'Rikki's husband?'
'Un huh.'
'You never ask for help.'
'Hardly ever,' I said.
'This is bad,' she said.
'Yeah.'
'Have there been any, ah, incidents?'
'Two,' I said. I told her about them.
Susan was quiet, listening, and when I got through, she remained quiet. Beyond the yard trees, and the meadow, down the slope, beyond the stream, the hardwoods had shed all of their leaves, as if simultaneously. Past them, in the distance, other trees had not yet begun un leaving and they remained bright and various behind the bare, gray spires, punctuated by the thick evergreens.
The crow flew away, and Pearl, after a brief dash in the direction of its flight, turned her attention back to our lunch.
'It's what you do,' Susan said.
'I've always known it. And I've come to terms with it.'
Pearl put her head on Vinnie's lap, her eyes rolled up looking at the smoked turkey sandwich that Vinnie was eating.
'But it scares me.'
'Sure,' I said.
'And I want you to be as careful as you can be… and not let them kill you.'
'None of us want that to happen,' I said.
Hawk seemed not to be listening which was an illusion. Hawk always knew everything that was going on around him. He was looking at the road, and then at the meadow, and down toward the woods, and back at the road.
Vinnie was staring down at Pearl as he chewed his sandwich. She stared back up at him. He scowled at her. She continued to stare at his sandwich. Finally he pulled off a corner of the sandwich and gave it to her. She raised her head, swallowed it, put her head back in his lap and continued to gaze at the sandwich.
'Swell,' Vinnie said.
'Do you think that Lonnie is connected to Craig Sampson's murder?' Susan said.
'He could be connected,' I said.
'Or it could be something else.'
'Like?'
'Like he's running some rackets in town and he doesn't want an outsider coming in, stumbling across them, and causing trouble.'
'But isn't trying to kill you the wrong way to do that?' Susan said.
'If he's covering up something, wouldn't that just cause more attention to be brought?'
'I've thought about that,' I said.
'And I've got a couple of conclusions.'
Vinnie got careless with his sandwich, and Pearl snapped the rest of it out of his hand and sped away to finish it off. I pushed another sandwich toward Vinnie.
'Ever occur to you maybe I don't like dogs?' Vinnie said.
'It has,' I said.
'Isn't she quick?' Susan said.
'Quick,' Vinnie said, and unwrapped his new sandwich. Pearl came back to the table and looked at Susan and wagged her tail.
Susan bent over and gave her a kiss on the muzzle.
'Good for you,' she said to Pearl. Then she looked at me and said, 'Conclusions?'
'The first time they made a run at me was in Port City, in a public place, middle of the day,' I said.
'Like maybe they weren't sweating the Port City Police Department,' Hawk said, his gaze moving comfortably over the landscape.
'And the second time,' I said, 'they were in Boston, and if they'd have succeeded, who would tie it to Port City?'
'And even if somebody did,' Hawk said, 'maybe they still not sweating Port City Police.'
'Hawk has reached the same conclusions,' I said to Susan.
'I still say if it were me, I'd just lie low and await developments.'
'Sure,' I said.
