'As close as you can be to a kid you only see a few times a year.' Sara paused, then said, 'Yeah. Some of them you connect with. I connected with Lacey. I think she has a little crush on me.'
'That's weird,' he said.
'Not really,' Sara told him. 'Lots of kids get crushes on adults. It's not a sexual thing, they just want to impress them, to make them laugh.'
'I'm still not following.'
'They get to be a certain age and their parents can't be cool anymore. Some kids, not all of them, can transfer their feelings onto another adult. It's perfectly natural. They just want someone to look up to, and at that point in their lives it can't be their parents.'
'So, she looked up to you?'
'It felt that way,' Sara said, and he could hear the sadness in her voice.
'You think she would've told you if something was going on?'
'Who knows?' Sara replied. 'Something happens to them when they get into middle school. They get a lot more quiet.'
'That's what Grace Patterson said. That they keep secrets.'
'That's true,' Sara agreed. 'I just chalked up the change to puberty. All those hormones, all those new feelings. They've got a lot to think about, and the only thing they're certain of is that adults have no way of understanding what they're going through.'
'Still,' Jeffrey countered, 'don't you think she would've talked to you if something was wrong?'
'I'd like to think so, but the truth is, she'd have to have her mother drive her here. I can't kick the mother out of the room without causing some suspicion.'
'You think Grace would have been reluctant to leave y'all alone?'
'I think she would've been worried. She's a good mother. She takes an interest in her kids and what they're doing.'
'That's what Brad said.'
'What does Brad have to do with this?' Sara asked.
'He's the youth minister at Crescent Baptist.'
'Oh, that's right,' Sara said, making the connection. 'He must've been on the retreat.'
'Yeah,' Jeffrey told her. 'There were eight kids from the church: three boys, five girls.'
'That doesn't sound like a lot of kids.'
'It's a small church,' Jeffrey reminded her. 'Plus, skiing is expensive. Not a lot of people have that kind of money to begin with, especially around the holidays.'
'That's true,' she agreed. 'But it was just Brad chaperoning?'
'The church secretary was supposed to help out with the girls, but she got sick at the last minute.'
'Have you talked to her?'
'She had some kind of stroke. She was only fifty-eight years old,' he said, thinking that when he had been a kid, fifty-eight had seemed ancient. 'She moved down to Florida so her kids could take care of her.'
'So, what did Brad say about Jenny and Lacey?'
'Nothing specific. He said Lacey and Jenny pretty much stayed by themselves while the rest of the kids were off skiing and having fun.'
'That's not uncommon for girls that age. They tend to form tight little groups.'
'Yeah,' Jeffrey sighed, feeling yesterday's frustrations settling into his gut. 'Brad went over to Jenny's house when she stopped coming to church. She pretty much burst into tears the minute she saw him and wouldn't talk.'
'What'd he do?'
'Left with his hat in his hands. He asked Dave Fine to check in on her, but Dave got the same treatment.'
'Did you talk to Dave about it?'
'Briefly. He was about to go into a therapy session.' Jeffrey felt a flash of guilt, thinking about Lena. He should not have allowed her to use her therapy appointment to interview Fine. Jeffrey had given in too easily because it was convenient.
'Jeffrey?' Sara said, her tone indicating she had asked him a question and was waiting for an answer.
'Yeah, sorry,' Jeffrey apologized.
'What did Fine say?'
'The same as Brad. He offered to come in tomorrow and talk some more, but neither one of them seem like they're going to be much help.' Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying to think of any straw he could grasp. 'What about Mark Patterson?' he finally asked. 'Does he seem kind of weird to you?'
'Weird how?'
'Weird like…' Jeffrey tried to find the words. He did not really want to go into the Patterson interview with Sara, mostly because of what had happened with Lena. There had been something between her and the boy, something that set his teeth on edge. They both worked off each other somehow. 'Weird like I don't know.'
Sara laughed. 'I don't think I can answer that.'
'Sexual,' he said, because that was a good word to describe Mark Patterson. 'He seemed really sexual.'
'Well,' Sara began, and he could hear the confusion in her voice. 'He's a good-looking kid. I imagine he's been sexually active for a very long time.'
'He just turned sixteen.'
'Jeffrey,' Sara said, as if she were talking to an idiot. 'I've got ten- year-old girls who haven't even started their periods asking me about birth control.'
'Jesus,' he sighed. 'It's way too early in the morning to hear that kind of thing.'
'Welcome to my world,' she told him.
'Yeah.' He stared at the jersey on his wall, trying to remember what it had felt like to be Mark Patterson's age and have the world in the palm of his hand. Though, Mark Patterson did not seem to feel that way.
Jeffrey did not like this helpless feeling. He should be back in Grant, trying to figure this out. At the very least, he should be keeping an eye on Lena. For a while Jeffrey had felt she was on the edge, but not until yesterday did he realize that she was closer to falling than keeping herself balanced.
'Jeff?' Sara asked. 'What's wrong?'
'I'm worried about Lena,' he told her, and the words felt familiar to him. He had been worried about Lena since he hired her ten years ago. First, he was worried that she was so aggressive on patrol, taking every collar like her life depended on it. Then, he had worried that she put herself in danger too often as a detective, pushing suspects to their breaking point, pushing herself to her own breaking point. And now he worried that she was about to lose it. There was no question in his mind that she would explode soon. It was just a matter of when. With a start, he realized this had been his fear from the beginning: When would Lena finally break in two?
'I think you should be worried about her,' Sara said. 'Why won't you
