Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar poured water into the coffeemaker and turned it on. “There’s a TV. In one of the storage closets over there near the door.”

Syd cocked an eyebrow. “Ah…let me guess…the Super Bowl?”

“No, baseball. The occasional night game when I’m home. All of the play-offs and the Series.” He set mats on the small, round kitchen table. Bright light came in through the eight-foot windows.

“Eames chair,” said Syd, patting the bent wood and black leather chair in the corner of the living-room area where two walls of bookcases came together. She sat in it and put her feet up on the wood and leather ottoman. “It feels comfortable enough to be a real one…an original.”

“It is,” said Dar. He set two white, diner-type mugs on the tablemats and then poured coffee for both of them. “You take cream and sugar?”

Syd shook her head. “I like James Brown coffee. Black. Rich. Strong.”

“Hope this suffices,” said Dar as she reluctantly got out of the Eames chair, stretched, and came over to join him at the kitchen table.

She took a sip and made a face. “Yeah. That’s it. Mr. Brown would approve.”

“I can make a new batch. Weaker. Saner.”

“No, this is good.” She turned around to look back across the room and into the other areas of the loft that were visible. “Can I play chief investigator for a minute?”

Dar nodded.

“A real Persian carpet delineating your living area there. A real Eames chair. The Stickley dining room table and chairs look original, as do the mission-style lamps. Real artwork in every room. Is that large painting in the open area there opposite the windows a Russell Chatham?”

“Yeah,” said Dar.

“And an oil rather than a print. Chatham’s originals are selling for a pretty penny these days.”

“I bought it in Montana some years ago,” said Dar, setting his coffee down. “Before the big Chatham stampede.”

“Still,” said Syd and finished her mental inventory. “A chief investigator would have to conclude that the man who lives here has money. Wrecks an Acura NSX one day but has a spare Land Cruiser waiting for him at home.”

“Different vehicles for different purposes,” said Dar, beginning to feel irritated.

Syd seemed to sense this and turned back to her coffee. She smiled. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m guessing you’re about as interested in making money as I am.”

“Anyone who discounts the importance of money is a fool or a saint,” said Dar. “But I find the pursuit of it or the discussion of it boring as hell.”

“Okay,” said Syd. “I’m curious about the eleven chess boards. Games being played on all of them. I’m only a duffer at chess—I know the horsie from the castle thingee—but those games look like they’re master level. You have so many chess master friends drop in that you need multiple boards?”

“E-mail,” said Dar.

Syd nodded and looked around. “All right, that wall of fiction. How are those books shelved? Not alphabetically, that’s for damned sure. Not by publication date, you’ve got old volumes mixed in with new trade paperbacks.”

Dar smiled. Readers always gravitated to other readers’ bookshelves and tried to figure out the system of shelving. “It could be random,” he said. “Buy a book, read it, stick it on the shelf.”

“It could be,” agreed Syd. “But you’re not a random kind of guy.”

Dar sat silently, thinking of the chaos mathematics that had made up the bulk of his Ph.D. dissertation. Syd sat silently studying the wall of novels. Finally she muttered to herself, “Stephen King way up on the upper right. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood a couple of shelves below, still on the right. To Kill a Mockingbird on the second shelf from the bottom. East of Eden way the hell to the left over by the window. All of Hemingway’s crap—”

“Hey, watch it,” said Dar. “I love Hemingway.”

“All of Hemingway’s crap on the bottom right shelf,” finished Syd. “I’ve got it!”

“I doubt it,” said Dar, feeling his feathers ruffled again.

“The bookcase is a rough map of the United States,” said Syd. “You shelve regionally. King’s up there freezing his ass off near the ceiling in Maine. Hemingway’s down there near the floor heating vent, comfortable in Key West…”

“Cuba, actually,” said Dar. “Impressive. How do you shelve your novels?”

“I used to do it according to the relationship between the authors,” she admitted. “You know, Truman Capote right next to Harper Lee…”

“Childhood friends,” added Dar. “Little, weakling Truman was the model for Dill who visits every summer in Mockingbird .”

Syd nodded. “With the dead authors it worked all right,” she said. “I mean, I could keep Faulkner and Hemingway the hell apart, but I always had to keep moving the live ones around. I mean, one month Amy Tan’s tight with Tabitha King, and the next thing I read, they’re not talking. I was spending more time reshelving my books than I did reading, and then my work started to suffer because I was frittering away my days worrying if John Grisham and Michael Crichton were still good buddies or not…”

“You’re so full of shit,” Dar said in a friendly tone.

“Yep,” Syd agreed, and lifted her coffee mug.

Dar took a breath. He was enjoying himself and he had to remind himself that this woman was here because she was a cop, not because of his devastating charm. “My turn,” he said.

Syd nodded and sipped.

“You’re about thirty-six, thirty-seven,” he said, starting with the riskiest territory and rapidly moving on. “Law degree. Your accent’s fairly neutral, but definitely devoid of back east. A little midwestern left in the corners of your vowels. Northwestern University?”

“University of Chicago,” she said, and added. “And I’ll have you know that I’m only thirty-six. Birthday just last month.”

Dar went on. “Chief investigators for even local district attorneys are some of the best enforcement people around,” he said softly, as if to himself. “Former U.S. marshals. Former military. Former FBI.” He looked at Syd. “You were in the Bureau for what? Seven years?”

“Closer to nine,” said Syd. She got up, went to the coffeemaker, and came back to pour them both more of the thick, black stuff.

“Okay, reason for leaving…” Dar said, and stopped. He did not want to make this too personal.

“No, go ahead. You’re doing fine.”

Dar sipped coffee and said, “That glass-ceiling sexism thing. But I thought the Bureau was getting better.”

Syd nodded. “They’re working on it. In ten more years, I could have been as high as a real FBI person could get—right under the political crony or career pencil-pusher that some president appoints as director.”

“Then why did you leave…” Dar began, and then stopped. He thought about the nine-millimeter semi-auto on her hip and the quick-release holster. “Ahhh, you enjoy enforcement more than…”

“Investigation,” finished Syd. “Correct. And the Bureau is, after all, about ninety-eight percent investigation.”

Dar rubbed his cheek. “Sure. And as the state’s attorney’s chief investigator, you get to investigate to your heart’s content and then go kick the door in when it comes time.”

Syd gave him a dazzling smile. “And then I get to kick the felons who were hiding behind that door.”

“You do a lot of that?”

Sydney Olson’s smile faded but did not disappear. “Enough to keep me in shape.”

“And you also get to run interagency task forces like Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep,” said Dar.

Her smile disappeared instantly. “Yes,” she said. “And I’d be willing to bet that you and I share the same opinion of committees and task forces.”