Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

Well, there were other things to do to protect himself. But first things first. He had to get Megan to her new home-with his son, Peter-deep in the mountains.

Matthews returned to the Mercedes. He pulled back onto the highway, noting that the white car was still sticking with him like a lamprey to a fish.

Amy wasn’t home.

Oh, brother. Tate sighed. Looked through a window, saw nothing. Walked back to the front door. Pressed the bell again. Standing on the concrete stoop of the split-level house in suburban Burke, Tate kept his hand on the doorbell for a full minute but neither the girl nor her mother came to the door.

Where’d she gone? Bett had said that they’d stop by soon. Why hadn’t Amy stayed home? Or at least put the book bag out on the front stoop?

Didn’t she care about Megan? Was this adolescent friendship nowadays?

“Maybe the bell’s broken,” Bett called from the car.

But Tate pounded on the door with his open palm. There was no response. “Amy!” he called. No answer.

“Go ‘round back,” Bett suggested.

Tate pushed through two scratchy holly bushes and rapped on the back door.

Still no answer. He decided to slip inside and find the bag; a missing teenager took precedence over a technical charge of trespass (thinking: I could make a good argument for an implied license to enter the premises). But as he reached for the doorknob he believed he heard a click. When he tried to open the latch he found the door was locked.

He peered through the window and thought he saw some motion. But he couldn’t be sure.

Tate returned to the car.

“Not there.” He sighed. “We’ll call later.”

“Leesburg?” Bett asked.

“Let’s try that teacher first. Eckhard.”

It was only a five-minute drive to the school. The rain had stopped and youngsters were gathering on the school yard-boys for baseball, girls for volleyball, both sexes for soccer. Hacky Sacks, Frisbees, skateboards abounded. After speaking with several parents and students they learned that Robert Eckhard, the volleyball coach, had put together a practice for three that afternoon. It was now a quarter to two.

Tate flopped down into the passenger seat of the Lexus. He stretched. “This police work… I don’t see how Konnie does it.”

Bett kicked her shoes off and massaged her feet. “Wish I’d worn comfy boots, like you.” Then she glanced toward the school. “Look,” she said.

When they’d been married Bett assumed that he knew exactly what she was thinking or talking about. She’d often communicate with a cryptic phrase, a gesture of her finger, an eyebrow raised like a witch casting a spell. And Tate would have no clue as to her meaning. Today, though, he turned his head toward where she was looking and saw the two blue-uniformed security guards, standing in one of the back doorways of the school.

“Good idea,” he said. And they drove around to the door.

By the time they got there the guards had gone inside. Bett and Tate parked and walked inside the school. The halls had that smell of all high schools-sweat, lab gas, disinfectant, paste.

Tate laughed to himself at the instinctive uneasiness he felt being here. Class work had come easily to him but he’d spent his hours and effort on Debate Club and the teachers were forever booting him into detention hall for skipped classes or missing homework. That he would pause at the door on the way out of class and resonantly quote Cicero or John Calhoun to his teacher didn’t help his academic record any, of course.

The security offices in Megan’s school were small cubicles of carpeted partitions near the gym.

One guard, a crew-cut boy with half-mast eyelids, wearing a perfectly pressed uniform, listened unemotionally to Tate’s story. He adjusted his glistening black billy club.

“Don’t know your daughter.” He turned, called out, “Henry, you know a Megan McCall?”

“Nope,” said his partner, who resembled him to an eerie degree. He stepped into the school proper and disappeared.

“What we’re concerned about is this car. A man seemed to be following her.”

“A car. Following her.” The young man was skeptical.

Bett took over. “Around the school yard. This past week.”

Tate: “We were wondering if anybody might’ve reported it.”

The man’s face eased into that put-upon look security guards are very good at. Maybe they’re resentful that they’re not full-fledged cops and could carry guns. And use them.

“Are the police involved?” the man asked.

“Somewhat.”

“Hm.” Trying to figure that one out.

“What happens if somebody sees something unusual? Is there any procedure for that?”

“The Bust-er Book,” the guard said.

Bett asked, “The… uh?”

“Bust-er. He’s a dog. I mean, a cartoon dog. But it’s like ‘Bust’ as in get busted. Arrested. Then a dash, then e-r If the kids see something suspicious they come tell us and we write it down in the Bust-er Book and then there’s a record of it for the police. If anything, you know, happens.”

Tate recalled what Amy’d said. “It was on Tuesday. Out in the parking lot by the sports field. Could you take a look?”

“Oh, we can’t let you see it,” the guard said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Parents don’t have, you know, access to it. Only the administration and police. That’s the rule.”

“That’s it right there?”

The guard turned around and glanced at the blue binder with the words “Bust-er” on the spine and a cartoon effigy of a dog wearing a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat. “Yes sir.”

“If you don’t mind… See, our daughter’s missing. As I was saying. Could you take a look?”

“Just have the police give us a call.”

“Well, she’s not officially a missing person.”

“I don’t have any leeway, sir. You understand.” The guard’s lean face crinkled. His still eyes looked Tate up and down and his muscular hand caressed his ebony billy club. He was everything Tate hated about northern Virginia. Snide and sullen, this young man would see nothing wrong with a tap on the wife’s chin or a belt on his kids’ butts to keep the family in line. He was master of the house; everyone did as he commanded. And never ask his opinion about the Mideastern and Asian immigrants settling in Fairfax because he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms.

Tate looked at Bett. Her eyebrows were raised as if she were asking:

Why was Tate hesitating? After all, he was the silver-tongued devil. He could talk anybody into anything. (“Resolved: The Watergate break-in was justifiable as a means to a valid end.” Lifelong Democrat, grandson of a lifelong Democrat, Tate had leapt at the chance to take the pro side of the debate and argue that irreverent position-for the pure joy of going up against overwhelming odds. He’d won, to the Judge’s shock and lasting amusement.)

“Officer,” Tate began, thinking of the rhetorical tricks in his arsenal, the logic, the skills at persuasion. Ratiocination. He paused, then walked to the door and motioned the guard to follow.

The lean man walked slowly enough to let Tate know that nobody on earth was going to make him do a single thing he didn’t want to do.

Tate, standing in the doorway, looked out over the school yard. “What do you see there?”

The guard hesitated uncertainly. He’d be thinking, What kinda question’s that? I see trees, I see cars, I see fences, I see clouds.

Tate waited just the right amount of time and said, “I see a lot of young people.”

“Um.” Well, what the hell else’re you gonna see on a school yard?

“And those young people rely on us adults for everything. They rely on us for food, for shelter, for schooling, and you know what else?”