Bookman's wake

“Well,” I said. “Looks like we fish or cut bait.”

“Let me go in,” Trish said. “At least if Pruitt’s in there he won’t know me on sight.”

“Okay, but do it quick. Get us three coffees to go, then get back out here and tell me what’s going on.”

She clutched her raincoat and struggled through the wind to the front door. I got back in the truck and waited. Bowman didn’t say anything, and in a minute I forgot he was there. I thought about Pruitt and Grayson, and about the blind woman in Baltimore. And I was suddenly very nervous.

One of Scofield’s grunts got out of the Caddy and tried valiantly to light a cigarette. No smoking allowed in the old man’s car, I thought. But the wind was fierce and at last he had to give it up.

The cafe got busy. It was a workingman’s joint, the customers coming and going in blue jeans and flannel. The slots in front of the building were now filled in with cars, and another row had begun out near the road behind us. A young couple brushed past, then two farmers, then a guy in coveralls who looked like the town grease monkey. They all converged at the front door, just as the door swung open and Trish came out.

She stepped aside, clutching a brown paper bag against her breast. I got out and let her into the truck and she gave me the news. Our friends had taken a booth at the far end of the dining room and were sitting there alone, waiting.

Trish gave out the coffees. “Hope you don’t have to be anywhere,” she said by way of apology to Bowman. He just grinned, well aware of the points he was piling up with her, and said his time was her time. He’d need to call in at nine and make sure a few things got done: other than that, he was all hers. More people came and went, old men in twos and threes mixed with the occasional loner. They would fill up the tables in a corner, eat their soft-boiled eggs and gripe as old men in small towns have always done about the thieves and sons of bitches running things in Washington. I could fit right in if they’d let me: a helluva lot better that would be than sitting out here like three bumps on a log. This was a difficult place for a stakeout. But you’d be much too conspicuous out on the road, so you took what the situation gave you and hoped you blended in. I hunched down in the seat till my eyes were level with the dash. I could still see everything that went on at the front door.

Bowman and Trish were talking shop again. I listened but did not hear. Then we all settled into that quiet restlessness that always seems to come in the second hour. I replayed the case in my head, trying to remember everything from the top. Slater walked into my store and we did our little macho dance. I crossed swords with Pruitt, came to know Eleanor and the Rigbys, absorbed the legend of the Graysons, met Huggins and Amy Harper. But through it all I kept thinking about a woman I had never met and probably never would, a blind woman who had gone crazy in Baltimore.

I got my chance at her when Bowman went to make his phone call. “The guy in Baltimore,” I said. “When he called you back, did he say anything about the particulars of that particular case?”

“He read me some stuff from the clips. I made some notes.” She opened her purse and got out her steno pad. “I spent more time with him than the others because of the blind woman.”

“Yeah, the blind woman.”

“What’re you thinking?”

“I don’t know yet. Go on with what he told you.”

“The victim’s name was Allingham. He lived with his wife on the outskirts of Baltimore, a suburb called Ellicott City. Nice house, secluded neighborhood, well-to-do people in their midfifties.”

“And the wife survived.”

“Not only survived, she seemed to’ve been deliberately left alone. He came into the room with her. She could hear him breathing.”

“ Him …did she say it was a him?”

“That’s how the clips had it. He came in… he stood there breathing hard. She knew what was happening, too: knew they had an intruder and he had just killed or seriously hurt her husband. Blind people see better than we think.”

“What else?”

She flipped a page. I looked at her notes and saw a cryptic brand of shorthand, probably something of her own making that was unreadable to the rest of the world. “Her name was Elizabeth. She was never a credible witness. She just sank into darkness after that. But who could blame her?”

I closed my eyes and tried to see it. Irish said, “The cops thought it might’ve been her dog that saved her. She had this German shepherd Seeing Eye dog, very protective. They say the dog raised hell when the cops arrived. They had to bring in a dog man to muzzle him before they could interview the widow.”

“I don’t think the dog had anything to do with it.”

“How so?”

“Dogs don’t usually discourage that kind of killer, at least not for long. If he’d wanted her, he’d go through the dog to get her.”

“Maybe the noise scared him off.”

“Maybe. And I can’t help wondering how she could hear the killer breathing if the dog was barking.”

“Who knows what she really heard? But look, are you going somewhere with this?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s just nagging at me. Did any of your news guys mention ashes at the scene?”