Quiver

Chapter 1

Tiny gold flecks floated in her speckled gray eyes. I stared at

her, and felt a strong urge to suck down some air, but didn't
fearing that any sudden movement might prove to be like opening
the door with a category five roaring outside.
Then, I proclaimed as calmly as possible with a gun aimed at
the center of my forehead, "I'm not in the same line of work as
your ex." I hope. "Hon, I'm not even his gender. In case you
hadn't notice I have breasts."
Okay they are small but come on they aren't invisible.
I knew had managed to keep the astonishment from my voice
thank you God, but not the tinge of fear, and knew that if I heard
it she did too.
I don't know what might set you off, I thought, blinked twice,
glanced at the clock mounted over the refrigerator behind her,
and saw that nearly fifteen seconds had passed since my last
check. Time was not flying.
I found it difficult to discern any emotions beyond her veil of
obvious rage. The lines that radiated from the corners of her eyes,
tightened, and gathered into pinched white folds like those along
the bottom edge of a thunderhead.
"Please lower the gun...please," I said softly--okay whimpered
softly when her eyelids lowered as if to narrow her focus, which
widened her pupils like growing pinpoints of unfathomable
despair.
A quick glance down let me see that her knuckles whitened too
as a quiver ran through the tip of her finger pressed against the
trigger. The safely was off. It was time to act.
As if suddenly weightless, I dropped to the floor and rolled
across the room. The gun fired, sounded like a cannon explosion.
The sudden recoil threw her hand up and back. I sprang to my
feet, jumped at her, grasped her wrist too hard, felt bones grind
and rasp, heard her scream a painful desperate need to inflict
injury on someone, and then heard my cry of "let go of it
Goddamn you!" as panic flooded my chest with hot liquid.
As we struggled for it, the gun fired twice more into the ceiling

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and powdered gypsum dusted my face. We both coughed. She
spit a glob of mucus at me, but missed. Her free hand turned into
a serpent's claw as its nails gouged two thin lines in the flesh
under my left eye.
That was when I decided that my options had run out. Blood
ran off my cheek and struck the floor. Staring into her hate-filled
eyes, feeling more panicked than anything else, I wrapped the
fingers of my free hand around her throat, found the arteries,
squeezed hard until consciousness fled her now horror-filled eyes
alert to the fact that her death approached quickly, like a stealthy
apparition, instead of an obvious demon.
Cindy McDonald struggled, slapped at my arms and face with a
weakness born out of a desire it seemed to me, to allow me to
bring about a swift end to her personal misery. She feebly batted
the fingers pressing her throat, and moaned without uttering a
single word until she collapsed.
I braced her against the counter, and checked for a pulse. It felt
weak kind of reedy but steady. She'd live but I now had a new
awareness of what I might do to defend my own life. Despite my
being a well-trained kick boxer, I had never fought anyone before
that moment outside of the gym.
My heart pounded in my throat like a caged animal and I
recalled a chant from my university days in Georgia. GRITS rule!
That's girls raised in the south, if you don't know.
However, I did not feel very victorious. That was my first
confrontation with a live weapon held by someone who intended
to use it on me. I needed a restroom badly.
Cindy felt like a featherweight, nearly all bones, no real muscle
and smelled like stale body talc. I knew she would recover to deal
with the truths she had created for herself.
I pried the gun from her limp fingers, flipped on the safety, and
jammed it in my waistband. The barrel felt uncomfortably warm.
Since I remained alive, I ignored the discomfort as a memento of
her misguided violence, my hastiness, and lowered her to the
floor.
Then I located a roll of strapping tape in a drawer by the old
timey gas stove and used the tape to bind her wrists behind her
back.

