Gliffe wouldn't just call Rayborn, he would call both the other two. But it would take him a while to get in touch with Younger, because Younger was probably still standing in front of the hotel. But eventually word would get to Younger, and Younger would check the room and see that he was gone. Then he would call Rayborn. When Rayborn said, 'Yes, he called,' that meant yes, Gliffe called. When he turned and looked at Parker and then said, 'Yes, he is,' that meant yes, Parker is here. When he said, 'Of course not,' he meant of course he hadn't told Parker anything. When he said, 'I'll try. I don't promise anything,' he meant he'd try to keep Parker from leaving here before Younger could show up.
Rayborn, having ended the conversation, came back across the room. 'A patient,' he said, smiling, and shrugging. 'We're always on call, we general practitioners. Now, where were we?' He sat down again in the same sagging armchair.
'I was out of touch with Joe the last three years,' Parker said, lying. 'I wondered how long he'd had this heart trouble.'
'Two years or more,' the doctor said, lying right back at him. 'In fact, I think it was his increasing blood pressure that first brought him to me.'
Joe Sheer didn't have any history of heart trouble, right up to three months ago, Parker knew that for sure. He also knew Joe had a doctor down in Omaha. A sudden unexpected heart attack could have taken him here, and then this doctor would be in charge instead of the doctor in Omaha, but that was the only way. The story the doctor was telling was bushwah.
Which meant Captain Younger was headed this way, no question.
Parker wanted to talk to the captain, wanted to find out what the captain was trying for, but not yet. There was still more to be done first.
He got to his feet and said, 'Well, I won't keep you. You must be busy.'
'Not at all, not at all.' The doctor struggled out of the chair, trying to look casual, saying, 'I have plenty of time, office hours don't begin till two.'
'I have to get back to the hotel,' Parker told him, and started walking towards the front door.
The doctor trotted after him. 'I haven't even offered you coffee yet. Or a drink? Surely you can spare ten minutes, I'd love to talk with you about Joe Shardin, a fine old man, there really can't be any reason for you to rush away, you just barely got here, we'll have a drink and-'
Parker opened the door. 'Maybe I'll come back when I've got more time,' he said. He looked at the doctor, who was blinking and looking winded, and still trying to be casual. 'We'll have a lot to talk about,' Parker told him. 'Some other time.' He stepped out on to the porch and let the door close behind him.
When he was a block away he looked back and saw the black Ford pulling to a stop in front of the doctor's house. But then he turned the corner and didn't see what happened next.
FIVE
IT was a smallish white clapboard house on a narrow lot in the middle of the block, flanked on both sides by houses larger than itself, but with vacant lots and fields and unfinished streeting in the block behind it. There was a driveway in from the street, running beside the house, but no garage. A gnarled apple tree stood in the middle of the back yard.
Parker had come the front way the last time, and by night. This time he was coming the back way, by day, walking across the scrubby weedy fields with his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets and his shoulder hunched against a cold breeze blowing across from his left. He came in at an angle, so he could see past the apple tree to the blank, black rear windows of the house and along the driveway to the kerb out front. No face showed in the windows, and no car was parked at the kerb.
In retirement, Joe had gone the whole way, even getting interested in the things retired types were supposed to be excited about, including gardening. The back yard was half lawn and half flower garden, broken up into alternative squares of each like a checkerboard, with a red slate walk meandering through it and around the apple tree and eventually to the back porch, a narrow affair with three creaking steps. A milk-company box stood on this porch, along with a broom, two empty beer cases, and a hoe. A clothes-line pulley hung from a hook on one of the porch uprights, but there was no clothes-line attached to it.
The screen door was unlocked, but the inner door wasn't. Parker tried the knob, then tried leaning on it a little, then stood and considered it a few seconds. He'd brought no tools along, nothing at all, not expecting to have to work.
There was no point fooling with it. He held the screen door open, raised his right foot, and slammed the flat of his heel into the door just above the knob. It made a hell of a racket, and the glass in the door trembled as though thinking about breaking. The second time Parker kicked it, the door gave up and opened, springing back so far and so hard it slammed into the wall. Parker stepped in, latched the screen door, and shut the door again. It wouldn't close all the way, but good enough.
He was in the kitchen, a small square room with green-check linoleum on the floor and chintz curtains over the windows. The refrigerator was small and old and had been repainted; Parker could see the brush marks from across the room. The small wooden table and the sideboard were both clean, but in the sink were one plate, one set of silverware, one coffee cup, and two glasses. Parker opened the refrigerator and found it still working; so the electricity had never been turned off. That was stupid. The refrigerator contained some TV dinners, some hot dogs and hamburgers, a head of lettuce, an opened bottle of milk, a few twelve-ounce battles of beer, and a quarter-pound stick of butter.
Parker shut the refrigerator door again and looked around the room. What was he looking for? He didn't know himself, exactly; just something to tell him what was going on, something to tell him how Joe had died, who had helped him if he had been helped, and what Captain Younger was up to. There might not be anything here at all, but it was the first place he should look.
He searched the rest of the kitchen and found only the stuff you'd expect to find in a bachelor's kitchen. He was all finished and ready to start on another part of the house when he remembered something. He got a table knife from the silverware drawer, took down the flour canister from its shelf, and took the top off. He poked the knife down into it, poked and pried around, and there wasn't anything in there but flour.
