The Old Man(24)

As he walked with the dogs he kept thinking. He didn’t know whether she had a good relationship with her father. Maybe she would turn the problem over to him. He could hear her voice. “Mom is seeing someone. Living with him. I don’t think she really knows anything about him. He just seems a little … I don’t know.” That would be all it took.

He and the dogs walked around the lake. He felt the leashes swinging from his neck, and it reminded him to look for signs that he needed to leash the dogs. He saw no police cars, and nobody walking who was close enough to feel uneasy about unleashed dogs.

When they were near the café he bought some coffee and went back down to the park to sit on a bench while the dogs sniffed around the area. He thought about the dogs. They had sat patiently while he had been at the café. They loved routines, because routines implied order, and order reassured them. All it took was repetition. Things being the same for a long time reassured people, too. A long history that didn’t change much was a person’s best credential.

When Caldwell and the dogs returned to the apartment, Sarah was still alone, this time reading a large hardcover law book. When they came in, she looked up. “You know what I’d like to know?”

“Whether I have a criminal record?”

“You don’t,” she said. “I already checked that. It cost me money, too.”

“Sorry.”

“I’d like to see a credit report on you.”

He felt his heartbeat accelerate, but kept his facial muscles relaxed. “Why would I give you that? Would you give me your credit report?”

“I’m not fucking your mother.” She frowned. “Or your father. Or whatever.”

He stared at her. “All right.”

“All right?” She had not been expecting this.

“May I use your computer?”

Her plate was still on the table. She picked it up and pushed her laptop toward him. He opened it and began to type while she put the plate in the sink. He was glad he had memorized Peter Caldwell’s birth date, last address, and Social Security number. After he filled in a grid and clicked a couple of boxes, he turned the computer around and pushed it in front of her so she could see the screen.

As the information appeared on the screen, she began to read it. After a minute or two of silence, she looked up. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“You don’t seem to be a deadbeat or a screwup or something. You’ve got a whole lot of credit available, but still have a mammoth rating. You pay your bills on time.” She scrolled up and down. “Why so many banks?”

“I like banks.”

“Not as much as they like you.” She shrugged. “Okay, I’m satisfied.”

“Thank you.” He spun the computer around and terminated the connection. He stood up and started toward the living room.

“Wait,” she said.

He stopped. “For what?”

“The apology. Here it comes.”

“Keep it. I’m very impressed with you for being so tough and persistent. You’re a fine daughter. Now I hope you’ll stop invading my privacy.”

“I will.”

As he walked out of the kitchen toward his room, he hoped she would keep her promise. Since he had come to Chicago he had not yet forced himself to settle certain issues in his own mind, and dealing with Sarah made him think about them. He had been in wars, and he had a long familiarity with the necessity of killing an attacker. He wasn’t sure he was as comfortable with killing someone who threatened his life less directly or intentionally, like Sarah and Zoe.





10


The next evening, after his confrontation with Sarah, Caldwell was in his room listening to the radio with earphones attached to his computer while he studied various sources to give him an idea of what his pursuers might be doing, and who they were. Since the night he left Vermont, he wondered how the death of the man who had broken into his house had been kept out of the newspapers. He had called the police and cops had come and interviewed him. Others had examined the crime scene. Men from the medical examiner’s office had taken the body away.

He had discovered that the police blotter for Norwich was on the police website, and he searched it every few days, but found no mention of the incident. The only way he knew of for the record to be wiped away so completely was if intelligence officers had gone to the police and persuaded them that the case was a national security issue. But they would have had to do it right away, before word got out, and that meant someone in the government had known about the incident the night it happened.

Suddenly the dogs both lifted their heads at once. He watched them to see if it was simply a reaction to something too distant to be of concern or a developing threat. He took off the earphones. There was a quiet knock, and he stood up and went to open the door.

Standing in the doorway was Zoe, and she was smiling. She was wearing a blue dress with simple lines and no unnecessary ornamentation. It was very pretty on her. “You look very nice,” he said. “You don’t wear dresses very often. Are you going out?”

“No,” she said. “Sarah left a few minutes ago to spend the evening with some friends. They picked her up, and she’ll be gone for hours. I thought this dress might be appropriate for this occasion.”