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 Quiver
She had left the bathroom light on, the only light shining
anywhere in the two-story house. That should have been a
warning when I first approached, but my job description has to do
with searching for missing kids, not handling criminally insane
parents.
I entered the small blue tiled bathroom, saw the cosmetics she'd
smashed in the sink, on the floor, smelled a variety of perfumes
that, when mixed, smelled more like the insides of a restaurant's
trash bin than a woman's boudoir. The vast array of colors
splashed all over the room reminded me of a Jackson Pollack
painting.
Nothing I found helped me understand why she had turned
from what had sounded like a caring person on the phone into
someone willing and able to kill a stranger without question or
warning. Okay, I had entered the house without invitation after
failing to get her attention by ringing the doorbell and pounding
on the door.
However, what explanation might apply other than a bad case
of psychosis, a nosedive into insanity? What could have driven
this woman so far through the twists and turns of normal life,
bless her heart?
Shoot, girl do you really want to know? Jesus, I thought, when
echoed reminders of the gun discharging reverberated though my
head, as if to push me past the search for behavioral aberrations
as an excuse for attempted manslaughter. My timing to escape
her impulsive reaction proved to be nothing more than a real
lucky break brought on by fear, or God watched over me and
gave me a swift kick in the butt. Maybe they're both the same.
Had my timing been off just a second...I shook my head,
refused to squirm farther along fear's invitation.
Then I advised myself, "Next time schedule appointments for
daytime or make sure all the lights are blazing inside the house,
girl. Otherwise, do not be in such a hurry to enter a dark house
without an armed escort or a pump action twelve gauge."
However, I needed to remind myself, Cindy had sounded so
timid and helpless when she phoned to set up the appointment for
her to explain her problem.
I fell for it.

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 Schliessmann
I closed the door, seriously wiped the seat with tissues, used the
toilet, scrubbed my hands, splashed water on my face, and then
heard her moaning. My shoulders sagged.
Using the mirror over the sink, I saw that the lacerations from
her nails were superficial. I located an unbroken bottle of Iodine,
stung some onto the cuts, and wondered what Hacker would
think of my new look.
Back in the kitchen, I discovered Cindy semi-alert, lying on her
back, watching me approach.
"I came here to help you, not to be killed by you." I badly
wanted to slap her into next week, but took a slow deep breath
and squatted alongside her head, far enough away, that she could
not bite me if for some reason she thought it might be an
appropriate reaction.
She didn't speak, until asked a direct question. "If I turn you
loose will you behave?"
"Who the hell do you think you are? My fucking mother or
something?" Her eyes blazed.
Or something? What might that be?
"I'm the stupid woman you contacted to help locate your
missing daughter before something worse might happen to her
remember?" I laughed callously, turned my head to the side, and
focused on the baseboard under the sink. Brown grease, floor
wax, a miscellaneous grime of crumbs, and what appeared to be
pieces of insects; a dead roach on his back feet reaching as if to
touch the cabinet overhang, lined the seam between baseboard
and floor. The small kitchen smelled of cordite and anti-bacterial
cleaning chemicals.
Missed a spot, I thought. Well, I never get down and personal
with my own kitchen, so why do it here? Besides, I am not going
to share a meal with her any time within the next, say lifetime or
two.
I looked at her red-rimmed swollen eyes. "I'm going to untie
you and leave you alone," I said when it became obvious even to
someone as slow as me that she had no intention of addressing
the issue of her daughter as I had thought she might when I first
arrived.
"When and if you feel lucid enough to make sense to someone

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 Quiver
other than the woman in the mirror, call me again. I think I may
be able to help you, but not under these circumstances." I waved
at her and patted the gun in my waistband.
Why be so quick to forgive? I asked myself. It's a weakness,
girl. You know it is.
I did what I promised before she could protest or cuss me out
the door, and watched her massage her throat as I left quickly
after a couple of glances over my shoulder.
The night felt warmer than normal for late October. Instead of
the tinge of a frost warning, tall, uncut grass whispered around
my feet, and needed mowing or it might grow knee high before
winter. Jack-O-Lanterns and a faux graveyard covered porches
and lawns, ghosts and witches draped from barren trees with
gauzy looking spider webs around them decorating neighborhood
yards for Halloween. I could smell both the odors of fallen leaves
and a flower garden still in full bloom.
Once seated in the car, I removed her short-barreled Smith and
Wesson .38, checked to be sure that I'd flipped the safety off, and
stuffed it in the glove box.
As I reached to jam the key in the ignition, two things
happened. My hand started to quiver so bad, okay it was more
like a nasty tremor, that the key missed the slot and scratched the
dashboard. That kind of thing had not happened to me since the
first time I'd had too much to drink, and then it proved to be a
blessing. I had dropped the key and passed out with my head on
the steering wheel until a cop came by and knocked the tip of his
nightstick on the window, scaring me half to death, and back into
sobriety.
The second thing that happened, was that Cindy came running
out the front door waving her arms, screaming, "Wait! Don't
leave me like this please," as if I was indeed her husband, or God
forbid, her mother rather than a naïve woman, ex-grade school
psychologist normally hired to locate missing children for a fee.
It's New Jersey, I thought. You should've stayed in Georgia, or
even South Carolina. But no, you had to fall for a guy from New
Jersey. What would John Rocker think? I asked myself using the
only example I could recall of a guy who I knew hated New
Yorkers so badly that his self-absorption had run him out of

