“Am I really your old friend Ed Smith.”
Lindahl leaned back in the booth and spread his hands. “Well, you really
“That’s right,” Parker said. As the waitress brought their plates, he said, “Over lunch, we’ll work out the details of that. In case somebody talks to you and then talks to me.”
“Good. We’ll do that.”
“We’ve only got to worry about today,” Parker said, “and then we’re done with it.”
With a surprised laugh, Lindahl said, “That’s right! Just today and tonight. The whole thing, it’s almost over.”
7
They got back to Lindahl’s house a little before two. The vehicle parked in front of it was not the Dennisons’ Dodge Ram, but a black Taurus that Parker recognized as Fred Thiemann’s. Then its driver’s door opened, and a woman in her fifties climbed out, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. She must have been waiting for them to get back.
Parker said, “The wife?”
“Jane,” Lindahl said, and looked worried. “What’s gone wrong?”
“She’ll tell us.”
Lindahl parked next to the Taurus as Jane Thiemann went over to stand by the door to the house, waiting for them, frowning. Looking at her through the windshield, Parker saw a woman who was weighed down by something. Not angry, not frightened, but distracted enough not to care what kind of appearance she made. She was simply out in the world, braced for whatever the bad news would turn out to be.
Parker and Lindahl got out of the SUV, and Lindahl said, “Jane. How’s Fred?”
“Coming apart at the seams.” She turned bleak eyes toward Parker. “You’re Ed Smith, I guess.”
“That’s right.”
“Fred’s afraid of you,” she said. “I’m not sure why.”
Parker shrugged. “Neither am I.”
Lindahl said, “You want to come in?”
“Fred sent me for his rifle.”
“Oh, sure. I have it locked in the rack in the bedroom. Come on in.”
They stepped into the living room, and the parrot bent its head at Jane Thiemann in deep interest. She looked at the television set. “You keep that on all the time?”
“It’s something moving. I’ll be right back.”
Lindahl went into the bedroom, and Parker said, “What was the urgency? Fred doesn’t figure to use it, does he?”
She gave him a sharp look. “On himself, you mean?”
“On anything. He isn’t hunting deer today.”
Coming back from the bedroom, carrying Thiemann’s rifle, Lindahl said, “Deer season doesn’t start till next month.”
She looked at her husband’s rifle as Lindahl offered it to her at port arms, and said, “I’d like to sit down a minute.”
“Well, sure,” he said, surprised and embarrassed. As she dropped onto the sofa, not sitting, but dropping as though her strings had been cut, he stepped back and leaned the rifle against the wall. “I’m sorry, Jane, I forget how to be civilized. You want something to drink? Water? I think I got Coke.”
Parker said, “You want the television off?”
“Yes, please,” she said, and to Lindahl said, “I’d like some water, if I could.”
Lindahl left the room, and Parker switched off the set, then sat in the chair beside it, facing the sofa. He said, “Fred’s in shock.”
“We’re both in shock,” she said. “But he’s in more than shock. He’s angry, and he’s scared, and he feels like he’s got to do something, but he doesn’t know what. Thanks, Tom.”
Lindahl, having returned to give her a glass of water with ice cubes in it, now stood awkwardly for a second, uncomfortable about taking the seat on the sofa next to her. He dragged over a wooden kitchen chair from the corner and sat on that, midway between Parker and Jane Thiemann.
Parker said, “What does he say, mostly?”
“All kinds of things. A lot about you.”
“Me?”
“He doesn’t understand you, and he feels that he has to, somehow. The only thing he knows for sure, if it wasn’t for you, this would all be different now.”
“That fella would still be dead.”
