Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

Video games, running shoes, Legos? What’s this clown up to?

“They rely on us for their safety. That’s what you’re doing here, right? It’s the reason they hired a big, strong guy like you. A man who’s got balls, who’s not afraid to mix it up with somebody.”

“I dunno. I guess.”

“Well, my daughter’s relying on me for her safety. She needs me to find out where she is. Maybe she’s in trouble, maybe she isn’t. Hey, let’s take an example: You see some tough big kids talking to a little kid. Maybe they’re just buddies, fooling around. Or maybe they’re trying to sell him some pot or steal his lunch money. You’d go and find out, right?”

“I would. Sure”

“That’s all I’m doing with my daughter. Trying to find out if she’s okay. And going through that book would sure be a big help.”

The guard nodded.

“Well?” Tate asked expectantly.

“Rules is rules. Can’t be done. Have a state trooper or a county officer stop by. I’ll be happy to help.”

Tate sighed. He glanced at Bett, who said icily, “Let’s go, Tate. Nothing more to be accomplished here.”

As they walked toward the car, the guard called, “Sir?”

Tate turned.

“That was a good try, though. Kids and safety and everything. I almost bought it.” He picked up a magazine on customized pickup trucks and sat down.

Tate and Bett continued to the car then climbed in and drove out of the lot.

Neither of them could contain the laughter for long. They both roared. Finally Bett gasped and said, “That was the biggest load of hogwash I ever heard. ‘It’s the reason they hired a big, strong guy like you.’ You sounded like you were trying to pick him up.”

Wiping tears from his eyes, Tate controlled his laughing. “That was some pretty good double-teaming.”

Bett reached under her blouse and pulled out the twenty or thirty sheets of notebook paper she’d ripped from the Bust-er Book while Tate had distracted the guard with his absurd argument. “I figured I better leave the notebook itself” She muttered, “The Bust-er Book? The Bust-er Book? Do people really take that stuff seriously?”

Tate drove about three blocks and pulled over to the curb.

“Okay,” she said, “Tuesday… Tuesday.” Flipping through the pages. “If the storm trooper back there’s the one who keeps the book he’s got handwriting like a sissy. Okay, Tuesday…“ She nodded then read: “‘Two students reported a gray car, no school parking permit, parked on Sideburn Road. Single driver. Drove off without picking up student.’”

“A gray car. Not much to go on. Anything else?”

“Not then. But Amy said Megan’d been thinking she’d been followed for a while.” Bett flipped back through the pages. Her perfect eyebrow rose in a delicate arc. “Listen. A week ago. ‘M. McCall (Green Team)’-that’s her class section at school-’reported gray car appeared to be following her. Security guard Gibson took report. Did not personally witness incident. Checked but no car seen. Subject did not know tag or make of vehicle.’” Bett looked at her ex-husband. “Why didn’t she tell me about it, Tate? Why?”

Tate shrugged. He asked, “Any description of the driver?”

“None, no.”

“What kind of car did her boyfriend drive?”

“White… I think a Toyota.”

“He could’ve borrowed one to follow her,” Tate mused.

“Could have, sure.”

More questions than answers.

Tate stared at the turbulent clouds overhead. The sun tried to break through but a line of thick gray rolled over the sky heading eastward. “We’ll come back and talk to Eckhard later,” he said. “Let’s go to Lees-burg.”

Joshua LeFevre glanced down at the odometer. He’d driven another twenty miles along I- 66 in his battered old Toyota since the last time he’d checked. Which put him about seventy miles from Fairfax.

Mr. Tibbs, the unflappable police detective within him, had finally figured out where Megan and her therapist lover were going: to the doctor’s mountain place. It was now chic for professionals to have vacation homes in the Blue Ridge or in West Virginia, where you could buy a whole mountaintop for a song.

The rain had stopped and he cranked the sunroof open, listening to the wind hissing through the Yakima bike rack on the roof.

It was early afternoon when he broke through the Shenandoahs and saw the hazy Blue Ridge in front of him. The rolling hills’ were not evocative gunmetal today, the literature major in him thought, but were tinted with the green frost of spring growth. Recalling that he and Megan had talked about a bike tour along Skyline Drive, which crested the ridge, later in the spring.

Without the rain LeFevre could see more clearly now and he realized that only the doctor was visible in the car. Where was Megan? Taking a nap? Wait… Was her head resting in his lap?

He was considering this appalling thought, distracted and angry, when the Mercedes got away from him.

Never would have happened to Sidney Poitier.

Damn.

The Merce had pulled out to pass a semi and he’d followed. But as soon as the big gray car had cleared the cab of the truck the doctor had steered hard to the right and pulled onto the exit ramp as the truck driver laid on his air horn and braked.

LeFevre’s Toyota was caught in the left lane and he couldn’t swerve back in time to make the exit.

His head swiveled and he saw the roof of the Mercedes sink below the level of the highway as it slowed on the ramp.

LeFevre slammed his fists on the wheel. Tantrums were definitely not Poitier’s style but he couldn’t help it. He thought about making an illegal U over the median, but he was a black kid with knobby dreads driving through the crucible of the Confederacy; the fewer laws he broke, the better.

The next exit was a mile down the highway and by the time he’d followed the Mobius strip of ramps and returned to the exit the Mercedes had taken, there was no sign of the big car-only an intersection of three different country roads, any one of which they might have taken.

And now that he thought about it, the doctor might just have stopped for gas and gotten back on to the interstate, continuing west.

He closed his eyes in frustration and pressed back hard into the headrest. Metal snapped.

What the hell’m I doing here?

The stuff love makes you do, he thought.

Hate it, hate it, hate it…

LeFevre pulled into the gas station, filled up at the self-service island then walked up to the skinny, sullen attendant with long hair sprouting from under a Valvoline giveaway cap, which was as greasy as his brown strands.

“How you doing?” Sidney Poitier asked very politely.

“Okay yourself?” the man muttered.

“Not bad. Not bad.”

The man stared at LeFevre’s hair, which was not exactly modeled on Mr. Poitier’s, circa 1967, but was much closer to a rap star’s.

“Helpya?”

It occurred to LeFevre that even Officer Tibbs, in suit, tie and polished oxfords, wouldn’t get a lot of cooperation from a guy like this by asking which way a seventy-thousand-dollar automobile had just gone.

At least, not without some incentive.

LeFevre opened his wallet and extracted five twenties. Looked down at them.

So did the attendant. “That’s cash.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You charged your gas. I seen you.”

“I did.”

“Well, whatsitfor?” The grimy hair swung as he nodded at the money.

“It’s for you,” LeFevre said in his most carefully crafted queen’s English.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Why’s it for me?” The man seemed to sneer.

“I have a little problem.”

The stubbly face asked, Who cares?