Free Silent Thunder by Loren D. Estleman

I was getting set to run. I had no chance of taking our son with me if we divorced; Doyle’s father would’ve seen to that. Without me around to hit, it would be just a matter of time before Doyle got zonked enough to hurt Jack. The money was for us to get away and to live on until I found a job somewhere else, under another name.”
    “What kind of a job?”
    It must have come out differently from the way I’d intended. Anyway her hazel eyes got hard.
    “I’d make films again if I had to. You do what you can to survive. When it’s you and your son you do more.”
    “Why didn’t you run?”
    “I should have. I didn’t.” She used my ashtray. “I told myself I wasn’t ready, that I needed more money to be truly secure. That’s the kind of trap you get into when you go to live in a big house where someone else pays the bills. I’d probably still be there, playing the good wife during the week and selling pearls on Saturday, if that one night he hadn’t beat me so hard I’m still passing blood.
    “No, I’m not a coward, Mr. Walker. No more than most. I’m not courageous either. Or I wasn’t, until that night.”
    I looked at the money order. I still hadn’t touched it. “Did you see anyone following you here?”
    “No one followed me.”
    “Sure they did. You’ve had a tail on you since you made bail. That’s how it works. Well, if the law has access to your bank records they know about this money order and who it’s for, so it doesn’t much matter. Tell Dorrance about the account. And tell him I’m back on the case.”
    “Are you back on the case?”
    I picked up the money order and put it in the top drawer of the desk. “It’s more than I ask for in a retainer, but the expenses are running high on this one. If there’s anything left when the thing is done, you’ll get it back, minus my day rate.”
    “Can you start right away?”
    “I never stopped.”
    The look I’d seen before came into her eyes then. I cut her off.
    “Don’t put on the cap and veil just yet, Mrs. Thayer. It so happened I had nothing to do this morning and no bills to pay. I’m not in the hero business.”
    “I didn’t mean to imply that you were.” She put a hand on one of mine. It was cool and dry as before. “Thank you.”
    “Where can I reach you?”
    She picked up the pencil I’d used before and wrote a Redford address and telephone number on my pad. Then she rose. “I hope Leslie doesn’t quit when I tell him.”
    “He wouldn’t quit this one if you confessed to first-degree murder on Donahue.” I got up to let her out.
    When the outer door closed behind her, I went back to the desk and finished my drink. Then I poured myself another without water and read the money order. It had a lot of zeroes, just like the case so far. After a while I put it in my wallet and left for my bank, where the girl behind the counter smiled at me for the first time in two days.
    From there it was only a block to the party store where Marcus worked. In the storeroom I mopped the back of my neck with a handkerchief and watched him stacking crates of bottles until he had time to pull a copy of last night’s News out of a pile. I gave him two bucks.
    “You know, Mr. Walker, you can get that free if you ask up front.” Today he had on a yellow T-shirt, dark with sweat, with a Monster truck rampant on his chest.
    “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t get to come back here and read your clothes.”
    “You after a killer?”
    “Actually, I’m working for one.”
    Outside the store I unfolded the paper and looked at the lower right-hand corner. The item that Ma Chaney had clipped out of her copy and stuck in a pocket ran a column and a half, with a double heading:
    FIFTH AREA HOME INVADED
    Intruders Threaten Couple with Automatic Weapons

10
    T HE SIDEWALK WAS no place to give the article any concentration, but I wasn’t ready to go back to the office. I folded the paper and carried it to the little lot where I parked my car.