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baseball.
My thinking was distressed enough that I wondered why I
really gave a damn about him, any more then, than I had almost
ten years earlier. The traveling pitcher--now a retired and
forgotten has been reliever--thought more clearly using than the
tip of his tongue than the stunted frontal lobes of his brain. But
then I knew several men who were like that. No pun intended.
I felt grateful not to feel forced to try reinserting the key where
my shaky fingers obviously did not want to put it, but also very
leery of a woman who had just tried to blow a hole through the
center of my forehead, and then, when that had failed, attempted
to gouge out my eye.
I mean, oh my God, everybody should have such options, I
thought. Keeps life interesting that way. Doesn't it?
I swung my feet out, let her come to me, and said, "Are you
feeling better now?"
She was crying. I hate it when people cry. I'm a sucker for
emotions, at least the type that involves tears, especially when I
had something to do with their creation. I once had an almost
boyfriend who cried to get his way, like when I refused sex on
our first and last date.
God, why don't guys like him learn some self-manipulation
techniques they can use before leaving home?
Cindy nodded. "Look, I'm really sorry, Ms Smith. I don't know
what the hell was going on in my head. I thought you were him
but of course, that's impossible...isn't it? He's got her and he's in
some God-awful place where I can't find her. She's not answering
her cellphone either."
I resisted the urge to glance down at myself. If she couldn't tell
earlier that I was female, than either, she was beyond repair, or
I'd been deluding myself for much of my entire adult life.
I also hated the sound of Ms Smith, or Ms Sue Todd Smith, or
any formality tacked onto my name. I told her, "Please call me
Sue."
Since I did not feel required to respond to her comment, I didn't
but waited for her to continue, and when that failed, did what I do
best and asked a question.
"Do you feel capable of talking about the situation with your

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daughter now?" I leaned over and locked the glove box so she
could not make a mad grab for the .38. This time the key slid
right in. Safety first was a Girl Scout motto and if it wasn't it
should've been.
And why the hell am I thinking about the Girl Scouts right
now? I'm anything but one, although a chocolate mint cookie
might help.
Cindy stood next to the front fender. She had her right palm flat
on the metal, smearing it with some kind of cosmetic grease,
which most likely would peel off the paint before I could drive
through a car wash.
Her jeans, bare feet, and yellow T-shirt bore splatters of the
same array of disorganized colors as her bathroom sink and
mirror. She must've gone in the room after I left her and managed
to get covered with the make-up she'd trashed, or I'd missed it
while we fought for the gun.
"Sue," she said, through a long drawn out miserable sigh, as if
exasperated by my request. Then she spoke Jersey fast as if she
knew I would jump in the car and drive off if she did not get the
words out in five seconds or less.
"It's only because he said he was coming back and when he did,
he was going to kill me. I just figured I'd be smart and have a gun
so I could defend myself if I needed to."
Or kill him first, I thought. Nobody buys a weapon unless they
intended to use it.
"And you told all of this to the police?" Hopefully.
"Yes."
"And they advised you to...?"
"To call when he got here. Otherwise there was nothing they
could do." She moved her hands as if to decide whether to wave
them around or put them somewhere, and then jammed them into
her pockets.
"And you have a restraining order?"
"I got the second one a month ago, and a lot of fucking good
that did Peggy and me. A restraining order in this town is as
useful as Charmin is at preventing diarrhea."
Least she's still got a sense of humor, I thought, gave up
fighting the grin, and asked, "Peggy's your daughter?"

