Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

“That’d be fine. That’d be good. Please.” Eckhard cleared his excited throat.

Oh, you pathetic thing…

“I could give you a computer disk.” Matthews suggested.

“Sure. That’d be great.”

“I only live about three blocks from here. Let me run up to my house and get some samples.”

“Good.”

“Oh,” Matthews said, pausing. A frown. “I only have girls.”

“Yes, yes. That’s fine,” Eckhard said breathlessly. A bead of spit rested in the corner of the mouth. Desperately he asked, “Can you go now?”

“Sure. Be right back.” Matthews started up the street.

He turned and saw the teacher, a stupid smile on his face, grinning from ear to ear, looking out over the field of his sad desire, rubbing his thumb over the disposable camera.

In the drugstore once again, Matthews walked up to the pay phone and called 911.

When dispatch answered he said urgently, “Oh, you need somebody down to Markus Avenue right away! The sports field behind Jefferson School.” He described Eckhard and said, “He took a little girl into the alley and pulled his, you know, penis out. Then took some pictures. And I heard him ask her to his house. He said he’s got lots of pictures of little girls like her on his computer. Pictures of little girls, you know… doing it. Oh, it’s disgusting. Hurry up! I’m going back and watch him to make sure he doesn’t get away”

He hung up before the dispatcher could ask for his identity.

Matthews didn’t know if snapshots of a fully dressed little girl in a school yard next to frames of a man’s erect dick (Matthews’s own penis, taken in the drugstore rest room twenty minutes ago) were an offense, but once the cops got a search warrant for the man’s house Eckhard would be out of commission-and a completely unreliable witness about a gray Mercedes or anything else-for a long, long time.

By the time he was back on the street, walking toward his car, Matthews heard the sirens.

Fairfax County apparently took children’s well-being very seriously.

Tate and Bett arrived at the school yard, taking care to avoid the main building, just in case the clean-cut young fascist of a security guard had happened to glance inside the Bust-er Book after Tate and Bett had left and found twenty pages missing.

But volleyball practice had been canceled for today, it seemed. Nobody quite knew why.

In fact the yard was almost deserted, despite the clear skies.

They found two students and asked if they’d seen Eckhard. They said they hadn’t. One teenage girl said, “We were coming here for the practice.”

“Volleyball?”

“Right. And what it was was somebody said it’s been canceled and we should all go home. And stay away from here. Totally weird.”

“And you haven’t seen Mr. Eckhard?”

“Somebody said he had to go someplace. But they didn’t tell us where. I don’t know. He was here earlier. I don’t get it. He’s always here. I mean, always.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“ Fairfax someplace. I think.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Robert.”

Tate called directory assistance and got his number then called. There was no answer. He left a message. He looked out over the school yard for a moment and had a thought. Tate asked his ex-wife, “Where did she hang out?”

“Hang out?” Bett asked absently. He saw her looking into her purse, eyes on the letter containing her daughter’s searing words.

“Yeah, with her friends. After school,”

She looked up. “Just around. You know”

“But where? We’ll go there, ask if anybody’s seen her.”

There was a long hesitation. Finally she said, “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not?” Tate asked, surprised. “You don’t know where she goes?”

“No,” Bett answered testily “Not all the time. She’s a seventeen-year-old girl with a driver’s license.”

“Oh. So you don’t know where she’d spend her afternoons.”

“Not always, no.” She glanced at him angrily. “It is not like she hangs out in southeast D.C., Tate.”

“I just-”

“Megan’s a responsible girl. She knows where to go and where not to go. I trust her.”

They walked in silence back to the car. Bett grabbed her phone again and her address book. She began making calls-to Megan’s friends, he gathered. At least she had their numbers, if not Megan’s boyfriend’s. Still, it irked him that she didn’t seem to know much basic information-important information-about the girl.

When they arrived at the car she folded up the phone. “Her favorite place was called the Coffee Shop. Up near Route fifty.” Bett sounded victorious. “Like Starbucks. All right? Happy?”

She dropped into the seat and crossed her arms. They drove in silence north along the parkway.

Braking to five miles an hour, Tate surveyed the crowded parking lot. He found a space between a chopped Harley-Davidson and a pickup bumper-stickered with the Reb stars ‘n’ bars. He navigated the glistening Lexus into this narrow spot.

He and Bett surveyed the cycles, the tough young men and women, all in denim, defiantly holding open bottles, the tattoos, the boots. At the other end of the parking lot was a very different crowd, younger- boys with long hair, girls with crew cuts, layers of baggy clothes, plenty of body piercing. Bleary eyes.

Welcome to the Coffee Shop.

“Here?” Bett asked. “She came here?”

Starbucks? Tate thought. I don’t think so.

She glanced at the notes she’d jotted. “Off fifty near Walney. This’s it. Oh my.”

Tate glanced at his ex-wife. Her horrified expression didn’t diminish his anger. How could she have let Megan come to a place like this? Didn’t she check up on her?

Her own daughter, for Christ’s sake…

Tate pushed the door open and started to get out. Bett popped her seat belt but he said abruptly, “Wait here.”

He walked up to the closest cluster-the bikers; they seemed less comatose than the slacker gang at the other end of the lot.

But no one he queried had heard of Megan. He was vastly relieved. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe her friend meant a generic coffee shop someplace.

At the far end of the lot he waded into a grungy sea of plaid shirts, Doe Marten boots, JNCO jeans and bell-bottom Levi’s. The girls wore tight tank tops over bras in contrasting colors. Their hair was long, parted in the middle, like Megan’s. Peace symbols bounced on breasts and there was a lot of tie-dyed couture. The images reminded Tate of his own coming-of-age era, the early seventies.

“Megan? Sure, like I know her,” said a slim girl, smoking a cigarette she was too young to buy.

“Have you seen her lately?”

“She’s here a lotta nights. But not in the last week, you know. Like, who’re you?”

“I’m her father. She’s missing.”

“Wow. That sucks.”

“How’d she get in? She was seventeen.”

“Uhm. I don’t know.”

Meaning: a fake ID.

He asked, “Do you know if anybody’s been asking about her? Or been following her?”

“I dunno. But her and me, we weren’t, like, real close. Hey, ask him. Sammy! Hey, Sammy.” To Tate she added, “They’d hang out some.”

A large boy glanced their way, eyed Tate uneasily. He set a paper cup behind a garbage can and walked up to him. He was about the lawyer’s height, with a pimply face, and wore a baseball cap backward. He wore a pager and a cell phone.

“I’m looking for Megan McCall. You know her?”

“Sure.”

“Have you seen her lately?” “She was here this week.” “She comes here a lot?” Tate asked.

“Yeah, she, like, hangs here. Her and Donna and Amy. You know.”