The Narrows - Michael Connelly [108]
Alpert looked at Rachel, expecting her take.
“The fuse,” she said.
“What about it?”
“It was long. It was like he wanted me to see the body but not get too close. But he also wanted me to get out of there.”
“And?”
“On the body there was a black cowboy hat. I remember there was a man on my plane from Rapid City in a black cowboy hat.”
“For chrissake, you were flying from South Dakota. Doesn’t everybody wear cowboy hats there?”
“But he was there, with me. I think this whole thing was a setup. The note in the bar, the long fuse, the photos in the trailer and the black hat. He wanted me to get out of there in time to tell the world he was dead.”
Alpert didn’t respond. He looked down at the phone in his hands.
“There’s too much we don’t know yet, Randal,” Dei offered.
He shoved the phone back into his pocket.
“Very well. Agent Dei, is your car here?”
“Yes.”
“Take Agent Walling to the field office now.”
They were dismissed, but not before Alpert looked at Rachel and threw one more grimace at her.
“Remember, Agent Walling, my desk by eight.”
“You got it,” Rachel said.
35
ELEANOR WISH ANSWERED my knock and that surprised me. She stepped back to let me in.
“Don’t look at me that way, Harry,” she said. “You have this impression that I’m never here and that I work every night and leave her with Marisol. I don’t. I work three or four nights a week and that’s usually it.”
I raised my hands in surrender and she saw the bandage around my right palm.
“What happened to you?”
“Cut myself on a piece of metal.”
“What metal?”
“It’s a long story.”
“That thing up in the desert today?”
I nodded.
“I should have known. Is that going to hurt you playing the saxophone?”
Bored with retirement, I had started taking lessons the year before from a retired jazzman I had come across on a case. One night, when things were good between Eleanor and me, I had brought the instrument with me and played her a tune called “Lullaby.” She had liked it.
“Actually, I haven’t been playing anyway.”
“How come?”
I didn’t want to tell her that my teacher had died and music had dropped out of my life for a while.
“My teacher wanted me to switch from alto to tenor—as in ten or fifteen miles away from him.”
She smiled at the lame joke and we left it at that. I had followed her through the house and into the kitchen, where the table was actually a felt-covered poker table—with cereal milk stains on it thanks to Maddie. Eleanor had dealt six hands faceup for practice. She sat down and started gathering up the cards.
“Don’t let me stop you,” I said. “I just came by to see if I could put Maddie to bed. Where is she?”
“Marisol’s giving her a bath. But I was counting on putting her to bed tonight. I’ve worked the last three nights.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine. I’ll just say hello then. And good-bye. I’m driving back tonight.”
“Then why don’t you do it? I got a new book to read her. It’s on the counter.”
“No, Eleanor, I want you to do it. I just want to see her because I don’t know when I’ll get back.”
“Are you still working a case?”
“No, that all sort of ended up there today.”
“The TV news didn’t have much on it when I watched. What is it?”
“It’s a long story.”
I didn’t feel like telling it once again. I walked over to the counter to look at the book she had bought. It was called Billy’s Big Day and its cover showed a monkey standing on the highest step at an Olympics-style award ceremony. The gold medal was being put around his neck. A lion had received the silver and an elephant the bronze.
“Are you going back to join the department again?”
I was about to open the book but I put it down and looked at Eleanor.
“I’m still thinking about it but it’s looking that way.”
She nodded as though it was a done deal.
“Any further thoughts from you on it?”
“No, Harry, I want