With Child

by Laurie R. King

  “I’m really sorry about this.”

  “Oh hey, it’s a real hardship, stopping at four o’clock instead of seven. Like, major downer, man, I just can’t stand it; I’ll have to walk to Portland without you.”

  “Is downer back in? I’ve heard cool and even bummer, which was out of it by the time I was growing up. Bad trip will be revived next.” Kate was trying, but it was getting bad fast.

  “Cool is cool, but out of it is out of it,” Jules informed her.

  “Wouldn’t you know?” she said lightly, and in a few minutes, she asked, “Which do you want, Best Western, Motel Six, or TraveLodge?”

  “Which one has cable? This one says it does, but that one is farther from the freeway, so it’d be quieter.”

  “Jules, choose. Now.”

  “Turn right.”

  Kate signed the register with unsteady hands, one small and fading part of her carrying on in the onslaught inside her tender skull, arranging cable for Jules’s room, arranging meals on the bill, taking the keys, aware of Jules, solicitous and worried at her elbow, practically guiding Kate up the stairs and dumping Kate’s bag on the chair.

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “Pull the curtains shut, would you? That’s better.”

  “Do you want a doctor or something?”

  “Jules, please, I just need to be alone and quiet.” She squinted across the room at the girl and saw the fear in her eyes. “Jules, I promise you, I’m okay. It’s just a kind of spasm that happens. I’ve had them before, and I’ll probably have them again. They’re”—she had to hunt for the word—“temporary. In the morning, I will be fine. Now, you go have some dinner.” The lurch of her stomach was almost uncontrollable this time, and she swallowed the rush of saliva in her mouth. “Watch MTV until midnight, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Did I give you the car key?”

  “Yes. I have it. And should I take your room key, just in case…?”

  “I really don’t want you to come over, Jules, but if it makes you feel better, take it.” And go! she wanted to shriek. Jules either saw the thought or sensed it, because she picked up Kate’s room key and went to the door.

  “Jules, I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t worry, Kate. I hope you sleep well.”

  “G’night.” The door started to close, but one last stir of her carrying-on self urged Kate to say, “Jules?” and the girl stuck her head back in. “Don’t go anywhere, will you? Other than the restaurant.”

  “Of course not,” the girl said, and closed the door firmly behind her.

  Kate took six rapid steps to the toilet, where she was comprehensively sick. Afterward, she washed her face with tender care, brought each shoe up to untie the laces before stepping on the heels to pull them off, and then slid gratefully between the stiff, sterile sheets. And slept and slept.

  In the morning when she woke, Jules was missing.

  Thirteen

  It did not help, being a cop. There was no armor against this, no reserves of professional impersonality to draw from, no protection. If anything, being a cop only intensified the horror, because she knew the dangers all too intimately. Kate had a full portfolio of images to draw from, all the dead and mangled innocents she had seen in her job, feeding into the standard reactions of any adult whose beloved child has disappeared: the rising tide of panic when there was no response next door and no familiar butch haircut in the restaurant, the muttered fury of just what she would do to the child when it turned out to be a false alarm—how could she put Kate through this routine, she who had always seemed so responsible? Why didn’t she leave a note, a message? And by God, if she was in the shower all this time, oblivious to the pounding and shouting—The only way to keep from losing it, Kate’s only hope against the almost overpowering urge just to bash her aching skull against the metal post that held up the overhang on the walkway, was to find the armor of Police Officer, buckle it on, and cope.

  She tried very hard, but it would not stay in place. “Yes, of course I looked in the restaurant. I looked in all three restaurants,” she told the man at the reception desk, a different man from the sharp-eyed Middle Easterner who had been there the night before, though like enough to be a brother or cousin. But stupid. “Nobody saw her since last night. I just want the key. Yes, I know it’s not on the hook—the man who was on duty yesterday gave it to us—but the girl in that room took it, and I can’t find her. Just let me borrow your master key; I’ll bring it right back. Oh, surely you can leave the desk for two minutes.” The armor slipped, and the elemental and terrified Kate looked out. She leaned forward and snarled into the clerk’s face, “I’m a police officer, and I’ll have your balls in jail if you don’t have that room open in thirty seconds.”

