Mail, she mouthed?
I shook my head. The mail lady came later in the afternoon and the gate was locked.
“Get under the desk.”
She didn’t question me and scrambled into the cave where my legs would normally go. I pulled out the Python, dropped to my knees, and stayed close.
“Are you armed?” I whispered.
She shook her head.
I slipped the Airlite from my pocket and handed it to her.
The only fancy furniture in our office was our chairs and the leather sofa. Otherwise, most of the rest was second-hand, including the two heavy Steelcase desks that looked as if they had once been part of a 1960 secretarial pool. You could fire a rocket-propelled grenade at them and barely make a dent.
I waited for the door to open. Maybe the gate had somehow jammed open, an innocuous malfunction, and the footsteps belonged to a new client, a traveling salesman, or a Jehovah’s Witness who would knock and say, “Hello, is anyone here?”
The room was silent.
I didn’t dare move to catch a glimpse. The desk sat so close to the ground, I was confident that if someone did come in he couldn’t see us. That would change if he walked behind Peralta’s desk, or toward the Danger Room. By then, I would have him in my gun sights, unless he was prepared.
If I get hit, come out blazing, I telepathed to the frightened blue eyes watching me.
The floor was old and creaked when you walked on it. The hinges squeaked when the door opened. But nobody tried to enter. The sound of footsteps came again, this time from the carport. Whoever had come into the lot was still out there. The palm of my hand was sweating into the custom combat grips of the Python.
Then, nothing.
I had to let a good five minutes pass before I dared slither out on the far side of the desk, ready for action. But no one was there. Waiting was the safe way. But it also ensured that I couldn’t see if our visitor had a vehicle. For that matter, I also couldn’t get a license tag number. We waited. Finally, I stood and locked the door. Peering out the blinds, I could see the gate was indeed shut.
25
Not long afterwards, Peralta arrived, sweeping into the room like a parade.
“Lindsey.”
“Sheriff.”
She was sitting on my desk. I stopped stroking her knees, said nothing, and resolved to avoid his glance.
“Lindsey!” Sharon’s voice. I looked up, and she walked in carrying a bag of hot dogs from Johnnie’s on Thomas. This was fun food.
As Lindsey and Sharon embraced, Peralta’s eyes found mine, and he knew what we had been doing, and his eyes actually twinkled like a tough Saint Nick of nooners. I felt my face flushing.
“We’re all here together, like it should be,” Peralta announced like the paterfamilias. As if anything were settled. “So let’s eat and get to work!”
Lindsey had fixed us healthy salads, to which I added a Chicago dog from Johnnie’s.
“He’s too gaunt,” Sharon whispered to Lindsey.
I told Peralta about the visit from the San Diego cops and the mystery guest who had been in the parking lot but never came in. His forehead tightened as he listened, but he only dived into lunch.
Peralta, with his mouth full: “Sharon talked to Tim Lewis’ parents,” which I translated from shawob awked a wimoois barents. It had taken many years of listening to Peralta over breakfasts at Susan’s Diner and lunches at Durant’s to master this particular dialect.
I said, “They talked to you?”
“I used my winning people skills,” she said, pulling a chair closer to his desk as she ate her salad like a lady. “Empathy, trust, respect…”
“She flashed her credentials,” Peralta said, amazingly pausing in his eating. “Show them.”