James Patterson - 10th Anniversary

I’d thought there was nothing Yuki couldn’t tell me, but I’d been wrong. This news had shaken me. And I didn’t know how to tell my good friend why I felt stricken to my bones.

“Lindsay, will you please say something?”

“There’s no good way to say this. I checked Brady out when he joined the squad,” I said. “He’s married , Yuki. Did Brady tell you that he’s married?”

THAT SUNDAY was all mine.

I had ordered eggs and hash browns at Louis’, a greasy spoon on Point Lobos Avenue. It was a great barn of a place, built in 1937 on a cliff overlooking the ocean. True, Louis’ drew tourists, but it was still a local hangout, especially in the early morning.

The day was still too young for tourists, so Louis’ was full of regulars, mostly runners and walkers from the coastal trail at Lands End, now relaxing and reading papers at the counter. Nobody was bothering anyone.

I sighed with contentment.

From my seat in a booth, I had a view of the Sutro Baths at Lands End and I could also see my parking spot in front of Louis’ and Martha in the driver’s seat of my Explorer. Before coming here, we’d made a stop at Crissy Field so that Martha could run on a sandy beach and swim in the surf of the bay.

“Careful, the plate’s not,” the waitress said, setting down my breakfast. She refilled my chunky brown mug with fresh-brewed Colombian java.

“Thanks. It looks perfect,” I said.

My cell phone rang, just as I picked up my fork. Why was I so goddamned popular? I looked at my phone, but didn’t recognize the name on the caller ID. Who was W. Steihl?

Should I take the call? Or should I let it go to voice mail?

I flipped a quarter and smacked it on the back of my hand. I took a peek.

“Boxer,” I said with a sigh into the phone.

“Sergeant Boxer, this is Wilhelmina Steihl. Willy. I met you the other day at Brighton?”

Now, I remembered her. Willy Steihl was one of Avis Richardson’s school friends. She had shiny black hair to her shoulders and steel-rimmed glasses, and she wore bright red lipstick.

I also remembered how hesitant she was to talk to Rich and me a few days ago, but from the sound of her voice, she had something urgent to tell me now.

“I couldn’t say anything when you were here,” Willy Steihl said to me. “People would have figured out that I was the rat.”

“Let’s not worry about being a rat,” I said. “Rats can be heroes, too. Do you know where we can find Avis’s baby?”

“No, no, I don’t know that. I’m a friend of Larry Foster? He said I should call you. Are you near a computer?”

“No, but my phone is pretty slick. What should I look up?”

“I want to show you some pictures. On Facebook. But I don’t want to give you my password.”

The kid was worrying about a password — something she could change in a couple of keystrokes — but I didn’t want to go balls to the wall with her. Willy was a minor. She didn’t have to talk to me at all.

“What if I meet you at your dorm?” I said. I signaled to the waitress to bring me my check.

“Not there. I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you,” Willy said.

I stifled a groan and told her I’d meet her at the entrance to 850 Bryant in an hour.

“I’ll be there,” Willy told me.

Was she going to help me find Avis’s baby? Or was this going to be another lead to nowhere?

I put a ten and a fiver on top of the check and left Louis’ still hungry.

IT WAS JUST ABOUT TEN and an overcast sixty-four degrees when I rolled the window down a few inches for Martha and left my car in the lot across from the Hall.

Willy Steihl was not outside the large granite cube where I worked, so I waited on the corner, tapping my foot as traffic breezed by at a steady clip even for a Sunday.

Ten minutes later, a cab draw up curbside and I opened the door for young Willy Steihl. She said hi and, keeping a good six feet between us, followed me through the double glass doors into the red-marbled lobby of the Hall of Justice.

Willy took off her belt, put it in a tote, and went through the scanners at the entrance. I badged security and took the girl with black hair, black clothes, and a bite-me expression up to the squad room, where the swing shift was at work.

I asked Sergeant Bob Nardone if I could use my desk, and he said, “Sure, Boxer. And I should do what? Work on my air computer?”

“Get up, Nardone. Heat up your coffee. Take a break. We won’t be long.”

I commandeered the desk chair, and Willy Steihl stood beside me as I logged on to my account. Then I gave the girl my chair so she could enter her information on my computer.

She hunched over the keyboard as she typed in her password and ID, saying, “Give me a second, okay? I’m opening the folder I was telling you about.”

I was drumming my fingers on my desk as Willy Steihl tapped on the keys. Finally she said, “Got it.”

I turned the monitor toward me and stared at a picture of a soccer game. Kids were flying across the field, the ball was in play, and people were cheering at the sidelines. A typical high-school sports event.

“See,” she said. “This was us against the Warriors. I was taking pictures of Larry.”

She enlarged the picture, focusing not on the field but on the people watching the game. I saw Avis Richardson with her profile to the camera, wearing Burberry-plaid pajama bottoms and a school sweatshirt that effectively hid her pregnancy.

She was standing very close to a tall, dark, and handsome man who, to my eyes, was definitely not a student.

Willy clicked the mouse and another picture came up, then another, and with each picture she enlarged the frame and closed in on Avis Richardson. In one of the pictures, I saw that Avis’s hand was tucked into the hand of the good-looking man.

“Who is that?” I asked Willy.

“That’s Mr. Ritter. He teaches sophomore English,” she said.

“What are you implying, Willy? Don’t make me guess.”

The girl squirmed in the chair.

“Willy. Do not waste my time.”

I wanted to give her a good shake, but she made up her mind without more help from me.

“We all knew that Avis and Mr. Ritter were close,” she said. “She got excellent grades in English, so we thought she was his favorite student, or maybe they were really close. You know what I mean? Because Avis lied when she told you that she was dating Larry Foster.

“She wasn’t dating him. I am.”

WILLY STEIHL had dropped a bomb.

She was leading me to believe that there was a relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her English teacher. What the hell was that? Statutory rape, that’s what it was, a crime that could come with jail time for Mr. Ritter if he was convicted. And, if he’d been involved in the death of a baby? He’d be serving life in a federal prison.

I said to Willy, “Apart from these pictures, is there anything else you can tell me? Did Avis say anything to you about Mr. Ritter? Have you ever seen them alone together?”

Willy Steihl shrugged, then shook her head no. She looked as though she were trying to disappear through the back of the chair.

“Willy, this is very helpful and it’s also very serious. Could Mr. Ritter be the father of Avis’s baby?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted you to see the pictures and draw your own conclusions, okay?”

Not okay.

“A baby is missing , Willy. Try to imagine what Avis must be feeling. What her parents are going through. That little boy is helpless. He may be alone. He may be dying. If you know anything that could help us find him, you have to tell me. It’s your obligation. In fact, if you know something and don’t tell me, that makes you an accessory to a crime.”