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 Schliessmann
Her eyes flooded with tears. She nodded while struggling to
contain the grief that quivered her chin, and contorted her
features. I hated seeing that, it made me feel useless.
I stepped out, straightened, and cautiously placed an arm
around her shoulders. Cindy folded in on me as if I was the only
person she knew who really gave a damn...perhaps I was, who
knew? I had not learned much about her life and family yet, and I
was not sure if I would or wanted to.
"We'll get her back," I said, trying to sound a lot more
confident than I felt with echoes of gunfire fresh in my mind, and
tried to ignore the cosmetic rainbow she transferred from her to
me.
Now we look like abstract Pollack twins.
"Let's go inside and sit." I guided her up the front steps and into
the living room, shut the door behind me.
She turned on the overhead light. The room looked neat and
organized. The furniture was plush dark blue velveteen and
glossy dark cherry wood. A coffee table, two end tables, a sofa,
and a pair of armchairs sat on thick pile pale blue carpeting. The
New Jersey scenic paintings and their placement on the pale
yellow walls were Feng Shui perfect. Not that such a thing was
important to me. My home was, well like my life, which was not
that way.
See, a hell of a lot of good it did her, I lectured myself, while
considering rearranging my own attempts at harmonic balance
and dismissed the idea just a quickly.
"How about some coffee?" I asked hoping to guide her towards
the tranquil platform of domesticity.
She nodded. "Sit. I'll bring it out." Cindy pointed to the sofa,
and then left me standing in the foyer as if I should decide on my
own whether sitting anywhere in her home was a safe gamble.
Outside, I heard a car pass the house, turned, and watched an
eight-year-old Ford Taurus pass under a streetlight as the driver
tapped the brake pedal long before reaching the corner. The brake
lights seemed to be doing a Morse code SOS. I hoped it was not
an omen of unwanted visitors like members of her family come
to lend a hand, or her ex-husband to end her life. The car drove
off, and I inhaled.

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 Quiver
My reflection in the window confirmed that I wore more make-
up on my clothing than I ever wore on my face in a month. There
was no way I felt ready to meet strangers.
By that time, I convinced myself it might be safe to sit, and
smelled the inviting aroma of strong coffee.
Cindy balanced two blue ceramic mugs, a matching creamer,
and sugar bowl on a glass tray shaped and colored like a
strawberry. She placed it on the coffee table and sat in the
armchair next to me. She had changed into a midnight blue terry
cloth robe, feet still bare but cleaned. She even smelled like soap.
I had not thought she'd been out of the room long enough for a
shower. Her hair was dry, but so what?
We remained silent while mixing sugar and cream in our
coffee, and then after a long swallow, I asked, "How long has
Peggy been gone?"
"Three days."
"And the police said..." I let it trail off, certain that I knew the
answer.
"He has joint custody...this week is her school's teacher's
conference and she took an extra day, so..." She drank her coffee
black. Her eyes, over the rim of the mug, looked beyond
salvation. I read her extreme anxiety, saw her anger, and fear.
I plunged into the thick of it without a warning for either of us.
"What has he done to her in the past?"
"I think he sexually molested her...more than once."
"Why do you think that?"
She squinted. The looked squeezed a spear of fear through my
heart. She had used that same expression as her finger applied
pressure to the .38's trigger.
"You think I'm lying to you? The fucking cops did."
Bless your heart. I would never think such a thing aloud, hon.
I slowly shook my head, placed my mug on the tray, reached,
took her mug, and then put it on the tray alongside mine. Then I
took her hands and studied her face closely. The tendons on the
back of her hands were like over-tightened piano wire. She
relaxed only slightly. However, it was enough to help.
"No. I don't think you're lying," I said quietly. "I have to ask
difficult questions. There is no other way for me to learn enough