  It was not until Kate stood in the doorway of the empty room and saw the bed and the three keys on the table—one for the car and two for their rooms—that the cold precision of routine slid into place. The coverlet was wrinkled, the pillows piled against the headboard, a black remote-control device lying to one side: the bed had not been slept in. The television at the foot of the bed was on, showing the menu screen and giving out no sound.

  Kate’s hands went automatically into her pockets, her ingrained response to avoid contamination of a crime scene. The clerk was peering over her shoulder, but Kate did not move from the doorway. “Go and call the police,” she told him, her voice impossibly level. “Tell them there may have been a kidnapping.” How can I be saying those words? her brain yammered. I’m the one who answers the call, not the one who makes it.

  “There is a telephone just there,” the clerk said.

  “Call from the office.” When he did not move, she snapped, “Sir, now. Please.”

  He left. She stepped into the room, her eyes darting across every bit of floor and surface. At the door to the bathroom, she took her right hand from her pocket and, using the backs of her fingernails, pushed the door open. The toilet had been used but not flushed (a true child of California’s perpetual drought, Kate thought absently), one glass had been unwrapped, and there was a crumpled hand towel on the fake marble of the sink. Beside the towel lay the new zip bag Jules had bought on the shopping trip in Berkeley, filled with the new cosmetics she had bought in the drugstore in Sacramento, but Kate could see no sign of a toothbrush or hairbrush, and she did not want to disturb the bag to look. Back out in the room, Kate checked the closet: empty, though one hanger had been pulled out from the cluster that was pushed against the end. She felt in her pocket, pulled out a pen, and used it to open the drawers: empty, all of them, but for one that held stationery and a Gideon Bible. She closed the drawers and went out of the room just as the excited clerk came back up the stairs. She put the key that he had given her into her pocket and asked him, “When does your cleaner come?” His face was avid, greedy as a panhandling drug addict, and she had to push down a surge of pure hatred.

  “She’s down at the other end, downstairs. She works her way up here by about ten or so—another hour at least.”

  “She mustn’t go in. No one can go in there. Tell her.”

  “But what happened?”

  “I don’t know. Go back to your desk. And don’t go off duty without permission.”

  “Whose permission? Look, I must be somewhere at noon—” But Kate turned her back on him, and he went off reluctantly to deal with the checking-out guests.

  The vehicles of officialdom drifted in one at a time, the local police in a marked car, a curious sheriff’s deputy and an equally bored highway patrol officer, on his breakfast break, followed by an unmarked police car. With each of them, she found herself answering familiar questions, could hear herself sounding like every adult she had ever questioned regarding a missing child, panicky and guilty and under thin control. The sense of unreality that always followed one of the bad headaches increased until she felt as if she were taking part in a dream.

  At about this point, a middle-aged detective who reminded her of a rural Al Hawkin stopped
the series of questions he was asking and looked at her closely.

  “Are you all right, Inspector?”

  Kate took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I’m not all right,” she said aggressively. “These goddamn headaches leave me feeling like a zombie.”

  “Migraines?”

  “Not exactly, but close enough. They’re the tail end of an injury.”

  “Car accident?”

  “What the hell does it matter?” she snapped, and then immediately said, “Sorry. No, I got hit in the head with a piece of galvanized pipe. Stupid. I was going in after a perp I’d wounded and one of his friends was waiting for me. I forgot to duck. My own damn fault.”

  As soon as she looked back at him, she knew that she had inadvertently said the right thing. The half-suspicious expression that had dogged his features miraculously cleared, and she could almost see the man recognize her, not as the butch-looking San Francisco cop, one of those affirmative-action females who would fret over a broken fingernail and be unreliable in a tight place, but, rather, as “one of us.” A real cop. Oh well, she thought. Anything that helps.

