Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

Tate poured wine, offered it to Bett.

She took the glass and cradled it between both hands the way he remembered her doing when they’d been married. In their first year of marriage, because he was a poor young prosecutor and Bett hadn’t yet found her career, they couldn’t afford to go out to dinner very often. But at least once a week they’d try to have lunch at a nice restaurant. They’d always ordered wine.

She sipped from the glass, set it on the table and watched the sheets of rain roll across the brown fields.

“What do we do, Tate?” she asked. “Where do we start?”

Prosecutors know as much about criminal investigations as cops do. But those gears in Tate’s mind hadn’t been used for a long time. He shrugged. “Let’s start with her therapist. Maybe she said something about running away, about where she’d go. What’s his name?” Tate felt he should have remembered.

“Hanson,” Bett said. “He had to cancel the session today-an illness or something. I hope he’s in town” She looked up the number in her address book and dialed it. “It’s his service,” she whispered to Tate. “What’s your cell number?”

She gave the doctor’s answering service both of their mobile numbers and asked him to return the call. She said it was urgent.

“Try that friend again,” Tate suggested. “Amy. Where she spent the night.” He tried to picture Amy. He’d met her once. He’d counted nine earrings in the girl’s left ear but only eight in her right. He’d wondered if the disparity had been intentional or if she’d merely miscounted.

Troubled, he thought again about her boyfriend. Well, she was seventeen. Why shouldn’t she go out? But with a college senior? Tate’s prosecutorial mind thought back to the Virginia provisions on statutory rape.

Bell shifted and cocked the phone closer to her ear. Apparently someone was now home.

“Amy? It’s Megan’s mother. Honey, we’re trying to find her. She didn’t show up for lunch. Do you know where she went this morning after she left you and your mom’s?”

Bett nodded as she listened and then asked if Megan had been upset about anything. Her face was grim.

Tate was half listening but mostly he was studying Bett. The tangles of auburn hair, the striking face, the prominent neck bones, the complexion of a woman who looked ten years younger than her age. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen her. Maybe it was Megan’s sweet sixteen party. An odd evening… For a fleeting moment, as he stood beside the girl -and her mother, delivering what everyone declared to be a brilliant toast, he’d had a sense of them as a family. He and Bett had shared a momentary smile. But it had faded fast and the instant they’d stepped out of the spotlight they’d returned to their separate lives. When he’d seen her after that, Tate couldn’t remember.

He thought: She’s less pretty now but more beautiful. More confident, more assured, her sunset-sky eyes were narrowed and not flitting around-coy arid ethereal-the way they’d habitually done fifteen years ago.

Maybe it’s maturity; Tate reflected. And he wondered again what her impression of him might be.

Bett put her hand over the receiver and said, “Amy said Megan left about nine-thirty this morning and wouldn’t tell her where she was going. She was secretive about it. She left her book bag there. I thought it might have something in it that’d give us a clue where she went. I said we’d be by to pick it up later.”

“Good.”

Bett listened to Amy again. She frowned in concern. “Tate… She said that Megan told her somebody’d been following her.”

“Following? Who?”

“She doesn’t know.”

Okay; hard evidence. The latent prosecutor in Tate Collier awakened a bit more. “Let me talk to her.”

Tate took the phone. “Amy? This is Megan’s father.”

A pause. The girl finally said, “Urn, hi. Is Megan, like, okay?”

“We hope so. We just want to find out where she is. What’s this about somebody following her?”

“She was, like, pretty freaked.”

Not real helpful, he thought and asked, “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I mean, her and me, we were sitting around watching this movie, I don’t know, on Wednesday, I guess, and it was about a stalker and she goes, ‘I don’t want to watch this.’ And I’m like, ‘Why not?’ And she’s like, ‘There’s this car with some older guy in it and I think he’s been following me around.’ And I go, ‘No way’ But she’s like, ‘Yeah, really.’”

‘Where?” Tate asked.

“Around school, I think,” Amy said.

“Any description?”

“Of the guy?”

“Or the car.”

“Naw. She didn’t tell me. But I’m like, ‘Right, somebody following you…‘ And she’s like, ‘I’m not bullsh-I’m not fooling.’ And she goes, ‘It was there yesterday. By the field.’”

“What field?”

“The sports field behind the school,” Amy answered.

“That was this last Tuesday?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I guess. She looked pretty freaked. And she says she told some people about it.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Some guys. She didn’t tell me who. Oh, and she told Mr. Eckhard too. He’s an English teacher at the middle school and he coaches volleyball after school and on the weekends. And he said if he saw it he’d go talk to the driver. And I’m like, ‘Wow. This is totally fuck-totally weird.’”

“His name’s Eckhard?”

“Something like that. I don’t know how to spell it. But if you want to, like, talk to him there’s usually volleyball practice on Saturday afternoon, only I don’t know when. Volleyball’s for losers, you know”

“Yeah, I know,” Tate said. It had been the only sport he’d played in college.

“You think something, like, happened to her? That’s way lame.

“We’d just feel a little better knowing where she is. Listen, Amy; we’ll be around to pick up her book bag in the next couple of hours. If you hear from her give us a call.”

“I will.”

“Promise?” he asked firmly.

“Yeah, like, I promise.”

As soon as Tate pushed the End button on Bett’s phone it buzzed again. He glanced at her and she nodded for him to answer it. He pushed Receive.

“Hello?”

“Urn, is this Megan’s father?” a man’s voice asked.

“That’s right.”

“Mr. McCall…

“Actually it’s Collier.”

“That’s right. Sure. Sony. This is Dr. Hanson.”

“Doctor, thanks for calling… I have to tell you, it looks like Megan’s run away.”

There was a pause. “Really?”

Tate tried to read the tone. He heard concern and surprise.

“We got some… well, some pretty angry letters from her. Her mother and I both did. And then she vanished. Is there any way we can see you?”

“I’m in Leesburg now. My mother’s had an accident.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But if Bett and I drove up could you spare a half hour?”

“Well…

“It’s important, Doctor. We’re really concerned about her.”

“I suppose so. All right.” He gave them directions to the hospital.

Tate looked at his watch. It was noon. “We’ll be there in an hour or so.”

“Actually” Hanson said slowly “I think we should talk. There were some things she told me that you ought to know”

“What?” Tate asked.

“I want to think about them a little more. There are some confidentiality issues… But it’s funny-I’d expect any number of things from Megan, but running away? No, that seems odd to me.”

Tate thanked him. It was only after hanging up that he felt a disturbing twist in his belly. What were the “any number of things” Megan was capable of? And were they any worse than her running away?