In the morgue, Harry did not find any references to Marian Turner; but he found a dozen references to Matthew Cotton, most of them about his work with the symphony orchestra or other charitable organizations or his involvement in real estate investments in the area, turning their old Classical High School into condominiums, tearing down the Bing Theater at the “X” and replacing it with a mini-mall.
One reference was to a lawsuit against him by the children of a man whose estate he executed. They had challenged his fees.
Harry took some notes in his pocket notebook, turned off the computer, and left.
* * *
“What do you think the most useful skills were,” Flowers asked again, “in my line of work?”
He pumped until his swing was sailing up and back in a wide arc.
“Paying attention to details,” Flowers answered his own question. “To what makes the moment the moment. Like right now. If you had to choose details to conjure up this moment, what would they be? The light spilling through the kitchen window onto the porch steps? The smell of the cut grass?”
“The cold swing on my thighs,” Friday said.
“Then,” Flowers said, “you use the details to make up a story about what’s happening. That’s all Harry does. That’s not nuts. That’s human. Humans are pattern-making animals.”
“Who laugh,” Friday said. “That’s what makes us human.”
“When someone like Billings talks like that about Harry,” Flowers said, “he’s showing how afraid he is of Harry’s reality. Of how Harry connects the details. Which I guarantee is more interesting than how Billings does it.”
Flowers pumped. He rose backward high into the night until he was backlit by stars.
“What’s the point of getting upset?” Flowers asked as he sailed down toward, past, and up in front of Friday, high, again backlit by stars.
“You know the score,” he said, his voice shredded by his movement.
Friday pumped, trying to keep up with him. To swing as high as he was.
“I didn’t even know,” Friday said, “we were keeping score.”
She pumped harder.
“I didn’t know it was a game,” she said.
Flowers sailed past her again. Up behind her. Down toward her.
“Sure, you did,” he said.
As the swing started up another arc in front of her, Flowers jumped off.
Friday stopped pumping. Let herself slow down, her arcs getting shorter and shorter.
Friday watched Flowers climb the two steps to the kitchen door, through the light spilling from the kitchen window, which moved along his body as if he were being scanned.
He leaned over and tugged at his right sock.
Friday’s swing slowed until she was almost, not quite, still.