Twenty Blue Devils

They knew better than to bother. Nelson sulked. Maggie pouted. The others went back to eating.

'That's that, then,” Nick said, his spirits visibly lifting. “Dessert time.'

He turned in his chair to call over his shoulder.

'Hey, Poema...you suppose we could get a cup of coffee around here?'

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Chapter 19

* * * *

'You have reached Julie and Gideon Oliver,” Gideon was informed by his own voice, sounding very much like a robot, and a pretty listless robot at that. “We aren't available to take your call, but if you'll leave a message at the tone we'll get back to you.'

This was disconcerting. Why wasn't Julie home? It was after 10:00 in Tahiti—past midnight in Port Angeles—and she hadn't said anything about going anywhere for the night. He chewed his lip for a few moments before it occurred to him to press the pound button to see if she had left him a message. When he did he was immediately relieved to hear her voice.

'Hi, love,” she said, sounding very much like Julie; bright, and sparkling, and pretty. “I hope you remember to listen for this message, because it's the sort of thing you always forget you can do, and if you call me and I'm not home and you don't know where I am you'll worry, right? But then if you did forget, then you're not listening now anyway, and you can't hear this, and if you didn't forget, then obviously you are listening, so what's the point of my babbling on about it?'

Gideon smiled as she caught her breath.

'Anyway, since you weren't going to be home for a while, I thought I might as well get out in the field for a couple of days and join the winter elk count in the Hoh quadrant; it's better than sitting behind a desk at the admin center, although you probably don't think so.'

She was right about that. Two days of moldering in the rainiest river valley in the United States during the wettest, coldest, gloomiest month of the year, never getting quite dry, never getting quite warm, was not his idea of a good time. He liked the Northwestern winters all right, but he preferred to look out at them through a double- paned window with a log fire crackling in the fireplace behind him. And he preferred dry beds to wet sleeping bags. For an anthropologist, as she sometimes reminded him and as he readily admitted, he had an unseemly fondness for the soft life.

'So that's where I am,” she went on. “I hope everything's all right in Tahiti and I hope your corpse isn't too terribly messy. I'll talk to you when I get back. Hi to John. Tell him I'm meeting Marti for lunch on Wednesday. And that's about it. I miss you, Gideon. I wish you were already back.” She paused. Her voice softened and dropped a notch. “I do love you.'

'I love you too,” he said to the recording, then left a message on the machine to that effect.

He leaned back, warmed by the call but feeling oddly vexed too. It didn't take him long to figure out why: he was always a little grumpy when Julie was away from home. The fact that he wasn't there either had nothing to do with the matter. When somebody traveled, he liked it to be him. Julie he preferred safe at home where she belonged—not that he would ever admit it to her. It was an attitude he didn't seem to have much control over, probably a genetic residue dating back to Australopithecus afarensis and before: man come back to cave from hunt, man want find woman waiting, cooking, loving...not out chasing stupid elk.

Well, what the hell, it was dangerous, wasn't it? What if they stampeded or something?

But of course he had to laugh at himself, remembering how extraordinarily capable Julie was; whom did he know that could take care of herself better in the out-of-doors? In fact, hadn't she once found and rescued him after he'd gotten himself hopelessly lost, confused, and miserable in the deep woods?

He was still thinking about that when he fell asleep with a smile on his face.

* * * *

The following morning at 9 A.M. Gideon and John again appeared at the gendarmerie on the avenue Bruat. They were treated in the same supercilious manner by the same supercilious clerk, but this time made to wait half an hour before being admitted to Colonel Bertaud's presence. By the time they were seated in the commandant's office John was already steaming, not a good sign.

Bertaud was not in a good mood either. “And what have we this morning, gentlemen?” was his soft, steely greeting. “A new murder to report?” The folder in front of him remained open, the fountain pen remained between his fingers, poised to write.

'No, the same old one,” John said bluntly.

All things considered, Gideon thought, not an auspicious beginning.

'Colonel,” he said, “we're sorry to bother you again, but we've come up with something that I think will interest you. I looked at the photographs of Brian Scott's body yesterday, and in my opinion there's pretty good reason to think he was stabbed to death.'

Bertaud screwed the cap on his pen. “The photographs?'

'These,” John said, and handed him the clasp-envelope across the desk.

Bertaud opened it and slid the contents out. “The top two,” Gideon said. “If you look at—'

'You made photocopies without asking for permission?” Bertaud said to John. “No doubt that is the way the FBI conducts itself in America, but—'

'If I asked for permission, would I have gotten it?” John shot back.