Robert B. Parker by Wilderness Page B

scared.”
    “No,” she said. “That’s true, but that’s not it. You’re scared you’ll fail. That you won’t be able to act like a man should, you would say, when someone has manhandled his wife and, your phrase, ‘violated’ his home.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    “That’s not an unreasonable feeling,” she said.
    He was silent and motionless, his back to her. The ball game continued.
    “I don’t blame you for feeling that way.”
    “Will you, please, for once in your life, just, please, shut the fuck up.”

16
    “Nice house,” Steiger said.
    Angie, in a sleeveless lime-green linen dress, tucked her legs under her on the seat of the rented Plymouth and looked at Aaron Newman’s two-hundred-year-old house.
    “It looks old,” she said.
    Steiger nodded. “Let’s cruise around back,” he said. “See what it looks like.”
    Angie nodded. Steiger put the Plymouth in drive and went around the block. They parked on the street behind Newman’s house.
    “What town is this?” Angie said.
    “Smithfield,” Steiger said.
    “We ever settle down, I’d like to live like this,” Angie said. Her hands were folded in her lap. Steiger’s right hand covered both of hers. Neither seemed aware of touching. It was a gesture so fundamental and one that had been made so often that it was unconscious.
    “Yeah,” Steiger said. “I wonder if he’s got an alarm system. Lot of these houses do. Tied into the police.”
    “Any way you can tell?”
    Steiger smiled at her. “I could break in at night and see if the cops come.”
    She shook her head. “No good,” she said.
    “True. I’ll see about hitting him outside. If it’s no good, I’ll go in during the day and do it.”
    “Anyone else there?”
    “Wife, I’m told. She works during the day. We’ll come out tomorrow and take a look. Then, depending what I see, I’ll figure the best time to hit him.”
    “I hope you don’t have to kill the wife too.”
    Steiger shrugged. “Don’t see why I’d need to, I do it right.”
    “I wonder if they love each other like we do,” Angie said.
    “Most people don’t,” Steiger said.
    “I know,” she said.
    Steiger slipped the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. He drove around the block and parked two houses up from Newman’s. Steiger reached over and took a road map out of the glove compartment and spread it open on Angie’s lap.
    “Anyone comes along, they’ll think we’re lost.”
    Angie nodded. “You’re not going to do anything today, are you?”
    “With you here? Have I ever?”
    “No. I know. You wouldn’t. It was a dumb question.”
    “Not dumb. You were worried. You had a right to ask. You’re never dumb.”
    A red and white Ford Bronco came down the driveway of Newman’s home and turned right onto Main Street. Steiger started the Plymouth.
    “That him?” Angie said.
    “Yes. In the passenger seat.” He drove down Main Street behind the Bronco. When it turned up onto Route 128 he followed.
    At the wheel of the Bronco, Hood said to Newman, “We may as well be watching Karl’s place while we figure this out.” The Bronco went over a small bump in the road and the long guns, wrapped in a blanket, rattled on the floor behind the back seat.
    Newman nodded. “Might as well,” he said.
    “I think Janet’s right,” Hood said. “The more I think of it, the more I like it. If we can get him isolated up in the woods, we’ll have him off his turf and on mine. We’ll have no cops to worry about, nobody to see us. We can lay up somewhere and pick him off with the Springfield.”
    “Why don’t we go up there and wait, then?” Newman said. “The more we hang around Karl and his house and his business, the more risk we run of blowing this.” The lines that ran from the corners of his nostrils to the edges of his mouth were deep. His eyes looked heavy-lidded.
    “I think you’re probably right,” Hood said. “Let’s give it this day to make sure nothing new develops.