for until Gary and my drum got here. My head hurt less, but still too much to concentrate through, and I was waiting on the yearbook staff at the school. “Yeah,” I said, nodding a little. “If Jen gets anything from the yearbook staff before Gary gets here, send her to wake me up, okay?”
“Sure. Now go on. You’ll only get a few minutes anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said again, and wove my way through desks toward the drop-spot nee broom closet. Much too small for an office, it was ventilated and kept fastidiously clean. Cops whose desks couldn’t be seen under the crap they had piled up were known to change sheets on the drop-spot cot, and it got swept out twice a day whether it needed it or not. It was the only really clean area in the whole station, and it stayed that way because everybody knew that sooner or later they’d be collapsing into the cot. Nobody wanted to sleep in someone else’s grunge.
I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, which was nice. I didn’t need another impact, no matter how soft, to make my head ache more than it already did.
I woke up to the scent of coffee under my nose. Gary sat on the floor beside the cot, Indian-style and grinning, holding a cup from The Missing O a few inches away from my face. I blinked at him slowly, then seized the cup and took a grateful slurp. Not just coffee. Mint-flavored mocha, heavy on the chocolate but with twice the caffeine.
“You are a god,” I announced as the first slug trickled down my throat and spread out to coat the lining of my stomach. “How’d you know about the mint?”
Gary chuckled. “Blond guy at the front desk said it was the best way to wake you up. I was polite and didn’t ask how he knew.”
I snorted. “I think Bruce knows the best way to wake everybody who works in the North Precinct, including Morrison.”
“Yeah? Whaddaya do, grab a bullhorn and bellow from far enough away that he can’t shoot you?”
I grinned sleepily. “Probably. I’ve never had to try. What time is it?”
‘“Bout two-forty. I got here fifteen minutes ago but they sent me for coffee. Said you needed the sleep and the caffeine. Some little Spanish lady has some papers for you.”
I sat all the way up, holding the coffee cup out. “Jen. She’s Hispanic, actually. She must’ve found the girl. Kick ass. Hold this, I gotta change the sheets.”
“You’ve got to what?” Gary watched in bemusement as I stripped the sheets off the bed and put new ones on. “You ever been in the army, lady?”
“Nope. Why do you keep calling me that?”
“You do corners like you were,” he said approvingly, then lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Calling you what?”
“‘Lady.’ I know it’s been over nine hours since you saw me and you’re old, but I did tell you my name.” I took my coffee cup back and grinned at Gary’s faint look of offense.
“Part of my charm,” he said with immense dignity.
“That’s what I told Marie,” I reminded him. “I was kidding.”
He spread his hands. “Turns out you weren’t. Who knew?”
“Are you decent in there?” Jen banged on the door and pushed it open, thrusting a handful of papers at me. I took another sip of my mocha and held the cup in my front teeth while I shuffled through the papers.
“You look like a rabbit,” Gary said. I spared a hand to flip him off.
The yearbook staff at Blanchet High had faxed over half a dozen pages of photos of the slender blond girl, most of them with her alone, often reading or drawing. She consistently wore her hair loose, tucked behind an ear when she was bent over a drawing pad.
“Fmmbmmy onna y’buk sfaff—”
Jen took the cup out of my mouth.
“Somebody on the yearbook staff has a crush on her, huh?” I repeated. Jen grinned and Gary looked startled.
“My guess is him,” Jen said, and pushed one of the faxed pages over to reveal a gawky kid with a camera leaning over one of the girl’s drawings. He had hair that fell over his eyes and good skin, for a teenager, and he would probably grow up cute. The girl was smiling up at him.
“Looks like true love.” I smiled and shuffled the picture away. At the bottom of the pile was a two line biography.
“At least she doesn’t want to be John Malkovich,” I mumbled.
“She probably doesn’t know who John Malkovich is,” Jen said dryly. “He’s too old for her.”
“Picasso’s older,” I pointed out. “Is this all there is? No phone number, nothing on where she lives?” I shuffled back to one of the photos and compared it to the drawing Jen had done. There were probably about a hundred thousand blond teenage girls in Seattle, but this one felt right. I looked up at Jen, hopeful.
She held out a thin manila folder. “I expect you to worship at my toes.”
I flipped it open. It held three pieces of paper and a black-and-white photograph, taken a year or two earlier. One paper was a copy of a birth certificate; the second, an adoption record. The third was a brief biography. I stared at the papers for a moment, then lifted my eyes to Jen’s in admiration. “How’d you do this?”
“Magic,
My eyebrows shot up. “Public?”
She didn’t even look uncomfortable. “For some definition of public.”
“You’re a bad woman, aren’t you, Jen?”
“Got what you needed, didn’t I? Right down to her home address. Which you’re going to need, since school let out twenty minutes ago. You should get going.”
“Last time you said that I went and broke my head open on the front steps. I’ll go as soon as I can. I’ve got something else to take care of first.” I pushed a hand through my hair, wondering if it looked as bad as it felt. “Gary, did you bring my drum?” The big cabby nodded. “It’s in the cab. I’ll grab it.” I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get this show on the road, then.”
CHAPTER 25
We ended up down in the garage break room, the place I was most comfortable in the station. A surprising number of people followed us down, evidently all struck with the need to take a break at exactly the same time. Morrison was conspicuous by his absence, for which I was both grateful and resentful. He, after all, had seen the diner’s security tapes and had come around far enough to reinstate me to work on the case. It seemed like he should come keep an eye on me while I did the weird stuff that he’d reinstated me to do.
Maybe I didn’t need to work on that damsel in distress routine after all. The idea of Morrison keeping his eye on me implied I might need him to rescue me, which seemed both unlikely and annoying. Fortunately, my replacement, Thor the Thunder God, came in from the garage with the rest of the mechanics. His arrival knocked me out of sulking over the captain.
“This really isn’t going to be that exciting,” I said to Gary. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder and was carrying it carefully. I assumed my drum was in there, protected against the weather.
“Want me to get ‘em out of here?” He looked more hulking than usual, like a rooster with his feathers fluffed out. I almost laughed.
“No, I think it’s okay. I just, ah.” I stopped arranging an empty space on the floor and looked around at the two dozen men and women crowding the break room. “No. No, in fact, I think I have an idea. All right, look, everybody.” I lifted my voice and straightened, arms akimbo. Nearly everyone came to attention, like I was their worst drill sergeant returned to haunt them. I fought off laughter again.
“This isn’t,” I repeated, “going to be very exciting. I’m going to sit here in a trance while Gary bangs a drum. I take it pretty much everybody’s gotten the lowdown by now.”
