“I need to know. You’ve got to understand that.”
“You need to believe. I know it’s not quite fair. A just God wouldn’t try us like this, before we even know each other. I’m not blaming you, but don’t blame me either. This is what I am. At this particular point in my life, I need faith more than love. An equal amount of each would be nice.”
“I guess 1 was a cop too long.”
She sighed. “And there isn’t any God, and life’s not fair.”
51
The road snaked away to the left, a narrow blacktop five miles south of Longmont. Houses were sprinkled on both sides. The pavement ended with a bump and the houses fell away and we clattered along a dusty washboard road. Trees appeared on the rolling edge of the prairie.
There was a rutted side road, just where Ruby’s map showed it: then the house, peeping through the seams of a wooded arroyo. I turned in and stopped. My odometer showed that we had come twenty-six miles from downtown Denver.
“Looks like nobody’s home,” Rita said.
“We’ll see.”
I left her there with the motor running and walked the hundred yards to the house. It was an old country house, American gothic. The windows were dark and in the mid-morning light it looked deserted. A rambling front porch flitted in and out of view through a blowing hedge. The wind was strong, whipping down the front range. Some of the windows had been boarded up: the front railing was down in places and the steps looked rickety and dangerous. On the east end some scaffolding had been erected and there was evidence of recent work. There were no cars in the yard. I watched for a while but saw nothing that mattered.
I moved to the edge of the house, then around to the front. The place was like a crypt: not even a bird to break the monotony, only that steady beating wind. I eased up the steps to the porch, flattened myself beside the door and listened.
Nothing.
How many times have I done this, I thought: how many times when I was a cop did I jack up my courage and walk into trouble with this same gun pointing the way? It never loses its charm: the prospect of sudden death, maybe your own, always comes with a clutching at the throat and a rush of adrenaline. I tried the door. It creaked open and I looked in at a picture of frontier America. Broken old furniture. Antique pictures. Farm relics from another time. A kerosene lamp stood on a table, its glass charred black. An old wooden yoke had been thrown in a corner.
I took one step inside. The floor creaked and in the silence it sounded like a gunshot. I flattened against the door and caught my breath. I waited, listening. I waited so long a mouse scurried across the room.
It didn’t look promising. The dust in the parlor was half an inch deep. No one had been through here in at least six months.
Doesn’t seem to be Janeway’s year for hunches.
If it didn’t pan out I was back to zero. Square one. Lookin‘ for a turtle-faced man and a whole new gambit.
I left deep black prints in the dust. I crossed the scurry marks left by the mouse. It’s going to be a wash, I thought, another dead end. I had reached a long dark hallway and still nothing had happened. A thick ribbon of dust, undisturbed since time began, stretched out toward the back of the house.
I lowered the gun. My forces were still on alert, but the condition was downgraded from red to yellow.
There were two rooms on each side of the hall. At the end was another hall that went into the east wing. There was a door, which was closed.
But it opened without creaking when I tried it.
On the other side was a different world. I world of paint and glass and fresh-hung wallboard. A bright world where music played and people lived.
I went back on red alert, following my gun to whatever lav-ahead.
A skeleton key was stuck in the door. The radio was playing so softly it could barely be heard a room away. The floor was shiny and new. I saw a kitchen off to the left: well lit, papered yellow, with shiny new appliances. There was a half-finished den and, across from that, a bedroom. A radio sent soft tones down the hall from the kitchen: elevator music from KOSI. The scaffold’s shadow leaped across the room.
I peeped into the bedroom.
He was on the bed, fully dressed, lying on top of a bright blue bedspread. He seemed to be sleeping, but his face was to the wall so I couldn’t be sure. I had a vision of him lying there, eyes wide, waiting. I went in cautiously and he didn’t stir. His breathing was deep and rhythmic, as if he’d been asleep for some time. I eased my way to the side of the bed. I still couldn’t see his face. He lay with one arm under him, his hand out of sight. I didn’t like that, but I was as ready as a guy ever gets. I leaned over and shook him lightly.
“Get up, Neff,” I said, “and bring that hand out very slowly.”
He was awake at once: too quickly, I thought, but a man standing over your bed with a gun will bring you up fast. He drew himself up till he was sitting. It was when he tried to look surprised that I knew I had him. He wasn’t enough of an actor to pull it off.
“Stand up real easy,” I said. “Just like that. Good boy. Now. I want you to go to that wall and put your hands against it, just like you see on TV.”
I patted him down. He didn’t have anything.
“Sit down over there,” I said. “Not there…over in the plain wooden chair. Just sit there and face me.”
He sat and watched while I did what a good cop always does: checked the obvious, easy places for weapons and found none.
He moved.
“Sit still,” 1 said.
“I was gonna scratch my leg.”
“Don’t scratch anything. Don’t even look at me funny. This gun of mine gets nervous.”
“You wouldn’t shoot me.”
“I sure as hell would.”
“So what’s going on?”
That was his total and token attempt at denial. He knew he couldn’t act and now I knew it too. Ruby had said he had been a magician and maybe that was true, but he’d never win an Oscar for bluffing his way out of a tight one. I had known a few others like that, guys who could lie as long as you didn’t suspect them. Look them in the eye, though, and accuse, and they’d fall apart.
Neff was trying to avoid my eyes. He looked at the ceiling, at the window—anywhere but at me. “You like my place, Mr. Janeway? My uncle left it to me; I’ve been working on it a year. Sealed off this part and I just do a little at a time. Eventually I’ll do it all. This isn’t really my thing… carpentry… painting… but I do like the way it’s coming together. I just do a little here and there. I don’t like to sweat much.”
“That’s what Ruby tells me.”
He gave a little laugh: wry, affectionate, almost tender.
“Ruby,” he said. “What a swell guy. Do anything for anybody. Great guy.”
“Would you like to tell me where you put the books?”
He shrugged. Jerked his head to one side. Couldn’t seem to find the words.
He looked through the window. He had a clear view of the road from here. “I saw you coming. I knew the way you were coming, cautiously like that… well, I just knew. 1 could’ve shot you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Gun’s in the barn. You’d‘ve seen me run for it. And I wasn’t sure how much you really knew. I thought maybe I could… talk you out of it. Shoulda known better. How’d you find out? What’d I do wrong?”
You were born, I thought.
“Tell me,” he said. “I need to know.”
“Maybe I’ll make you a deal. I might tell you if you tell me where the books are.”