One Door From Heaven

resist arrest. I lost it anyway. Seeing that girl, I lost it."
        Reaching across the table, Geneva squeezed his hand. "Good for you."
        "No, it wasn't good. I would've kept going until I killed him-except the girl stopped me. In my report, I lied, claimed the creep resisted arrest. In the hearing, the wife testified against me… but the girl lied for me, and they believed the girl. Or pretended to. I made a deal to leave the force, and they agreed to give me severance pay and support my application for a PI license."
        "What happened to the child?" Geneva asked.
        "Turns out the abuse was long-term. The court removed her from her mother's custody, put her with her maternal grandparents. She'll graduate high school soon. She's okay. She's a good kid."
        Geneva squeezed his hand again and then leaned back in her chair, beaming. "You're just like my gumshoe."
        "What gumshoe?"
        "The one I was in love with back when I was in my twenties. If I hadn't hidden my murdered husband's body in an oil-field sump, Philip might not have rejected me."
        Noah didn't quite know how to respond to this. He blotted his damp brow again. Finally he said, "You killed your husband?"
        "No, my sister, Carmen, shot him. I hid the body to protect her and to spare our father from the scandal. General Sternwood-that was our daddy-wasn't in good health. And he…"
        Puzzlement crossed Geneva's face as her voice trailed away.
        Noah encouraged her to continue: "And he…?"
        "Well, of course, that wasn't me, that was Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep. The gumshoe was Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe."
        Geneva clapped her hands and let out a musical laugh of delight.
        Although he didn't know why he was smiling, Noah smiled.
        Geneva said, "Well, it's a delicious memory even if it's a false memory. Honestly, I must admit, I'm something of a wimp when it comes to being naughty. I've never had it in me to be a bad girl, so if I hadn't been shot in the head, I'd never have had a memory like that."
        The sugar content of cookies and cola provided sufficient mental lift to deal with a wide spectrum of intellectual challenges, but, by God, for some things you needed a beer. He didn't have a beer, so instead of making an attempt to deduce logically the meaning of what she'd said, he asked another question: "You were shot in the head?"
        "A polite and well-dressed bandit held up our convenience store, killed my husband, shot me, and disappeared. I won't tell you that I tracked him to New Orleans and blew him away myself, because that was Alec Baldwin and not a part of my real life. But even wimp that I am, I'd have been capable of shooting him if I'd known how to track him down. I'd have shot him repeatedly, I think. Once in each leg, let him suffer, then twice in the gut, then once in the head. Do I sound terribly savage, dear?"
        "Not savage. But more vindictive than I would have expected."
        "That's a good honest answer. I'm impressed with you, Noah."
        She turned on one of those ice-melting smiles.
        He found himself smiling, too.
        "I'm enjoying our little get-together," she said.
        "Me too."

Chapter 61
        
        SATURDAY: HAWTHORNE, Nevada, to Boise, Idaho. Four hundred forty-nine miles. Mostly wasteland, bright sun, but an easy haul.
        A cloud of vultures circled something dead in the desert half an hour south of Lovelock, Nevada. Though intrigued, Preston Mad-doc decided against a side trip to investigate.
        They stopped for lunch at a diner in Winnemucca.
        On the sidewalk outside the restaurant, swarms of ants were feeding on the oozing body of a fat, crushed beetle. The bug juice had an interesting iridescent quality similar to oil on water.
        Taking the Hand into a public place was risky these days. Her performance on Friday, in the coffee shop west of Vegas, had been unnerving. She might have gotten what she wanted if the waitress hadn't been stupid.
        Most people were stupid. Preston Maddoc had made this judgment of humanity when he'd been eleven. In the past thirty-four years, he'd seen no reason to change his mind.
        The diner smelled of sizzling hamburger patties. French fries roiling in hot oil. Bacon.
        He wondered what the beetle ooze smelled like.
        Several men were sitting side by side on stools at the lunch