I found Rayfield arranging a deskful of ragged papers ripped from his notebooks, as if trying to make sense of a senseless world. Surprised in thought, he seemed for a moment both old and innocent. Then his face went tough.

“What do you want?”

I tossed the scrap in front of him. “That used to be a picture of my wife. Someone did the artwork and left it on my windshield.”

He looked at it carefully, turning it once to check the back for marks. “Know who, or why?”

“Not who. The obvious why is the Cantwell case. I want protection for Kris Ann.”

“And what will you do for us?”

“My job. I’m asking that you do yours.”

He looked at me shrewdly. “Then tell me who drives the green Cadillac Otis Lee saw at the Cantwells’.”

I paused, glancing at my fingernails, then back to Rayfield. “I don’t know.”

His eyes narrowed. Coldly he said, “Tell your wife to take a vacation.”

“She won’t go without me, and I can’t.”

“Yeah.” His face was hard. “You so busy and all. If you wanted to be your father, Shaw, you should have just been a cop.”

I flushed. “You’ve been wasting time.”

“We check backgrounds. After I found you’d been poking around Otis Lee and the Parsons woman I checked yours.” He sounded as though information were power. “I turned up the usual things. At St. Ignatius you were all-city quarterback but got an academic scholarship for Notre Dame and another to Vanderbilt Law. When you married Cade’s daughter you were flat broke.”

“Brilliant work, Lieutenant.”

“And then,” he went smoothly on, “I dug some more and discovered that of all things your father was a cop. I’m sorry about what happened, Shaw.”

I looked around at the dim hanging lights, gray tile, gray desks with gray faces behind them. “It’s like you said about Grangeville,” I answered. “That was a long time ago.”

“It’s strange, though, how your family has a history of violence. Like your grandfather leaving Ireland because he’d killed a British soldier.”

I shrugged. “He needed work, unemployment being what it was. Maybe when you quit toying with me we can get back to my wife.”

A telephone rang across the room. Rayfield watched it until someone answered. “Who else have you been talking to?”

I guessed that he was still looking for a driver to go with Lee’s description of the car. A sad, stray thought of Kris Ann went through me as I said, “No one.”

“Quit playing games,” he snapped. “You want protection for your wife and you won’t tell me shit. You’ll end up getting her killed.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked angrily.

“It’s an observation.” His face turned curious, analytic. “It seems you’re more interested in protecting Henry Cantwell than your own wife.”

“That’s an odd remark.”

He kept staring. “Is it?”