Hard News

with the gun but I don’t remember how I got there.’”
    “You don’t think
I
had anything to do with it?”
    “Occurred to me.”
    “You want my solemn word?”
    “Will you swear on the Grimm Brothers?”
    “Absolutely.” She raised her hand.
    “Rune … Didn’t you think it was dangerous for a child to pull a stunt like that?”
    “Not that I
did
walk around with a grenade but if I had I would’ve made sure it was a dummy.”
    “You could get me fired. And you could get arrested.”
    She tried to look miserable and contrite and unjustly accused at the same time. He popped open two Pabsts.
    He was stern when he said, “Just don’t forget: You’ve got more to think about than yourself.”
    Which gave her a little thrill, his saying,
Remember me? I’m in your life too
. But he tromped on that pretty fast by nodding toward the bedroom and saying, “Think about her. You don’t want her to lose two mothers in one month, do you?”
    “No.”
    They sipped the beers in silence for a minute. Then she said, “Sam, I got a question: You ever do any homicide?”
    “Investigations? No. When I was in Emergency Services we ran crime scenes a lot but I never did the leg-work. Boring.”
    “But you know something about them?”
    “A little. What’s up?”
    “Say there’s somebody killed, okay?”
    “Hypothetically?”
    “Yeah, this guy is hypothetically killed. And there’s an eyewitness the cops find and he gives a statement. Would the cops just stop there and not interview anybody else?”
    “Sure, why not? If it’s a solid witness.”
    “Real solid.”
    “Sure. Detectives’ve got more murders than they know what to do with. An eyewitness—which you hardly ever get in a homicide—sure, they’d take the statement and turn ‘em over to the prosecutor. Then on to another case.”
    “I’d think they’d do more.”
    “An eyewitness, Rune? It doesn’t get any better than that.”
    THE SITES OF TRAGEDY.
    It had happened three years ago but as she placed each foot on the worn crest of a cobblestone—slowly, a mourner’s hopscotch—Rune felt the macabre, queasy pull of Lance Hopper’s killing. It was eight P.M., an overcast, humid evening. She and Courtney stood in the courtyard, at the bottom of the four sides of the building. A square of gray-pink city-lit sky was above them.
    Where exactly had Hopper died? she wondered. In the dim triangle of light falling into the courtyard from the leaded-glass lamp by the canopied doorway? Or had it been in the negative space—the shadows?
    Had he crawled toward the light?
    Rune found that this bothered her, not knowing exactly where the man had lain as he died. She thought there should be some kind of marker, some indication of where that moment had occurred—the instant between life and no life. But there was nothing, no reminder at all.
    Hopper would have to be content with whatever his gravestone said. He’d been rich; she was sure it was an eloquent sentiment.
    Rune led Courtney into the stuccoed lobby. An entry-way of a medieval castle. She expected at least a suit of armor, a collection of pikes and broadswords and maces. But she saw only a bulletin board with a faded sign,
Co-op News
, and a stack of take-out menus from a Chinese restaurant.
    She pressed a button.
    •      •      •
     
    “ WHAT A CUTE LITTLE GIRL. YOU’RE YOUNG TO BE A mother.”
    Rune said, “You know how it is.”
    The woman said, “I had Andrew when I was twenty-six; Beth when I was twenty-nine. That was old for then. For that generation. Let me show you the pictures.”
    The apartment was irritating. It reminded Rune of a movie she’d seen one time about these laser beams that crisscrossed the control room in a spaceship and if you broke one of them you’d set off this alarm. Here, though, no laser beams, but instead: little china dishes, animal figurines, cups, commemorative plates, a Franklin Mint ceramic thimble collection, vases and a thousand other artifacts, most of them flowery and ugly, all poised on the edges of fake teak shelves and tables, just waiting to fall to the floor and shatter.
    Courtney’s eyes glinted at these many opportunities for destruction and Rune kept a death grip on the belt of the little girl’s jumpsuit.
    The woman’s name was Miss Breckman. She was handsome. A born salesclerk: reserved, helpful, organized, polite. Rune remembered she was in her late fifties though she looked younger. She was stocky, with a double