The older bikers watched with slow interest as Parker walked toward the Subaru. Behind him, at Hanzen’s continuing orders, Ernie pushed the boat free of the shore, apparently getting his own feet wet in the process, and that was good for a general laugh.
Parker got into the Subaru. Offshore, Hanzen was tying the anchor line to the float. Parker started the Subaru, backed in a half-circle, shifted into drive, and saw that one of the bikes, with its owner seated leaning against it, was in his way. He drove forward and put his foot on the brake, and the biker pretended not to see him, to be interested in watching Hanzen wade ashore.
Parker leaned his head out the Subaru window: “You care about that bike?”
The biker turned his head. He contemplated Parker for a long minute, unmoving, and just as Parker took his foot off the brake he grunted and struggled to his feet and wheeled the bike out of the way.
Hanzen was on shore now, drying his legs with a towel Ernie had brought him from his own bike’s saddlebag. Parker completed his turn to the dirt road and jounced over the railroad track.
They all watched him go.
11
Claire had her own car, a gray Lexus, legitimately registered in her name at the Colliver Pond address. She’d driven off in it three days ago, to look into Hilliard Cathman’s private life, so when Parker heard the garage door opener switch on at three that afternoon it was probably Claire coming back. But it didn’t have to be Claire coming back.
Parker had been seated in the living room, looking at maps of New York State, and now he reached under the sofa to close his hand on the S&W .32 revolver stored there. He tugged, and the clip holding the revolver gave a small metallic click, and the .32 nestled into his hand.
He rose, crossed the living room and hall and the kitchen, looked through the hole he’d drilled a long time ago at eye level in the door between kitchen and garage, and saw the Lexus drive in, this side of the Subaru already parked in there. Claire was alone in the car, and didn’t seem troubled by anything. He watched her reach up to the visor to lower the garage door behind her.
When Claire walked into the living room, Parker was again studying the maps. The revolver wasn’t in sight. He looked up and said, “Welcome back.”
She nodded at the maps. “Planning a trip?”
“You tell me.”
“Ah.” She smiled and nodded. “You can keep them open, I guess. After I shower and you bring me a drink, I’ll tell you all about it.”
It was nearly six when they got around to talking, the long spring twilight just starting to stretch its fingers outside the house. Claire sat up in bed, back against the headboard, a sheet partly over her. Her drink, the ice cubes long gone, she held on her up-bent knee, the tan skin looking browner against the clear glass. Parker, in black trousers, paced as he listened.
She said, “Cathman’s a widower, his wife died of cancer seven years ago. No girlfriends. Three grown daughters, all married, living in different parts of the northeast. Everybody gets along all right, but they’re not a close-type family. At Christmas he’ll go to a daughter’s house, that’s about it.”
“He’s alone?”
“He lives alone. In the two-room office he’s got for his consulting business, he has a secretary, an older woman named Rosemary Shields, she worked with him for years when he was with state government, she retired when he did, kept working for him. She’s one of those devoted secretaries where there’s never been sex but she’d kill for him and he wouldn’t know how to live without her.”
“He has to know other people,” Parker said. He frowned out the window at the lake, where it now reflected the start of sunset, as though a lot of different pastel paints had been spilled on it. “He isn’t a loner,” he said.
“Not by choice,” Claire agreed. She sipped at her drink and said, “He’s always been a bureaucrat, his friends have always been other bureaucrats. They all got older together, retired, died off, moved away. He’s in correspondence with a couple of people in Florida, one in California. He still knows a few people around Albany, but doesn’t hang out with them much. When he wants to see somebody in his office on business, the guy is usually in for him.”
Parker touched the window glass; it was cool. He said, “Money?”
“His retirement. The consulting business brings in a little, not much. He’s lived in the same house for thirty-four years, in a suburb called Delmar, paid off the mortgage a long time ago.”
“Proteges? Young bureaucrats coming up?”
“He’s on the wrong side of the issue,” she said. “Or he’s got the wrong issues. And he was never important enough to cultivate. I think basically people are ready to forget him, except he’s still around here and there. Comes to the testimonial dinners and the news conferences.”
“Brothers, sisters?”
“Two older brothers, both dead. Some cousins and nephews and nieces he never sees. He comes from two old New England families, his first name, Hilliard, was his mother’s maiden name. Anglican ministers and college professors.”
Parker nodded, then turned to offer Claire his thin smile. “That’s why the anti-gambling.”
“His forebears would turn in their graves.”
“Armed robbery,” Parker said. “They’d spin a little for that one, too, wouldn’t they?”
“I’d think so,” Claire agreed.
Parker turned back to the window. The spilled paint on the lake was getting darker. He said. “He’ll think about those forebears, won’t he? He’ll want to make it right, not upset them a lot.”
Claire watched his profile and said nothing.
After a minute, Parker shook his head in irritation. “I don’t like wasted motion,” he said. “But I just have the
