“How the hell did you know that?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re all over the local news. The News-Sentinel; Channel Ten. But I figured it out last night. When you said you were in San Diego.”
I wasn’t happy to hear this, but I was impressed. “How?”
“Easy-peasy. The crash was big news—national news—yesterday morning. Sensational story; celebrity pilot; everybody tight-lipped about whether the body’s been I.D.’d. Then one of the world’s experts on identifying skeletal remains turns up in San Diego. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
“I like the way your mind works, Red. Ever think about getting out of the library?”
“Huh?” She sounded . . . what? confused? taken aback? No: She sounded defensive, maybe even scared. Why? Parsing what I’d said to her, I realized, Hell, Bill, you dumb-ass. This woman’s been stalked, and suddenly you sound like maybe you’re hitting on her. Angling for a date. “What I mean is,” I hurried to clarify, “ever think about changing fields? From library science to . . . oh, for instance, forensic anthropology? We can always use smart people.”
I heard a brief snort—was it laughter, or scorn? “Hey, thanks,” she said. “I’ll add that to my list of brilliant career moves: years of school, mountains of debt, and a one-in-a-million shot at some dead-end teaching job in Fargo—where the odds of getting tenure would be about as low as the average winter temperature.”
“So you like the idea,” I said. “Great. I’ll be watching for your application.” Using my shoulder to hold the phone against my ear, I began wriggling into my clothes.
“You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll be watching for my Mac-Arthur Genius Grant.” She paused, then her tone got serious again. “Speaking of which: Your guy Janus—he was a Mac-Arthur Fellow, wasn’t he? Didn’t he get a genius grant for creating that charity?”
“Yeah,” I said, saddened anew by the shame and the waste of Janus’s death, or his fall, or whatever it was. “A quick-response relief force, helping people hang on till the governments and the Red Cross can get there? It was a brilliant idea.”
“Important work,” she agreed. “Bound to be frustrating, though—so much need, so little funding.” She fell silent a moment. “So put yourself in his shoes. What would you say—what could you say—if somebody offered you a way to raise more money and help more people? A way to hire more staff, buy more planes? What if all it took to make it happen was to take a little something back with you, back across the border, on your way home?”
“Smuggling drugs? You’re saying Richard Janus made a deal with the devil?”
“Not saying; just wondering,” she replied. “Just thinking out loud. Playing what-if. Deadhead miles are a waste of time and fuel, right? Ask any long-haul delivery guy. Wheels or wings, same diff. Besides, somebody’s gonna haul it; somebody’s gonna get rich. Why not one of the good guys?”
“Because then you stop being one of the good ones,” I pointed out. “Because running drugs makes you one of the bad guys.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that,” she conceded. “But maybe you could rationalize it.”
“Rationalize it how?”
“Same way Robin Hood did, I guess. Take from the rich, give to the poor.”
“But,” I started to protest, then stopped. But what?
“There’s something else,” she added.
Crack! Crack crack crack! The metal door of my room rattled, and I jumped almost as if the knocks had been gunshots. “I gotta go,” I said furtively. “Somebody’s at my door.”
More rapping. “Hey, Doc—you in there?” It was McCready’s voice. “You about ready?” I checked the bedside clock. Crap, I thought. I was five minutes late. “Be right there,” I hollered. “One second.”
BANG! “Yo, Doc! We’re burning daylight!”
“Coming. Coming!” I muttered a quick “talk to you later” into the phone and ended the call, then hurried to the door and tugged it open. “Sorry,” I said, my face flushing. “I got caught on a call to UT.”
“Everything all right?”
I nodded. His question was routine—superficial small talk, without a doubt.
Almost without a doubt, I realized uneasily. Was it just my imagination, or were his eyes boring into mine with the keen skepticism of a federal investigator?