Kisscut

  Sara tucked her hands into her hips, trying to keep her anger down. “That’s just about the most immature thing I’ve ever heard you say. What, if you can’t have it, no one will?”

  Tessa’s mouth opened and closed. “When did you become so self-righteous? I happen to remember a time when you were pretty pro-abortion.”

  Sara felt her cheeks turn red. She was very conscious that her mother was in the room. “Stop it.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to tell Mama about the time you thought Steve Mann had knocked you up?”

  Cathy kept silent, but Sara could feel that her mother was hurt. Cathy had always made it clear that her daughters could come to her with anything. And, except for this one time, Sara always had.

  Sara tried to explain to her mother. “It was a false alarm. I was studying for finals. I was stressed out. My period was late.”

  Cathy held up her hand, telling Sara to stop.

  “I was a teenager,” Sara added, her voice weak. “My whole life was ahead of me.”

  Tessa said, “And the first thing you did was call the women’s center in Atlanta to see how fast they could get rid of it.”

  Sara shook her head, knowing this was not true. The first thing she had done was burst into tears and tear up her acceptance letter from Emory. “That’s not how it happened.”

  Tessa was not finished, and her next remark cut to the bone. “This is so easy for you because you know you’ll never get pregnant.”

  “Tessa,” Cathy hissed, but it was too late. The damage was done.

  Sara’s mouth formed an O but the word would not come out. She felt as if she had been slapped.

  Cathy started to say something, but it was Sara’s turn to hold up her hand.

  “I can’t do this right now,” she said, because she could not. Sara could not ever remember a time when Tessa had hurt her so much, and she felt as if she had lost her best friend.

  Without another word, Sara left Tessa’s apartment, letting the screen door slam closed behind her.

  11

  MARLA HANDED Jeffrey a stack of pink messages before he even had time to take off his jacket. He felt as if he had been gone for three months instead of twenty-four hours.

  “This one’s important,” Marla said, pointing to one of the slips. “And this one, too.” She kept going until she had identified all but one of the messages as important. Jeffrey glanced at the unimportant one. There was a man’s name he did not recognize, followed by a one–eight hundred number.

  “What’s this about?”

  Marla frowned as she obviously tried to remember. “Either vinyl siding or coffee service. I forget which one.” She shrugged apologetically. “He said he’d call back.”

  Jeffrey balled up the message and tossed it into the trash, asking, “Is Lena around?”

  “I’ll fetch her,” Marla said, backing out of the office.

  Jeffrey sat at his desk and the first thing he saw was a missing poster of Lacey Patterson. She was a thin, boyish-looking girl with blonde hair like her mother. The photo was a school picture with an American flag in the background and a globe of the world in front. Her height and weight were under the photo, along with where she was last seen and a number people could call. The flyer had been faxed out to all the precincts in the area and put into the national database that tracked missing children. It would take time for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to put together a packet to send to law enforcement all around the Southeast. If today was like every other day in America, Lacey Patterson’s name had been keyed in along with a hundred other newly missing or abducted children.

  Jeffrey picked up the phone and dialed Nick Shelton’s number. When Nick answered, Jeffrey was somewhat surprised. The field agent was seldom at his desk.

  “Nick? Jeffrey Tolliver.”

  “Hey, Chief,” Nick said, his twangy good-old-boy drawl a bit jarring to Jeffrey’s ears. Considering Jeffrey had spent the last twenty-four hours in central Alabama, this said a lot.

  Jeffrey asked, “You riding a desk today?”

  “Somebody’s gotta take care of all this paperwork,” Nick told him. “No word yet on your missing girl?”

  “No,” Jeffrey told him. “Anything on the state-wide alert?”

  “Not a peep,” Nick said. “It’d help if you had a license plate on that car.”

  “It was too far away for anyone to see it.”

  Nick sighed. “Well, I sent it over to the computer lab. Who knows how long it’ll take for them to get somebody on it? It’s not top priority until something happens one way or the other.”

