فصل 12 - بخش 08

12

Full dark had come when Ralph and the others stepped out of Howie Gold’s building. Howie himself was still upstairs, making arrangements, and his investigator was with him. Ralph wondered what they would talk about with everyone else gone.

‘Ms Gibney, where are you staying?’ Jeannie asked.

‘The Flint Luxury Motel. I reserved a room.’

‘Oh no, you can’t,’ Jeannie said. ‘The only luxury there is on the sign out front. The place is a pit.’

Holly looked disconcerted. ‘Well, there must be a Holiday Inn—’

‘Stay with us,’ Ralph said, beating Jeannie to it and hoping it would earn him some points later on. God knew he could use them.

Holly hesitated. She didn’t do well in the houses of other people. She didn’t do well even in the one where she had grown up, when on her quarterly duty visits to her mother. She knew that in the home of these strangers she would lie awake long and wake early, hearing every unfamiliar creak of the walls and the floors, listening to the murmured voices of the Andersons and wondering if they were talking about her … which they almost certainly would be. Hoping that if she had to get up in the night to spend a penny, they wouldn’t hear her. She needed her sleep. The meeting had been stressful enough, and the steady pushback of Detective Anderson’s disbelief had been understandable but exhausting.

But, as Bill Hodges would have said. But.

Anderson’s disbelief was the but. It was the reason she had to accept the invitation, and she did.

‘Thank you, that’s very kind, but I have to run an errand first. It won’t take long. Give me your address, and my iPad will take me right to you.’

‘Is it anything I can help you with?’ Ralph asked. ‘I’d be happy to—’

‘No. Really. I’ll be fine.’ She shook hands with Yune. ‘Come with us if you can, Lieutenant Sablo. I’m sure you want to.’

He smiled. ‘I do, believe me, but it’s like that poem says – I have promises to keep.’

Marcy Maitland was standing by herself, holding her purse against her stomach and looking shell-shocked. Jeannie went to her without hesitation. Ralph watched with interest as Marcy initially drew back, as if in alarm, then allowed herself to be hugged. After a moment she even put her head on Jeannie Anderson’s shoulder and hugged back. She looked like a tired child. When the two women drew apart, both of them were crying.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ Jeannie said.

‘Thank you.’

‘If there’s anything I can do for you or your girls, anything at all—’

‘You can’t, but he can.’ She turned her attention to Ralph, and although her eyes were still wet with tears, they were cold. Assessing. ‘This outsider, I want you to find him. Don’t let him get away just because you don’t believe in him. Can you do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ralph said, ‘but I’ll try.’

Marcy said no more, only took Yune Sablo’s offered arm and let him lead her to her car.