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about your situation for me to help you without asking them. I am
sorry if some of what I ask hurts, or threatens you, or even insults
you. Believe me, I wouldn't ask questions if I didn't need to know
the answers."
She nodded her head showing very little enthusiasm, but the
movement let me know she had listened and maybe understood.
"Okay. I'll try to keep that in mind," she said evenly.
I wanted to remind her that I had her gun, but decided to forego
mentioning the weapon. It was locked in the car anyway.
"Peggy has all the classic signs of parental sexual abuse. I even
took her to a professional, but she couldn't get her to talk, and
Peggy told her father what I'd done and--"
"That's when he threatened to kill you?"
"Yes." She nodded again, and her eyes betrayed her attempt at
remaining civil.
"And the symptoms were what exactly?" I released her hands
and we both wrapped our fingers around our mugs, lifted and
drank. I studied her, ready to dodge another irrational assault like
a thrown mug of hot coffee, not that I thought she would charge
me with a sugar spoon, but hey, you never know, right?
Cindy lowered her mug onto her lap, and kept both hands
around it. Her voice was quiet, forced through grief and a
mother's electric pain.
"Her father used to walk around the house naked. Sometimes
he'd be...erect, teasing me to touch him, get him off." She
blushed, diverted her eyes, and drank some coffee.
I wanted to be reassuring, but knew any attempt would be
superficial, shallow, so I waited for her to recompose herself.
"Later, I'd find him standing naked in her doorway...after she
was asleep. He'd be stroking himself, and when he saw me,
would get angry. He even forced himself on me once right
after...it made me feel so used, like his whore there only to
relieve him." She sobbed in a breath. "It was the same as if he
had raped me." She crossed her legs, rested her hands and mug
on her top knee. Cindy had begun to unravel her feelings and
began to sound more reassured with my presence.
"How old was she at that time?"
"Nine. She's thirteen now."

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 Quiver
I sat still, found it close to impossible without fidgeting, but
managed to do a good enough job of it that she did not react.
Abusive parents make me crazy, which makes me want to walk
around, step outside and scream at God.
"Then, about six months ago Peggy started to act out. She
couldn't sleep through the night, seemed really depressed, then
would get very touchy-feely with her father and get angry
towards me. She'd refuse to bathe...before that she used to insist
on a bath every night."
I inhaled sharply, hid it behind a slow exhale, and wanted to
castrate the bastard with a dull knife, or maybe with a pair of bolt
cutters but that would have been too quick.
"Anything else?"
"Yes. The worst thing was when Peggy started to copy
him...walking around in bikini underwear, touching herself
inappropriately." She almost dropped the mug.
I grabbed it in time, placed it on the tray, and decided enough
time had passed since my last act of compassion. I sat on the arm
of her chair and put my arm around her, held her while she cried,
and I stopped worrying about her trying to shoot me.
Peggy was now thirteen, sexually abused for at least three to
four years, and may have blamed her mother for not being able to
rescue her from the start.
"Did you get a restraining order for you but not for Peggy?"
"Yes."
"Why's that?"
"I was afraid she'd run away. She had already threatened to if
she couldn't see him...and did once for a week. I felt like I would
die if she didn't come home."
I nodded. I understood the fear of loss.

Twenty minutes later, I left with several digital photos of her

daughter and ex-husband, the addresses of her ex's relatives and
their timeshare, which was, oddly enough, an oceanfront
condominium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I know I said
oddly enough as if that should be significant, but the town was to
me. That's where I met Hacker while I searched for a missing
boy. The search got us entangled with each other as well as

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finding the boy and solving a riddle that involved a desiccated
corpse that had dropped out of a garage ceiling and landed on
Hacker's back.
The ignition key slid into its slot as if I had rubbed some baby
oil on it before insertion. I twisted it, and started the engine. As I
drove back to Madison, I wondered if Hacker would notice the
scratch, tried to rub it out, but failed, and then decided I did not
care if he noticed it.

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 Quiver

Chapter 2

Michael Hacker McKaybees sat on the porch swing,

illuminated by the headlights as I steered into the short double-
strip concrete driveway. He waved when he saw me, got up, and
walked down the steps to wait.
Hacker stood five ten, with dark curly brown hair, and weighed
one eighty-five. He told me he once boxed at a club in downtown
New York City, which for me explained his too fine physique.
His eyes, he said, were his mother's light brown, and he carried
scar tissue on his stomach and back, from a bullet he failed to
dodge during the Gulf War. He also had a weird scar that looked
like an inverted cross that started at the center of his sternum,
traveled down to the top of the public bone and crossed from hip
to hip.
When I asked him to tell me about it, he said it was the
remnants of Tatyna Rovich's knife work. He refused to tell me
who, she was, other than to say she ran a Russian mob in the city.
No matter how hard I pressed him, he would not tell me how and
why she carved an inverted cross into his body. He became my
mystery man, not that I cared for secrets in a relationship.
I glanced out the window to be certain I had gotten the wheels
on the two concrete strips. I hated driveways with a grass median.
The Z-4's wheels were on the cement. I swung my legs out,
stood as Hacker strode over, and hugged me as if he sensed my
need.
"How'd it go?" he asked quietly, glanced at my ruined clothing,
grinned, pointed at my medicated face, nodded, and added, "Or
should I ask?"
I had clung a little too long; passed him some make-up so he
would not feel left out, and broke away when I felt him stiffen,
and me becoming too needy. It reminded me of the growing
tension between us, which I had been blaming on my moving
north, but knew it was something deeper within me wedging us

