“Well, the fellows at the airport did say she had a large trunk with her, so maybe our magician friend Bret was with her. In any case, between information that’s coming in on Ryan and Neukirk and now this, everybody is pretty busy back in Las Piernas. I think I’m going to have to send Pete on home.”
Pete was happy to go, antsy to get on the road. Rachel was more reluctant. “I don’t want to leave you here alone,” she said.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “And I’m not alone.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Yes. Thanks. I’ll be coming home soon. Maybe you could help Jack to hang in there.”
“Sure,” she said, and gave me a fierce hug before she left.
The call from Hocus came in right at midnight.
“Good evening, Irene, Tom.” Samuel again.
“Evening, Samuel,” Cassidy answered. “Bret still on his way back from Bakersfield?”
I looked over to him in surprise, then realized what he was doing.
“Now, Tom, that’s the sort of question you know we’ll never answer.”
“I just figured he was the magician in the family. The master of disguise and all that.”
“I have talents of my own,” Samuel said.
“Really? I mean, I’m not surprised, but I guess I supposed the medical training would take up a lot of time.”
“It did. But as it so happens — perhaps Irene will recognize this.” Matching his voice to that of the old man’s, he said, “ ‘As long as you like, honey.’ ”
“So it was you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, laughing. “And since you were expecting this call, you must have discovered our note. Now, what we’d like to know is, how are things coming along?”
“Well, as I mentioned, it’s tough getting things done on the weekend,” Cassidy said.
“And yet Irene has narrowed the field, hasn’t she? She’s even gone to the place where Powell died. If she’s willing to sit around and talk to the woman her husband was once in love with, she’s making a real effort, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Cassidy said. “I think that shows you that we’re doing our best here. She’s been through a lot today, trying to find out who this man could be.”
“Irene, you’re being very quiet,” he said.
“Sorry, Samuel, I’m just tired.”
“Poor Irene. Cassidy is a man of great endurance. Did you know that? In high school, he was a miler.”
“A miler?” I asked.
“In track and field,” Samuel said. “I could name some of his times, and the races he won. It’s how he got to college. On a track scholarship.”
“I’m flattered,” Cassidy said. “You must have made a real effort to find that out. You interested in track, Samuel?”
“No, Cassidy, in you. You’ve become a specialty of mine. I know all sorts of things about you. I know the name of the little town in Texas where you grew up. I know your high school. I’ve been there. People are very friendly there.”
“Yes, they are,” Cassidy said, but he shifted in his chair. His forehead furrowed with tension.
“Why’d you go into law enforcement, Cassidy?”
Cassidy relaxed a little. “Oh, like a lot of people who get into it, I wanted to make a difference. Is that why you got into medicine?”
“No. I’m not really in medicine, of course, although I know as much as any doctor. I didn’t become an EMT because I was into the humanity of it all, Cassidy. I’m not very fond of most of humanity, for one thing. But it takes a lot to hold my interest — I had such a thrilling childhood, you see. Being a paramedic is far more exciting to me than working in a hospital would be. All except the emergency department. But I like my job better. I like racing to the scene, hearing the sirens, finding everything in chaos — saving them or not saving them. It’s up to me. Just me. We’re alike in that way, aren’t we, Cassidy?”
“There are definite similarities, Samuel,” he said.
“We even have rather tragic beginnings to our stories,” Samuel said.
Cassidy was silent. I was startled to notice he was gripping the phone cord. Cassidy — tense. I watched his face. In the past forty-eight hours, almost constantly in his company, I had not seen this look. He was shaken.
“Yes, that little town in Texas,” Samuel went on. “That’s as far as anyone looks, isn’t it? Thomas Cassidy, track star, likeable guy, very popular. They don’t ask who you dated in high school, do they? They don’t find out that you didn’t date the girls from the local school, do they?”
I saw Cassidy’s gaze wander. I wrote a note: “Cassidy? What’s going on?”
“They do the background checks, but they don’t ask the right people,” Samuel went on. “The jealous women. You met her at a track meet, I hear. From a rival school. But her town wasn’t too far from yours, right?”
Cassidy was ignoring the note. He had closed his eyes.
“What’s the point to all of this, Samuel?” I said.
