I nodded.
'You learn anything, you'll dash right on in here and tell me about it,' DeSpain said.
'Sure. Who's working the case?'
'Me,' DeSpain said.
'Keeping your hand in?' I said.
'Sure.'
'I find something, I'll let you know,' I said.
'
'Predate it,' DeSpain said. He scratched a spot behind his ear with the muzzle of the gun.
'We're fighting crime up here day and night,' he said.
'Day and fucking night.'
'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,' I said.
DeSpain's wolfish grin flashed again. It was almost a reflex.
There was no humor in the grin, or in the eyes that were as hard and flat as two stones.
'Yeah,' he said.
'It is, isn't it.'
CHAPTER 8
We were in front of a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse set on twelve acres about three miles from the center of Concord, waiting for the real-estate lady. The house didn't look its age, but it didn't look my age either. The foundation plantings were overgrown, the paint was peeling, some of the windowsills had shriveled and warped. The land rolled gently down toward a stream and merged with thickly forested wetlands, where the deciduous trees were already beginning to turn. From most places on the property you could see no other human sign.
Pearl the Wonder Dog raced around in steadily widening circles, her nose to the ground, her short tail erect. After every full circle she would come to stand in front of Susan with her mouth open, and stare up at her for a moment. Susan would pat her, and Pearl would dash off in another circle.
A single blue jay curved in past some pine trees and settled on the lawn and cocked his head and listened for worms. He heard none and went up again, circling closer to us before he settled on the limb of a red maple. Like most birds he seemed never completely at rest, moving his head, fluttering his wings, making brief, abrupt hops on his tree limb for no reason that I could see. On the other hand, he may have thought me sluggish, leaning against the car in the last glimmer of sunlight beside this striking woman.
Probably at least thirteen ways of looking at a blue jay.
'This is the house,' Susan said.
'Perfect,' I said.
'Having established that we cannot live together, we should buy a house in the country together.'
'We have also established that we can spend weekends together,' Susan said.
'That's because you always distract me with endless sexual invention,' I said.
'Doesn't seem endless to me,' Susan said.
'Ever since I sold the Maine place I've thought we should buy a weekend place out of the city, with some land we could fence, so the baby could run around and point birds.'
'Pearl's instincts run more to pointing Oreo cookies, I think.'
Susan ignored me.
'And this is the place. It's run down so we can buy it cheap.
Then you'll fix it up, and we'll come here with Pearl on autumn weekends and roast chestnuts and have a nice time.'
When she was really intense about something she paid very little attention to anything else. Except, usually, me.
'We always have a nice time,' I said.
'Yes. We do,' Susan said.
'Are you making any progress in Port City?'
'Sure. Hawk's watching Christopholous and no one's following him,' I said.
'I had a nice talk with DeSpain.'
'Does he know anything?'
'No. He gave me the psycho list, but there's nothing on it that helps.'
'Is he any good?' Susan said.
'DeSpain. Yeah. He's a good cop. Very tough cop.'