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apart. I had believed I loved him when I decided to move up and
live with him. Then, I learned about his feelings for Liz Dokker,
a NYPD homicide detective. He loved her, but they could not
successfully cohabit due to diametrically opposed lifestyles.
And me a trained psychologist, you would think I'd've known
better. However, my training is in child psychology, different
from adult think in many ways, which made me feel weakly
vindicated.
He smelled like cut grass and fresh air, which helped me
explain my reaction. I needed the reassurance that, here at least,
life was as normal as it ever got, and that both feet were planted
solidly on Terra Firma.
Physically abusive parents made me feel like pulling out my
hair. Sexually abusive adults made me want to break several
laws, commit a few felonies.
"All right," I started, felt my inhale jerk as if it had stumbled
over a weak sob. "That is if you might ever call getting shot at all
right." I returned to the Z4, unlocked the glove box, fetched the
.38, and passed it to him. "I don't know what the hell to do with
this thing."
"Shot at?" He ducked his head just slightly. It was a movement
like a tilted nod that he did to express disbelief when hearing
something he would rather not have heard. Then, he checked the
load, glanced at it, and said, "Three times?"
"Yes," I averred, and looked at the front yard where the porch
light illuminated it. "Lawn's looking good. You actually mowed it
today. I thought you hated the chore?"
"I do hate it." He kept watching me with a question on his face,
which he knew I would not be able to avoid for long. Nor did I
want to. "Who's the registered owner?"
"Huh?" His question caught me off guard. "Oh. Of the gun?"
"Revolver." He held it, dangling it by the trigger guard off his
forefinger up where I could not help but see it, as if the action
was necessary for further clarification. I wanted to slap it out of
his hand and almost did.
"Cindy McDonald," I said and heard enough anger in my voice
to know he did too.
"It's a Smith & Wesson Model .38 Airweight. Has a two-inch

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 Quiver
barrel. If she was more than fifty feet away, chances are the shots
would have missed you completely." He had spoken with a thin
layer of sarcasm, but not thin enough that I would miss it or miss
understanding the feeling he put behind it. Now, I wanted to slap
him, maybe with the Goddamn revolver.
This man can be a pain in my southern butt, I decided and
jammed loose hair behind my ears in a gesture he should have
read as a warning.
I knew he was pushing me, and why. That did not help. I hated
feeling pressured. A fresh spark of anger laced my words.
"Gun, revolver, pistol...who the hell cares what it is, Hacker? It
shoots Goddamn bullets doesn't it?"
That wasn't enough to get it all out and I nearly yelled, what's
the matter with you, boy are you stupid too?
However, I caught myself and swallowed the flash of rage,
brought on, I knew in reaction to ducking bullets. Then, I felt
guilty and surprised that the words had popped out. I really had
thought I had dealt with it while talking to Cindy, but the abuse
thing struck close to home.
"Sorry," he said. "Guess that was a stupid thing to say. I needed
to see if you were really, okay. Getting shot at has a way of
making one's consciousness, seek refuge behind a wall of numb
disbelief."
I still wanted to slap him, but maybe not so much.
"I told you I felt okay, but now I'm thinking that maybe I'm not
doing so well." I placed a hand on his forearm. His flesh was
tight over the muscles, felt reassuring, but right then, it would
have felt better wrapped around my waist or shoulders.
I leaned against the hood of the car, tried to wipe off Cindy's
palm print, failed, and told him everything that happened, and
then asked, "Want to go to South Carolina with me?" and caught
myself hoping he would say no.
"Wish I could." He put the S&W in his pants pocket.
"You could check on your swamp house. We haven't been
down in six or eight months."
He stepped closer, put both hands on my shoulders, and let his
fingers caress my neck and cheeks. "If she'd killed you..." He
stopped as if unable to complete the sentence without drawing a

