taking him back.”
Ruth escorted her son inside and slammed the door shut before Miss Jewel could speak again. She loved that door; it was an old, heavy wood construction with a big vertical dead bolt and slamming it produced the most satisfying thud she'd ever heard.
Jason stood on the bottom step with his back turned to her. The space was a narrow passage, just wide enough for the door and the stairs. On one side a radiator hissed, releasing steam onto a little window that was the hallway's only source of light. It cast a rectangular shaft of light onto Jason as he cupped his ears and looked up the stairs, to where they twisted away. Ruth knelt down and put her hands on his shoulders. He lowered his hands and she turned him to face her.
“I'm sorry.” she said. “I'm sorry I had to yell. I'm just mad at those people for taking you away from your projects.”
“I didn't like it there.” he said.
His voice wasn't very childlike. It was firm and confident for his age. He was also big. He wasn't just overweight, but also tall. He wasn't easy to frighten. Even the loud noises didn't frighten him. They just annoyed him.
Jason said, “Can you call Mr. John today? I'd like to go see him.”
Ruth nodded. “First let's call your grandpa. Would that be okay?”
He made a satisfied grin and nodded. “That would be fun. I'm hungry.”
“Okay, let's go up.”
The stairs took them to the second floor apartment in the triple decker home. Ruth made her son peanut butter on bread and checked the clock on the microwave. This was not a good day for Miss J or anyone to drop a surprise on her. Most days she might be able to work out some slack. After all she was a sergeant, a detective investigator, not some rookie beat cop. She could pull at least a little weight, even if her lieutenant didn't like her. Her boss thought of her as nothing but a cop's kid with an urge to please but not enough bricks in her brain to get the job done. Ruth thought of herself as cautious and unwilling to take chances, but that slowed her closure rate. Somehow, that didn't sit as well with the lieutenant as whip snap numbers.
Calm down, she told herself. She was worked up enough as it was without thinking of her boss. He was, after all, not her problem today. No, today she faced something even worse. She had an appointment to testify in court. It was federal court, no less. She was a minor player in the case and it would take her no more than an hour to discharge her duty there and get on with being a cop. But it was an appointment, and god help you if you piss off a federal judge.
Ruth dialed her father's cell phone. When he answered, he was huffing.
“Honey, I'm really sorry to hear that.” he said, once Ruth explained what had happened. Always merciful, he ignored how she repeated the story as though he'd been the one at fault. Ruth was still hot in the skull and needed someone, anyone, to boil for it. Dad was always happy to man the escape hatch and bring her pressure down low enough to manage thinking again.
“Are you at jogging?” she said. She glanced at the clock and ran her finger up her forehead and through her wet, pony tailed hair. “I'm sorry, Dad. I forgot what time it was.”
“No problem. Don't worry at all. So what are you going to do?”
“I was hoping you and Mom could take him for the day.”
There was a pause. And then, “Well, Ruthie, I would if I could. But we're not at home.”
Ruth waited a few beats. She wasn't sure what that meant. Somewhere in her brain, someone knew the answer and was trying to tell her. But she just wasn't getting it.
Dad said, “Sweetness, we're in West Palm Beach. With all the other old farts.”
As her Dad always used to say, light dawned on Marblehead. “Oh Dad,” said Ruth. “Dad, I totally forgot.”
Her parents, life long New Englanders, had flown out the day before. It was their first time either had been south of DC. It was supposed to be a vacation, but Mom didn't try very hard to hide her plan to look at time shares. Ruth's dad was a retired cop (no surprise there) and swore he'd never take the easy road like every other “old fart”. But he'd also once said that he used to be tough as bark, until the day he had a daughter tougher than he was and he just gave up on trying to be better than her. The sound of his voice made it clear that he was enjoying himself. She wanted all that for him, for the both of them.
He said, “So, do you want me to fly back and pick up Jason? I'm getting tired of this fantastic weather anyway.”
She smiled. “No, I'll figure something out.”
Jason tugged on her jacket. He mouthed the words “John Smith”.
