Edge

out from McCall but he caught on and he’s not saying anything.”
    Ryan muttered, “Well, Jesus, what’re we going to do?”
    I said, “I could use some help.” My eyes on Joanne.
    She lifted an eyebrow.
    I said, “Part of McCall wants to cooperate. I can tell. He’s on the borderline. I’m thinking if you could talk to him, he might help us out.”
    “Appeal to his sense of decency?” she asked.
    “As Amanda’s stepmother, yes.”
    Her eyes swung to the wedge of light falling on the grass from the open door of the panic building. “I’ll give it a try.”

Chapter 58
    POGUE AND I stood outside the closed door to the outbuilding.
    I observed him closely for the first time.
    The head beneath that sandy hair was long, a predator’s skull. His features were pinched—they’d circled in on themselves—and a scar curved forward from his chin, short and narrow, from a knife, not shrapnel. He didn’t smile or offer much expression and I doubted that he ever did. No wedding ring, no jewelry. I noted remnants of stitching where insignias had been removed from his green jacket. I supposed that it was a personal favorite and that he’d had the garment for years.
    His narrow hips were encircled by a worn canvas belt. It held a special holster—a clamp basically, fitted for a silenced pistol—and a number of magazine holders, along with a knife and several small boxes whose purpose I couldn’t guess.
    Unlike Ryan Kessler, Pogue didn’t constantly tap or fidget with his weapons. He knew where they were if he needed them. On the ground beside him was a battered dark nylon rucksack, whose contents were heavy. I’d heard a clank when he’d set it down.
    He stood with his arms crossed, looking over the property with the eye of a shepherd, as if he weren’taware of my presence. Finally he said, “Missed this one.”
    Meaning Barr, I assumed.
    He continued, “I had information. Bits of it. But nothing fit together.”
    Though that wasn’t completely true. The bits did fit together, like a machine-cut jigsaw puzzle. I’d been focused on the individual pieces, though. Not the image as a whole. I’m not much of a jigsaw player—it’s not really a game—but I know the strategy generally is to do the outer border first, so that you have a framework, and then fill in.
    Exactly what I hadn’t done here. I’d made a lot of assumptions.
    He looked at my back. “You like that Glock?”
    “I do.”
    “They’re fine firearms.” Then, with a hint of criticism: “Prefer a little longer barrel myself.”
    “Interesting holster.” Nodding down at his hip.
    “Hmm,” he replied.
    More silence. Pogue said, “Evolution.” There was some thoughtfulness in his voice.
    While pursuing my various college degrees I usually found time to take some courses for no reason other than that I was curious about the topic. Once I’d taken a very good class in medical school, called Darwin and the History of Biology (also because the lecture hall was next to where Peggy was taking Anatomy). I was curious what Pogue meant and I glanced his way.
    “Weapons reflect efficient evolution more than anything else in society, don’t you think?”
    Survival of the fittest, in a way, but not quite what Darwin was thinking of.
    But it proved to be an interesting idea. Pogue continued, “You’ve got medicine and vehicles and paint and clocks, computers, processed food, you name it. Think about them. Giving mercury as medicine or leaching blood out of people. Or making airplanes that crash and bridges that collapse. Engineers and scientists just flailing around, trying to get it right, killing people, themselves included, in the process. Failure after failure after failure.”
    “I suppose that’s true.”
    “But weapons? They’re efficient from the git-go.” An accent, slightly Southern, protruded.
    Efficient . . .
    “You couldn’t have a sword that broke the first time you used it. You couldn’t have a musket that blew up in your face—the men who made those made ’em right the first time. No luxury for error. That’s why you can still shoot guns’re two hundred years old and some of ’em are pretty damn accurate.”
    “Natural selection.”
    Pogue said, “Darwinian gunsmithing.”
    Some heady thinking from a man who, even if he wasn’t technically a government killer, protected them for a living.
    We fell silent, not because of the conversation, but because Ryan Kessler was limping down from the house like a