“No, it was a man’s voice. He was saying he thought your work was the work of Satan, and so on. Said he didn’t think you ought to be in Texas, and he was going to take care of that the next time he saw you. He mentioned your new hotel by name.”

I was pretty offhand about the phone call until Parker Powers got to the “he mentioned the hotel” part. That was unnerving, and I knew I had to take this seriously.

“So do you think this car was his, or do you think you just scared the shit out of some teenagers parking back here?” My legs were getting stiff, so I bounced up and down gently on the balls of my feet, then stretched down to touch my toes.

“I don’t know,” Parker said, his voice gloomy. “I got a partial license number, though, and I’ll run the plate.”

I suddenly realized, actually understood, that this man had put himself in front of me when he thought someone was going to be shooting at me. The enormity of the act virtually smacked me in the face.

“Thank you,” I said. All of a sudden, my knees were shaking. “Thank you for doing that.”

“That’s what we’re supposed to do,” he said. “We’re supposed to protect. Lucky I didn’t have to do much protecting. I might have had a heart attack.” He grinned, and I was glad to observe that his chest wasn’t heaving anymore.

“So, we should head back, huh? I guess this was pretty much a nonincident?” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, which was pretty absurd.

“No, I guess they left for good.” He seemed relieved about that. “Let’s go back to the hotel.” He holstered his gun.

I knew there was no way I was going to get the policeman back up to a running pace. We were at least walking briskly when we left the bus lot and we passed the high school. Then we were in the residential area, and there was almost no traffic now. Everyone was home from work, no one was going back out tonight. The temperature had dropped a little, and I began to shiver. We had three blocks to go. We were in a little neighborhood where yards were a hobby. Even in the winter, there were trees with leaves, and bushes, and rock gardens decorating the small front yards. Parker Powers was asking me questions designed to calm me down, an inconsequential stream of inquiry about my running history, how long I ran each day, if my brother ran . . .