Rough Weather - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,13

cops?” I said.

“Yes. Several people had cell phones. As soon as the candles blew out in the chapel, we all ran out and hid everyplace. The people with cell phones called nine-one-one. But of course the police had no way to get here.”

“They’ll be along,” I said.

“Have the criminals all gone?” Heidi said.

“I just scoped the island,” I said, “and found nobody.”

“Thank God for small favors,” she said.

“Or big ones,” I said.

“Are you all right, Dr. Silverman,” Heidi said.

“Yes,” Susan said.

Heidi studied us for a moment. Her face was pinched, and she looked pallid. But she was not giving in to whatever she felt.

“There’s hot water,” Heidi said. “I’m going to the kitchen now to see if we can get some sort of breakfast together. See if I can find any of the staff.”

Susan and I went to our room, and I got the first sight of myself in the mirror. I looked like I was in blackface . . . full body.

Susan and I went to the kitchenette, where the floor was made of stone, and took off all our clothes.

“We going to salvage any of your stuff?” I said.

“No,” Susan said.

She found a big green plastic bag in the broom closet, and we bundled the clothes up and put them in the bag. I saved my gun and a jackknife that I took from my pants pocket. Susan saved nothing.

There were two bathrooms, at least, in our suite. We each went to one of them and undertook a cleanup. It took me about half an hour. It took Susan much longer.

13

We were clean and sprightly. We had drunk coffee and eaten sandwiches in the living room, and now we were talking to the cops. The state guys had the duty on the south-coast islands, and there were a lot of them. The first arrivals were a SWAT team in full battle dress who came in by helicopter, much as their opposites had. They went about securing the island. A second chopper brought some EMTs, who tended to people who thought they needed tending to. Later, by boat, almost sedately, came the detectives, led by the state homicide commander, Captain Healy.

When Healy came into the living room and spotted Susan and me, he gestured for us to follow him and we went down the hall to another room, which somebody called the parlor. In my youth the parlor and the living room were one and the same, but my youth was not spent on Tashtego Island.

“Susan,” Healy said when we were alone. “If I looked like you, I wouldn’t waste my time on the likes of him.”

“There are things you don’t know,” Susan said.

“Or want to,” Healy said. Then he turned to me and said, “Okay, tell me what you know.”

I told him. He looked at Susan.

“Anything to add?” he said.

She shook her head. He looked back at me.

“Just to be sure I understand,” Healy said, “Heidi Bradshaw hired you to be some sort of substitute husband for the wedding.”

“What she told me,” I said.

“You believe her?”

“No.”

Healy looked at Susan.

“You believe her,” he said.

“No.”

“Either of you have an idea of what she might really have wanted?”

Susan said, “No.”

I said, “No idea.”

Healy nodded.

“You have had some dealings with the Gray Man before,” he said to me.

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s a big coincidence that you and he show up on an island off the south coast of Massachusetts?”

“No,” I said.

“What do you think it is?” Healy said.

“No idea.”

Healy nodded again. He looked at Susan and smiled.

“There you have the essence of my professional life,” he said.

“Oddly enough,” Susan said, “mine, too.”

“You know if Rugar was invited?” Healy said to me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Anything else either of you want to tell me?” Healy said. “Observation? Theory? Anything?”

I shook my head. I could see Susan thinking about it. So could Healy.

“What?” he said to her.

“Just . . . not even an observation . . . an impression, maybe,” Susan said.

“Yeah?” Healy said.

“I’ve seen a lot of traumatized people in my practice,” Susan said. “Heidi Bradshaw seems to be holding up awfully well in the face of a horrendous experience culminating in the murder of her son-in-law and the kidnapping of her daughter.”

“You think she’s somehow involved?” Healy said.

“Perhaps she’s simply numb with shock,” Susan said. “Perhaps she’s Mother Courage. I only can say that her behavior is not consistent with other behavior I’ve seen in other traumatic circumstances. And I’ve never seen circumstances as flamboyantly traumatic as these.”

Healy looked at me. I