“The same lady is at your house now, waiting for you.”
“You just happened to notice her?”
“In the pursuance of my duties I did notice a car in your driveway and, knowing that you were hanging by a thong around your dong from Mt. Kilimanjaro, I stopped to investigate further.”
“Ever vigilant.”
“She might have been a burglar come to heist your valuables.”
“I have no valuables worth heisting.”
“This I know, but a burglar might not, burglars being what they are. She was sitting on your porch, waiting, pretty as a… as a… what? What’s particularly pretty?”
“A pretty woman?”
“There you go! She was sitting there, pretty as a pretty woman. Clever devil, you are, not having a car phone so she could reach you
… Do you often have gorgeous women paying you house calls?”
“We have a little business together. Just business. She wants to pick my brain.”
“Have her do it through your pecker.”
Becker returned to his car, shaking his head in mock disgust. Tee closed the door and leaned against it.
“You’re a great role model, but one hell of a bad influence.”
“I thought you were out of the business,” Tee said.
“I am. This is special.”
“Because of her? Because of the babe waiting on your porch?”
Becker studied Tee for a moment as if seeking the answer in his friend’s face.
“You know. Tee, you’ve got all the natural instincts of a busybody and a matchmaker. You may have missed your calling.”
“Salaries for busybodies are so low, though. And besides, think what law enforcement would be missing without me.”
“A chief?”
“Fucking A. So, is it because of her? And if not, why not?”
Becker started the engine, then paused.
“I wish it were that simple,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s complicated, sure, that’s how you like to make things. I respect that. But you’re really doing it for her, right?”
Becker sighed. “Right, Tee. Right.”
He pulled away slowly because the big policeman was still holding on to the door.
“You dog,” Tee said in gleeful approval. “Happy hunting.” Tee slapped the side of the car as if it were a horse.
Becker drove away, still shaking his head in amused disdain at his friend’s simpleminded analysis. But when he pulled into his driveway and saw Karen standing on the porch, balancing herself in that distinctive way she had, one foot behind the other like a dancer, he wondered how big a part of it was exactly what Tee suggested. He could not look at her without feeling a stirring of something that had nothing to do with official Bureau business.
Karen Crist stood when she saw Becker’s car approaching. For a quick moment she longed to check her appearance in a mirror, but she repressed the urge. In the first place, her appearance was irrelevant, she told herself. She was second in command of Kidnapping, she had hundreds of men under her command. Becker was a consultant, nothing more. And in the second place, she had been compulsively looking at her image in the porch windowpane ever since she arrived. She looked as good as she was going to on this day… although she wished her jawline were a little firmer. She always put it on in the face first, which was damned unfair. It didn’t allow her the few extra pounds of leeway most women could add to the thighs and ass. Whatever she ate too much of showed up immediately and then went below her waist. And she had been eating too much lately, she knew it. The stress of work and raising a child as a single parent and…
Becker was out of the car. Karen stood by the porch railing, unconsciously arranging her legs in line with each other, which thrust her pelvis forward and straightened her back. It was the pose she had adopted in grammar school and incorporated so completely into her habits that she was unaware of both the unnaturalness of it and its effect on others. To men, she looked like a ship’s figurehead, bracing into the wind, bold and inviting. Neither the sobriety of her expression nor the propriety of her demeanor-nor even the loftiness of her official position or the seriousness of her career field-could ever completely overcome the impression of her body language. However much men might be impressed or even intimidated by her in other ways, they still reacted to Karen Crist as a woman. It was a situation she was aware of, and she used it when she needed to.
Becker was out of sight beyond the angle of the garage for a moment, and when he came into view again he was smiling. Karen loved his smile. He was normally of sober mien so that when he smiled it offered such a happy contrast. If he had been a man who practiced charm, it would be a formidable weapon, Karen thought, for it made him look boyishly winning, shedding years and revealing a sweet and mischievous side to him.
“A pleasant surprise,” Becker said.
Karen resisted her own impulse to smile.
“I couldn’t raise you on your phone,” she said. “I was passing here, so I thought I’d try my luck in getting you at home… And I got lucky.”
“if you consider me good fortune.”
“Your local Chief of Police apparently does. We had a little chat.”
“Tee likes to chat.”
“I noticed. He seems to think rather highly of you.”
“We’ve been friends since high school.”
“I got the impression he was trying to fix us up.”
“Did you tell him we’d already been fixed up?”
“I didn’t think that was for me to say,” Karen said. “He’s your friend; I don’t know how much you want him to know.”
“With Tee, it’s probably better for him to know than to let his imagination go to work. I’m surprised he didn’t try to pick you up himself.”
“He does that, does he? He’s a married man.”
“It’s not that he does it. He just can’t seem to stop thinking about it.”
“Men,” she said.
“You’re right. I can’t argue.”
“No wonder women are losing patience.”
“I don’t know why you’ve put up with us this long.”
“It’s a tribute to our good nature.” Karen tilted her head slightly, hoping to firm her jawline. “But enough is enough.” Becker sat on the railing and grinned at her. The directness of his attention summoned her back to the business that had brought her here.
“Another boy is missing.” she said.
“A snatch?”
“We don’t know yet, it’s too early. We have the state and local police in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts reporting any disappearances that fit our profile immediately. It’s a nine-year-old boy. Physically he matches the others; he was last seen at a mall…” Karen shrugged. “Maybe he’ll show up by the time we get there. Maybe he fell asleep in the movies…”
“Maybe. Where was it?”
“Bickford.”
“That’s about an hour from here.”
“If we go in my car, we’ll be able to talk. But I’ll have to leave no later than five-thirty, so if you think you’ll want to stay longer, maybe we’d better take both cars.”
“Why do you have to go?” he asked.
