Lee saw immediately where she was heading. 'There've been a number of cases like that lately, haven't there? Kids making friends through the Internet and running away to join them.'
'Exactly.'
'And you're asking me if Jules might have done that?'
'I can't believe it. I'd have thought she was way too bright to fall for a con.'
'A con she wants to believe in? A fantasy to fit her own, a way out of the problems she's had building up in school and at home, a way to follow the romanticized notions of homelessness she may have built up around Dio? Kate, you know as well as I do that a teenager always believes he or she is both isolated and invulnerable - 'You don't understand' and 'It can't happen to me' form the bedrock of her age group.'
'So you'd say she could have done it?'
'Gone with someone who presented himself as a father figure? Sure. Were there any Internet conversations in storage?'
'None. Richard - the computer kid - said there were signs she'd dumped files. But she'd done it so cleanly, he couldn't retrieve them.'
'So what do you do next?'
Kate put the delicate horned figure back on its shelf. 'What I've been doing all along. What I always do. Ask ten thousand pointless questions and follow any answer that doesn't feel right.'
'But we're still planning on going out of town?'
'Tonight. After I've seen Dio.'
'Wanda told me not to harass you,' she told the boy over their hamburgers. He looked startled, then smiled uncertainly.
'Did she think you were going to?'
'She knows I'm going to.' Calmly, she ate a bite of her food and took a pull at the straw in her milk shake. 'But she wanted you to know that you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to.'
'And do I? Have to talk to you?' He was thrown off balance by her odd attitude.
'No.'
'So, why should I stay here?'
She shrugged. 'Be a shame to waste your burger.' She took another bite, and after a minute, he followed her example.
'So,' he asked after a while, 'when does the harassment begin?'
'It's been going on since I left the message for you at school. I plan to make you so sick of little notes and big hamburgers that you tell me what I want to know.'
His jaws stopped, then started moving again, more slowly.
'What do you want to know?'
'The same thing I wanted to know last time. Whatever you're not telling me about Jules.'
'What am I not telling you?'
'If I knew that, I wouldn't have to harass you.'
'What makes you think there's something I'm not telling you?'
'I don't think; I know.'
'How do you know?'
'You tell me every time you open your mouth.'
'Maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut, then.'
'See? You just did it again.'
Resentment and outrage mingled in Dio's face as he searched for the proper reaction.
'Dio, you're going to tell me sooner or later, because you want to. You can tell me now, or you can tell me after I've beaten you into submission with hamburgers and milk shakes. Oh, and ice cream. You like ice cream?'
'Yeah.' He was beginning to look alarmed.
'There's a killer ice cream parlor in the other direction from the school. I can bring in the big guns; they have a brownie sundae that makes you think you've died and gone to heaven. That ought to bring you to your knees. And if it doesn't, I'll have to torture you with the occasional ball game.'
Suddenly, it dawned on him: This adult, this policewoman, was making a joke. She could see him rejecting the idea, trying it on again, and slowly working around to considering the possibility. Eyeing her curiously, he ventured a response: 'If you really wanted to hurt me, there's a movie I was thinking of seeing.'
She threw the remnant of her hamburger onto the paper-lined basket; he jumped; she reached for the napkins and began to wipe her hands in disgust. 'Wouldn't you know,' she said bitterly. 'Here I try to threaten someone, it turns out he's a goddamn masochist.'
His mouth went into an O, and then he saw the skin around her eyes crinkle slightly, and he suddenly began to laugh.
Kate was inordinately proud of that laugh, but she gave no indication. Instead, she finished dramatically wiping her hands and fought hard to keep a look of disgust pasted on while the boy dissolved in snorts and choking laughter. She doubted he'd laughed like that in a hell of a long time.
It wiped away his fear of her. However, when the brief episode was over, he became suddenly shy, and she decided that Wanda Steiner was right: It was best to take things in stages - too soon to ask about the name Kimbal. She led him off to the car and drove him home, chatting about nothing.
But when they were in front of the Steiner home, she caught him before he could open the door.
'Jules was my friend, Dio,' she said quietly. 'I intend to find out what happened to her, and I can't afford to ignore what you know. Think about it.'
He walked away, subdued. She drove away, buoyant with the knowledge of a step taken, and with the thought of some days alone with Lee.
'Has Jon been home since this morning?'
'Just to drop off the swimsuit he bought me. You like it?'
Kate turned from her examination of the closet to look at the piece of nylon Lee was holding up.
'Good heavens, it looks like you could actually swim in the thing. I'd have expected something that looked like spiderwebs, or with plastic fruit hanging off it, or made out of snakeskin. How on earth did you get him to buy just an ordinary suit?'
'I told him I'd make him go back until he got me one that I would wear, that I'd pay for only one suit, and that if he succeeded, he could have three days off.'
'Clever you. Does it fit?'
'More or less.'
'Will wonders never cease? But anyway, he does know we're going away?'
'I told him I doubted we'd leave before tomorrow morning - I didn't think you'd actually get away, to tell you the truth.'
'Ye of little faith. Do you want the sweatshirt or the sweater?'
'Both. I did tell him we'd leave a note if a miracle happened and we actually got away before he gets back. Which reminds me, did you make any arrangements with work, or are you just calling it medical leave?'
'I called in two days of vacation. Have you seen those rubber sandals I bought last year?'
'Jon put them in the box on the left. Sweetheart,' said Lee in a different voice, 'what do you want to do with these?'
Kate turned from the closet and saw Lee holding the envelope and loose pictures.
'Ah, hell,' she said. 'I don't know. Send them to Al, I guess. No, not the one of Jules. And leave the negatives out, as well; he won't need those. Just stick them in the drawer, and here, give me the envelope.' She sealed the flap and, downstairs, paused in the act of carrying out the suitcases to address the envelope to Al in care of D'Amico's department. She then added a P.S. to Lee's note, asking Jon to mail it, and then she carried the suitcases out to the car.
She left her gun in its drawer and the cellular phone on its charger. After much agonizing and changing her mind three times, she left her pager too, on the table next to the phone. Like it or not, this would be a holiday. She felt that she owed Lee the symbolic commitment of leaving the beeper behind.
Three hours later, Jon came in, his arms filled with grocery bags. The puzzled look on his face cleared when
