T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

He drove past the Imperial Beach Pier and then down Seacoast Drive to the last homes before Mexico. He felt his heart working faster and the damp cold at his temples as he walked to her door. Got the same feeling he had when the pieces of an investigation started to mesh, when he was sure of something he couldn't quite see yet. Felt like he was pursuing the hunch of a lifetime.

Sally Rainwater opened it as far as the chain would go but said nothing.

"I just wanted to thank you for your help," he said. "I'm sorry you had to go through that with Pete, then with us. Your alibi checked at the market and your letters from Pete were legit. You know that already. I apologize for the heavy treatment."

He looked down. He'd thought about what he'd say, hadn't realized it was so little, would be over so quickly.

"I thought you handled yourself with guts and class," he said. "It took a lot to try to save Pete like you did."

"I wouldn't describe the hallway scene as classy."

"It shouldn't have happened."

He couldn't make out much of her face, just eyes and hair and a hand up at her throat holding a cowl or collar tight. "You'll keep looking at me as a possible accomplice, won't you?"

"If you'd like."

"Cute."

"We'll keep looking at you," said McMichael. He now felt as stiff and mirthless as a tax collector. "I'll have some questions and I'll want your help."

"So what are you really doing here? Looking at me? Heading off a use-of-force lawsuit? Putting me off guard so you can investigate a murder?"

"I wanted to tell you those things, face-to-face, not over the phone."

"Why?"

McMichael now clearly heard the footsteps of disaster, though they sounded far away and avoidable. The next two seconds became an hour. "I thought you deserved it."

All he could see of her eyes was a glimmer. "Is this a personal call, Detective McMichael?"

"No. Yes."

She didn't move. McMichael prepared his retreat, heard himself trying to explain his side of the Rainwater citizen's complaint to the captain. In the way of most catastrophes, this one had come quietly, then deafeningly. Not until right now did he understand that this was the most asinine and unprofessional thing he'd ever done.

The door closed then swung open and Sally Rainwater stepped aside to let him in.

She was dressed like she was the night before at Pete's, but without the blood and the boots. Pink fluffy slippers again. Even in the slippers she was tall. There was an open textbook and a legal pad and yellow pencil on the kitchen table. A steaming mug by the book.

She shut the door, crossed her arms and looked at him with steady brown eyes. The room shrunk around him.

"I've never done anything like this before," he said. There was a chip of something yellow stuck to her lower lip. McMichael was grateful for it and stared.

"I haven't, either."

"I wondered who you are. You were in my dream."

"I thought about you, too."

Her eyes held a fierce curiosity and McMichael felt pinned. He studied the yellow chip. "I don't know what to say."

"You can sit down."

He sat on the couch under the painting. She made orange tea and brought it to him in a mug with the bag still in it. When she sat in the director's chair she was far away and up higher than him, which only aggravated McMichael's growing sense of incompetence and stupidity.

"Nice place," he said.

"Cheap and on the beach."

"Not many of those left!"

She looked at him and McMichael checked his tea bag.

"I really can't do this," she said.

"Me neither."

She took his mug into the kitchen. Then she came out and pulled him up from the couch and kissed him. Both her hands on his face. It was short but generous and McMichael's heart bounced off the moon. No hiding the physics of things but he turned his waist a little to try.

"Go home now," she said. "Treat me like a regular woman and call me. I'm not a walk-in clinic."

"Roger that."

"Nights are best until I get another job."

"I'm really-"

"If you apologize I'm going to kill you."

"Pleased."

"We might do some good, Detective. Then again, this may be the dumbest thing either of us has ever managed. You got some of my pencil stuck to your lip."

"Psittacidae," said Dr. Robert Eilerts, chief ornithologist for the San Diego Zoo. It was nine the next morning, a cool and windy forty degrees when McMichael had left home.

Eilerts looked up from the microscope. "One of the parrots. There are over three hundred different species. But if you give me a few hours with the feather I think I can narrow it down."

"I'll pick it up as soon as I get your call."

"Should be before noon. Does this have to do with the Braga murder?"

"I'm sorry, I can't tell you that," said McMichael.

The doctor nodded and colored, then bent back down to his scope.

The Wild Animal Park is northeast of the city, in the dry foothills of Pasqual Valley. McMichael picked up Via Rancho Parkway and steered with one hand through the gentle bends. He could see patches of frost in the shaded swales and the bright glimmer of oaks shivering in the cold inland breeze. He felt giddy and doubtful about the night before, wondering if such cloddish behavior would come back to bite him. All he'd gotten for it so far was a memorable kiss and an invitation to call.

The Wild Animal Park human resources director agreed to show McMichael her personnel mug for Kyle Zisch. "You can find him at the bird show," she said. "He'll come out the exit behind the theater right after the performance- it starts in half an hour."

"Any parrots in the show?"

"Oh yes," she said. "Samson and Delilah. Absolutely beautiful, and huge vocabularies. Be sure to stop by the nursery on your way over. We've got a darling new baby mountain gorilla."

McMichael looked at the baby gorilla in her windowed nursery. Her name was Misty. Diapers and everything. He was surprised how small she was. And how human her eyes were, set in the inhuman face. He wondered if people really could have descended from apes, how things like language and conscience and imagination could flow down one biological streambed and not another. Although, looking into Misty's eyes, McMichael thought he saw his own and Sally Rainwater's, which he made a point not to mention to her. Father Shea had told him once that creation was ongoing and we should all understand that God had made everything to start with.

McMichael bought a disposable camera and a soft drink, then found a bird-show seat third row from the front. The handlers were dressed in safari outfits and kept up a joking banter with the audience. A peregrine falcon tore from the heavens at ninety miles an hour to snag a treat from a young woman on the stage. McMichael stood and snapped some photographs.

Kyle Zisch made his appearance with a flamboyant bird on each arm. He was easy to make from the mug: dark-haired, bearded and bespectacled. His voice was oddly high as he introduced Samson and Delilah. "And I'm Kyle!"

McMichael stood, excused himself rather loudly and took two more shots.

Zisch walked the birds to separate perches and they hopped on. The handler then reached into a waist pouch and set some food on the stands. McMichael could hear the smack of beaks on wood as the birds took their prizes.

"You don't have very good manners, Samson," said Zisch.

"I learned them from you," squawked the bird.

"Delilah," said Zisch, "what's your excuse?"

"I'm a birdbrain."

The audience chuckled and Zisch rewarded them again. He explained that these were macaws, native to South America, and were not known for their talking abilities. But the staff had taken a liking to the two fledglings and had begun building their vocabularies the week they were born. He said they knew over twenty sentences each- and continued to pick up new words and phrases all the time.