“You've got someone?” said Dad. “Someone you can rely on with your son?”
“Well, there's John.”
She winced. She knew Dad wouldn't like that idea.
“The guy with the baseball bat?” he said. This time he sounded like he might actually get on that plane on fly north.
Ruth and John had been seeing each other since a few weeks after the fire. She thought he was a pretty good guy. After all, he'd come back for her. That meant a lot. Dad would say that “pretty good guy” doesn't sound much like the making of a soul mate. Well, to Ruth it sounded like she was being a realistic adult. A girlish crush made her a single parent in the first place. (Ruth glanced at the wine stains on the Formica counter – evidence of how that little fling had ended) Dad was lucky he'd found a soul mate early in life, but that meant he didn't really get how the other half lived. “Pretty good guy” was about all the material she needed for a sturdy partnership.
The best thing about him was that Jason loved him. And she could understand why. John was a networking tech and had access to all the computer equipment things that Jason loved. For John's part, he had a sister named Alice with her own special needs and that made him understand and admire the boy. He was genuine and not like the guys who pretended they could put up with Jason because they wanted his mom.
John's main problem was his temper. He was gentle most of the time, but when he exploded he obliterated obstacles in his path. It was one such incident that forever cemented his identity in Dad's brain as “The guy with the baseball bat”. To him, that was the ultimate counter example to pretty good. John's circuits were cross wired in some unpredictable ways. How could Ruth ever be sure we wouldn't go “bleep, bleep kaboom” at the wrong time?
She couldn't, but life was full of risk. Today she was ever more willing to take that risk because she had a date in court, not that she was about to tell her father.
“Maybe not John.” she said, “Dad, don't worry, I'll find someone else.”
Jason let go of her jacket, dejected.
Dad said, “Maybe I shouldn't have left.”
“No, no, no. Really, don't worry.” She closed her eyes. “You know what, I've got this friend who's not at work today. She's not too far away and she loves Jason.”
A voice insider her screamed, you moron, did you forget your Dad's a cop? But if he saw through the lie – and she was sure he did, even over all those miles of phone line – he let it go.
“Okay.” he said, “Okay, let me know how it goes. I love you.”
“You too.” she said.
Ruth hung up the phone and dialed John Smith.
On the dining room table, her phone buzzed at her. The blinking sphinx icon announced the Sorter's presence. The program had not signaled her directly since Norman Shaw. Perhaps she'd been right all along. It wasn't done with her. She touched the symbol and the resulting message said:
COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET ONE
Underneath the words were a series of concentric rings, each with eyes around the circumference and each spinning in the opposite direction of its neighbors. There were letters and numbers under each eye. They were blinking lights, switching from red to black as they spun. It looked like the device Norman Shaw had been holding in his hands before he'd shot himself. Ruth touched it. The wheels slowed and stopped. The blinking stopped as
well. The letters that had been lit in red when the image froze stayed like that. They were scattered across the wheels but easy to read and they said,
4 HOURS
SIX
Reggie folded his bathrobe on one of the Adirondack chairs next to the pool and mounted the diving board. He stood there for a moment, alone in the quiet pool room. Sara had left a few minutes before. The police had asked her a lot of questions, but they hadn't taken her to the station. Todd Laurel was an ex-felon with an obvious grudge. He'd been standing in Binder's kitchen when Sara had shot him. Given that and her hysterical sobbing and state of undress, the cops had little motive to belabor their interview with her. Reggie had called her a cab and the look in her eyes as she rode away made it clear that it would be some time before she slept well again.
Reggie just needed to clear his head a little. The indoor pool was on the top floor of his condo complex. At this hour in the morning, the room was dim and abandoned. He could have turned on a light, but he preferred the windows and their dawning sun. The pool's water stretched away from the patio and touched the windows. It looked as though he could swim straight into the sky.
He hopped on the diving board and plunged in. The windows continued below the water line, making the pool seem a bit like an aquarium. The difference was that these walls were made of one-way glass. No one on the outside could see in. Reggie swam under the water, all the way to