Bookman's promise

to the bathroom and beyond that was apparently the only other room in the house, their bedroom.

“Is she in there?”

He nodded. “Denise is in with her. Sit down, she knows you’re here.”

We sat at the table and Ralston offered coffee. He caught me looking around at his raggedy surroundings. “I told you it wasn’t the Brown.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I was just wondering where you two planned to sleep tonight.”

“We’ll get by. Won’t be the first time we bagged it on the floor.”

I nodded toward the door. “What happened?”

“She just all of a sudden gave out. Her old heart decided it had enough.”

“Did you call a doctor?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t want us to.”

A long moment passed.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “It seems indecent to let her die when help is just a phone call away. But you’ve got to ask yourself what the hell you’re saving her for—to be sent back to that place, just so she can die next month instead of now? She hated it there, you know.”

“That’s not exactly what I was thinking. In fact, I agree with everything you’re saying. But I used to be a cop and in situations like this, I still think like one.”

“Are you saying we could be prosecuted? Man, that would figure, wouldn’t it?”

“I never had a negligent homicide.” I looked at Erin. “Isn’t that what this would be?”

She nodded. “Criminally negligent homicide would probably be the statute.”

“Jesus.” Ralston looked at Erin and said, “You a lawyer?”

She nodded and I said, “She’s a real lawyer, Mike. Be glad she’s here.”

“It’s a fairly straightforward law,” she said. “If you cause a death by your failure to act, it could conceivably be prosecuted as a class-five felony. That’s very unlikely to happen, but you should be aware of the possibilities.” She shrugged. “An aggressive DA…”

“Jesus,” he said again. “The woman just wants to die a natural death, for God’s sake, without having tubes running out of her nose for three months. What’s the law got to do with that?”

“You’re like me,” I told him: “all fire, no ice. You leap before you look. You do a pretty good job of keeping the fire contained, but it’s always there simmering, isn’t it?”

He walked to the window and looked out into the backyard.

“Sit down and talk to me,” I said. “You make me nervous, pacing around.”

He sat and I made the universal gesture for Go ahead, speak. But when he did, it was not about the old woman’s life, it was about her quest. “Have you asked yourself what she really wants? I mean, what can she hope to gain from this search she’s taken on? Even if she found it all tonight and could legally sell it, what good would it do her?”

“It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. Maybe she’s got someone to leave it to.”

“But in the end it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s pretty hopeless, what she’s asking you to do.” I sighed. “Yeah, it is.”

I brought him up to speed on my talk with Dean Treadwell, but we both knew that the odds of anything coming from that bookstore were less than the snowball in hell. It was still raw speculation, we were spinning our wheels, but at the moment there was nothing else to do. There was no hint yet that Mrs. Ralston was ready to let me into the bedroom.

“This is great coffee,” Erin said. “What do you do to it?”

Ralston smiled. “That’s my secret, miss. I’m a gourmet cook by trade.”

“I’m learning all kinds of stuff about you tonight, Mike,” I said. “So what’s the story of you two? You and the missus.”

Again he gave me that humorless laugh. “How much time you got?”

The question seemed to beg itself out of easy answers, but then he had one. “The easy answer is, I screwed up everything I ever touched. I drank, gambled, lost everything. Hell, look around you. We are starting from scratch. I’ve got nothing but that woman sittin‘ in there at the old lady’s bedside, but that’s enough. And that’s the story of us. Since you asked.”

I heard a stir and Denise appeared in the doorway. She was at least in her late forties, a good ten years older than Ralston: tall, gangly, black as night, homely as hell yet lovely in an exotic way that had nothing to do with what the