With Child

by Laurie R. King

  “Ah shit, man,” he burst out. “She was only twelve!”

  “Have you never known a twelve-year-old with a baby?”

  “Well, yeah. But that’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course. That kind of girl is—well, they’re not really girls. Jules was different. She really was young. She was just a kid. Is…just a kid,” he corrected himself. To Kate’s amusement, the streetwise boy across the table from her began to blush. “She never knew anything about sex, not when I knew her last summer, anyway. I mean, she’d talk sometimes, you know, but it was just an idea to her, not a real thing. I’m sure she didn’t know. And I never…”

  “Did anything to disturb her innocence,” Kate finished for him.

  “No.”

  The brief flicker of amusement died under the bleak awareness that if Jules was by some miracle still alive, her innocence almost certainly was not. Kate refused to think about it, and she moved on to safer topics.

  “When I was at her apartment once, just after you’d disappeared, the phone rang. She took it off and immediately hung up, without even answering, and she said something about strange telephone calls. Do you know anything about them?”

  He squirmed in his seat, and all her instincts awoke. She’d hit something here; she could smell it radiating off him. He did not answer, just sat hunkered down, his blush gone, leaving him pale and very determined.

  “Dio, she’s missing,” she said, nearly pleading. “I don’t think she went under her own power, or if she did, she didn’t mean to be away this long. She wouldn’t have left us all hanging like this, Dio. Not Jules. She would have called, written, something.”

  “She…was getting…weird phone calls,” he said jerkily. “A couple of times, maybe. It was a man.”

  “Were they obscene? Did she tell you what he said?”

  “They weren’t, no. That was the problem—if they’d just been some guy getting off on dirty talk, she’d have known how to deal with it, but this was just bizarre. He’d say things like, ‘You’re mine, Jules,’ and then—no, wait, he called her Julie. ‘You’re mine, Julie’ and ‘I love you, Julie; I’ll take care of you.’”

  Kate felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle and rise. That kind of call was indeed seriously creepy. “Why didn’t she tell anyone about the calls? Other than you?”

  “I told her she ought to. They freaked her out, they really did, but she’d only had two or three, and he didn’t actually threaten her or anything.”

  “God, she could be stupid,” Kate began, but Dio, his brow furrowed in thought, was not finished.

  “And I think there was something else.”

  She waited, and then coaxed, “What was that?”

  “She seemed…this funny attitude…I don’t know how to describe it.” He was searching for words, though, so Kate waited, and after a minute his face cleared. He looked up at her eagerly, looking amazingly young and almost beautiful until he remembered who she was. He hesitated but then went on, although cautiously.

  “I knew someone once—a friend’s sister. His older sister, a year and a half older. They had a lot of problems in their family, but the two of them were really close. Then, when she was about fourteen, she started seeing this older guy. I mean a lot older, maybe thirty. He had a big car and he used to take her out, buy her clothes, and she began to get all secretive. She acted proud and excited and a little bit scared, like she had a big prize she was keeping to herself.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Dad—her dad found out and threw her out of the house. I don’t know what happened next, because I left a few weeks later.”

  “And Jules reminded you of your…friend’s sister?” Kate asked, drawing him gently back to the point he had been making.

  “A little.”

  “You think she had a boyfriend, then?”

  “Not a boyfriend. Like I said, she’s just a kid. Not in her brain, but in a lot of other ways.”

  “But it was somebody she’d met?”

  He began to look uncomfortable again, and suddenly Kate was certain that he knew more than he was telling.

  “I don’t think she ever met him, no.”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there, Dio?” She leaned forward, suppressing the urge to shake him. “Please, Dio. It could be what I need to find her.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to be found?” he burst out angrily. “She’s surrounded by goddamn college professors and cops. Who could blame her?”

