30

In the parking lot Hawk took a.12-gauge shotgun out of the trunk and a box of ammunition. He fed four shells into the magazine and handed me the gun and the extra ammo. I got in the backseat with the shotgun. Hawk and Susan got in front. Hawk drove.

“We can’t leave Caroline,” Susan said. “For whatever reason she seems to have fixed on Spenser as her salvation. Her husband and son have, in a manner of speaking, abandoned her. If Spenser does as well it might very well kill her.”

“We stay here,” Hawk said, “we gonna have to shoot up a mess of Wheaton cops.”

“I know,” Susan said.

“There ain’t but maybe fifty of them,” Hawk said.

“But then all the other cops in the world will be on our case,” I said.

“We may run out of ammunition,” Hawk said.

“She’s suicidal?” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “She’s suicidal and she’s got this fixed notion that somehow if you stick by her she may not have to die.”

Hawk shook his head. We were cruising away from Wheaton out toward the reservoir. He said, “A fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie.”

Susan was half turned in the front seat so she could talk to both Hawk and me. Her arm rested along the back of the seat. I had the shotgun leaning against my left thigh, the butt on the floor. Susan turned her head fully toward me.

“She feels guilty about her husband,” Susan said. She wasn’t quite looking at me. She wasn’t quite looking at anything. She had her head tilted slightly downward the way she did when she was thinking. I waited. The headlights on the Jag made an empty tunnel into the darkness ahead of us.

“Could she have killed him?” I said.

“Yes, she could have. I don’t think so, but it’s possible.”

Snow was spitting again, just hard enough for Hawk to turn on the wipers. He set them at INTERVAL and their periodic pass across the windshield seemed arrhythmic in its spacing.

“But she’s feeling guilty about his death?” I said.

“About her husband,” Susan said. “Whether about his death, I don’t know.”

The wipers made one sweep and the empty tunnel ahead was a little clearer. There was more snow spit. The windshield beaded slowly, some of the flakes melted and formed little lines of trickle. Then the wiper blades made another pass and the emptiness was clear again.

“Maybe this isn’t about cocaine,” I said.

“Maybe some of it is,” Hawk said.

“Yeah. But maybe all of it isn’t,” I said.

“You thinking hearts full of passion, jealousy, and hate?” Hawk said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Makes the world go round,” Hawk said.

“That’s love,” I said.

“Same thing,” Hawk said.

“Not always,” Susan said.

The Jaguar was almost soundless as it purred through the inconsistent snowfall in the dark.

“We have to talk with her,” Susan said. “It’s a difficult time for her, but...” Susan shook her head.

“Time like this she may say things she’d not say if everything was more cohesive,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“Still it might be pretty bad for her to be questioned about things like this now.”

“I’m not worried about her,” Susan said. “Right now I’m worried about you. They’re going to frame you on a cocaine charge.”

“Yes.”

“And they can probably make it stick. You did hijack three hundred pounds of it.”

“Kilos,” I said.

“Kilos, pounds, whatever,” Susan said.

“And you got two hundred keys in Henry Cimoli’s cellar,” Hawk said.

“So they can have police arrest you anywhere. You can’t be safe by merely staying out of Wheaton.”

“True,” I said.

“And surely you can’t be safe by staying in Wheaton.”

“True also,” I said.

“So we have to talk with Caroline,” Susan said.

“And if this is too much for her, too soon right after her tragedy?” I said.

“Then it is,” Susan said. “I don’t think it will be. I don’t think she has a future unless we get this unraveled. But if it destroys her, then it destroys her. I will not let it destroy you,” she said.

“Your car’s back at the motel,” Hawk said to Susan.

“Yes. So are my clothes and my makeup. My God, my entire face is in the motel room.”

“No,” I said. “Stay out of the motel room. If they got hold of you they’d use you to get me.”

“My entire face,” Susan said.

I said, “Forget the face.”

We were all quiet for a space as the wipers made their idiosyncratic sweeps of the windshield.

“Okay,” Susan said. “But you can’t look at me again.”

“I’ll stare only at your body,” I said.

“So we going to see Miss Caroline?” Hawk said.

“Best I can think of,” I said.

Hawk slowed, and swung the Jaguar in an easy U-turn.

“You figure the cops be busy at the motel framing us?”

“I hope so,” I said. “They have no reason to think we know.”

“Unless, of course, that kid,” Susan said, “what was his name...?”

“Conway.”

“Unless Conway was lying.”

“To what end,” I said.

“An end we don’t know,” Susan said.

“Always possible,” I said. “But complicated.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“When in doubt I tend to go for the simple,” I said.

“Except for me,” Susan said.

“About you,” I said, “I’m not in doubt.”

“So we’ll act as if Conway was telling the truth,” Susan said.

“It’s the best information we’ve got.”

“And if it’s wrong?”

“Readiness is all,” I said.

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