With Child

'Pistol? Rifle? Machine gun? Grenade launcher?'

'Just the pistol, I guess.'

'Fine, if your mom doesn't object.' Silence. 'You think she would?'

'Probably,' she said darkly.

'I really couldn't take you if she didn't approve. Ask Al to convince her.'

'She doesn't like guns.'

'I'm not crazy about them myself. They make a lot of work for me,' she said darkly, Lee and the murdered Jules-like girl very much on her mind. 'Ask Al.'

'Okay.'

Kate returned to her shower in a better frame of mind.

Nothing came up to keep Kate from her appointment with Jules, and on a gorgeous crisp autumnal morning, she drove down the peninsula and parked outside the apartment building. She was buzzed in, took the elevator up, and Al opened the door, unshaven and in a dressing gown and slippers. He nodded Kate in. She looked everywhere but at the partner who was in fact her superior officer. He did not seem to notice.

'Coffee?' he asked, holding out his own cup.

'Not if you made it, thanks.'

'I think Jules did.' She followed him to the kitchen and they examined the glass carafe. The coffee was still more brown than green. 'Not too old.'

'Yes, then I will have a cup.'

'Taking her to the range, then?'

'If it's all right with Jani.'

'Jani connects guns with some unpleasant things in her past, but she agrees that Jules has the right to an education.'

'I don't want to create a problem here.'

'You're not creating it. Ah, here's the Juice now.'

'The name is Jules, Alhambra,' she growled in the mock disgust of a long-standing joke, and in an aside added, 'Good morning, Kate.'

Today's T-shirt read, in delicate gold writing: WHEN GOD CREATED MAN, SHE WAS ONLY JOKING. Kate grinned.

'Hey, J, like the shirt. Ready to go? Oh, hi, Jani.'

Jani came into the room, dressed more casually than Kate had ever seen her (though rumor had it that when Al Hawkin had first met her, she'd been wearing nothing but a towel, no doubt an exaggeration) - in yellow-orange cotton shorts and a loose white blouse, both crisply ironed. There were also sandals on her feet, two pencils through the heavy bun she wore her gorgeous black hair in, and a pair of reading glasses in one hand. When she entered the room, her daughter immediately stiffened and looked out of the window.

'Hello, Kate. Have you been offered anything to drink?'

'I've got coffee, thanks.'

'And you, Jules, did you eat breakfast?'

'I'm not hungry, Mother.'

Ah, said Kate to herself, so that's how it is.

What a world lay in those four words, a minor salvo in the bitter civil war between mother and daughter, a family of two turned in on itself in dependency, infuriated at itself. The four words brought with them a flood of memories, of battles and uneasy peace treaties made all the more terrible by the love that lay beneath. Kate drained her coffee cup, still standing, and held it out to her partner with a smile that felt pasted on.

'Thanks, Al, that was great.' He handed it to Jules.

'Put it in the sink, would you, Jujube?'

'Anything you say, Altercation.'

When the child had left the room, Jani spoke quietly, with surface nonchalance. 'Before I forget, Kate, Rosa Hidalgo would appreciate it if you could stop by before you leave today. Nothing terribly urgent, merely a question that arose concerning one of her young clients.'

'But what —' Kate stopped, surprised at the stillness in Jani's posture, the urgency in her eyes. 'Sure, be glad to,' she said easily, and Jani relaxed and held Kate's eyes for a split instant longer, in warning, before nodding her head in an informal leave-taking and disappearing back into her study. Jules stood in the doorway and watched her mother's retreating back, glowering with suspicion.

'Shall we go?' Kate suggested.

'Have a good time, Emerald,' Al said. Jules roused herself.

'I'll try, Allegheny.'

'Be home by midnight, Pearl.' He stifled a yawn.

'Or you'll turn into a pumpkin, right, Alcatraz? And by the way,' she said as a parting shot, 'I don't think pearls qualify as jewels.'

He laughed and closed the apartment door behind them. On the stairs, Jules dropped the joking attitude as if it had never been and turned to Kate.

'What did she want?'

'Who, your mother? Oh, at the end there. She didn't want anything,' Kate said easily. 'Had a message from Rosa downstairs, probably about a case she asked me about a while back. Why?'

'She's always talking about me to people.'

'That's hardly surprising; you're an important part of her life. It would be a bit strange never to mention you, don't you think?' Kate knew that her face gave away nothing - there were too many hours of interrogation behind her to let her thoughts be read by a twelve-year-old. Even this twelve-year-old.

'That's not what I mean.'

'No? Well, in this case, I don't think your suspicions are justified. Your mom probably just thought it was a private message, that's all.'

In silence, Kate and Jules walked down the two flights of stairs, Kate feeling absurdly on trial, as aware of the child's inner turmoil as if she could see it on a screen: Which side was Kate on? Kate wondered if it mattered, knew that it did, knew furthermore that she wanted Jules to trust her loyalty, and realized that she'd be a damned fool to get herself between child and mother, with Al Hawkin standing over it all. Have to watch your step, Kate.

Still in silence, she started the car and drove the half mile or so to the park with the swimming pool. Jules walked away onto the grass, and Kate trailed after, to the shade of a tree on a low rise. Jules settled down as if sitting in a familiar chair. Kate sat down beside her.

'This is where you used to meet him, you said?' she asked after a couple of minutes.

'His father used to beat him. Did I tell you that?'

'No, you didn't, but it doesn't surprise me. A lot of runaways come from abusive families.'

'He's dead, isn't he?'

'He may be. But in all honesty, Jules, I think the odds that he's alive somewhere are considerably higher.'

'Did you ever read Peter Pan?' Jules asked abruptly.

'Peter Pan?' Kate wondered where this was going. 'Not in a very long time.'

'I hate that book. It's detestable. I read it again last week, because I was thinking about something Dio said, and when you take away all that cute, cheerful stuff they put in the movies, you see it's about a bunch of boys whose parents throw them away, or anyway don't care enough to bother looking for them when they get lost, who get together to try and take care of each other, only to have another group of grown-ups try to kill them all. What's the difference between a pirate and a serial killer, or a drug pusher, or a… a pimp, I ask you?'

Kate was shocked, though whether by the words or the ferociously dry eyes, she could not have said.

'Um, what makes you think —'

'Oh, get real, Kate. I'm not stupid, you know. I do read.' She jumped up and stalked off to the chain-link fence around the swimming pool and stood with her fingers hooked into the wire, staring at the lesson going on in the water. Kate followed her slowly, then leaned with her back against the fence, facing the opposite direction.