'They talked to him,' Lucas said, flipping through the stack of paper. 'The state guys did.'
'Well…' His eyes were on Lucas, judging: 'What I mean was, I'd take him out back to my workshop, put his hand in the vise, close it about six turns and then ask him. And if that didn't work, I'd turn on the grinder.' He wasn't smiling when he said it.
'You think he knows who killed his boy?' Lucas asked.
'If you asked me the most likely guy to commit a sneaky-type murder in this county, I'd say Russ Harper. Hands down. If his son gets killed, sneaky-like… that's no coincidence, to my way of thinkin'. Russ might not know who killed him, but I bet he'd have some ideas.'
'I'm thinking of going out there tonight, talking to Harper,' Lucas said. 'Maybe take him out back to the shop.'
'I'm not doin' nothing. Invite me along,' Climpt said, stretching his legs out.
'You don't care for him?'
'If that son-of-a-bitch's heart caught on fire,' Climpt said, 'I wouldn't piss down his throat to put it out.'
Climpt said he'd get dinner and hang around his house until Lucas was ready to go after Harper. Helen Arris had already gone, and much of the department was dark. Lucas tossed the Jim Harper file in his new file cabinet and banged the drawer shut. The drawer got off-track and jammed. When he tried to pull it back open, it wouldn't come. He knelt down, inspecting it, found that a thin metal rail had bent, and tried to pry it out with his fingernails. He got it out, but his hand slipped and he ripped the fingernail on his left ring finger.
'Mother-' He was dripping blood. He went down to the men's room, rinsed it, looked at it. The nail rip went deep and it'd have to be clipped. He wrapped a paper towel around it, got his coat, and walked out through the darkened hallways of the courthouse. He turned a corner and saw an elderly man pushing a broom, and then a woman's voice echoed down a side hallway: 'Heck of a day, Odie,' it said.
The doctor. Weather. Again. The old man nodded, looking down a hall at right angles to the one he and Lucas were in. 'Cold day, miz.'
She walked out of the intersecting corridor, still carrying her bag, a globe light shining down on her hair as she passed under it. Her hair looked like clover honey. She heard him in the hallway, glanced his way, recognized him, stopped. 'Davenport,' she said. 'Killed anybody yet?'
Lucas had automatically smiled when he saw her, but he cut it off: 'That's getting pretty fuckin' tiresome,' he snapped.
'Sorry,' she said. She straightened and smiled, tentatively. 'I didn't mean… I don't know what I didn't mean. Whatever it was, I didn't mean it when I saw you at the school, either.'
What? He didn't understand what she'd just said, but it sounded like an apology. He let it go. 'You work for the county, too?'
She glanced around the building. 'No, not really. The board cut out the public health nurse and I do some of her old route. Volunteer thing. I go around and see people out in the country.'
'Pretty noble,' Lucas said. The line came out sounding skeptical instead of wry. Before she could say anything, he put up a hand. 'Sorry. That came out wrong.'
She shrugged. 'I owed you one.' She looked at his hand. He was holding it at his side, waist height, clenching the towel in his fist. 'What happened to your hand?'
'Broke a nail.'
'You oughta use a good acrylic hardener,' she said. And then quickly, 'Sorry again. Let me see it.'
'Aw…'
'Come on.'
He unwrapped the towel and she held his finger in her hand, turned it in the weak light. 'Nasty. Let me, uh… come more under the light.' She opened her bag.
'Listen, why don't I… Is this gonna hurt?'
'Don't be a baby,' she said. She used a pair of surgical scissors on the nail, trimming it away. No pain. She dabbed on a drop of an ointment and wrapped it with a Band-Aid. 'I'll send you a bill.'
'Send it to the sheriff, I got it on the job,' he said. Then: 'Thanks.'
They stopped at the door, looked out at the snow. 'Where're you going?' Lucas asked.
She glanced at her wristwatch. No rings. 'Get something to eat.'
'Could I buy you dinner?' he asked.
'All right,' she said simply. She didn't look at him. She just pushed through the door and said all right.
'Where?' following her onto the porch.
'Well, we have six choices,' she said.
'Is that a guess?'
'No.' A grin flickered across her face and she counted the restaurants off on her fingertips. Lucas noticed that her fingers were long and slender, like a pianist's were supposed to be. Or a surgeon's. 'There's Al's Pizza, there's a Hardee's, the Fisherman Inn, the Uncle Steve's American Style, Granddaddy's Cafe, and the Mill.'
'What's the classiest joint?'
'Mmm.' She tilted her head, thought about it, and said, 'Do you prefer stuffed ducks or stuffed fish? On the wall, I mean, not the menu.'
'That's a hard one. Fish, I guess.'
'Then we'll go to the Inn,' she said.
'Do you play piano?'
'What?' She stopped and looked up at him. 'Have you been asking about me?'
'Huh?' He was puzzled.
'How did you know I play?'
'I didn't,' he said. 'I was just thinking your hands… they look like a pianist's.'
'Oh.' She looked at her hands. 'Most of the pianists I've known have heavy hands.'
'Like a surgeon's hands, then,' he said.
'Most surgeons' hands are ordinary.'
'Okay, okay.' He started to laugh.
'Ordinary. They are.'
'Why are you grumping at me?' Lucas asked.
She shrugged. 'We're just getting over being awkward. It's always hard on a first date.'
'What?' he asked, following down the sidewalk. He had the sense that something had just flown past him.
The restaurant had been built from two double-wide trailers set at right angles to each other, both covered with vinyl siding disguised as weathered wood. A neon Coors sign hung in the window. Lucas pulled into the parking lot and killed his light, trailed a few seconds later by Weather in her Jeep.
'Elegant,' he said.
She pivoted her feet out of the Jeep, pulled off her pac boots. 'I want to change shoes… elegant, what? The restaurant?'
'I think the vinyl siding combined with the sparkle of the Coors sign gives it a certain European ambiance. Swiss, I'd say, or possibly Old Amsterdam.'
'Wait'll you find out that each table has its own red votive candle, personally lit by the maitre d', and a basket of cellophane-wrapped crackers and breadsticks,' Weather said.
'Hey, it's a gourmet joint,' Lucas said. 'I expected nothing less. And a choice of wines, I bet.'
'Yup.'
And they both said, simultaneously, 'Red or white,' and laughed. Weather added, 'If you ask for rose, they say fine, and you see the bartender running into the back with a bottle of white and bottle of red.'
'Where'd you get your name?' Lucas asked.
'My father was a sailboat freak. Homemade fourteen-foot dinghys and scows. He used to build them in the garage in the summer,' she said. She pulled on the second loafer, tossed the pac boot onto the floor on the passenger side, stood up and slammed the car door with authority. And left it unlocked. 'Anyway, Mom says he was always talking about the weather-'If the weather holds, if the weather turns.' Like that. So when I was born, they called me Weather.'
'Does your mother live in town?'
