cool, fragrant mist when Nauman finally parked on the deserted street outside Sigrid's walled

***

garden. Her bandaged arm made getting out of the low car awkward, so he held the door and offered a strong hand up.

The streetlight down the block glistened on the wet leaves plastered along the sidewalk and haloed Bauman's silver hair as he unlocked her gate and handed back the key.

Moved by an inexplicable need, Sigrid touched his face with her fingertips and lifted her lips to his for a long intense moment.

Naument held her thin body as lightly as if she were a woodland creature that might suddenly turn and flee and looked down into her troubled gray eyes. In the six months that he had known her, it was the first time that she had initiated an embrace.

'Hello?' he said, pleased and yet puzzled.

'I-It's-Oh damn it all, Nauman!' she murmured with her face against his shoulder.

'That's okay, love, I know,' he soothed. His fingers tangled in her fine soft hair. 'Come home with me, Siga?'

He felt the negative movement of herh ead. 'Want me to stay with you?'

'No,' she said regretfully, and pushed away from him and opened the wooden door with a deep breath. 'I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm being totally unprofessional.'

'You're being human,' he said gently. 'It's allowed.'

'Yes. Well.' Her voice was wry as she moved through the gate.

The moment had passed. Oscar turned to go. At the curb, he glanced back. The door remained open and he could still see her shadowed form silhouetted against the lights of her apartment.

'Sure you won't change your mind?'

'No.'

Her low clear voice was again as cool as the damp October night and the garden door clicked shut between them.

16

THE wind shifted in the night, pushing the rain clouds out to sea, and dawn brought crystalline blue skies and dryer air. As the sun came up, a clean autumnal freshness blew through the city's glass and stone forests.

Exhausted physically and emotionally, Sigrid had gone straight to bed the night before, but she slept badly, coming awake between uneasy dreams. Each waking took her longer to slide back under and the bedclothes twisted and tangled around her restless body. She almost never rose early by choice, yet by the time the odor of coffee drifted down the hall to her room, she had been lying wide-eyed and tense for more than an hour and she wearily kicked back the covers to join Roman over the Sunday Times.

Since moving in together, their Sunday mornings were usually quiet and companionable with the radio tuned to a classicalm usic station and the luxurious sense of lazy hours stretching ahead free of all responsibilities.

Armed with coffee, juice, and a plate of jelly doughnuts, Roman would attack the thick newspaper from the end and munch steadily through to the front, pausing occasionally to dab away some powdered sugar and to read aloud a columnist or a comment that annoyed or amused him. He kept notecards beside his plate so he could jot down any stray sentence or quirky fact that struck him as the basis for a magazine article.

For her part, Sigrid usually bit into a French cruller and began at page one, moved on to the News of the Week in Review, zigged with the book reviews while Roman zagged with the magazine, then skimmed the other sections before diving happily into the puzzle page.

One could almost chart how long each had been awake by their respective places in the paper and by the number of pastries still in the bakery box on the table.

Today, however, Sigrid could not concentrate. A dull headache at theb ase of her skull echoed the faint ache in her arm and she felt thick-tongued and clumsy. She phoned the hospital and learned that Tillie was to be moved out of intensive care that afternoon. It was too early for any of the day shift to be at headquarters yet, so she returned restlessly to the newspaper.

Diagramless crosswords were her favorite puzzles, but even finding a pair of them at the back of the magazine section couldn't divert her this morning.

What she really wanted, what she truly needed, was a long session in the nearest swimming pool. Since childhood, swimming had been her principal exercise. She was not a team player, jogging bored her, and sweating heavily in a workout class had never appealed; but slicing through water, pushing herself physically until an almost mindless euphoria enfolded her, never failed to release all tensions and leave her mentally refreshed.

The knife wounds in her arm and hand placed pools off-limits, though, and just knowing she could not swim for several weeks knotted the muscles in her neck even tighter.

On the radio, the anxious drive of a Bach harpsichord concerto was starting to affect her like fingernails scraped across a blackboard.

Abruptly, she shoved the paper aside and went and changed into jeans and a bulky blue sweater.