Speaking in Tongues

and past the Confederate Cemetery.
    “It was him, Tate,” Bett said, breaking a long silence.
    “Who?”
    “A man came to see me. He said he was her therapist but he wasn’t.”
    “It was Matthews?”
    “He called himself Peters.”
    “His son’s name was Peter,” Tate mused. “That must be why he picked it.” Glanced at her. “What happened?”
    She shook her head. “He seduced me. Nothing really happened but it was enough . . . Oh, Tate, helooked right into my soul. He knew what I wanted to hear. He said exactly the right things.”
    You can talk your way into somebody’s heart and get them to do whatever you want. Judge or jury, you’ve got that skill. Words, Tate. Words. You can’t see them but they’re the most dangerous weapons on earth. Remember that. Be careful, son.
    She continued, “He’d called Brad. I think he pretended he was a cop and told him to get to my house. We were together on the couch . . . I was drunk . . . Oh, Tate.”
    Tate put his hand on her knee, squeezed lightly. “There was nothing you could’ve done, Bett. He’s too good. Somehow, he’s done all of this. Dr. Hanson, Konnie . . . probably Eckhard too, the teacher. Just to get even with me.” They drove on in silence. Then Tate realized something. “You got here too quickly.”
    “What?”
    “You couldn’t have been in Baltimore when you got my message.”
    “No, I got as far as Takoma Park and turned back.”
    “Why?”
    A long pause.
    “Because I decided it had to stop.” Instinctively she flipped the mirror down and examined her face. Poked at a wrinkle or two. “I was running after Brad and I should have been going after Megan.” She continued, “I realized something, Tate. How mad I’ve been at her.”
    “At Megan? Because of what we heard at the Coffee Shop?”
    “Oh, Lord, no. That’s my fault, not hers.” She took a deep breath, flipped the mirror back up. “No, Tate. I’ve been mad at her for years. And I shouldn’t’ve been. It wasn’t her fault. She was born at the wrong time and the wrong place.”
    “Yes, she sure was.”
    “I neglected her and didn’t do the things I should have . . . I dated, I left her alone. I did the basics, sure. But kids know. They know where your heart is. Here I was, running after Joe or Dave or Brad and leaving my daughter. Time for that to stop. I’m just praying it’s not too late.”
    “We’ll find her.”
    The roads were deserted here and the air aromatic with smoke from wood cooking fires, common in this poor part of the county. The Volvo streaked through a stop sign. Tate skidded into a turn and then headed down a bad road.
    “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” she asked.
    “We sure are. They don’t put out all-points bulletins anymore. But if they did we’d be the main attraction in one.”
    “They don’t know my car,” Bett pointed out.
    He laughed. “Oh, that took all of thirty seconds for ’em to track down. Look, there. That’s his place.”
    Matthews’s small bungalow was visible through a stand of trees some distance away. A rusting heating-oil tank sat in the side yard and the stands of uncut grass were outnumbered by patches of red mud. The house was only two miles away from Tate’s farm. A convenient staging point for a break-in and kidnapping, he noted.
    “What are we going to do?” Bett asked.
    Tate didn’t answer her. Instead he took the gun out of his pocket. “We’re going to get our daughter,” he said.
    Thirty yards, twenty, fifteen. Tate paused and listened. Silence from inside Matthews’s house.
    He smelled the scent of wood smoke and pictured the kidnapper sitting beside the fireplace with Megan bound and gagged at his feet.
    The shabby house chilled his heart. He’d seen places like it often. Too often. When he was a commonwealth’s attorney he’d always—unlike most big-city prosecutors—visited the crime scenes himself. This was what detectives dubbed a section-sixty cottage, referring to the Virginia Penal Code provision for murder. Shotgun killings, domestics, love gone cruel then violent . . . There were common elements among such houses: they were small, filthy, silent, brimming with unspoken hate.
    The Mercedes wasn’t in the drive so it was possible that Matthews hadn’t heard the message from the police. Maybe Megan was here now, lying in the bedroom or the basement. Maybe this would be the end of it. But he moved as silently as he could, taking no chances.
    He