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
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
