“Also, his language is a bit rough for the kids,” I added.
Special Agent Recht glanced at Doakes. As an FBI agent, she could not admit that anything scared her, even Doakes the cyborg, but she looked like she thought that was a very good idea. “Sure,” she said. “Why don’t you wait out here, Sergeant?”
Doakes glared at me for a very long moment, and in the dark distance I could almost hear the angry scream of his Passenger. But all he did was raise one silver claw, glance at his keyboard, and punch one of his prerecorded sentences. “I am still watching you, motherfucker,” the cheerful voice assured me.
“That’s fine,” I said. “But watch me through the door, all right?” I motioned Recht inside, and as she brushed past Doakes and came in, I closed the door behind her, leaving an unblinking Doakes to glare at the outside of the door.
“He doesn’t seem to like you,” Special Agent Recht observed, and I was impressed with her keen eye for detail.
“No,” I said. “I think he blames me for what happened to him,” which was at least partly true, even though he had disliked me well before he lost his hands, feet, and tongue.
“Uh-huh,” she said, and although I could see she was thinking about that, she didn’t say anything more on the subject. Instead, she moved on over to the couch, where Rita still sat clutching Cody and Astor. “Mrs. Morgan?” she said, holding up her credentials again. “Special Agent Recht, FBI. Can I ask you a few questions about what happened this afternoon?”
“FBI?” Rita said, as guiltily as if she was sitting on stolen bearer bonds. “But that’s—why would—yes, of course.”
“Do you have a gun?” Astor said.
Recht looked at her with a sort of wary fondness. “Yes, I do,” she said.
“Do you get to shoot people with it?”
“Only if I have to,” Recht said. She glanced around and found the nearby easy chair. “Can I sit down and ask you a few questions?”
“Oh,” Rita said. “I’m so sorry, I was only—yes, please sit down.”
Recht settled herself onto the edge of the chair and looked at me before addressing Rita. “Tell me what happened,” she said, and when Rita hesitated, she went on, “You had the kids in the car, you pulled out onto U.S. 1 …”
“He just, he came out of nowhere,” Rita said.
“Boom,” Cody added softly, and I looked at him with surprise. He was smiling just a little, which was equally alarming. Rita looked at him with dismay, and then went on.
“He hit us,” she said. “And while I was still—before I could—he just, he was there at the door, grabbing at the children.”
“I punched him in the crotch,” Astor said. “And Cody stabbed him with a pencil.”
Cody frowned at her. “I stabbed first,” he said.
“Whatever,” Astor said.
Recht looked at the two of them with mild astonishment. “Good for you both,” she said.
“And then the policeman came over and he ran away,” Astor said, and Rita nodded.
“And how did you come to be there, Mr. Morgan?” she said, swinging her head toward me with no warning.
I had known that she would ask this, of course, but I had still not come up with any really socko answer. My claim to Coulter that I had wanted to surprise Rita had fallen very, very flat, and Special Agent Recht seemed to be considerably sharper—and she was looking at me expectantly as the seconds ticked by, waiting for a sane and logical reply that I did not have. I had to say something, and soon; but what?
“Um,” I mumbled, “I don’t know if you heard I had a concussion …?”
The interview with Special Agent Brenda Recht of the FBI will never appear on any highlight reel that wants my endorsement. She did not seem to believe that I had gone home early because I felt bad, stopping at the school because it was that time of day—and I can’t really say I blamed her. It sounded remarkably feeble, but since it was all I could come up with, I had to stick with it.
She also seemed to have troubl
e accepting my statement that whoever had attacked Rita and the children was a random maniac, the product of road rage, Miami traffic, and too much Cuban coffee. She did, however, finally accept that she was not going to get any other answer. She stood up at last, looking at me with an expression that might best be called thoughtful. “All right, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Something doesn’t quite add up here, but I guess you’re not going to tell me what it is.”
“There’s really nothing to tell,” I said, perhaps too modestly. “These things happen all the time in Miami.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “The problem is, they seem to be happening around you an awful lot.”