"This is Johnny," Montero said by way of introduction. He grunted and crushed Kate's hand a bit, in warning perhaps, or revenge for all the disturbance she had caused, or maybe just because he was a poor judge of his own strength.
"Good to meet you, Johnny." Kate extracted her hand. "Want to go for some coffee? I have half an hour before my return flight." The last flight to San Francisco, she thought, wondering why no one had written a song with that title. She then wondered if she wasn't getting a little light-headed. "A drink, maybe?"
"Sure," B.J. said, without so much as a glance at her companion. The top of her head was in line with the center of his biceps, but she handled him with all the ease of a mother.
Kate paid for two coffees and a beer for Johnny ("I'm driving," said B.J.) and, once at the table, opened the envelope. There were nine photographs, not eight. Middle-class gypsies in Afghan hats were caught in motion; the elderly fisherman stood in the frigid water, looking like a frost-rimed sculpture; Kate and Jules stood on opposite sides of the car, taking a last glance at the scene. Kate's door was open, as was the girl's mouth. Jules had been saying something about Montero's sheepskin coat, Kate thought, and remembered the blast of cold air against her nearly shaven scalp when she took off her hat before getting into the car, a jolt that seemed to have set off the headache.
The five remaining pictures were snapshots, hastily composed, though well focused. The focal points, however, were on the young people close to the lens, not on the cars parked in the slots or on the ordinary people walking to and from them. Kate glanced through them, not knowing what she thought she might see, but they were only pictures, memories of someone else's good times.
"You see anything?" B.J. asked. Kate tore her gaze from the picture and reached for her coffee. She shook her head.
"I didn't really expect to."
"You mean the man isn't there? Lavalle?" B.J. sounded both disappointed and relieved.
"I don't know what he looks like."
"You don't?"
Kate, seeing her astonishment, pulled herself together and gave a laugh. "I haven't been in on the interviews yet, and I wasn't there when he was arrested. A case like this, there're hundreds of people working on it. I'm only one." She glanced at her watch. "I better get moving. Let me give you a receipt, and if you'd just sign the backs of those photographs, so we know whose they are." A chain of evidence, as if anyone would ever look at them in a court of law. Would ever look at them, period.
Kate could feel herself beginning to run down. The brief push of zeal that had been set off by Peter Franklin at the bus company and the photographs taken by his driver was fading. If she hadn't already made an arrangement with the police photographic lab technician, she would have gone straight home from the airport, but instead, carried along by routine, she dutifully went to the lab, marked the photos for cropping and enlargement, and pointed out the faces and license plates she wanted brought out.
Then she went home.
It was nearly ten o'clock when she woke up the next morning, and the house was filled with the rich aroma of bread baking. She felt rested, but the sensation of being a piece of run-down machinery persisted. The last few days seemed unreal, like some stupid and pointless dream that had seemed profound at the time. Lee was home and Jon was baking. It was a sunny Thursday morning as she lay in bed while the rest of the world was hard at work. A bird was singing in the tree outside the window, and a dog barked somewhere.
And Jules was dead.
That brilliant, sweet, troubled, funny girl was gone, victim of the most revolting kind of killer. Kate had loved her, had been loved by her, and now she was gone.
She lay among the rumpled sheets, thinking bleak thoughts on a beautiful morning, and when the doorbell rang down below, she was caught up in a memory of another morning, in late August, when Jules had arrived on her doorstep and rung the bell, backpack over her shoulder, bandage on her knee, her hair still worn in long, childish braids, to ask Kate's help in looking for a friend. Kate had found him, and lost her, and suddenly, hit by an overwhelming upsurge of the grief that she had so long pushed away, she turned her face into the pillow and allowed the tears to come.
She didn't hear the sound of the bedroom door opening and then closing, but a minute later the mattress sank as Lee sat down on it, and she felt Lee's hand stroking her hair. Neither of them said anything for a long time, until Kate finally lifted her head, found a Kleenex, and turned onto her back.