  “Did she tell you that, when you saw her in December?” Kate demanded, but it was too much for him. He stood up and threw his tall cup toward the garbage can, ignoring it when it missed. Kate scooped up the other wrappings, threw them and the cup in the bin, and hurried out the door after him. She caught him halfway down the block.

  “Dio, you have to let me take you home.”

  “I don’t have a home,” he raged, throwing her hand off his shoulder, “and I don’t have to let you take me anywhere!”

  “I told Wanda I’d drive you back. If you come back on foot, she won’t like it.”

  “Who gives a fuck?”

  “She does, Dio. She’s a good woman; don’t push her around just because you’re pissed off at me. It’s not worth it.”

  He saw the sense of this, but no ex-con in cuffs went into a patrol car with less willingness than Dio climbing into the Saab, and he glowered out the side window the whole way back. She pulled up in front of the nondescript suburban house that had served as shelter for an endless trail of disturbed teenagers and turned off the engine.

  “You’re a good friend to Jules, Dio,” she said quietly. His hand froze on the door handle. “I think she would be so happy to see how much you’ve done to pull your life together. I know it’s tough, and if there’s anything I can do to help you stick with it, I hope you’ll call me. I don’t agree with all the decisions you’re making here, but I do understand that you only want to help Jules, and that you think this is the best way. I only ask you to think about something.

  “Sometimes it’s a sign of courage not to snitch on your friends. Other times, it’s irresponsibility. Part of growing up is beginning to wonder which it is.”

  He didn’t respond, but he didn’t move, either.

  “Jules saw the makings of a fine human being in you, Dio. I’m beginning to agree with her.” She saw the color begin to creep up the side of his neck. “I gave you my card, didn’t I? Phone me if you think of anything else,” she said. “Anything at all.”

  Eighteen

  Kate drove the Saab away from Wanda and Reg Steiner’s home, but around the corner she pulled over and turned off the ignition. After tapping her fingers on the steering wheel for a while and pursing her lips, she looked at her watch. A lousy time of day to get onto the freeway, but it couldn’t be helped.

  To her dismay, Rosa Hidalgo’s apartment was silent, and there was no answer to the bell or Kate’s knock. She walked back to the car, thought for another minute, then retraced her path toward the freeway, stopping at a gas station to buy a map and borrow a phone book.

  Jules had said her summer computer class was at the university, which Kate took to mean the university her mother taught at. The departmental listings in the telephone book took up an entire column, but there was no answer, not in the Computer Sciences office, nor in the German department, nor in any of half a dozen others she tried at random. The secretaries had left for the weekend.

  However, Kate reflected, the computer maniacs she had known would not be diverted by the hour hand of a clock—or, for that matter, by a ringing telephone. There wasn’t much else to do, short of going home, so she bought herself a cup of bad coffee from the gas station cashier and drove to the university.

  Darkness had fallen before Kate’s flashed badge and firm reiteration of her name and rank got her into the computer labs.

  “See?” said the elderly security guard who had been Kate’s guide for the final stages of
her quest. “Told you they’d be here.”

  The four people at the computer terminal did not stir until Kate had actually hung her badge down over the front of the monitor, and even then the only response was one of vague irritation. The hand of the man sitting next to the keyboard reached up and brushed her ID away.

  “You’ll have to wait a minute,” he said.

  Kate had to admit that she hadn’t anything better to do, so she waited a minute, and then five more. After that, she got up and went into the next room, an office filled with copy machines old and new, a long table with a motley group of chairs, and various kitchen machines. She found a can of coffee in the refrigerator and filters in with the reams of Xerox paper. When the coffee was made, she carried the carafe into the lab, along with half a dozen Styrofoam cups, the top one filled with packets of sugar and creamer. The woman and the three men had not changed position, although it was now the woman’s hands that flew across the keyboard.

  “Coffee?” Kate asked loudly. One of the men, a young boy with red hair and freckles, tore his eyes from the monitor long enough to glance at his watch.

