John Sandford - The Fool's Run

We were leaving Gettysburg. We could see blue sky to the south and west, but the town was still under a dark slab of cloud, and it was raining again. A semitrailer ahead of us on the highway threw up a plume of water and resolutely fought off attempts by the cars behind him to pass. We slowed to fifty, then to forty-five, and settled down for a long trip.

"There might be another problem," LuEllen said. "When Dace and I were going around town, I didn't see many white cops. If he's black and he lives in a black neighborhood, everybody on the block will be looking at us."

"Bobby says he's black, all right, but he and his wife live out in Bethesda," I said. "She's got a heavy job with the Commerce Department, and he's a lieutenant, so they've got a few bucks."

"We need this, right?" asked LuEllen.

"Yeah. We have to know what's going on,"

"All right. But if we wind up in deep shit, don't say I didn't warn you."

When we got to Bethesda, the sun was shining and the clouds were blowing out to the northeast. The streets were still damp, with dead oak leaves stuck to them, and everything smelled cool and clean.

The Dentons lived in a low, dark, wood-and-stone house on a lot with tall trees in the back and a narrow, sloping front yard. There were no extra-green tufts of grass. Basement windows were set into the foundation, and the garage was attached to the left side of the house as you approached it. Beside the garage, a tall, gray, board fence separated the Dentons' yard from the one next door.

"Look at that fence. Must not like their black neighbors," I said as we cruised by the first time.

"That's a pool fence," LuEllen said matter-of-factly. "There's a swimming pool back there, in the neighbors' yard. There's a law about putting fences around your pools to keep kids out."

We drove past once more. Everything about the house was neat and in good repair.

"They've got money, all right," I said. "Maybe we ought to check them out for a maid."

"No black cop in the world has a maid, not if he wants to get ahead. Let's find a phone. Let's call them, and if they're working, let's do it. Today. Right now."

"You sure?"

"Goddamned right I'm sure." She sounded fierce, tight, angry. I looked her over and slowed the car.

"If you're doing it because you're scared, or pissed about Dace, that's not good enough. It won't help him if we're busted or shot," I said.

"I'm scared, and I'm pissed about Dace, but I'm not crazy," she said, looking across the seat at me. "The house feels right. There's nobody home. There's hardly anybody on the street. This is the time."

I took a left at the first street and drove to a shopping center. She dipped into her purse for cocaine and took the first hit as we pulled up to a phone.

We got Mrs. Denton's secretary, but Mrs. Denton was in a meeting and couldn't speak to us. We left a message. "Tell her Bob called." We couldn't get the cop on the phone. He was working, a woman said, but he might be out for an early lunch. We called the house. There was no answer. I clipped the phone and LuEllen took a deep breath.

"Let's go," she said.

"You're sure? You're making me nervous." I shoved the phone receiver under the car seat.

"This one feels nervouser. Probably because he's a cop," she said. She had the cellophane wrap of coke in the palm of her hand. "Let's get it the fuck over with. C'mon."

We dropped the car at a park and walked down to the Demons'. An Oldsmobile passed us as we were approaching the house, and the driver lifted a finger in greeting, as though he recognized us. I nodded and LuEllen lifted a hand. We slowed to let the car get out of sight before we turned into the Dentons' driveway.

A small louvered window, in what was probably the kitchen or bathroom, was cranked open. We could hear the phone ringing as we walked up to the house.

"Hold it a minute," LuEllen said as we walked in front of the garage. There was a row of windows in the garage door, just at shoulder height, and she peered through them.

"All right," she muttered distractedly.

Glancing up and down the street, she took my arm and led me around the side of the house, between the garage and the neighbors' pool fence. There was a door on the back of the garage, and it hung open. We stepped into the garage.

"Nice and private," LuEllen said. There was a space for two cars side by side. Both spaces were empty. A lawnmower, smelling faintly of gasoline and grass clippings, was pushed against one wall. Several fishing rods hung on one wall, along with a small net. A sack of birdseed and another of fertilizer sat on the floor below the rods. Two bikes hung by their wheels from hooks screwed into the rafters. A pair of green plastic garbage cans stood beside the door into the house.

LuEllen tried the door. It was locked. We were standing on a doormat, and she pushed me away and lifted it. Nothing. Then she scanned the walls, and finally looked up at the overhead tracks for the garage door.

"Can you reach up there?" she asked.

"If I stand on the garbage can." I stood on the can and stretched to the track, slid my fingers along a few inches, and pushed the key off the track into LuEllen's waiting hands.

"Wa-la," she said. "Cops can be as dumb as anyone else." She cracked open the door and used her doggie whistle. Nothing. "Anybody home?" she called. The phone kept ringing. We went inside and she picked it up and dropped it back on the hook.

"We don't have to trash the place. If we can get the stuff and get out, he'll never know we were here," she said.

The house arrangement was purely functional. A kitchen, dining room, living room, library, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms, along with a miscellany of closets, marched straight down from the garage to the opposite end of the house. The garage door opened into the kitchen, the better to unload groceries. The basement door also opened into the kitchen, directly opposite to the door coming in from the garage. The front door was about halfway down the house.

We checked the top floor, but there was no sign of a computer. We went back to the kitchen and down the stairs. There were four more rooms in the basement. The general utility room had a washer and drier, a furnace and water heater, and a workbench made from an old chest of drawers and covered with a pile of tools. Adjacent to it was a small tiled studio with a floor loom. On the loom was a skillful, half-finished weaving of a vegetable garden. Another weaving hung on the wall. The initials D.D. in one corner indicated that the cop, whose first name was David, was the weaver.

Next was a family room with a television set, a couch, and two comfortable leather chairs. The computer was in a little nook off the family room, along with a two-drawer steel file cabinet, a few computer books, a printer, and a box of disks. Off the computer nook was the fourth room, a bathroom.

LuEllen was impatient and hurried me along. "Let's go, let's go," she said as I brought the computer up. Denton had one standard communications program, which I copied, but there was no sign of a code list in the program. His file disks all appeared to contain personal budgetary stuff, games, programming languages, and the like. I went through them one by one, the minutes ticking away, the sweat gathering on my forehead.

"Look through the cabinet and around the desk. See if you can find anything that looks like a list or a serial number, maybe," I whispered to LuEllen. "It might be written right on the desk, or on the top of a file. anywhere."

"Right," she whispered back. Suddenly we were dealing in whispers.

I unscrewed the plate over the phone line and clipped a bug in place. LuEllen riffled through the files in the cabinet and checked the desk, top and bottom, but found nothing.

"Look under the covers of the books," I said.