The manila envelope Lee held was much thicker than it had been the night before. Kate took it from her without comment and slid the pictures out onto the bedcovers.
"A courier brought it from the lab," Lee said. "I thought it might be urgent."
Kate picked up one enlargement that she hadn't asked for but that had been done anyway: she and Jules on either side of the Saab, two heads of cropped hair, one on an ill-looking cop, the other on a girl with her life ahead of her. Except it wasn't life that awaited her a short distance up the road.
Urgent? These? No. The whole thing was pointless, a delaying tactic to avoid facing the truth, and she had finally admitted it.
Lee's fingers appeared at the top edge of the picture and tugged gently. Kate let it go and closed her eyes. Even with her arm across her face, she could feel. Lee studying the two images, and she knew just when Lee began to cry. Kate held out her arms, and Lee curled up against her, and while the sun shone and the bread cooled and the dog was finally let inside, the two women mourned the brief life of Jules Cameron.
And yet…
"You're like this terrier my parents used to have," Lee said. "He would not let go of a thing once he got his teeth into it." She was trying to be humorous, but her concern showed, and a bit of irritation, as well.
Kate licked the last of the sticky rolls from her fingers and turned her face to the sun. She had carried a table and chairs down to this, the newly rescued patch of garden, the only place in the winter that caught any sun. Jon had gone out, and the house felt silent and nearly content, as in the aftermath of a storm.
"I feel more like one of those high school biology experiments," she said ruefully. "You know, where you have some dead creature that you prod at and it jumps."
"Do you really have to do this?"
"It's a loose end, and it'll keep twitching until I tidy it up. After all, I did get all those people on the alert on Friday, then just took off."
"Rosa Hidalgo and some computer nut hardly count as 'all those people.' "
"It seemed like a lot more at the time. Anyway, it'll only be for the afternoon, and then tomorrow or the day after I was thinking about taking off for a couple of days."
"I think that would be a good idea," Lee said carefully.
"With you? Please? If you can get free," she added.
The joy dawning on Lee's face rivaled the morning sun, but all she said was, "Where?"
"Somewhere on the coast. Just drive?"
"South to Carmel or Big Sur?" Lee suggested.
"Fine."
"I'll need to buy a bathing suit. My only one has holes in unfortunate places."
"What fun."
"If you can guarantee me a private swimming hole, yes."
"Jon would love to take you shopping for a suit," Kate said firmly.
Kate stared at the telephone for twenty minutes before she could work up her nerve to call Rosa Hidalgo. The question of legality - no, it was not even a question - the fact that what she planned was both illegal and unethical was actually of little concern when compared to the thought of Jani's anger if she heard that the woman she blamed for her daughter's disappearance had then been inside her apartment. Scenarios of shame and a permanent state of discomfort around Al almost drove her off - almost.
Very fortunately, Rosa was not home, and would not be home until late. Furthermore, her daughter, Angelica, had no hesitation about letting Kate into the apartment.
Albert Onestone, king of the Internet - Richard Schwartz to the rest of the w
orld - took her a while longer, but she eventually got through to him, his real rather than virtual self on the telephone. Had she been conversing through the keyboard, she was certain he would have wriggled out of her grasp, but confronted by a live voice in his ear, he was out of his element and agreed to go with her to tease the secrets from Jules's computer.
Richard lived in a converted garage not far from the university, and when he came to the door, she almost laughed, so like the caricature of the computer nerd was he. Stooped, pale, bespectacled, and blinking at the sunlight, he was far from the overbearing persona that came across on the screen. She introduced herself, shook his damp hand, invited him to get in the car, waited while he logged off and shut down some machines, assured him that the jacket he had on would be heavy enough, helped him find a pen, and made sure he locked the door behind him.
"Richard," she said when they were in the parking area next to Jules's apartment, "for your own protection, I'm trying to keep anyone from knowing that you were here."
