'You got the box?'
'Yeah, and the rose and the paper. I'll bet there's no prints on it.'
'I'll bet you're right,' Quirk said. 'But we'll try. Can you bring it over?'
'No,' I said. 'I'm not leaving her alone.'
'May be just one of the fruitcakes she treats,' Quirk said.
'Still not leaving her alone,' I said.
'Yeah. Okay, I'll send somebody over. If it's one of her fruitcakes, there might be prints.'
I hung up and sipped my second cup. Instant coffee has much less caffeine than ground coffee; two cups of instant was practically none. I put the water on to heat for a third cup.
Susan's phone rang. It was separate from the office phone. I picked it up and said, 'Hello.' Hawk's voice said, 'Susan?' I said, 'Nobody likes a minority smart-ass.'
'True,' Hawk said. 'What you need?' I told him about the rose intruder.
Hawk said, 'And he punched you in the head and you chased him and he got away? Was he a brother?'
'I don't think so,' I said.
'You let a white guy run away from you?'
'What do you want from me,' I said. 'I'm a white guy too.'
'Yeah, you so funky sometimes I forget. I'll come over in case we have to chase him again.'
At two minutes to eight Susan appeared wearing a salt and-pepper-tweed jacket over a black turtleneck. She had on a full black skirt and black shoes with a short heel.
'You are more beautiful than a bird dog on point,' I said.
'And damned near as smart,' Susan said. 'I know we have to talk more.
But I simply can't right now. I know you can't leave me unprotected, but I cannot have you or Hawk lounging in my waiting room when the patients come.'
'I'm going to get your front door fixed and then one of us will be around, but we won't be in the way and we won't scare the patients.'
'Yes,' she said. She kissed me. I patted her on the fanny and she was out and down to her office as her first patient arrived. I heard her say 'Come along' as I stood at the top of the stairs out of sight.
A carpenter named Shutt came over and replaced Susan's jimmied front door. I gave Susan my S&W .32 to keep in her desk drawer, and Hawk and I took turns lingering at the top of Susan's stairs while she conducted business. There are few things more boring than standing around at the top of a stairwell out of sight.
When Susan got through that night I took her down to Cambridge Police Headquarters to get her a pistol permit. The gun guy was a bear-shaped Tac cop who'd served two tours in Vietnam and did some gunsmithing on the side.
'Can she shoot?' he said.
'Taught her myself,' I said.
'I was afraid of that.' The cop's name was Steve Costa. 'Let's go up to the range, ma'am. Have you fire some rounds to qualify.'
'What if I don't qualify?' Susan said.
Costa grinned. 'You'll qualify,' he said.
We went upstairs and along a corridor lined with tired yellow tiles.
Costa unlocked the door and we went into the range.
'Lovely,' Susan said.
'Yeah, they don't waste much time on the range,' Costa said.
The room looked like an afterthought, jammed into a forgotten space under a long stairwell. There was a small shooting table on which a coffee can full of brass had tipped over and spilled most of the cartridge casings on the floor. Costa walked down the narrow alley of the range and pinned a target onto the trolley with a clothespin. He set the target about fifteen feet away and walked back to the shooting table.
'As you can see, ma'am, the target consists of the silhouette of a man surrounded by increasingly concentric circles; the smallest circle, around the man's head and heart area, is worth ten points. The next circle is worth nine, and so on until the last circle, outside of which there is no score.'
'Please call me Susan.'
'Okay, Susan. In order to qualify for a license to carry firearms you have to score seventy, firing a maximum of thirty rounds.'
'Fine,' Susan said.
'Want to fire some for practice, Susan?'
'No, thank you.'