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 Schliessmann
deep breath.
I touched his mouth. "She didn't. That's all that's important.
Cindy is scared to death that something horrible, like sexual
abuse, might happen, or has happened to her child. Her ex
threatened to kill her. I have to help her even though she might be
unpredictably insane."
"I understand that. I just don't like the way the case started." He
glanced down at the bulge of the gun in his pocket.
The neighbor started his Chevy Malibu. The small car needed a
muffler, and ruptured the stillness that had enveloped us and
drew my attention away from our conversation. I inhaled and
smelled the roses blooming across the front of the house. It was
mid-autumn, but the flowers seemed determined to flourish until
the first snowfall. The season had remained Indian summer for
weeks longer than, according to Hacker, was normal.
I ducked under his arms. "Let's go inside. I'm getting hungry,"
and waited for him to walk with me.
In the kitchen, I discovered he had cut open a pumpkin. A pile
of slimy seeds and wet stringy fibers rested on a mounded wad of
paper towels that had scenes of Linus and Marcie waiting for the
Great Pumpkin printed on it. There was something amusingly
ironic about the two together, the imprint and the actual
disemboweled pumpkin, but I could not focus my thoughts
enough to clarify the humor.
I liked the smell of fresh pumpkin, wished it were available as
an air freshener spray instead of unidentifiable wild flowers or
alpine mountain mist, whatever the heck that might be.
I found leftover coffee warming on the rear burner and poured
myself a mug. While I sipped some black, I turned to face
Hacker, knowing he was waiting patiently.
I decided to surprise him, okay, distract him. "Did your father
call?"
He opened a beer, drank some, and frowned. "Not yet. But you
know how he is."
I did. The old man had ignored his son from Hacker's birth to
age thirty-five. Then he decided it was time for them to work
together since they both happened to be in the same trade, private
investigators--although completely opposite modus operandi. Oh,

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 Quiver
yeah, like Hacker and Liz too. Hmmm...
I was not certain how Hacker managed to accept his father,
even got along with him, but I guessed doing so was one of
Hacker's strong points. He told me he had to learn to deal with his
father on the old man's terms, try to understand why he did what
he did. I suggested they try guy stuff, like beating drums as a
form of male bonding. He found my idea less than amusing for
some reason, but then he was a Yankee.
Finally unable to avoid the discussion, I said, "I wish you'd go
ahead and say whatever it is that's bothering you."
He smiled weakly. "Just wanted to know if you're getting
hazard pay along with your normal fee."
"Actually..." I let it trail off. Cindy was broke, had not gotten
alimony or child support in six months and worked as a cashier at
a local K-Mart. In addition, I did not need the money up front.
"Pro bono," he groaned. His smile became lopsided. "She have
a boat or something to give you?"
"Funny." Floridian clients that had hired me two years ago had
given me a houseboat in payment for finding their grandson. I
lived on it until moving north to be with Hacker. Now it sat dry
docked over in Toms River, where I could neglect it and not
worry about its condition, since there were plenty of
professionals dockside who were more than willing to look after
it...for a fee of course.
"You sure you can't come with me?" I asked.
"You sure the girl is in South Carolina?" He came up alongside
me, close enough for me to smell fresh beer on his breath.
I nodded, and then shrugged. "No. How could I be? However, I
think it is the most logical place to begin searching since it's the
farthest point from home. All of her father's relatives are locals
down there in Myrtle Beach, or somewhere in that part of the
state."
He nodded too. "I have a commitment I can't get out of, but if
something comes up and you need me to come down once I'm
finished, call me." He put an arm around my waist finally.
I placed my mug down on the counter next to the sink in case I
wanted another coffee, and said, "Think you need a shower?"
He nodded again. "Wash my back?"

17
 Schliessmann
"Thought you'd never ask," I said as I pulled his T-shirt over his
head, unbuckled his belt, and watched him squirm out of his
jeans. I ignored the gun when it clunked the floorboards.

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