"Protection?" he said nervously. "I don't think —"
"Not that kind of protection - there's nothing dangerous here. It's just to keep you from getting involved. If anyone finds I've been here and broken into the computer, it's my responsibility. I don't want to bring you into it."
"Would you know how to get through the security blocks by yourself?" he asked dubiously.
"Probably not, but nobody could prove I hadn't stumbled through on my own. Don't worry, I'm great at bluffing. Now, you wait here. I'm going to go up and get the door open, then come back for you. I'll be five or ten minutes."
"Really?" He sat up, looking interested. "Do you use picks? I'd like to watch."
"Nothing so clever, just the key. Wait here."
Angelica was home, and she came to the door with a phone tucked under her chin.
"Hi!" she said; then she muttered into the phone, "Hold on just a sec." Turning back to Kate, she said, "I've got the key. Do you want me to come up with you?"
"Oh, no, that's okay," Kate assured her. "Al told me where he kept his sweaters; it'll only take me a minute."
"Funny, Mom just sent them a bunch of things."
"Well, you know how men are," Kate said vaguely. Angelica laughed and went back to her phone conversation, leaving the door open. Kate trotted up the stairs and let herself in.
It did indeed take her only a minute to locate Al's unpacked boxes, piled to await his return from the aborted Mexican honeymoon. One in the bedroom held warm sweatshirts, so Kate pulled out three or four and some socks, bundled them under her arm, and went back downstairs with the key, carefully leaving the apartment door unlocked.
Angelica was still on the phone. She was sitting on the sofa with her feet on the coffee table, painting her toenails with bright red stars against a white background. Kate held up the key between two fingers. "Where does it go?" she asked.
"Oh, stick it on the hook next to the kitchen phone," the girl answered, waving at the door. Kate found the hook and returned the key to what she hoped was the same place that Angelica's mother had left it. When she came back through, the girl looked up from her task.
"Just a sec," she said again into the receiver, and to Kate: "Did you find what he wanted?"
"I did, thanks. And look, Angelica, maybe you shouldn't mention this to your mother. Actually, she sent the wrong stuff, not what Al had asked her for. She'd be embarrassed if she knew."
Angelica giggled conspiratorially, and Kate shut the Hidalgo door behind her when she left.
Richard was reading the driver's manual from the glove compartment.
"Come on," Kate said, throwing the clothes across the backseat.
"Wait a minute. I don't know if I - What are those?"
"Old sweatshirts. Let's go."
"Just how illegal is this?"
"Not at all. He's my partner," which had nothing to do with it, but it seemed to reassure him. He allowed her to take the manual from his hand and pull him out of the car.
"I really don't —" he whined.
"Shhh!"
"I really don't understand," he said in a whisper. "You never explained why you need to get into Jules's computer."
"I told you she disappeared. She was kidnapped."
"Yes, I know."
Feeling she had given the feeble explanation so often that it was nearly threadbare, she sighed. "If Jules disappeared voluntarily, she may have left behind an indication of why - a friend's address, for example, or a phone number. She kept a written diary, but she took it with her. She may also have kept a diary in her computer."
"It's an invasion of privacy," he said desperately. "There are laws against it. I'm sure there are."
They were on the stairs now, the back ones, which did not run right past the Hidalgo door. "I thought hackers believed in freedom of information," she commented.
"Corporate or governmental information, sure, but not private stuff."
"Never mind, Richard, I won't make you read it. Just unlock the door and I'll rob the palace."
They got into the apartment without being seen. Richard booted up, then tapped and scowled at the keyboard for a while before giving a brief grunt of satisfaction as Jules's files fell open before them.
"Before I open these," he said to her, "I need to know if you want to hide your tracks."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, as it is, when I go into one of these, the computer will record that it was opened on this date and time. If you don't want that to happen, I have to change the date on the computer so it thinks it's last month, or last year. It's not perfect, and someone looking for it would probably see it, but it's a way of escaping a quick glance. I can be more elaborate if you like, and nobody would ever know, but that takes more time."
