“Not big on small talk,” she said, apparently to herself. Crossing past him, she said, “Let me put this stuff away. You want coffee?”
“No need.”
She went into the bathroom, came back out empty-handed, and said, “I get it, we’re not gonna be chums. Fine. What’s the message?”
“Wait a minute,” Parker said. “When was the last time you hung out with your brother?”
“Grammar school,” she said. “Why?”
“You’re here because he got shot,” Parker said. “You’re not here to be a hostess or something. We’re not gonna take tea together.”
She thought that over, nodding her head. “You’re right,” she decided. “If Jake wasn’t in the hospital, I’d never have met you in my life, and I wouldn’t miss the experience.”
“That’s right.”
“I have the idea,” she said, “he was involved with you and your friends in something he shouldn’t have been, and whoever shot him, I’m glad they did, because now he’s out of it, safe in the hospital.”
“That’s right,” Parker said. “But he can still help.”
“Not to get on the wrong side of the law all over again.”
“He can’t, in the hospital. But he can phone his motel, tell them we got another guy coming in a few days, same deal.”
“I suppose so,” she said, clearly not knowing what the deal was.
“And tell him, we won’t try to get in touch with him until he’s out of the hospital.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Fine.”
He turned away, but she said, “Wait one second, will you?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
She waited, frowning, then abruptly said, “I don’t like Dr. Madchen.”
He watched her face. “You don’t like him?”
“He isn’t Jake’s doctor now, not while he’s in the hospital, but he’s hanging around anyway, and he’s making Jake nervous, and now he’s making
“In what way?”
“I take it,” she said, “he’s somehow part of what you people are doing, or connected with it somehow. And he’s like the nerd kid who just wants to hang around with the big boys, only he drops hints like how it’s really important to him that everything be okay and—”
“Hints?”
“Just to Jake, I think,” she said. “But I mean, in my presence. I guess he figures, I’m the sister, it’s safe. But he’s a needy guy, and he makes me nervous.”
“Thank you,” Parker said. “All of a sudden, he makes me nervous, too.”
“You’ll talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll tell Jake what you said.”
“Good.”
She walked him to the door. “This Dr. Madchen,” she said, “I don’t mean he’s a bad guy or a threatening guy or anything like that. I just mean he’s drawing attention to himself because he’s so needy and uncomfortable.”
“I understand,” Parker said.
“So when you see him,” she suggested, “use your best bedside manner.”
5
A mile from Riviera Park, the rearview mirror in the Lexus showed Parker a battered old tan Plymouth Fury that tugged at his memory. It seemed to be pacing him, hanging two or three cars back in moderate traffic as he drove east across Massachusetts toward the motel. Early afternoon, the thin September sun not yet low enough to obscure his view back there. Who was that?
Elaine Langen’s house, when he’d gone there to get her gun. No other car parked outside when he arrived. The meeting with Mrs. Langen cut short because a “lady policeman” had come to the house. That tan Plymouth Fury parked next to his Lexus when he came around from the kitchen door and drove away.
So she recognized him, too. She was watching Jake’s place, to see what activity might take place there, or she had beat cops watching it. For whatever reason, she connected this Lexus to both the Langen house and Jake’s mobile home. And now she was following, waiting to see where he’d go next.
Nowhere with her. Parker made a few turns, accelerated, decelerated, put himself in positions where he could make abrupt turns across lanes of oncoming traffic, and without raising a sweat, she stayed with him. Sometimes she lost ground, but she never lost the Lexus.