  “Two minutes,” he murmured, though not necessarily at Kate. She considered interrupting, by pulling out a few plugs perhaps, but decided to give them the two minutes. Actually, she thought as she poured herself a cup and sipped, it was almost refreshing to meet people who were not only unintimidated but also seemingly unaware of her status as an authority figure.

  Two minutes and twenty seconds later, some invisible sign on the screen caused the four attendants to slump back in their chairs. The woman gave the keyboard a few perfunctory taps, and across the room a laser printer hummed to attention.

  “Coffee?” Kate asked again. This time, the four of them, chatting in incomprehensible shorthand, came over to where she sat at a worktable. She poured and pushed the cup with sugar and creamer toward them. The redheaded boy was the only one to add sugar, stirring it in with a ballpoint pen that he took from his pocket.

  “What was all that?” Kate asked politely. “It didn’t look like English.”

  “It wasn’t. Bloke in Moscow,” said the woman, her voice thickly Australian. “He can only talk when his partner goes on a break.”

  “Full of interesting stuff,” commented the oldest man, who might have been thirty. “However, his English isn’t up to it. Hence Sheila here,” he said, nodding at the woman.

  “Kate Martinelli,” Kate offered, taking the name as an opportunity for introductions, although the woman’s name was Maggie, not Sheila. The others were Rob, the young redhead; Simon, the older man; and a young Chinese man with the unlikely name of Josiah. “My adoptive parents were missionaries,” he said, offering a well-worn explanation in a voice with no accent.

  “Do any of you know Jules Cameron?” Kate asked as soon as introductions had subsided. Four sets of eyes looked at her blankly. “She’s a junior high school student who was in a class that was taught here last summer, something about programming. There was a boy in the class, her partner in some project. He sold a game to Atari when he was ten years—”

  “Richard!” three voices chorused.

  “We all know Richard,” Maggie said. “We’ve all heard the story about Atari a thousand times.”

  “I haven’t,” said Josiah.

  “You’ve only been here a week.”

  “I bet you know him anyway,” said Simon. “He uses Albert Onestone as his nom de clavier.”

  “Oh, Albert. Sure, I know Albert. Is he as bigmouthed in life as he is on the net?”

  “Worse.”

  “God.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?” Kate asked.

  “He’s always on the Internet. I don’t think he sleeps. Or do you mean actually him, as in his body?” Maggie asked.

  “His actual physical person, yes.”

  “I’m not sure where he lives.”

  “Could you ask him?” Kate asked.

  “You mean when I see him?”

  “If he’s always on-line, what about now?”

  Richard, the computer genius whose pomposity had come across clearly even in choppy Internetspeak, had nonetheless agreed to meet Kate in the flesh. First, though, she needed to reach Rosa Hidalgo, to gain access to the Cameron (now Cameron-Hawkin) apartment. Richard, she trusted, would be able to open the computer inside the apartment, on the slim chance that Jules had left something—diary, letters, mutterings to herself—in its electronic recesses. It was this thin thread that she had followed down here, and she could only hope it led her a bit further before it snapped, or unraveled. She’d been an investigator long enough to be resigned to any number of fruitless days, but that did not mean she relished them.

  Rosa was home. Her voice sounded strained, and she obviously held the memory of December’s conversation with Kate in the front of her mind. Kate sat at the telephone in the corner of the computer lab and gradually wore Rosa down, grinding away with a steady application of Jules’s name and an attitude of profound apology. She hung up feeling more than a bit nauseated, but with the permission at hand. Now all she needed to do was drag Richard away from his keyboard.

  She was interrupted in her dialing of his number by the beeper somewhere on her person. She hung up, dug the tiny machine out of her pocket, and held it up. It displayed her own home number, with no message.

  Old familiar panic feelings flooded over her as she punched the numbers, and when Lee herself answered, Kate went querulous with relief.

  “What do you want, Lee?”

  “Where are you? We expected you hours ago.”

