Denny looked across the street at the window. The figure in it did not move.
"You can ask her anything," Ruthie said. "Something I don't know. And she'll answer. And you can read it yourself, with the card, so you know I'm not making it up."
He could have said no. He thought about that afterward, too. He could have said, honey, I appreciate it, but I'm going across the street, and walked out the door and up the outside stairs, and that would have been a reasonable thing for a chief of police to do, and it might even have turned out fine. But he was standing in the pharmacy where his own father had bought him Lifesavers, holding a dead lineman's flashlight — no, he corrected himself, looking at the scratched name, a living lineman's flashlight, a father's — and a ten-year-old's homemade code card, and the ten-year-old was looking at him with an expression he recognized, which was the expression of a person who has done every single thing she can think of and is now waiting to find out whether the grown-up in front of her is going to let it count.
Dustin Kincaid had never had a card. Nobody had ever asked Dustin Kincaid a question he could answer by himself.
"All right," Denny said. "Show me."
They went out under the green awning. The rain was coming down harder now, a fat cold October rain that drummed on the canvas over their heads and ran off its scalloped edge in a beaded curtain and splashed on the sidewalk at their feet. It smelled of wet leaves and dryer lint from the laundromat vents across the street. Behind them the bell over the door jingled, and Neha Kulkarni came out in her white coat with her arms crossed against the cold, and behind her Tyrell, still holding the glucose meter, and the door sighed shut on its closer and the bell rang again.
"I've got the prescription up," the pharmacist said quietly to Denny. "If you want something to ask her that's on the e-script."
Denny nodded. He was thinking. He looked at the girl.
"Ruthie," he said. "Who's your mom's diabetes doctor?"
"Dr. Feldman. At Summit Endocrinology in Canton. He has a beard and a fish tank."
He looked at Neha Kulkarni. The pharmacist shook her head very slightly. Then she leaned in and murmured it, low enough that the girl could not hear over the rain: "Prescriber's not Feldman. It's an on-call. Ahn. Susan Ahn, MD. Same practice. Called in at five thirty-two."
Denny looked back at the girl. "Did you talk to the doctor tonight? The one who called it in?"