  “When did you eat last?” he said abruptly.

  “I don’t know. I’m not hungry.”

  He got up and went to the door of her motel room, which had been left open a crack despite the cold.

  “Hank, go grab us some sandwiches. You want a beer, glass of wine, something?” he asked Kate, who became dimly aware that it must be closer to noon than morning.

  “Alcohol’s not a good idea just now. A Coke is fine, or coffee.”

  The food, she had to admit, had been a good idea. Reality approached a few steps when the sandwiches had hit her system, and her mind started to work again.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  “Hank Randel.”

  “Hank. What have we got so far?”

  A deep, melodious, and sardonic voice cut across any answer Hank Randel might have made. “Sergeant, I’m sure you weren’t going to answer that, so I’ll save you the embarrassment of having to refuse.”

  Kate had been a police officer long enough to know the voice of authority when she heard it. She stifled an impulse to stand to attention and instead turned to look at the figure that now filled the doorway.

  “Inspector Martinelli,” said the man, coming into the room. “Lt. Florey D’Amico.” He was a huge man with a quiet voice, and his hand as it shook hers was cautious with its strength. He was a foot taller than Kate and weighed two of her. She felt like a child, or a doll, in front of him as he took off his hat, shook the rain from it, and examined her thoughtfully. “I’m sorry this has happened, Inspector Martinelli. The child, she isn’t yours I was told.”

  “No, she’s…a sort of goddaughter. A friend. She’s my partner’s stepdaughter.”

  “I see. Well, what say we leave these gentlemen to get on with their work and you come back with me to the office.”

  Kate dug in her heels. She had no standing here to speak of, but she could be an obnoxiously well-informed private citizen, with rights.

  “I want to know what you are doing about locating Jules.”

  He inclined his head to the door in invitation. She thought he was merely ignoring her demand, and she considered fighting him, then decided that she probably could do it better in front of witnesses. She picked up her coat and went to the door she had not been out of in nearly two hours, and when she stepped out onto the walkway, she felt her jaw drop. The motel parking lot was a writhing hive of police activity: a dozen marked cars and as many more distinctively dull sedans, uniformed officers and plainclothesmen in all directions, even a mobile command post in the process of being set up. Civilians were lined up outside half a mile of yellow tape, and she knew were she down there, she would hear the sound of news cameras and shouted questions. Voices from the room Jules had occupied drew her, and she looked in, seeing the final stages of the Crime Scene technicians’ activities.

  Kate was completely bewildered at the intensity of response to a missing girl. Portland was quieter than San Francisco, granted, but this? There were even television news vans, for God’s sake. She looked up into D’Amico’s face.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Ah. I wondered. Well, Inspector Martinelli, you obviously did not think of it, but your young friend Jules Cameron is young, slim, and has short dark hair, and as such (Oh God, Kate thought) we have to recognize that she fits the profile of victims for (oh God, no) the man the press has taken to calling the (No. Oh, no, no, no) Snoqualmie Strangler.”

  When he saw her reaction, D’Amico grabbed her arm and all but lifted her back inside the room, allowing her to drop onto the bed and shoving her head down onto her knees. She had not fainted, did not even cry out, but she sat with her head down and bit the side of her hand so hard, there was blood in her mouth.

  It seemed a very long time, but in fact it was less than five minutes before Kate sat upright on the bed. This time she had no questions, merely followed the lieutenant meekly out the door and to his car.

  D’Amico’s office was warm, light, and surprisingly tidy. The telephones and voices were muted by a glass-topped door. He pointed Kate to a chair, went on down the hallway for a minute, and when he came back, he closed the door and went around the desk to his own chair.

  “Tea?”

  “I’d rather have coffee.”

  He scooped up the telephone receiver in one paw and spoke into it. “Two coffees, one cream and sugar.”

  When it came, Kate drank the sweet mixture obediently.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said.

