The one significant thing she’d brought with her was her husband’s binoculars. I didn’t picture her returning to Canyonview to watch birds. With binoculars Madeleine Riordan might have been able to peer into the canyon, into the lair of our parking pest. Had she seen something there she was considering telling me about? Had she needed time to decide whether to take that unnatural step? She would have hesitated to call us, her old adversaries. If you spend years embroiled in citizens’ complaints, you end up viewing the police as a passel of bullies who exist only to threaten and maim. And a crime has to be dire indeed before you’d pass them another club or bit of information. Harassing meter maids hardly fell into the dire category. Again the thought jabbed me: did she just need someone to talk to? Could she have been so lonely she’d abandon her principles for the sake of an hour’s visit? Or had she been stringing me along? Two days ago I would have accepted “stringing along”
