“No, I’ll do it!”
The kid abruptly moved, all jangly limbs, bumping into things as he hurried around the end of the counter and opened the cash register. He stepped back from it and stared at Parker. “You won’t shoot me?”
“Not if you’re facedown on the floor.”
The kid dropped as though in fact he had been shot, and when he was on the floor, he put his hands over the back of his head, trembling fingers entwined.
Parker reached over the counter into the cash register drawer and removed the twenties and tens, touching only the money. Then he looked down at the kid and said, “Look at your watch.”
The enlaced hands sprang apart, and the kid arched his back to look at the large round watch on his left wrist.
“I’ll be outside for five minutes. If I look through the window and see you up, I’ll shoot. Five minutes. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.” The kid kept staring at the watch, body arched.
Parker turned away, left the shop, and walked back to the large store, where he went inside and found Lindahl on line at a checkout counter, only one other shopper in front of him. In his shopping cart were two dark brown duffel bags folded into clear plastic bags and two pairs of yellow kitchen gloves mounted on cardboard in shrink-wrap. He nodded to Parker: “Found it. You get anything?”
“No, I just looked around.”
Lindahl’s turn came, and he paid and got his purchases in a large plastic bag with the store’s name over a smiley face. They walked out of the store, Lindahl carrying the bag and saying, “Should I drive back?”
“Sure.”
Parker gave him the keys. In the car, they started out to the road, but then had to wait while a police car rushed by, lights flashing and siren ablare. Lindahl watched them go by, startled. “What do you think that is?”
“Nothing to do with us,” Parker said.
6
They stopped at a run-down traditional diner for lunch on the way back. They chose a table beside the large window with its view out to very little Sunday traffic on this secondary road, and after they’d given the waitress their orders, Parker said, “Tell me about the Dennisons.”
“The who? Oh, Cory and Cal? What do you want to know about them for?”
“They came to see me last night. Right after you left.”
“They came— They were at my place?”
“They think I might be one of the missing robbers.”
“Jesus!” Lindahl looked as though he just might jump straight up and out of the diner and run a hundred miles down the road. “What are they gonna do?”
“If I am one of the robbers,” Parker said, “they think I must have a bunch of money on me.”
“But you don’t.”
“But if I was and I did, I could give Cal money to get plastic surgery and an artificial eye.”
“Oh, for—” No longer in a panic, Lindahl now looked as though he’d never heard anything so dumb. “They said that to you? You’re the robber, and give us some of the money?”
“The robber part wasn’t said.”
“But that’s what it was all about. And if you give them the money, they won’t report you? Is that the idea?”
“I suppose so.”
“That’s a Cal idea, all right,” Lindahl said. “He’s jumped off barn roofs since he was a little kid.”
“Cory’s the smart one,” Parker agreed, “but he follows the other one’s lead. They say they’re gonna come back today and talk to you.”
Lindahl was astonished all over again. “Talk to me? About what?”
“Am I really your old friend Ed Smith.”
Lindahl leaned back in the booth and spread his hands. “Well, you really are my old friend Ed Smith. I oughta know who you are.”
“That’s right,” Parker said. As the waitress brought their plates, he said, “Over lunch, we’ll work out the details of that. In case somebody talks to you and then talks to me.”
“Good. We’ll do that.”
“We’ve only got to worry about today,” Parker said, “and then we’re done with it.”
With a surprised laugh, Lindahl said, “That’s right! Just today and tonight. The whole thing, it’s almost over.”
7
They got back to Lindahl’s house a little before two. The vehicle parked in front of it was not the Dennisons’ Dodge Ram, but a black Taurus that Parker recognized as Fred Thiemann’s. Then its driver’s door opened, and a woman in her fifties climbed out, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker. She must have been waiting for them to get back.
Parker said, “The wife?”
“Jane,” Lindahl said, and looked worried. “What’s gone wrong?”
“She’ll tell us.”
Lindahl parked next to the Taurus as Jane Thiemann went over to stand by the door to the house, waiting for them, frowning. Looking at her through the windshield, Parker saw a woman who was weighed down by something. Not angry, not frightened, but distracted enough not to care what kind of appearance she made. She was simply out in the world, braced for whatever the bad news would turn out to be.
Parker and Lindahl got out of the SUV, and Lindahl said, “Jane. How’s Fred?”
“Coming apart at the seams.” She turned bleak eyes toward Parker. “You’re Ed Smith, I guess.”
“That’s right.”
“Fred’s afraid of you,” she said. “I’m not sure why.”
Parker shrugged. “Neither am I.”
Lindahl said, “You want to come in?”
“Fred sent me for his rifle.”
“Oh, sure. I have it locked in the rack in the bedroom. Come on in.”
They stepped into the living room, and the parrot bent its head at Jane Thiemann in deep interest. She looked at the television set. “You keep that on all the time?”
“It’s something moving. I’ll be right back.”
Lindahl went into the bedroom, and Parker said, “What was the urgency? Fred doesn’t figure to use it, does he?”
She gave him a sharp look. “On himself, you mean?”
“On anything. He isn’t hunting deer today.”
Coming back from the bedroom, carrying Thiemann’s rifle, Lindahl said, “Deer season doesn’t start till next month.”
She looked at her husband’s rifle as Lindahl offered it to her at port arms, and said, “I’d like to sit down a minute.”
“Well, sure,” he said, surprised and embarrassed. As she dropped onto the sofa, not sitting, but dropping as though her strings had been cut, he stepped back and leaned the rifle against the wall. “I’m sorry, Jane, I forget how to be civilized. You want something to drink? Water? I think I got Coke.”
Parker said, “You want the television off?”
“Yes, please,” she said, and to Lindahl said, “I’d like some water, if I could.”
Lindahl left the room, and Parker switched off the set, then sat in the chair beside it, facing the sofa. He said, “Fred’s in shock.”
“We’re both in shock,” she said. “But he’s in more than shock. He’s angry, and he’s scared, and he feels like he’s got to do something, but he doesn’t know what. Thanks, Tom.”
Lindahl, having returned to give her a glass of water with ice cubes in it, now stood awkwardly for a second, uncomfortable about taking the seat on the sofa next to her. He dragged over a wooden kitchen chair from the corner and sat on that, midway between Parker and Jane Thiemann.
Parker said, “What does he say, mostly?”
“All kinds of things. A lot about you.”
“Me?”
“He doesn’t understand you, and he feels that he has to, somehow. The only thing he knows for sure, if it wasn’t for you, this would all be different now.”
“That fella would still be dead.”
“Oh, I know that, we both know that, he isn’t blaming you, he’s blaming what he calls ‘my own stupid self.’ But if it had been just him and Tom up there, they would have gone to the troopers, and who knows what would have happened?”