wrong?'
'No, no. Sorry, I must've misunderstood Wanda. But there couldn't be two kids named Dio who live with the Steiners.'
'Not likely,' the vice-principal agreed.
'Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you'd get a message to him, to say that Kate Martinelli would like to speak with him after school. Tell him he doesn't have to but that she'd appreciate it.'
There was a pause while Pierce wrote the message down; then she said, 'Okay, I'll have it delivered.'
'Thank you very much. How's he doing, by the way?'
'Surprisingly well. Are you a friend?'
'I found him, when he was sick.'
'You're the police officer who saved his life and was nearly killed?'
'Both exaggerations. But I'm glad he's doing okay.'
'He seems to have a lot of catching up to do, but by his tests, I'd say he's a bright boy. Not that being bright is everything.'
'It probably helped him survive.'
'There is that, yes. Well, thank you, Ms Martinelli. Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.'
Kate thanked her in return, and cut the connection with her finger. Kimbal? After a moment she allowed the button to come up, and dialed the Steiner number again.
'Wanda? Kate here. Tell me, why is Dio using the name Kimbal?'
'I'm sorry, I assumed you knew. Kimbal is apparently the girl's birth name. I ought to have made it clear, but I thought you knew her so well.'
'Who told you her last name was Kimbal?'
'I suppose Dio must have. That is to say, I know her name is Cameron now, but I assumed her mother changed it after the divorce. Is this not the case?' she asked, sounding more resigned than concerned. 'Has Dio been lying to me?'
'No. I mean, you seem to know more about Jules than I do.'
'I never met her, or her mother, but it sounds like she was a lovely girl.'
Kate felt her throat constrict at the flavor of eulogy in Wanda Steiner's words, but she forced herself to say, 'Yes, she was. Thanks, Wanda. I won't bother you any more.'
'It's not a bother, dear. Tell me, do you want me to say anything to Dio about the name? I will if it's important, but at this stage with my boys I generally find it best to keep the number of confrontations to a minimum.'
Kate agreed that it was a question that could be put off for an easier time, thanked her again, and hung up.
After a minute of staring unseeing at the carpet, she blinked and then went in search of Lee, whom she found in the consulting rooms, where she saw her clients. There was no client this morning, just Lee, tidying the crowded shelves of figurines used in the therapeutic process.
'Can I consult?' Kate asked.
'The couch is free.'
'Not for me, Frau Doktor. A consultation about a mutual friend.' Lee put down her cleaning cloth and lowered herself into a chair. Kate sat in the chair across from her, picking up a glass unicorn to fiddle with. 'As you know, I'm trying to reconstruct why and how Jules disappeared.'
'There's been nothing to connect her with the Strangler, then?'
'Al would've called. No, I think something else happened to her.'
'But I thought - Are you saying you think she's alive?'
'No.' Kate took a breath, then forced herself to say it. 'I think Jules is dead. But I'm not convinced the Strangler did it. There are too many oddities: Jules was getting weird phone calls from a man; on the drive north, she seemed at times preoccupied, touchy; and unless she was snatched from the parking lot at the motel, which is unlikely, she opened her door to her abductor. Voluntarily. No, I'm uncomfortable with a number of things, and I think there's a chance that someone either watched her or communicated with her over the Internet, or both, then either followed us on the freeway - which wouldn't have been difficult to do, and I certainly wasn't watching over my shoulder - or else arranged to meet her along the way, as soon as she was away from the fairly tight watch Jani kept over her.' She rubbed her forehead with her free hand. 'I don't know, Lee. I'm just trying to find an explanation that makes sense.'
'What did you want to consult about?'
'I broke into Jules's computer.'
'How on earth did you do that?'
'I had some help. A lot of what I found was what you'd expect, school assignments and such, but there were three files that bother me. One of them seems to be a kind of novel she's writing, all about a little girl - her words - named Julie. I should mention that according to Dio, one of the things her strange phone caller said was, 'You're mine, Julie.' The story is an endless round of these idyllic episodes, picnics and horseback rides and travel and camping and cooking dinner at home, with her in the middle of a family: Mommy, Daddy, and Julie. Pages and pages of detail, actually very monotonous. If it hadn't been in her personal files and had her kind of vocabulary, I wouldn't have thought she could write such drivel.
'The second file was a lot more like Jules. It was notes and references and statistics, all about relationships.'
'Relationships?'
'Marriage, mostly. Pieces of articles about marriage and divorce, statistics about the effects of divorce on children, things that sounded like advice-to-the-lovelorn columns -how to keep your man, things like that - next to a part of some university study with a hundred footnotes, all of them copied. Oh, and personal research she'd done, as well. I recognized several conversations I'd had with her over the last few months, transcribed. She had an amazing memory.'
'And the third file?'
'That was the strangest of all. She named the file 'J.K.,' just the initials. Now, I just got off the phone to the vice-principal of Dio's high school, and she told me that Dio is using the last name Kimbal. Wanda Steiner, who's fostering Dio, thought that was Jules's original last name.'
'J.K.'
'Yes.'
'What's in the file?'
'A name. That's the whole file, just a name: Marsh Kimbal.'
Lee thought for a moment, looking progressively more unhappy. 'You've got to talk to Al, ask if he knows who Marsh Kimbal is.'
'And how do I explain how I got the name? Broke into his apartment, violated Jani's privacy?'
'You did get the name from Dio's school.'
'The last name, yes, but the name Marsh would take some explaining. I know I'll have to tell him eventually. But first I need to talk to Dio: There are things he's not telling me. And I'll run a search on the name Marsh Kimbal, see if anything turns up, though it's probably a pseudonym.'
'You still haven't asked me a question,' Lee said mildly.
'I have several. First, would you say those first two files indicate a normal reaction on the part of a single- parent child?'
'A highly intelligent thirteen-year-old who doesn't have a family aside from her mother; who, as you told me the other day, just learned her father was a violent criminal; who, furthermore, is going through a rough time with her mother and is facing the upheaval of having a new father wished on her, even a father she's fond of - all this considered, I'd say yes, it's an unusual interest in family dynamics, but an understandable one.'
'Okay. Now, you know Jules; you know how smart she is. Could someone who found out about this fixation —'
'Not a fixation, I'd say that was too strong a word.'
'Okay, this strong interest - could he sucker her into running away by playing on a sense of family?'
