“Stay in your lane. You don’t want to attract a trooper.”
“No, I—” She controlled the car, but not herself. Leaning forward over the wheel, staring wide-eyed and openmouthed out the windshield, as though seeing some horror on the far horizon, she said, “How can you say that? How can you just say a thing like that?”
“Because it doesn’t have to happen. I’m giving you advice, Mrs. Langen. You’re in something very deep. It’s over your head out here. You gotta keep swimming. If you don’t keep swimming, you’re gonna drown. No use blaming me for it, or my partner, or Jake. You swim, or you drown.”
“You drown me.”
“Easily. You’re dead before you can worry about it.”
They had reached the exit. She steered the Infiniti down the ramp, and Parker pointed at a diner some distance away. “Pull into the parking lot there.”
“I’m afraid to stop.”
“I don’t have that fax number yet. Pull in.”
She pulled in, switching off the engine, and sat with both hands on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the dashboard. “What now?”
“You were going to say,” Parker told her, “call it off, the cops are too close, they’re suspicious already, we can’t go through with it.”
Blazing up, forgetting to be terrified, she turned her head to glare at him, fingers clutching the wheel even tighter as she said, “That’s right! And it’s true, they are. They’re suspicious, they believe I shot Jake, they don’t really buy the reason Jake gave them, if this robbery happens they’ll know that’s the reason. They’ll just come after me. I don’t know how strong I am.”
Parker said, “Remember you decided, my partner and me, we’re good cop, bad cop?”
She didn’t follow. “Yes?”
“This woman cop you’ve got.”
“Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa.”
“Is she good cop or bad cop?”
“Good, at least so far. I mean, she’s on her own. So there is no bad cop.”
“Yes, there is,” Parker said. “Me.”
The look she gave him turned bleak.
Parker said, “Everything she says to you, every hour she spends on you, just keep reminding yourself. This is the good cop. The bad cop is out there, and he’s not very far away, and he doesn’t go for second chances.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” Her voice now was a whisper, as though all strength had been drained from her.
“The bad cop is nearby.”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Talk to the good cop all you want,” Parker said. “But always think about the bad cop.”
“I will.” Whispered again, this time almost a prayer.
“Good,” Parker said. “Let’s drive to your house, you can get me that fax number and drive me back to my car.”
She nodded, and started the engine.
As they moved out of the diner’s parking area, Parker said, “This is an Infiniti.”
“Yes.”
“That means forever.”
“Yes.”
“Seems worth going for,” he said.
She nodded, not looking at him. “Yes,” she said.
4
Jake’s mobile home was all cleaned up. No dishes in the sink, no clothes on the bedroom floor, no newspapers on top of the water closet. Having knocked once and gotten no response, Parker had let himself in, the flimsy lock on this structure offering not much of a challenge, and now there was nothing to do but settle down and wait.
There were books on a living room table that hadn’t been there before, most of them fantasies about life in medieval castles on other planets—the sister’s reading, it must be. Parker took one of them, read for a while, then stopped reading and merely waited.
He had come here direct from the meeting with Elaine Langen, Dalesia’s original note with his contact’s fax number now in Parker’s pocket. He had a couple of details to settle with Jake, which would have to be through the sister, and then he could go back to Trails End Motor Inne. And there wouldn’t be much to do after that but wait for Briggs to get here, and then the armored cars.
Before they’d separated, Parker had reminded Elaine Langen once more about the handover at the stop sign on the night, while the armored cars were being loaded, when she would let them know which one carried the cash. That was the last piece, and it seemed to him that the woman was cowed enough just to do her job and not make any more trouble.
He waited an hour and a half, and got to his feet when he heard the key in the lock. The sister walked in, looking busy and preoccupied, carrying a plastic bag with a drugstore’s name and logo on it. She saw him as she was closing the door, jolted, recovered, finished shutting the door, and said, “Well. You specialize in scaring the life out of me, don’t you?”
“I need,” Parker told her, “for you to take a message to Jake.”
“Not big on small talk,” she said, apparently to herself. Crossing past him, she said, “Let me put this stuff away. You want coffee?”
“No need.”
She went into the bathroom, came back out empty-handed, and said, “I get it, we’re not gonna be chums. Fine. What’s the message?”
“Wait a minute,” Parker said. “When was the last time you hung out with your brother?”
“Grammar school,” she said. “Why?”
“You’re here because he got shot,” Parker said. “You’re not here to be a hostess or something. We’re not gonna take tea together.”
She thought that over, nodding her head. “You’re right,” she decided. “If Jake wasn’t in the hospital, I’d never have met you in my life, and I wouldn’t miss the experience.”
“That’s right.”
“I have the idea,” she said, “he was involved with you and your friends in something he shouldn’t have been, and whoever shot him, I’m glad they did, because now he’s out of it, safe in the hospital.”
“That’s right,” Parker said. “But he can still help.”
“Not to get on the wrong side of the law all over again.”
“He can’t, in the hospital. But he can phone his motel, tell them we got another guy coming in a few days, same deal.”
“I suppose so,” she said, clearly not knowing what the deal was.
“And tell him, we won’t try to get in touch with him until he’s out of the hospital.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Fine.”
He turned away, but she said, “Wait one second, will you?”
He turned back. “Yeah?”
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
She waited, frowning, then abruptly said, “I don’t like Dr. Madchen.”
He watched her face. “You don’t like him?”
“He isn’t Jake’s doctor now, not while he’s in the hospital, but he’s hanging around anyway, and he’s making Jake nervous, and now he’s making me nervous.”
“In what way?”
“I take it,” she said, “he’s somehow part of what you people are doing, or connected with it somehow. And he’s like the nerd kid who just wants to hang around with the big boys, only he drops hints like how it’s really important to him that everything be okay and—”
“Hints?”
“Just to Jake, I think,” she said. “But I mean, in my presence. I guess he figures, I’m the sister, it’s safe. But he’s a needy guy, and he makes me nervous.”
“Thank you,” Parker said. “All of a sudden, he makes me nervous, too.”
“You’ll talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll tell Jake what you said.”
“Good.”
She walked him to the door. “This Dr. Madchen,” she said, “I don’t mean he’s a bad guy or a threatening guy or anything like that. I just mean he’s drawing attention to himself because he’s so needy and uncomfortable.”
“I understand,” Parker said.
“So when you see him,” she suggested, “use your best bedside manner.”