He had often wished that his desires served him better, but in this he supposed he was not unusual — that it was a lucky man indeed whose desires served him well. Yet he had hopes. Over the last few months Morse had become involved with a master sergeant in division intelligence — a calm, scholarly man five years older than he. Though Morse could not yet think of himself as anyone’s “partner,” he had gradually forsaken his room in the N.C.O. quarters to spend nights and weekends at Dixon’s town house off post. The place was stuffed with ancient weapons and masks and chess sets that Dixon had collected during his tours overseas, and at first Morse had felt a sort of nervous awe, as if he were in a museum, but that had passed. Now he liked having these things around him. He was at home there.
But Dixon was due to rotate overseas before long, and Morse would soon receive new orders himself, and he knew it would get complicated then. They would have to make certain judgments about each other and about themselves. They would have to decide how much to promise. Where this would leave them, Morse didn’t know. But all that was still to come.
Billy Hart’s sister called again at midnight, just as Morse was turning over the orderly room to another sergeant. When he picked up and heard her voice, he pointed at the door and the other man smiled and stepped outside.
“Would you like the address, then?” Morse asked.
“I guess. For all the good it’ll do.”
Morse had already looked it up. He read it to her.
“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t have a computer, but Sal does.”
“Sal?”
“Sally Cronin! My cousin.”
“You could just go to an Internet café.”
“Well, I suppose,” she said skeptically. “Say — what’d you mean, maybe you could help?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” Morse said.
“You said it, though.”
“Yes. And you laughed.”
“That wasn’t an actual laugh.”
“Ah. Not a laugh.”
“More like… I don’t know.”
Morse waited.
“Sorry,” she said. “Look, I’m not asking for help, O.K.? But how come you said it? Just out of curiosity.”
“No reason. I didn’t think it out.”
“Are you a friend of Billy’s?”
“I like Billy.”
“Well, it was nice. You know? A real nice thing to say.”
After Morse signed out, he drove to the pancake house she’d been calling from. As agreed, she was waiting by the cash register, and when he came through the door in his fatigues he saw her take him in with a sharp measuring glance. She straightened up — a tall woman, nearly as tall as Morse himself, with close-cut black hair and a long, tired-looking face, darkly freckled under the eyes. Her eyes were black, but otherwise she looked nothing like Hart, nothing at all, and Morse was thrown by the sudden disappointment he felt and the impulse to escape.
She stepped toward him, head cocked to one side, as if making a guess about him. Her eyebrows were dark and heavy. She wore a sleeveless red blouse and hugged her freckled arms against the chill of the air conditioning. “So should I call you Sergeant?” she said.
“Owen.”
“Sergeant Owen.”
“Just Owen.”
“Just Owen,” she repeated. She offered him her hand. It was dry and rough. “Julianne. We’re over in the corner.”
She led him to a booth by the big window looking out on the parking lot. A fat-faced boy, maybe seven or eight, sat drawing a picture on the back of a place mat among the congealed remains of eggs and waffles and sausages. Holding the crayon like a spike, he raised his head as Morse slid onto the bench across from him. He had the same fierce brows as the woman. He gave Morse a long, unblinking look, then he sucked in his lower lip and returned to his work.
“Say hello, Charlie.”
He went on coloring for a time. Then he said, “Howdy.”
“Won’t say hello, this one. Says howdy now. Don’t know where he got it.”
“That’s all right. Howdy back at you, Charlie.”
“You look like a frog,” the boy said. He dropped the crayon and picked up another from the clutter on the table.
“Charlie!” she said. “Use your manners,” she added mildly, beckoning to a waitress pouring coffee at the neighboring table.
“It’s O.K.,” Morse said. He figured he had it coming. Not because he looked like a frog — though he was all at once conscious of his wide mouth — but because he’d sucked up to the boy. Howdy back at you!
“What is wrong with that woman?” Julianne said as the waitress gazed dully around the room. Then Julianne caught her eye, and she came slowly over to their table and refilled Julianne’s cup. “That’s some picture you’re making,” the waitress said. “What is it?” The boy ignored her. “You’ve got yourself quite the little artist there,” she said to Morse, then moved dreamily away.
Julianne poured a long stream of sugar into her coffee.
“Charlie your son?”
She turned and looked speculatively at the boy. “No.”
“You’re not my mom,” the boy murmured.
“Didn’t I just say that?” She stroked his round cheek with the back of her hand. “Draw your picture, nosy. Kids?” she said to Morse.
“Not yet.” Morse watched the boy smear blue lines across the place mat, wielding the crayon as if out of grim duty.
“You aren’t missing anything.”
“Oh, I think I probably am.”
“Nothing but back talk and mess,” she said. “Charlie’s Billy’s. Billy and Dina’s.”
Morse would never have guessed it, to look at the boy. “I didn’t know Hart had a son,” he said, and hoped she hadn’t heard the note of complaint that was all too clear and strange to him.
“Neither does he, the way he acts. Him and Dina both.” Dina, she said, was off doing another round of rehab in Raleigh — her second. Julianne and Bella (Julianne’s mother, Morse gathered) had been looking after Charlie, but they didn’t get along, and after the last blowup Bella had taken off for Florida with a boyfriend, putting Julianne in a bind. She drove a school bus during the year and worked summers cooking at a Girl Scout camp, but with Charlie on her hands and no money for child care she’d had to give up the camp job. So she’d driven down here to try and shake some help out of Billy, enough to get her through until school started, or Bella decided to come home and do her share, fat chance.
Morse nodded toward the boy. He didn’t like his hearing all this, if anything could penetrate that concentration, but Julianne went on as if she hadn’t noticed. Her voice was low, growly, but with a nasal catch in it, like the whine of a saw blade binding. She didn’t have the lazy music that Hart could play so well, but she seemed more truly of the hollows and farms of their home; she spoke of the people there as if Morse must know them, too — as if she had no working conception of the reach of the world beyond.
At first, Morse was expecting her to put the bite on him, but she never did. He did not understand what she wanted from him, or why, unprompted, he had offered to come here tonight.
“So he’s gone,” she said finally. “You’re sure.”
“Afraid so.”
“Well. Good to know my luck’s holding. Wouldn’t want it to get worse.” She leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Why didn’t you call first?”
“What, and let on I was coming? You don’t know our Billy.”
Julianne seemed to fall into a trance then, and Morse soon followed, lulled by the clink of crockery and the voices all around, the soft scratching of the crayon. He didn’t know how long they sat like this. He was roused by the tapping of raindrops against the window, a few fat drops that left oily lines as they slid down the glass. The rain stopped. Then it came again in a rush, sizzling on the asphalt, glazing the cars in the parking lot, pleasant to watch after the long, heavy day.