The Rule of Threes (Special Agent Constant Marlowe)

by Jeffery Deaver

Soon they will be leaving for their jobs. Heading out into the world, taking on tasks lined up like hurdles, some low as curbs, some thigh-stretchers.

As a former runner, I appreciated this bit of figurative language.

He gets the knife from the bedroom. And from the kitchen table he collects his gun and the roll of gray duct tape. Everything goes into his backpack. There are a few other items inside too, making the total more than three. This doesn’t bother him. He’s crazy, yes, but not to the point of being weird crazy.

Finally he pockets a handheld compass, not an electronic one. Nobody uses traditional compasses any longer. That’s foolish. For one thing, there’s no GPS trail of where you’ve been. For another, the North Pole never runs out of juice.

She declined Eventide’s offer of coffee, and walked to the boards, crossed her arms and examined the photographs of Abigail and Kelly. Their eyes were in that eerie focus-unfocus that you never got over—either when seeing the corpse in person or . . . well, whenever the images decided to resurface; maybe when you were shopping for groceries, driving fast on a clear fall day, or at night when sleep approached.

Marlowe often walked through the towns in which she was running cases, picking up a sense of the locale and those who populated it. Their respect for law, their contempt. Controlled substances of choice. Clothing, from male and female boardroom suits to men’s sleeveless tees. Number of tats and the age of those inked and messages conveyed by the artists’ needles. Lawyers’ offices whose windows featured placards about DUI representation or immigration or divorce or weapons. Soccer versus gridiron versus NASCAR.

Despite the encroaching autumn it wasn’t shedding leaves but some little capsules of buds that dropped silently onto the hood and windshield. An attempt to launch the lifeboats and keep the species alive.