The Devils Teardrop

perusing eyes.
    Caught once again. He didn’t care.
    Parker said, “You don’t look like an FBI agent.”
    “Undercover,” Lukas said, finally laughing. “I used to be really good at it. I played a Mafia hit man’s wife once.”
    “Italian? With that hair?”
    “I had Miss Clairol for backup.” Neither said anything for a moment. “I’ll stay until she leaves. Thought a hint of a domestic life might help you out with the social worker.”
    “It’s above and beyond the call,” he said.
    She gave a shrug worthy of Cage.
    “Look,” he said, “I know you said you had plans. But the Whos and I were going to do some yard work.”
    “In the snow?”
    “Right. Cut down some bushes in the backyard. Then we were going sledding? What it is, we don’t get much snow here?”
    He stopped speaking. Ending declarative sentences with interrogatory inflection? And he actually began asentence with “What it is.” The forensic linguist within him was not pleased. Nervous, are we? He continued. “I don’t know if you’d be interested, but . . .” He stopped once again.
    “Is that an invitation?” Lukas asked.
    “Uhm. Yes, it is.”
    “Those plans I had?” she said. “I was going to clean up my house and finish sewing a blouse for a friend’s daughter.”
    “Is that an acceptance?”
    A tentative smile. “I guess it is.” Silence for a moment. “Say, how’s the coffee? I don’t make it very often. Usually I just go to Starbucks.”
    “Good,” he answered.
    She was facing the window. But her eyes moved once more toward the door; she was listening to the sound of the children. She turned back to Parker. “Oh, I’ve figured it out.”
    “What?”
    “The puzzle.”
    “Puzzle?”
    “How many hawks were left on the roof. This morning, sitting here, I figured it out.”
    “Okay. Go ahead.”
    “It’s a trick question. There’s more than one answer.”
    “That’s good,” Parker said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s a trick question. It just means you’re thinking the right way—you’ve realized that a legitimate answer is that there are several possible solutions. It’s the first thing that puzzle masters learn.”
    “See,” she continued, “you tend to think that all the facts you need are given in the puzzle but there are some that aren’t stated.”
    Absolutely right. He nodded.
    “And those facts have to do with the nature of hawks.”
    “Ah,” Parker said, “and what does a hawk’s nature have to do with the puzzle?”
    “Because,” she said, pointing a finger at him and revealing a sliver of girlishness he hadn’t seen before, “hawks might be scared off by a gunshot. But they might not. Because—remember?—they were far apart on the roof. That was a clue, right?”
    “Right. Keep going.”
    “Okay, the farmer shoots one bird off the roof but we don’t know what the other two do. They both might stay. So then the answer’d be there’re two left. Or one might fly off and that’d leave one. Or both might fly off, which’d leave none. So. Those’re the three answers.”
    “Well,” Parker responded, “you were right to consider implied facts.”
    She frowned. “What does that mean? Am I right or not?”
    “You’re wrong.”
    “But,” Lukas protested, “I have to be right.”
    “No, you don’t.” He laughed.
    “Well, I’m at least partly right, aren’t I?”
    “There’s no such thing as partly right when it comes to puzzles. You want to know the answer?”
    A hesitation. “No. That’d be cheating. I’m going to keep working on it.”
    It was a good moment to kiss her and he did, briefly, then, as Lukas poured more coffee, Parker returned to the living room to hug his children and tell them good morning on the first day of the year.

Author’s Note
    In trying to solve Parker’s puzzle, Jackie Lukas’s mistake was in making an assumption: that the hawk the farmer shot would fall off the roof. It might not have. The question didn’t ask how many “living hawks” were left on the roof, just how many “hawks.” So the answer is this: Three hawks would remain if the dead hawk didn’t fall off and the other two don’t fly away. Two hawks, if the dead hawk didn’t fall off and one flies away or if the dead hawk does fall off and the other two stay. One hawk, if the dead hawk falls and one of the others flies away or if the dead hawk doesn’t fall and the others fly away. No hawks, if the dead hawk falls off the roof and the others fly