It was a cool, clear afternoon and I could be at the beach but instead I was here. Portrait of a detective in a detective's office. When a detective is in a detective's office, shouldn't he be detecting? One of life's imponderables. The problem was that I didn't suspect Mark Thurman of a crime, and crime still didn't look good to me as the answer to Jennifer Sheridan's problems. If you're talking cops and crime, you're talking motive, and I didn't see it. I had been in Thurman's home and I had talked to his fianc+!e and his neighbors, and the crime part just didn't fit. When you're talking cops and crime, you're talking conspicuous consumption. Cops like to buy cars and they like to buy boats and they like to buy vacation homes and they explain it all by saying that the wife came into a little money. Only Thurman didn't have a wife and, as near as I could tell, he didn't have any of the other things, either. Of course, there could always be something else. Debt and dope are popular motives, but Thurman didn't seem to fit the profile on those, either. I had witnessed events and gathered evidence, and an examination of same had led to certain conclusions which seemed fair to me but not to the client. Maybe the client was crazy. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe the client was just confused and maybe I should have done more to alleviate her confusion, but I had not. Why? Maybe she should be the detective and I should be the client. We couldn't be any more confused than we were now.

Sometime later the phone rang. I got up, went to my desk, and answered it. "Elvis Cole Detective Agency. We never lie down on the job."

"Caught you sleeping, huh?" It was Rusty Swetaggen.

"Ha. We never sleep."

Rusty said, "I talked to a guy who knows about REACT."

"Yeah?" I sat in the chair and leaned back and put my feet up. It was quiet in the office. I looked at the water cooler and the couch and the two chairs opposite my desk and the file cabinet and the Pinocchio clock and the closed door to Joe Pike's office. The water machine hummed and little figures of Jiminy Cricket and Mickey Mouse stared back at me and the coffee machine smelled of old coffee, but something was missing.

Rusty said, "Maybe I shouldn't even mention this."

"You've rethought our friendship and you want me to pay for lunch?"

"Nothing that important. This guy I talked with, he said something that's maybe a little funny about the REACT guys down at Seven-seven."

"Funny." I have seen these things in my office ten thousand times, and today something was different.

"Yeah. It's like he wouldn't've even mentioned it if I hadn't pushed him, like it's one of those things that doesn't matter unless you're looking, and it probably doesn't matter even then."