Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

Connolly checked the mail, went for walks, wandered in and out of the Tech Area looking for something to do. Eisler’s books were sold to raise money for the school, his personal effects doled out by Johanna Weber to friends in the emigre community. Connolly had asked her for a picture-the theoretical team on an outing in the Jemez Mountains-and, surprised, she had given it to him with sentimental tears in her eyes. He placed it on the bureau next to the photograph of Karl, two pieces in the puzzle. He saw Emma at the movies, but they stayed away from each other, afraid to divert their attention from the waiting. Finally, after a week, claustrophobic in all the wide space of the mesa, he drove into Santa Fe to see Holliday.

“I’d just about given up on you,” Holliday said pleasantly. “Coffee?”

“In this heat?”

“Old Indian trick. Just pay it no attention and after a while you don’t know it’s there.”

“It’s there,” Connolly said, wiping his neck.

They sat out behind the office where a table had been set up in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree.

“Sorry I haven’t been around. I just haven’t had anything to tell you.”

“That you can tell me, you mean. That’s all right. I figure it’s Hill business now. I don’t ask. Looks like we’ll all know pretty soon.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, not much traffic into town these days. Real quiet. But you got these explosions going off in the canyons every night now. Folks don’t even complain anymore-no point. Meantime, you got every hotel room in town booked for next week. That nice Mrs. McKibben’s onto the boarding houses now, so you must have a crowd coming in. So I figure you’re about to do whatever it is you’re going to do up there.”

Connolly smiled at him. “You’re a good cop.”

“That’s not hard in a small town. Nothing happens. Until you came along, anyway.”

“I guess you’ll be relieved when I go.”

Holliday sipped his coffee, looking at him. “You might be here quite a spell. One thing you learn in police work is how to wait. Now you, you hate to wait. You’d make coffee nervous.”

Connolly smiled again. “So what do you do while you’re waiting?”

“Mostly you turn things over in your mind.”

Connolly looked at him with interest. “Such as?”

“Well, such as that car. Anybody bother it yet? No. But now you’ve got all these explosions going off nearby. You’d think somebody’d want to move it, wouldn’t you?”

“Why should he? Nobody’s found it yet. It’s been months.”

“True. But it’s funny about that car. Easiest thing in the world to drive it somewhere else, then get a bus or something back to the Hill. That way nobody’d connect it at all.”

“Nobody has connected it. As far as he knows, it’s still hidden.”

“Maybe. But that was before they started blowing those canyons all to hell. If it was me, I’d move it.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“Well, the way it makes sense is if he isn’t on the Hill anymore.”

“No, he’s there.”

“You’re sure.”

“He has to be.”

“Has to be isn’t evidence.”

“He’s there,” Connolly said firmly. “I know it.”

Holliday paused. “Well, if you know it. ‘Course, there’s one other way it makes sense.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I’d move it, but maybe he’s not as smart as I am. That’s another thing you learn in police work-they’re not the brightest bunch of guys. We just like to think so ‘cause it makes us look good.”

Connolly smiled. “What else do you get when you turn things over?”

“Not much. The funny thing about this one is that we’ve got the when and the where and it sounds like you’ve got the why but you’re not telling.” He looked at Connolly, who nodded. “Well, in my experience, at least one of these ought to lead us to who. But not this time.”

“We have to come at it a different way.”

“That why you’ve got my boys watching those churches?”

Connolly nodded. “It might be a waste of time.”

“Well, it won’t do them any harm. Good way to get to know your own town. You take me-I’ve never been to the Governors’ Palace. Pass it every day, but never been inside. But that’s usually the way, isn’t it?”

“You’re leading up to something.”

“No, I’m just teaching you how to wait,” Holliday said, his eyes enjoying a private joke. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and damned if I can come up with anything. ‘Course, I don’t know the why.”

Connolly placed his coffee on the table and looked away. “Somebody was passing military secrets and Karl surprised them at the drop. At San Isidro. But you didn’t hear that, okay?”

Holliday looked at him closely, then nodded. “Well, I figured that much.”

“How’s that?”

“Everything top secret and MPs walking around the place and people dropping in from Washington. What the hell else could it be? Still,” he said, smiling, “it’s nice to know. I appreciate that.”

Connolly didn’t say anything.

“And now you’re arranging another drop?” Holliday said quietly.

Connolly got up and paced toward the tree, ignoring him. “When did you figure all this out?”

“Don’t get excited. Not for a long time. See, he had me going there with that queer business. You look at that, you’ve got no reason to look at anything else. Smart. But there’s another thing. How’d he come up with that?”

“It was in the papers.”

“Yeah, but it’s smart. I mean, if he’s too dumb to move the car, how come he’s smart enough to think up something like that?”

Connolly looked at him. “I don’t know. How is he?”

“Well, maybe it’s on his mind, like.”

“You mean he’s a homosexual after all? Doc, we’ve been down that road, and it didn’t get us anywhere. What’s the difference now, anyway?”

“Maybe he just thinks about them. There has to be some way to get to the who. A trail somewhere. Everything counts in a murder. I mean, he thought of it. Now why is that?”

“I don’t know, Doc. Maybe you’d better turn it over some more. I’ll tell you this, though. We got the guy who was passing the secrets.” Holliday looked at him in surprise. “And neither of them liked guys. Not him. Not Karl. It was a blind.”

“Huh,” Holliday said, a grunt of acknowledgment. He sat for a minute, thinking. “What about the one you caught?”

“He’s dead.”

Holliday took another sip of coffee with an almost studied casualness. “You kill him?”

“No.”

“So he’s not the one setting up the meeting?”

“No.”

Holliday mulled this over for a minute, then stood up. “Well, I don’t know. I’m in over my head now. Maybe someday you’ll let me know how this works.”

“I may never be able to do that, Doc,” Connolly said seriously. “You understand that.”

Holliday nodded, then grinned. “You may never catch him, either. Sometimes it happens that way. Even when you wait. You understand that?”

“Then my secret’s safe with you.”

It wasn’t until the next day that, for no specific reason, Holliday’s conversation made Connolly think of Corporal Batchelor.

“He transferred out,” Mills said. “He’s up at Oak Ridge. Why?”

“I just wanted to see how he was doing. Can we get him on the phone?”

“Are you kidding? You can’t call somebody at Oak Ridge just to pass the time of day. Family emergency, maybe. Otherwise, you write.”

“Let’s get him anyway.”

“What’s going on? I’ve never seen you so jumpy.”

“Just call him.”

Mills picked up the phone with a shrug. “You’re the boss. It might take some time, though.”