  “Is that why you beeped me, because I missed dinner? I’m working.” Damn it, Kate groused to herself. She can take off for months, yet I can’t have a couple of hours without checking in. Well, she corrected herself after a glance at her watch, six hours. “Sorry, I guess it is late. I should’ve called. I’ve gotten out of the habit of having someone at home.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Oh, look Kate, I’m sorry—I’m not thinking straight. I just got off the phone with Al Hawkin.”

  Kate held her breath.

  “They’ve arrested the Strangler,” Lee’s voice in the receiver said.

  “What?” The four people at the computer turned to look at her, but she did not see them.

  “Just a little while ago. He wanted you to know before you heard it on the news.”

  “How good a make is it?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How sure are they that they’ve got the right man?”

  “Al said it looks positive. He said to tell you a witness came forward who saw the letter being mailed. I assume that makes sense to you?”

  “It does, yes. Where is he? Al, I mean.”

  “He said he was with D’Amico at the man’s house, south of Tacoma, helping with the search, but that he’d call you tomorrow.”

  The help that Al would be giving, Kate knew, was to stand by and look at things taken out of the Strangler’s house, to see if one of the trophies he had collected belonged to Jules. She shuddered and grasped the telephone as if it were a lifeline. Think, woman, she ordered. Don’t go all soft now. She looked at her watch: just after eight o’clock. Lee was talking again, but Kate broke in, unheeding.

  “Lee, I need you to make some phone calls. Do you have a pencil? Okay. Rosa Hidalgo: Tell her I won’t be coming by tonight, but for God’s sake, don’t tell her why. Next, a kid named Richard.” She gave Lee the number. “Same message as for Rosa; I’ll call him in a few days. Next, call the dispatcher. Have her contact Kitagawa and tell him I’m going back on medical leave, that my head’s killing me.…No, of course not; it’s fine. And then the airport. Find me a flight; I’ll be able to make it by ten o’clock. Wait a minute—did Al say more precisely where it was?”

  “Just that it was south of Tacoma.”

  “Nothing about which airport?”

  There was a silence on the line, then Lee said, “He did say something about it being too damn far from Por
tland, that he wished he’d flown into Seattle.”

  That answered the bigger question: Yes, Al knew that his partner would come.

  “Right. Book me a flight into SeaTac, have a taxi at the house in, oh, an hour. That’ll give me five minutes to pack. See you shortly.”

  “Drive carefully,” Lee urged, but the phone was dead before she had finished.

  When Kate reached Russian Hill, she found her bag already packed and Jon bent over the duct-taped tear on her down parka with a needle and thread.

  “Bless you, Jon,” she said, and trotted upstairs.

  “Do you want a sandwich, or coffee?” he called after her.

  “No, I ate,” she shouted back, ducking into the study to hunt down maps of Washington. As she pawed through the map drawer, she was dimly aware of the sounds of Lee making her laborious way up the stairs. When the click of her braces paused at the study door, Kate spoke over her shoulder.

  “Have you seen those large-scale maps I brought back with me?”

  “They’re on the shelf.”

  Kate looked up and saw the bulging manila envelope. She kicked the drawer shut and stretched up for the packet, then shook it out on the desk and began sorting through it for the maps she might need.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “Let you know where I’m staying. The car keys are on the table downstairs.” She chose half a dozen sheets and put them back into the envelope, bent down the little metal wings to seal the flap, and turned to go.

  “Kate, just hold on a minute.”

  “I can’t, sweetheart. I’ll miss the plane.”

  “Why do you have to go? Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “It can’t wait,” Kate said gently. “I have to go.”

  “But why? They don’t want you up there.”

  Kate winced, then said simply, “Al needs me.”

  I need you, Lee wanted to say, knowing that if she did, Kate would stay, and that Kate would resent it. And she couldn’t help but be aware that she had relinquished the right to say that, after these last months, no matter how true it was. She forced herself to draw back.