  She rubbed one hand tiredly across her ridiculously short hair, vaguely aware that she had forgotten to pull on the knit cap before leaving her room. Her head was throbbing again, though so far her stomach had not joined in the revolt. “I don’t know what happened. Jules and I checked in to the motel yesterday at about four-thirty, and this morning when I woke up, she wasn’t in her room. That’s all I know.”

  “When did you leave San Francisco?”

  “We left…What’s today? Wednesday? We left Monday morning. Stayed Monday night near Sacramento. Jules wanted…Jules wanted to…Oh God.”

  “Inspector Martinelli,” he said, and his voice, quiet as ever, nonetheless brought her spine straight. “I require your assistance. You will give me a report of your movements since you left San Francisco on Monday morning.”

  “Sir. Jules’s mother and my partner were married on Sunday afternoon. We had made an arrangement that Jules would spend two weeks with me while they were on their honeymoon, and after the wedding she went back with me to my house in San Francisco. We left the house at nine o’clock Monday morning. We stopped in Berkeley to do some shopping, and then about noon we drove north and then east onto highway Eighty. We detoured to Sacramento because Miss…because Jules needed to see the capitol building for a school project. We stayed the night at a motel just north of town, got back the next morning onto the I-Five, and continued north. We’d planned on staying the night in Portland, but we didn’t quite get that far.” She described the trip, the stops, and the meals. About ten minutes after she began, another man came in, a young man in a dark suit with FBI written all over him. She broke off, but he just nodded at D’Amico, pulled up a chair, and waited for her to resume. She made it to the end of the report, and Jules was still missing from her room. Then the questions began.

  “Inspector, why did the two of you come here?”

  “I wanted…My lover is visiting her aunt, in the San Juan Islands.” Neither of them reacted to the word her. “I haven’t seen her since August, and I thought—I’m on sick leave—I’d come up for Christmas.”

  “And Jules Cameron? Why was she with you?” asked the FBI man.

  “Her mother and my partner just got married, on Sunday,” Kate repeated patiently. “They’re in Mexico on their honeymoon, but Jules didn’t want to go with them; she asked to come stay w
ith me instead. I was happy to have the company. She’s a good kid. No, she’s better than that. She’s a lovely human being, very smart, frighteningly smart, and mixed up, and she wanted…she likes me.” Suddenly the tears came, unexpected and unwelcome in front of these men, but unstoppable. D’Amico put a box of tissues on the desk in front of her, and they waited until she gained control.

  “God,” she said hoarsely. “How am I going to tell Al?”

  “Al is her stepfather? Your partner.”

  “Al Hawkin.”

  D’Amico’s head came up. “I know Al Hawkin. I thought he was with L.A.”

  “He was. He transferred to us a couple of years ago.”

  The FBI man spoke up. “The Eva Vaughn case.”

  “I remember,” D’Amico said. “Were you involved with that one?” He was asking her, and she nodded. “And the Raven Morningstar case, during the summer following?” he added slowly, as recognition and memory came. She nodded again, blew her nose a last time, and sat up to look straight at him, bracing herself. However, he did not comment about her notoriety or the mess that had been made of that latter case, but went back to her partner. “I heard Al Hawkin speak at a conference a few years ago. He’s an impressive man. His subject…the subject was child abduction,” he said in a voice gone suddenly flat.

  Kate’s mouth twisted into a bitter laugh. “It was his specialty,” she said. “Oh God.”

  Fourteen

  Kate met the newlyweds at the airport early the following morning. Beneath their incongruous fresh sunburns and bright holiday clothes, they both looked deathly ill, flabby with exhaustion and grinding terror. Jani seemed unaware of her new husband’s arm across her shoulders, unconscious of the coffee stains down the front of her lightweight yellow linen jacket. Her eyes flicked across Kate to fix on the large man at Kate’s side. Hawkin spared Kate a longer glance, taking in his partner’s equally derelict state in the moments it took to walk from the gate to where she and Lieutenant D’Amico stood waiting. Kate said nothing. Before Al Hawkin could speak, Jani walked straight over to the tall man in authority and looked up into his face.