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where Bart was haranguing the other waitress about something. She lowered her voice. “I get off in an hour.”
    “Sorry,” Keller said. “My workday’s just starting.”
    “Well,” she said, disappointment obvious in her face, “I work every weekday ‘til three. Stop by, when you have some time.”
    “I could be an axe murderer for all you know,” Keller said.
    She smiled at him. “You don’t look crazy,” she said.
    Shows how much you know, Keller thought. He left a twenty on the table for the coffee and the information and walked out.
    Out in the car, he flipped open the file and looked again at the picture of Laurel Marks. He was beginning to get a sense of her, beginning to fill in the spaces behind what he could see in the photo. Now he felt the anger in the set of the jaw, the fury behind the eyes. He looked back at the restaurant. Alicia was looking out the window at him. When she saw him look up, she waved, then went back to work.
    Keller shook his head. Not so long ago, he would have played the game, done the dance of invitation and withdrawal, until the final act, bodies locked together in a momentary coupling in a rumpled bed somewhere. And after that…nothing. For the long dead years since the desert, nothing had meant anything to him.
    Now, everything had changed. Keller slid the cell phone into the slot of his hands-free system and hit a number on the speed dialer. There was the soft chirring of the ringer on the other end, then a gravelly male voice answered. “Yeah?”
    “Mr. Jones,” Keller said. “It’s Jack Keller.”
    “Keller,” Marie’s father growled, “how many times have I gotta tell you to call me Frank?”
    “Sorry, Frank,” Keller said. “Marie’s working, I guess.”
    “Yeah,” he said, “You wanna leave a message?” A loud metallic banging rose in the background, filling the car. “BEN!” Frank Jones shouted. “Cut it OUT! I’m on the PHONE!” The banging stopped.
    “Sounds like you’re pretty busy,” Keller said. “Thirty years I was a cop,” Frank said. “I handled drunks, dopeheads, thieves, about a thousand varieties of asshole…and the person that’s made me craziest is a freakin’ five-year-old.”
    “You can’t shoot him,” Keller said. “That’s what’s making you nuts.”
    “Yeah,” Frank said. “That’s gotta be it. Anyway…”
    “Just tell her I called. About this weekend.”
    “Okay,” Frank said. “You comin’ up?”
    “I don’t know yet,” Keller said.
    Frank’s voice turned cooler. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever.”
    Keller was about to say something, but the banging started up again. “BEN!” Frank hollered before coming back on the line. “Gotta go,” he said in a harried voice.
    “Thanks, Frank,” Keller said, but the line was dead.
    Shelby was standing over a plump woman in a shapeless flowered dress, on her knees in the parking lot. She had her hands over her face. As Shelby tried to put his hand on her shoulder, she dropped her hands, threw back her head, and screamed again. It was a wordless soul-tearing howl of anguish and despair and it made the hair on the back of Marie’s neck go up. Shelby yanked his hand back as if the woman had burned him.
    Marie holstered the gun and walked over. The woman’s screams had subsided to great convulsive sobs and she had covered her face with her hands again. Marie looked at Shelby.
    “Station owner’s wife,” he said.
    “Jesus Christ,” Marie said. “She scared the shit out of me.”
    A strange pained look flickered across Shelby’s face for a moment, then was gone. Marie hesitated for a moment, puzzled by the sudden tension between them. She broke it by asking, “The lady make an ID yet?” He gestured at her. “Looks like she’s doin’ one right now, doncha think?”
    She grimaced. “Yeah, but we’ve got to…ah, shit.” Marie knelt beside the woman and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Ma’am?” she said softly. “Ma’am, please, I need