Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,42

Tattoos covered his skinny arms.

“Dr. Alderson was a professor at Coyle State. Psychology. He used to come by couple evenings a week. Talk with some of the shelter folks. He spent a lot of time, I remember, with Red.”

“You pay him?” I said.

“No, no. We got no money for paying,” Cora said. “Everybody volunteers here, ’cept me. I’m full-time staff.”

“How big a staff is it?” I said.

She smiled.

“Me,” she said.

“Place looks pretty good,” I said.

“We got rules. Blankets have to be folded. Floors have to be swept. Plates and stuff have to be washed, and if you don’t take your turn, you’re out.”

“Ever have any trouble here?”

“No,” she said. “Couple of cops come in every night, have coffee, look around. I don’t tolerate no trouble.”

“What else can you tell me about Dr. Alderson?” I said.

“It’s been a while,” Cora said. “Don’t remember much to speak of. Just that he was good. He come regular. Would sit and talk with some of these people. Listen to what they had to say.”

“He save many besides Red?” I said.

“Not much that’s savable,” Cora said. “Time they here most of them pretty far down the chute. Even if you could get them straight, they got substance-abuse problems, dementia, liver problems, cancer. They not going anywhere.”

“Did he spend as much time with those kinds of people?”

“I don’t know. Evenings are pretty busy here. Helped Red, though. I can remember that.”

“Can you give me an address for Coyle State?” I said.

“Cabbie’ll know,” she said.

“I’m driving.”

“Rental car?”

“Nope, my own. I drove out here.”

“From Boston?” she said.

“Yep.”

“You ’fraid to fly?”

“Nope.”

“Why you drive here from Boston.”

“Gave me time to think,” I said.

“I’ll bet it did,” she said.

She wrote out an address on the top sheet of a small yellow pad, tore off the sheet, and gave it to me.

“You getting rich here?” I said.

She smiled again.

“Not hardly,” she said.

“So why do you do it?”

“Might as well be me,” she said.

“Nobody better,” I said, and put out my hand.

45.

Ilay on my bed in the Holiday Inn and talked with Susan on the phone.

“Hawk on the job?” I said.

“If he stayed any closer we’d be having sex,” Susan said.

“Yikes,” I said.

“Sort of a metaphor,” Susan said. “He’s very conscientious.”

“Vinnie and Chollo?”

“Right behind Hawk,” Susan said. “In truth they’re driving me crazy.”

“Good,” I said.

“I know. I’m very safe.”

We were quiet. It didn’t feel like quiet. It felt like we were saying things to each other.

After a moment, Susan said, “Progress today?”

“Yeah, some,” I said. “I found someone who knew Alderson. He was associated with a college out here. I’m going there tomorrow.”

“What college?”

“Coyle State,” I said.

“Nope,” Susan said. “Never heard of it.”

“Now you have,” I said. “You can always learn things talk ing to me.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “It’s one of the reasons I do it.”

I looked up at the ceiling. It was a standard sprayed-on ceiling. The room was generic hotel chain, generic furniture, generic rug. Nice view of the lake if I stood up. I’d been in a lot of rooms like this, mostly minus the view. They worked fi ne. They housed you, kept you warm, let you bathe and sleep and eat. They didn’t do much for the soul, but their mission had nothing to do with the soul.

“Any other reasons?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Do you know when you’re coming home?”

“No. It’ll depend a little on what I find out at the college tomorrow.”

“Have you been thinking about us?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Have you been thinking about marriage?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“We are the kind of people who marry,” I said.

“Yes.”

“On the other hand there’s nothing broken.”

“So why fi x it?” Susan said.

“Maybe,” I said.

Again the interactive quiet stretching nearly seven hundred miles across the dark fields of the republic. The fi elds were now probably darker and fewer than the ones Fitzgerald imagined, but I liked the phrase.

“And have you been thinking about why you’re so committed to this case?” Susan said.

“Most of the drive out here,” I said. “When I wasn’t thinking about marriage.”

“Any conclusions?”

“More a bunch of images,” I said. “Doherty talking about his wife. The look on his face when he listened to the tape. The way his wife seemed to feel he didn’t matter.”

“And are there any images of us that pop up?”

“We were separated,” I said. “I had to kill some people in a way I don’t feel so good about.”

“And if I hadn’t done what I did, you wouldn’t have had to kill the people you killed.”

“True.”

“Isn’t that a little hard to forgive?” Susan said.

“I’ve