Speaking in Tongues

“Mrs. Walker?”
    “Yes?”
    “Do you have a gun?”
    A choked sob. “No, we don’t. I don’t. I’ve never . . . I wouldn’t know how to use one. I guess I could go to Sports Authority. I mean—”
    “That’s all right,” Matthews said soothingly. “I’m sure it’s not going to come to anything like that.”
    “What if Megan’s mother, like, calls?” the girl asked.
    “Yes,” Mrs. Walker echoed, “what if her mother calls?”
    A concerned pause. “I’d be careful. We’re investigating her too . . . It was a very troubled household, it seems.”
    “God,” Mrs. Walker muttered.
    Matthews hung up.
    What a mess this could become. The kidnapping had been so simple in theory. But, in practice, it was growing so complicated. Just like the art of psychiatry itself, he reflected.
    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.

Chapter Nine
    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 hebelieved 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. Classwork 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