The Right Jack

Sigrid was stu

"And nothing. They were partners and your father was killed and this is the first time I've met him since the funeral."

"But you hate him. Why? Was it something to do with Dad's death?" Abruptly, Sigrid realized she'd never been told many of the actual details. "What really happened? Was it the captain's fault?"

"I don't know what really happened," A

"What about El Diego?"

"He'll just have to wait. I can't go jetting off with my only child slashed to ribbons."

"Don't be dramatic, Mother. I'm perfectly capable of managing."

"Oh Lord, don't I know it!" A

Since infancy, A

Yet even a geneticist couldn't have predicted Sigrid's rearrangement of parental genes. She had Leif's height, nearly six inches taller than her mother, but her ski

In fact, Sigrid seldom looked in mirrors. She well knew that her neck was too long, her mouth too wide, her chin too strong. By the age of thirteen she'd decided once and for all that she would never be attractive. From that time on, mirrors had stopped being important.

Of course, thought A

She blamed herself for Sigrid's lack of physical self-confidence. In those first few years after Leif's death, she'd moved around so restlessly, changing apartments the way other women change furniture, too unhappy to see what her frenetic life style was doing to an already introspective child.

"I should never have sent you off to that boarding shool when you were so young," she said mournfully. As if to compensate for past maternal lapses, A

Sigrid sipped obediently and then lay back upon the pillow. "It didn't hurt for you to leave me then and it's not going to hurt now," she said, following the main points of her mother's illogical thought processes with the ease of long practice. "Go home, Mother. Get some sleep and then get on a plane. I'll be fine."

Her arm throbbed and she was too tired for more talk. "If you really want to do something for me just get my car away from that fire hydrant and don't forget to leave a note telling me where you've put it."

"I'm not that disorganized," A

"Good night, honey," A

Pain stabbed her left arm, her hand burned, and her right arm was begi

She delayed the ordeal for a few minutes, replaying in her mind the scene that had just taken place between her mother and her boss.

What an odd coincidence that she should wind up working for her father's onetime partner. That at least explained the tension she'd always sensed with him, his air of undefined expectation. He must have thought it strange that she never mentioned her father to him, but why had he waited for her to bring it up first?

She scrunched her shoulders deeper into the pillow, trying to get comfortable as she considered her relationship with detective Tildon. She was shaken and angered that he'd been hurt tonight, but although they worked well together they knew almost nothing about each other's personal lives. She was sure it would have been different with her father and McKi

A

What really happened, she wondered, that day her father died? Why had A

Both arms hurt badly now and Sigrid began to long for sleep's release. She tried naming the fifty states in alphabetical order and when that failed, she began a chronological listing of presidents and vice-presidents, a proven soporific. She had just reached Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax and was drowsily fumbling for Grant's second vice-president when the door to her room whooshed open on pneumatic hinges and a young Asian nurse entered to remove the IV needle from her right arm.

Sigrid gratefully flexed it and the nurse smiled sympathetically. "Feels better, yes?"

"Yes."

"And your other arm, please? Your doctor, he has left pain medicine if it hurts too much."

"Not yet," Sigrid said stoically, easing onto her stomach.

The nurse tucked in the blanket and rolled the IV stand out while Sigrid gave up on Grant's second term and moved on to Rutherford B. Hayes and William Wheeler… James A. Garfield and… Chester A. Arthur. No vice-president for Arthur and then came Grover Cleveland and Henderson? No, Hendricks. Thomas Hendricks…

The throbbing of her arm took on its own metronomic rhythm and she fell into an uneasy sleep.