'Felton,' I said. 'He'll walk right past you, lean over and kiss me.'
Susan had great reflexes. She was leaning across from her seat and her face covered mine as Felton went past on the sidewalk beside the Jeep. I could see him with one eye through Susan's hair. He was watchful in the exaggerated way of a kid playing war. He walked past us and turned in at his mother's house.
'Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good,' I said to Susan.
Susan sat back up in the seat, looking toward Felton. 'What now?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'What's his mother like? If he confesses, will she help him?'
'I have only his perception of her. If it's accurate, she will be solely interested in how to prevent damage to herself. If helping him would hush it up, she'd help. If turning him in would make her safe, she'd do that. Her concern with others' opinion of her seems nearly paralyzing, in her son's report of it.'
'Why would he be here?' I said.
'I don't know.'
'Is he likely to be especially vulnerable in front of his mother?'
'Yes,' Susan said.
'Okay,' I said. 'He's clearly dressed up in his battle gear. He looks like the Hollywood version of a cat burglar.'
Susan was watching with me as Felton went to his mother's house and went in the front door.
'He's got his gym bag. Maybe he's got clean socks and a toothbrush in there. But maybe he's got rope and tape and a thirty-eight caliber gun,' I said. 'If we caught him with the murder gun, we'd have him.'
'It would be good to have hard evidence,' Susan said.
'It would be intensely stupid to walk around carrying the murder weapon, knowing there's people after him,' I said.
'It would be a way to be caught,' Susan said.
'If he wants to be,' I said.
'Part of him wants to be,' Susan said. 'It's probably what brought him to therapy. And caused him to write and make the phone calls.'
'And come here, to his mother's, in the light of the midday sun,' I said. 'Let's go in.'
'And then what?'
'We'll see what develops,' I said.
'Do we have the right, in front of his mother?'
'Suze, up to now I've played mostly your game. But now we're in my park. Now we do it my way,' I said.
'Because?'
'Because I know more about this than you do. Because this is what /
I do.'
Susan was silent for a moment, looking at Felton's mother's house.
'And maybe,' I said, 'he's come with the rope and the gun for his mother.'
Susan nodded slowly and opened the door on her side.
The front door opened into a small hallway with tan figured wallpaper.
Stairs led straight up to the second floor. To the right was a small dining room with a mahogany table, two corner cabinets. To the left was a living room that ran the depth of the house and was papered in beige with large red flowers. Felton sat toward the back in a bright red velvet wing chair. His mother sat on the sofa, which was covered with a floral throw.
'Well, who's this?' Mrs. Felton said. She was a sharp faced little woman, her hair tightly permed and colored a honey-brown. She had on a gray-green dress and green high-heeled shoes.
'My name is Spenser, Mrs. Felton. And this is Dr. Silverman.'
Mrs. Felton frowned a little at the Dr. Silverman. Doctors were male.
And Silverman sounded Jewish. Felton was absolutely motionless in his chair. The gym bag was on the floor at his feet. He looked at a point in space somewhere between me and Susan.
'What do you want?' Mrs. Felton said. 'You should have knocked.'
'Do you know what your son's been up to, Mrs. Felton?' I said. Soaping windows? Peeking in the girls' locker room, putting a tack on the teacher's chair? Her face got hard and the lines became immobile and her eyes slitted. She turned toward Felton.
'What does he mean, Gordon? What have you done now?'
Felton remained rigid and still and not looking at any of us. 'Nothing.'
Felton said. 'I don't know them.'