  “I know,” Jeffrey said. There would need to be a break in the case, some kind of clue to follow or angle to work, before the big guns could be called in. Right now, all they could do was stand around with their hands in their pockets.

  Jeffrey asked, “There’s no way to move her up on this? Jesus, Nick. Sara and Lena saw the kid being snatched.”

  “You know how many kids have gone missing in the last twelve hours?”

  “Still—”

  “Hey, now.” Nick lowered his voice. “I made it my business to talk to this old boy used to work in child crimes. He’s gonna make a couple of phone calls and see if they can put some kind of priority on it.”

  “Thanks, Nick.”

  “Meanwhile, it won’t hurt to have some of your boys follow up on those faxes you sent around.”

  Jeffrey made a note of this, thinking Nick was right. So much trash came through the fax machines at the office that sometimes it took hours before somebody could sort through it.

  Nick asked, “Any chance this is just a do-gooder, snatching her up to keep her safe?”

  “Hell, Nick,” Jeffrey said. “I don’t know.”

  “None of your primaries drives a black Thunderbird?”

  “No,” Jeffrey said. They’d checked the vehicles of everyone even remotely involved in the case, then spread it out to include all of Grant. No one in the county had an old Ford Thunderbird registered to him.

  “In the meantime,” Nick said. “What can I do ya for?”

  “Purity,” Jeffrey said. “Tell me what that means in relation to pedophiles.”

  “No idea,” Nick said. “I can beep it through the computers and let you know.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Your lady was on the phone with me earlier talking about purity,” Nick told him. “That castration case, right?”

  “Right,” Jeffrey said.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Nick began, “this castration has a religious angle to it most times. They do it to make sure the girl stays a virgin.”

  “We know she wasn’t that.”

  “Hell, no,” Nick agreed. “From what I heard, she’d been around the block more than a time or two.”

  Jeffrey tried to let this slide off his back, but Nick’s characterization of the child was a little harsh even for him. Law enforcement people tended to be as tough as they could about this kind of thing, and Jeffrey was no exception. Had he not killed the little girl in question, Jeffrey might have laughed. As it was, he could only say, “I’ve got a name for you to run through the computer.”

  “Shoot,” Nick said.

  “Arthur Prynne,” Jeffrey said, then spelled out the name of the man he had almost beaten that morning behind Possum’s store.

  Nick mumbled something, obviously writing down the name. “What is that, Polish, or something?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” Jeffrey said. “He’s got a tattoo like the one I sent you.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “He was cruising a day-care center when I happened upon him.”

  “Can’t really arrest him for that,” Nick said, though they both knew this was obvious.

  “He’s got a computer at home. Probably hooks up with other pedophiles that way,” Jeffrey said. “Said he was a girl-lover.”

  “Man,” Nick sighed. “I really hate that phrase.”

  “We could do a sea
rch here at the station, but to tell you the truth, Nick, I don’t think any of us knows how to find that kind of thing.”

  “Feds have got a whole squad on it. Having a name makes it a priority. Maybe they can squeeze this guy and get him to flip?”

  “Very possible,” Jeffrey said. “He didn’t have much of a spine when I interviewed him. I can see him turning in some of his friends to save his hide.”

  “Interviewed him, huh?” Nick chuckled. “He know you were a cop at the time?”

  Jeffrey smiled. Nick was a lot of things, but he was not stupid. “Let’s say we had a conversation and leave it at that.”

  Nick laughed again. “How fast you want me to do this?”

  “Really fast,” Jeffrey said, not wanting the responsibility if Prynne turned out to be less innocent than he seemed.

  “I’ll put it through to the Alabama boys, pronto,” Nick said. Then, “We just caught something over in Augusta that might interest you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Augusta cops busted this guy at his hotel on coke distribution. They kind of stumbled across a bunch of magazines that weren’t exactly legal.”

