“So, has there been any progress in the investigation?”
“We’re following up on a variety of leads at this time.” Strictly by the book, this guy was.
“Do you have any actual suspects?”
“Like I said, we’re following up on a variety of leads at this time.”
“Does it look to you like this was the work of more than one person, or a single individual?”
Trimble paused. “At this point I’d have to say there’s nothing that specifically indicates more than one person, but there’s nothing that specifically rules it out, either. What makes you ask?”
“Just asking,” I said.
“Look,” said Trimble, his tone softening a bit, “I’m willing to work a two-way street here. You were there, you know Lawrence. If there’s something you know that you think might be relevant, you share it with me, and anything I get, I give it to you first. We make an arrest, I call you.”
“Even before Dick Colby?”
Trimble actually laughed. “Even before Dick Colby. I’ve given him lots of stuff in the past. Preferably over the phone, if you get my drift.”
“I do,” I said, feeling that maybe I’d broken the ice a bit with Trimble. If he was willing to make fun of Colby, he couldn’t be all bad. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to check in with you once a day, see if you’ve got anything. And if I’ve got something, I’ll call you.”
“Anytime,” Trimble said. There was a pause. He added, “Night or day.”
“Deal,” I said.
I’d barely replaced the receiver when the phone rang.
“Hey,” said Sarah. “We’re on a break here. This guy from the newspaper association is telling us how to listen to our reporters’ concerns, to imagine how they must feel when their copy is chopped to ribbons, as a way of making a newsroom more harmonious. I want to feed this guy into a paper shredder. How’s Lawrence doing?”
“Holding his own, I think. Not great, but not getting worse.”
“Have you seen him?”
“I went there this afternoon, a couple of hours ago.”
“How’d he look?”
“Bad.”
“Y’able to talk to him at all?”
I paused. “Only a little. I did most of the talking. He’s hooked up to a lot of machines and shit. Looks like a Borg.”
“Huh?” Sarah, not a Star Trek fan, missed the reference. “I’m outa here tomorrow, after the morning session. Should be back home late afternoon, unless I decide to pop into the office first.”
“Don’t bother. Just come home. We miss you.”
Maybe it was something about Letitia’s story about looking after Lawrence when they were young, but more and more, I was appreciating that the only sure thing that protected us from the bad things out there were the people closest to us.
I wrote my story, let Nancy know it had been filed and updated with a call to Trimble, and left the building. The Virtue started for me just like that. Good ol’ Otto. He knew what he was doing. I decided to stop on the way home for some groceries. Maybe, just maybe, there’d be a chance for me, Angie, and Paul to have a meal together.
The cross street at the bottom of Crandall is a busy thoroughfare lined with shops, cafés, restaurants, and a small theater that shows second-run stuff. It was a nice day, and the cafés had moved some tables and chairs out onto the sidewalks. I found a spot by the curb and went in Angelo’s Fruit Market and bought the makings of a salad, then went next door, to the fresh pasta place, for some linguine and a tomato-Alfredo sauce, and as I was coming back out I glanced in the direction of the café two doors down, where there were half a dozen tables out front, and thought I recognized the person sitting with his back to me, fiddling with a laptop computer.
I came up behind him, this young man in a long black jacket, and peered over his shoulder. There was a map on the screen, which, at a glance, looked like our neighborhood. There was a small, pulsing dot moving across it.
“Lost Morpheus again?” I asked.
Startled, Trevor Wylie whirled around, reaching up with his right arm and easing shut the lid of his laptop at the same time.
“Mr. Walker,” he said, taking off his sunglasses so he could see me more clearly.
“How are you, Trevor?” I said, moving around in front of him.
“Good, I’m good,” he said. “Whatcha doing around here?”
“Just picking up some things for dinner. How about you?”
He motioned to the paper cup next to his computer. “Having a coffee, doing a bit of surfing, homework.”
Across the street I noticed Trevor’s black Chevy, sitting low in the back as though the rear springs were going. It was a hulking piece of Detroit machinery amidst smaller, newer, mostly imported cars. Black jacket, black car, the wandering black Annihilator. The forces of darkness were aligned against me.
“That really is an amazing program you’ve got there,” I said, resting my bags on the top of the table. “If I ever get a dog, I guess I’ll have to get something like that.”
“Sure.”