LITMIR.BIZ

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My weather station?”

      “Lead on.”

      I followed her down the hall to the back room. There was a desk and a Mac Pro computer connected to a large flat-panel display. More books on shelves. Two big snake plants on the floor and ivy leaves tumbling from a wall sconce cum planter.

      She pointed to the Mac. “I’ve got a sensor station on the roof. The physical readings happen up there, wireless info bursted to the computer every two seconds. Air temp, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, relative humidity, barometric pressure, precipitation. Plus I’ve got my weather program and input networked to eighty-two remote stations across the country, sites run by amateur meteorologists through related software. I helped create the net. I could tell you what it’s doing in Paducah, Dubuque, Ypsilanti …”

      I crossed my arms and posed a challenge. “How about Fort Wayne, Indiana?”

      “Why Fort Wayne?”

      “An old friend lives there. Can you do it?”

      She sat and commenced a furious ticking of keystrokes, conjuring charts, graphs, numbers, a maelstrom of American weatherness. Her interest was infectious, and I leaned over her shoulder and watched the screen, unable to ignore the scent of perfume from her hair, something warm and sunny.

      “Here we go. The station in Fort Wayne is operated by a Duanine Eby, I don’t know if that’s a him or her, but it’s raining – a tenth of an inch so far – baro pressure is 1016.36 millibars and rising over the past two hours. Wind is northwest at present, shifted from north-northwest this morning, holding steady. Let’s check a bit south, Indianapolis. Wind is west, baro’s higher, so Fort Wayne’s about to catch the edge of a southerly high pushing up from the Gulf, now centered around Memphis. In two hours the rain will disappear, the wind will pick up for a couple hours, then presto, your friend in Fort Wayne will be in a new system. Blue sky, nothing but blue sky …”

      “Alice?”

      “What?”

      “This is great.”

      She looked over her shoulder, skeptical. “You really think so? You enjoy meteorology that much?”

      “I enjoy your enjoyment.”

      The embarrassment again, manifesting in a pause and a cleared throat. “I’ve loved the weather since sixth grade. My father took me to the Jersey shore, Cape May. I watched storms forming, clouds merge, darken. Curtains of rain connected the clouds and the ocean. It took my breath away. I got books on weather from the library and built a hygrometer made from three of my dad’s hairs, a dime, and a plastic milk carton. I kept daily accounts in a notebook called Alice’s Weather Observations. Every night at dinner I’d solemnly forecast the next day’s weather.”

      I laughed at the sight of a young Alice Folger holding forth at the table.

      “What did your parents think about all this?”

      “I was an only child. I could do no wrong.”

      I saw a photo at the far side of the desk, a big, lantern-jawed officer in dress blues, his arm around a solid woman in a white gown, sweet eyes in a plain face. They were in their middle-to-late thirties, I judged, and resembled a pair of happy potatoes.

      “These are your parents?”

      A pause, as though she had to switch gears. “On their wedding day in 1963. Myrtle and Johnny at Niagara Falls.”

      “Your dad was a cop.”

      She looked at the photo. “It seems like everyone I grew up with was or became a cop. Every male, at least. A lot of women, too. Mainly support work.”

      “You have siblings? Oh, you said you were an only child. I guess you were expected to carry the blue banner forward, right?”

      Two long beats passed. “My choice. Mine alone.”

      “Sure.”

      “It’s all I ever wanted to do as far back as I remember.”

      In the span of a minute something had changed. It was small, a shadow in the corner of the room, weightless, but detracting from the overall light. She turned from the wall, pushed a smile to her face.

      “Hey, you look like you’re feeling better.”

      I held up the beer. “What the doctor ordered. Listen, I’ll be heading on back to the hotel. I’m studying the Ridgecliff files. I might be able to close in on what part of town he’s operating from.”

      “It’s good to have you out of your shell, thinking. You need a ride to the hotel? I can run you in the –”

      I waved my hands and shook my head. “I think a little air is necessary. I’m going to take a walk, see what’s happening in the neighborhood. Thanks for taking pity on a guy leaning against a lamppost, Lieutenant.”

      I was half a block away before I realized I’d left everything to do with the cases at the door when entering Alice Folger’s house, and she’d done the same, at least for thirty minutes.

      My nicest half hour in New York since I’d arrived.

       Chapter 19

      I went back to the hotel that night reflecting on my brief time with a living, breathing, happy Folger. I had felt an attraction to her, I realized, a roiling in my guts that I didn’t in any way need.

      For a year or so, I’d kept close company with Clair Peltier, the head of pathology for the Alabama Bureau of Forensics. Our early fires had banked into warm coals these days, as we discovered we were closer as friends than as lovers. Still, the physical relationship was something we’d had to experience in order to discover we were destined to be friends. New Age-y sorts would call us soul mates I suppose, beings who have crossed several lifetimes together, and who can now communicate about everything through a glance and a gesture.

      I’d called her earlier to see if she’d speak to Waltz’s NYPD forensics guy. Our conversation made me recall how comfortable we were, and that the relationship was what I enjoyed at the moment.

      Still, thinking of Folger made my heart race. So I pulled on my running shoes and shorts. Time to switch my head off, wear my body down. I did a few minutes of cleansing breathing, trying to regain the calm I’d felt at Alice Folger’s house, then beat feet from the hotel aiming south, picking up speed, feeling the night slide by like cool water.

      My calves gave out about the time my breath did and I pulled up short on a slender street somewhere in the East Village or Lower East Side. My hands were on my knees and I was sucking hard breaths when my phone rang.

      “Yeh-he?” I wheezed instead of spoke, sounding like Cluff.

      “Ryder? Is that you? I didn’t hear what you said.”

      “Folger?” I gasped.

      “You OK? You sound –”

      “Running. Winded. Gimme sec.”

      “Where are you?”

      “South of … hotel somewhere. Zig-zagged all over. Probably lost.”

      “Check a street sign. Hurry.”

      I half-jogged, half-limped to a pair of street signs. “I’m at Prince and Elizabeth. I see a church spire a block down.”

      “Old Saint Pat’s, northwest of you. Can you grab a cab? There’ll be cabs on Houston, north of Prince.”

      I saw a flow of headlights and taillights a block away. “I see the traffic. Could you tell me what this is –”

      “Hustle, please. Here’s the address …”

      Folger answered my shave-and-a-haircut knock dressed in exercise shorts and a filmy

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