  “Pornography?” Jeffrey guessed.

  “Kiddy porn,” Nick confirmed. “There was some freaky shit.”

  “In Augusta?” Jeffrey asked, surprised that he did not know about this. Augusta was pretty close to Grant, and they tended to swap information with the cops there just to keep everyone in the loop.

  “We’re sitting on it,” Nick said. “Trying to pull down the big guys.”

  “The perp’s turning state’s evidence?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Flipped faster than a two-dollar whore,” Nick told him. “And, before you ask, he doesn’t know anything about a black Thunderbird or a missing little girl.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as two fists can be.”

  Jeffrey frowned, though he was hardly in a position to feel superior. “Thanks for checking.”

  “No offense, Chief, but you better hope she’s not with one of these guys. They trade kids like you and me used to trade baseball cards.”

  “I know that,” Jeffrey said, but the truth was, he didn’t want to. Thinking about Lacey Patterson being trapped with someone like Prynne made Jeffrey sick.

  “Anyway,” Nick sighed, “there’s supposed to be a delivery tonight or tomorrow. Evidently, Augusta is the distribution point for the Southeast.”

  “I can’t believe they’re still printing that shit when you can get it for free on the Internet.”

  “You can trace through the Internet if you know what you’re doing,” Nick reminded him. “You want me to give you a holler when it’s going down?”

  “You’ve got my cell number, right?”

  “Yep,” Nick said. “You think this Prynne freak is active?”

  “No,” Jeffrey said, because his impression had been that Arthur Prynne was the kind of pedophile who was content to look at pictures and not act on his fantasies. “I don’t know how long that’ll last, though.”

  Nick asked, “He gonna be expecting a knock on his door?”

  “I think he has been all his life,” Jeffrey said, looking up to see Lena standing in the doorway. “I’ve gotta go, Nick. Call me back when you get something on that bust, okay?”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  They hung up, and Jeffrey motioned Lena in, surprised by the way she looked. Her eyes were bloodshot, the way people tend to get when they’ve been crying for long periods of time. Her nose was red and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  “Wanna talk about it?” Jeffrey asked, indicating one of the chairs across from his desk.

  She gave him a puzzled look, like she didn’t understand. She asked, “Any word on Lacey?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Have you set up that appointment we talked about?”

  Lena bit her lower lip. “I didn’t have time.”

  “Make time,” he told her.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jeffrey sat back in his chair, staring at her for a few beats. He said, “Tell me what happened when you snatched up Mark. Did he say anything?”

  “He’s being real tight-lipped all the sudden,” she told him. “He won’t say anything.”

  “He lawyer up?”

  “Buddy Conford,” Lena told him. “Won’t that be a conflict of interest?”

  Jeffrey considered this. Buddy was the lawyer representing the county if and when Dottie Weaver brought a case against Jeffrey. He asked, “Does Buddy know there’s a connection between Mark and what happened with Jenny Weaver?”

  “He knows Mark’s the one Jenny wanted to shoot. Everybody knows that.”

  “I mean,” Jeffrey said, “does he know we suspect Mark of being the father of the child?”

  Lena’s eyebrows went up. “Do we?”

  “Tell me why he wouldn’t be.”

  “There could be another boy,” she suggested.

  “With the mother around?”

  “She’s been sick a lot,” Lena said, shrugging. “I get a vibe from the father. He likes to push people around.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Jeffrey said, because Patterson had made a sport out of pushing Lena around in the trailer the other day. Jeffrey had been torn between stepping in and seeing if Lena could take care of it herself.

  Lena said, “Maybe he molested Mark, and so Mark molested his sister? Kind of like a cause and effect?”

  “That’s not how pedophiles work,” Jeffrey said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Not all pedophiles were abused as children. You can’t make that assumption.”

  “We’re talking theory here, right?” Lena asked. “I mean, it could have happened that way. I don’t see Patterson being into boys, though.”

