Camelback Falls (David Mapstone Mystery 2)

“Sometimes,” Sharon said, “she reminds me of a young Susan Sontag, all that dark hair, a

nd that poetic watchfulness she has.”

“Different politics,” I said. But I liked the phrase “poetic watchfulness.” I added, “And she doesn’t consider herself an intellectual. She’s quite stubborn about that. But she is a great mind and soul.”

“I like Lindsey,” Sharon said, turning aside my idealistic parry. “I’ve come to like her. She’s knocked off a lot of her rough edges the past couple of years.”

“She’s knocked off some of mine, too.”

“I suppose so,” Sharon said. “You certainly seem happy around her. I don’t know if that’s a reason to get married. Who said a second marriage is ‘the triumph of hope over experience’?”

“Dr. Johnson,” I said.

She patted my hand. “David, the Renaissance man. I hope she gets that about you.”

“She does,” I said. “She reads. We read to each other. That’s a big deal today.” I felt uncomfortable, as if I were defending Lindsey from a subtle, professionally engineered attack.

“You know,” she said, “the day he was shot, I was wrapping up an article about women and marriage.”

“Oh, yeah?” I was relieved for a slight change of subject.

“The headline, I guess, is that marriage is bad for women’s growth. That’s the way I see it.” She sighed heavily. “I was trying to figure out how I was going to tell him about this without setting him off. How screwed up is that?”

“It sounds pretty bleak,” I said. “About marriage.”

“Oh, there are always exceptions, I guess. But in my line, love gone wrong is the biggest source of people’s unhappiness. On the radio show, I could take nothing but lovelorn calls. I have the screener keep a better balance with other pathologies, just so I don’t get bored.”

She added quietly, “I haven’t been sure I wanted to be married for years. Many women are that way, David. They’re stunted in their growth taking care of their men.”

She went on: “I can’t say it quite like that on the radio, of course. It would disappoint the love fantasies of too many listeners, and their advertisers. So this article is for an academic journal. Publish or perish, you know all about that.” She paused. “Anyway, I guess I should feel terribly guilty in the wake of all that’s happened. So you and Lindsey have set a date? You’re going to do this for a second time, David?”

There was a lot I wanted to say. But I just said, “April 30th. Central Methodist Church. We expect you both to be there.”

She just smiled and nodded. Then, quietly, “David, I always imagined you as the scholar, just living the life of the mind.”

I made myself talk. “Sharon, have you ever heard of something called the River Hogs?”

She said she hadn’t, and asked the inevitable “why.” I avoided answering, the cop way, by firing another question.

“What do you remember about Mike after the Guadalupe shooting? What was his state of mind?”

“His state of mind?” She laughed. “You were his partner, David. You tell me. You knew him better than I did, certainly back then.” She smiled to herself. “You were such an oddity. This intense young man who read books and seemed gentle and thoughtful, among all these cowboys. I think I learned something about Mike from the way he gravitated to you, in spite of himself. It was like you filled a part of his soul that came from his father. It was a part he’d never let me into.”

I sat up and rearranged myself, trying to find a comfortable perch in the chair. But there was nothing wrong with the chair.

I went on, “What was his life like off-duty? Did he talk about work?”

“He barely talked at all,” she said, her huge eyes darkening.

“Did he have buddies he hung out with? Acquaintances? Anybody else he might have been talking to during that time.”

I had thrown her out of synch. A rigid silence overcame her usual easy poise. “We were going through a hard time then,” she said.

I plunged ahead heedlessly. “How so?”

She sighed and her fine cheeks flushed. “He had been having an affair.”

My face must have given me away. She said, “You didn’t know? I thought partners knew everything, certainly more than spouses. Oh, yes. It was some waitress at Hobo Joe’s. Her name was Lisa. She was nineteen and had fake red hair. I blamed myself, of course. All women do.”