Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Twenty-Two

Spike called first thing in the morning, asking what he was supposed to do with Melanie Joan today. I informed him that since shooting her wasn’t an option, he should stand down until he heard from me. She was in the hands of her manager for now.

“Literally,” I said.

Then my father called, right before I was getting into the shower. We had entered into a deal, my father and me. He would check in with me around this time every morning, then again around midday, then in the evening. By now he had told my mother enough about Joe Doyle acting like a “nuisance” — while not entirely true, it was what he told her anyway — and convinced her to pay a visit to my sister, now remarried, almost happily, and living in Santa Barbara.

“Mom really bought the nuisance thing?” I said.

“Your mother’s position was always that the less she knew about my work, the better.”

“But you’re no longer working.”

“Irregardless,” he said.

“You know what a silly word that is, right?” I said.

I heard him giggle. “I know,” he said. “But sometimes I can’t help myself.”

“Any new developments overnight?”

“Here we go,” he said. “I feel like you’ve practically got me on an ankle monitor.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Maybe you scared off Mr. Doyle,” he said.

“I’m good, Dad,” I said. “But I’m not that good.”

“Or bad,” he said, “as the case may be.”

I didn’t want him living alone while this beef with Doyle was going on. He just didn’t need to know that yet, or my plan to have him watched without telling him I was having him watched. He wasn’t my client, but I knew I had to treat him like one, as a way of keeping him safe. I was trying to do the same with Melanie Joan. But she wasn’t making it easy, now that her current sweetie was in town. Richard Gross Points. One thing had not changed with her over the time since she had first come into my life.

She sure could pick ’em.

But she was still my client, at least for the time being. So I was still working her case this morning. Which is why, once I was somehow looking both as glam and as casual as I could in a Frank & Eileen denim shirt for which I’d paid far too much and white jeans that might have been a little too tight, I was in Downtown Crossing in the offices of Reddy Forensics.

I had been referred to Liam Reddy by Martin Quirk, once my father’s commander in Homicide and the man Phil Randall still referred to as the greatest cop in the history of the Boston PD. Quirk, not Liam Reddy.

Reddy, who’d worked in forensic science when he himself was still with the cops, had put in his papers, started his own company, finally begun to make some real money, even though he was around my father’s age.

Chapter One of the book I had started to think of as Something was now on Liam Reddy’s desk. He had come back with the pages after being away for about thirty minutes, having taken them to the small lab at the other end of the hall. He carefully spread the four top pages out in front of him now, looking more like an ex−Marine drill sergeant than he did a cop. Stocky, steel-gray crew cut, stubby fingers, precise mannerisms. With his sleeves rolled up I saw huge forearms, and what appeared to be some kind of Army seal tattooed on his right one.

“We can date ink by testing it with a solvent we use,” he said. “But again, a professional could find a way to get around it. And the kind of gel ink here has been around forever. You’ve probably used it in pens yourself.”

He grinned.

“Want to hear about the properties the solvent can detect?” he said.

“Not so much,” I said.

His grin widened.

“Didn’t think so.”

“Was it that obvious?”

He poked the pages with his index finger.

“You run into trouble trying to date ink back further than even a year,” he said, “unless it’s a specific brand that we find out was discontinued longer ago than that. And again, this ink isn’t that kind of ink. So all I’d be providing to you is guesswork. And I hate guesswork.”

“Being a science guy.”

“Card-carrying,” he said.

He shrugged.

“Listen, there’s stuff that’s possible with certain documents, involving indentations and latent imaging,” Reddy said. “But I don’t see any indentation worth a shit on these pages.” He shrugged. “I wish I could be of more help. I mean, you are Phil Randall’s kid.”

“So this could have been written in the early nineties,” I said.

“Or written last month by somebody wanting to date it and knowing what they were doing.”

“Narrows it right down,” I said.

“Unfortunately, science still has its limitations, damn it all to hell,” he said. “But from just the preliminary testing we did, my educated opinion is that it wasn’t written last month. The fading of the paper, and the ink, makes me think there’s a good chance it could have come out of the time period you’re talking about. But I can’t say for sure. Again: Science can be like statistics sometimes. You torture it long enough, you can make it tell you anything you want it to.”

He stacked the papers again, neatly, like he was making a bed with hospital corners.

“Are these pages important to your case?” he said.

“If they’re real they are,” I said. “Unless somebody just wants me to think they’re real.”

“Again,” he said, “I wish I could do more for you.”

“Thank you for trying.”

“How is your dad, by the way?”

“As unchanging,” I said, “as the statue of John Harvard.”

“Give him my best,” he said.

There was no point in telling Liam Reddy, ex-cop, about Joe Doyle, even if he was my father’s friend.

“Before I go,” I said, “is there any other avenue I might explore?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” he said. “The United States Secret Service.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded.

“They’ve got a forensic database worlds beyond anything I got myself here,” he said. “But they keep it under lock and key, as you might imagine. Unless it’s a matter of national security, which it doesn’t sound like this is.”

Now I grinned.

“Well,” I said, “not yet, anyway.”

“Can I give you some advice?” he said.

“Oh, by all means,” I said.

“Understand I’m just looking at this as a guy who spent as much time as I did with the cops,” he said. “But maybe the best thing to do is forget about trying to find out when it was written and just focus on who wrote it. It seems to me that’s probably the best way to get you to where you want to go.”

I told him that the thought had occurred. Then thanked him again, promised I would send along his regards to my father, gathered up the pages, slipped them back inside a hard folder, put the folder into my bag, and drove back to River Street Place to walk Rosie before I headed for the office.

I had just finished locking up when Lee Farrell called me from police headquarters to tell me that my father had been arrested.