  “The vibe again?”

  “Yeah,” Lena nodded. “I don’t get that vibe.”

  “What about Mark?” Jeffrey asked, remembering how Lena had behaved when they first interviewed the kid. “What kind of vibe do you get off of him?”

  Lena had the grace to look down. “Well,” she began, “he’s hypersexual.”

  “Go on.”

  “He really seems to work off his appearance, his sexuality.” She looked back up. “I think he probably doesn’t know how to communicate any other way.”

  “That tattoo,” Jeffrey began. “I found a guy in Alabama who had the same one.”

  “The hearts?”

  “He was watching a day care,” Jeffrey said, feeling the same disgust he had felt at Possum’s store. “Looking at the kids there.”

  “Little kids?” Lena asked. “He’s a child molester?”

  “More like a pedophile,” Jeffrey corrected. Sara had given him a lesson on the difference between these two a long time ago during another case, and he told Lena about it now. “Child molesters tend to hate children, and don’t want to be around them except to abuse them. Pedophiles think they’re doing the kid some good. They think they love them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lena said, skeptical.

  “Pedophilia is considered a mental illness.”

  “So was homosexuality until the early sixties. I still don’t see the difference.”

  Jeffrey knew that Lena’s sister had been gay, so he was surprised to hear her say this. “I suppose the big difference would be that adult-to-adult sexual contact is healthy. Children aren’t prepared for that kind of thing.” She did not respond, so he continued, “With a child-adult relationship, the balance of power is always going to be on the adult’s side. It’s not a level playing field. The adult is always going to be the one in control of the kid.”

  Lena gave him an incredulous look. “It sounds like you’re justifying it.”

  “I’m not doing that at all,” Jeffrey said, feeling prickly at her accusation. “I’m just telling you what the mindset is.”

  “The mindset is pretty fucking perverted.”

  “I agree with that,” Jeffrey told her. “But you can’t l
et your disgust color how you approach this, Lena. If Mark has that tattoo because he’s a pedophile or a child molester, you can’t let him know that you disapprove. He’ll never open up to you.” Then, because he had taught her this before, he added, “You know that.”

  “Well,” Lena said. “Which one do you think he is? He’s barely older than Lacey.”

  “Three years at least.”

  “That’s not a huge difference.”

  “Maybe from thirty to thirty-three it’s not, but with kids, that’s a pretty big jump when you think about it. That’s the difference between being a child and being a young adult.”

  She was silent, obviously thinking this through.

  Jeffrey said, “Look at it this way: A pedophile is more comfortable around children because he’s scared of adult relationships. Adults scare him.”

  “What about Jenny? How did she get sewn up like that? What’s the story?”

  “That I don’t know,” Jeffrey said. “Maybe Mark will give it up?”

  “He’s not talking,” Lena told him. “Frank was in with him, and he just stared off into space.”

  “Is he high?”

  She shook her head no. “He was before, but it’s worn off by now.”

  “Is he looking for a fix?”

  “He seems okay,” she said. “He’s not twitching, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “What about his physical state? Sara said he looked like someone had worked him over.”

  “Yeah,” Lena said. She took some Polaroids out of her breast pocket. “We took some pictures to document it. Dr. Linton said the cut on his belly looks like it was done with a sharp knife. It wasn’t deep enough for stitches, though. He’s got a bruise coming out on his eye.”

  Jeffrey looked at the pictures one by one. Mark stared at the camera with a dead look in his eyes. There was one shot where he had his shirt off, and there were grass stains on the waist of his jeans as well as superficial scrapes on his lower abdomen.

  “We didn’t do any of this?” Jeffrey asked, just to make certain.

  “Of course not,” Lena said, which was odd, because he had asked her this question on other cases and gotten a straightforward answer with none of the attitude. As if to get a jab in, she said, “Ask your girlfriend. She saw him before I did.”