Robert B. Parker by Wilderness

know.”
    “Why?” Newman said. “Why is it so important? I think we’re taking a lot of risks following Karl around.”
    “There’s risks in anything worth doing, Aaron,” Hood said.
    They were at the kitchen table in what had become a near nightly ritual. Janet would make sandwiches or a pasta. Newman and Hood would bring home some beer and wine. They would sit at the kitchen table in the summer evenings and talk of stalking Adolph Karl.
    “You can’t do this in complete safety, Aaron,” Janet said.
    “It’s a matter of degree,” Newman said. “What Chris said sounds good but it doesn’t mean anything.”
    “You know it does, Aaron. I’ve read your books, you understand that.”
    “No, I don’t. Not this way. It’s like you want to take risks.”
    “Risks are part of it,” Hood said. “If it’s worth doing.”
    “You act like the risks
make
it worth doing.”
    Janet said, “What do you think we ought to do, Aaron?”
    “I think we ought to shoot him as quick as we can and get this over.”
    Hood smiled. “We agree, Aaron. I think that too, but you need intelligence. You need to know the enemy before you can make a move, and we haven’t gathered enough to figure out how to hit him and get this done with.”
    Newman ate a forkful of pasta with a basil-and-oil
pesto
sauce. He drank some beer.
    “I think you ought to try to get him in the woods,” Janet said.
    Hood said, “Woods?”
    Janet nodded. “He’s got a summer place up in Fryeburg, Maine. I looked it up on the map. It’s southwestern Maine, near the New Hampshire border. Accordingto an article in the
Herald American
, April 18, 1976 …”
    “She’s a scholar,” Newman said.
    Janet went on: “He’s a real hunter and fisherman and goes to his place in Fryeburg whenever he can.”
    “Do you know the address?” Hood said.
    “I drove up there this morning. It’s about two and a half hours, and I looked him up in the phone book.”
    “You cut class?” Newman said.
    “Yep.”
    “I wished you’d waited. We could have driven up together and maybe had lunch on the way back and had a nice time.”
    Janet didn’t answer.
    “Maybe that’s the end to work from,” Hood said. “Maybe we should go up there and wait for him to come.”
    “Fryeburg’s awfully small,” Janet said. “It would be easy to be noticed.”
    Newman opened another beer.
    Hood said, “We could keep watching him here. I assume if he heads up to hunt and fish we could tell. Rods, gun cases, waders, that sort of thing being loaded into the car.”
    Newman said, “I’m going up to bed. You folks work this out and let me know.”
    They both watched in silence as he walked out of the kitchen and up the back stairs.
    Janet shook her head.
    “He feels bad,” Hood said. “He thinks he didn’t react well in the alley today.”
    “He worries an awful lot about things like that,” Janet said. “And then he waits for me to make him feel better. And I don’t know what the hell to do.”
    “Nothing to do, I guess. Just let him know you love him. He’ll work it through. He’s a good man.”
    “I know. But he’s a complicated man and one with ferocious passions. Sometimes I feel …” She shook her head again.
    “How do you feel?”
    “Inadequate to his passions. And that makes me mad. There’s a lot of pulling and shoving in our life. And now this. It will be awful for us both if he can’t do this.”
    “If he can’t he’ll be dead. Maybe all of us. You can’t forget that, Janet.”
    “I know.”
    “Do you really know? It’s easy to forget it sitting here in the kitchen. But we’re involved in a very serious undertaking. And if we do it wrong we may be dead.”
    “I don’t forget,” Janet said. “I also don’t forget what happened to me.” Her face was bright as she said it.
    “Yeah.” Hood smiled briefly. “I guess you don’t.” He got up and headed for the back door. “I’ll come over in the morning when he’s feeling better and