"No, we don't need to be paranoid about this. Go ahead and do the simpler cover."
The files Richard opened were as tidy as Kate would have expected, clearly delineated between work and private material. She had him open each one to be sure, but many of them were simply for school - science and English assignments, book reports and homework of various kinds.
There were three oddball files, and Kate, knowing that Jules used a compatible, if more advanced, version of the word processing program that Lee had on their computer, had him copy them onto a disc. He then closed down the files, restored the proper date to the computer's brain, and shut it down.
"Should we wipe off our prints?" he suggested eagerly.
"No," she said, to his disappointment. When they left, it was quite dark, and again nobody noticed their presence.
TWENTY-THREE
There was a lot of material on the disc, and Lee's archaic printer was smelling overheated before Kate finished. But that was nothing compared to what the stuff did to her brain as she read far into the night, lying on the couch in the guest room.
She fell asleep at some time before dawn, waking three hours later with a drift of papers covering her and the floor around the sofa, like a caricature of a park-bench sleeper with a blanket of newspapers. She groaned, eased her rigid neck, and cobbled the papers together in rough order before walking stiffly down the stairs to the coffeepot.
"Sleeping beauty," commented Jon. He was constructing a shopping list, which always seemed to involve turning out the entire contents of every cupboard. Fortunately, there was a bit of cold coffee in the pot. Kate splashed it into a mug and put it in the microwave to heat.
"Do you think we could bear to have lentils again?" he asked her. He was tapping his teeth with the eraser end of the pencil, a gesture Kate suddenly recognized as pure Lee, adopted by her caretaker.
"I like lentils," she said finally.
"Maybe I should substitute flageolet. Such a saucy name, don't you think?"
"They sound delicious," she said absently, turning to remove the still-cold coffee from the whirring machine. Dio - she'd meant to call Dio before he went to school.
She took the cup into the living room, making a face when
she sipped it, and paused to get her notebook from her briefcase. She flipped through it to find the phone number she wanted, sat down, dialed, sipped, and grimaced again, then sat forward when the phone was answered.
"Wanda Steiner? This is Kate Martinelli."
"Hello, my dear. How is your poor head?"
"Much better, thanks. How is Dio doing?"
"He's coming along nicely. I do like him. He's one of the nicest boys we've had in a long time. Not a mean bone in his body, despite everything he's been through."
"Has he given you any other ideas about his past? Where he came from, what his name is?"
"As you know, Inspector" - Kate grinned to herself: When being official, both Steiners invariably called her Inspector Martinelli; otherwise, to the wife, she was Kate, dear - "I try to give my boys as much privacy as I can, and they know I won't violate their confidence. However, having said that, there's really nothing to tell. I think he may have come from a medium-sized city in some western state, and I believe his mother died within the past five years."
"That's more than he told us."
"Oh, he hasn't said anything directly. I judged it by his habits, and the fact that he has very pretty manners when he chooses. He spent a childhood around a woman who loved him and taught him well, but he's had a fair amount of rough treatment since then. There are scars on his back, you know."
"Are there," Kate said grimly.
"From a belt or a switch, I'd say, which drew blood, and more than once." The words were cool and factual - she had, after all, seen worse beneath her roof - but the voice was not.
"And he hasn't let a name slip?"
"Never. In fact, he's taken the birth name of his friend, your partner's daughter."
"Jules?"
"When he first came to us out of the hospital, we told him he needed two names for the records, at school and so forth, so he asked her permission to borrow it temporarily."
"Good… heavens."
"I thought it was rather sweet."
"I wonder what her mother thinks."
"I doubt that she knows," Wanda said complacently. "So, were you just asking after the boy, or was there something in particular I could help you with?"
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