"Why not? You have to be wary of personal reactions, but that doesn't mean ignore them."
"Well, all right. It's the way he looked at me. A few years ago I began to realize that every time I met a man who looked me over like I was a piece of prime breeding stock, and he the blue-ribbon bull, he would turn out to be the same kind of person—an empty-headed incompetent who was so taken with his own sense of magnificence that he couldn't see that the only prick he had was between his ears. If you'll pardon my French, as Red Jameson would say. Ned is just too stupid not only to pull this off but to see Vaun as any kind of a threat. In fact, I'd doubt he's very troubled by the money. You would be, but he very probably thinks it's his due."
"You got all that from a look?"
"From a lot of looks over the years, Al."
He started to laugh, and as before it changed him into someone she could begin to like a great deal.
"Casey, I think I'm going to like working with you," he chuckled, and as he moved to the car he reached out and slapped her shoulder with a large hand, and then his face collapsed at her reaction.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry, I forgot. Are you okay?"
It took her a minute to catch her breath.
"Oh, yeah," she finally gasped, "just great. I always stand around with watering eyes, gritting my teeth. Makes me look tough."
At the high school the final bell had just rung, and Kate steered toward the visitor's parking against a surge of yellow buses, overladen cars, and clusters of long-legged students with the bodies of adults and the clamor of second-graders. Nothing like a high school to make a person feel short, clumsy, staid, and totally conspicuous. It seemed to affect Hawkin the same way.
"I never feel so much a cop as when I come to a high school," he muttered.
"Flat feet and a truncheon," Kate agreed.
"Just the facts, ma'am." He raised his voice. "Pardon me, ladies, can you tell me where I'd find the principal's office?"
The answer came as multiple giggles and a flurry of vague waves as the collective of females fluttered away. At the next junction he directed the same question to a group of males, and got vague thumb gestures and deeper guffaws, and the same mass sideways movement. He was drawing breath for a third inquiry when Kate nudged him and pointed to a sign saying Office. They pushed slowly inside to the desk.
The harassed secretary gradually realized that Hawkin was not a student and turned her stubby nose and small eyes in their direction. Her piercing voice cut across the din and caused it to slip several notches as the student bodies took note of the nature of these two intruders.
"Are you Detective Hawking? Mr. Zawalski said that you and Officer Martini would be here and that he'd be back in ten minutes if you'd like to wait in his office."
The waters parted and the two of them moved meekly under the speculative eyes and the beginning of whispers into the inner sanctum marked Principal. A burst of voices was set off by the closing of the door, and Kate grinned at Hawkin.
"Well, Detective Hawking, what do you bet there's a scramble for lockers and many flushings of toilets in about two minutes?"
"Sorry for the janitor tomorrow when they're all backed up."
The office was large and cluttered, the lair of a proponent of hearty camaraderie and school spirit. Plaques and group photographs of bulky young men in shoulder pads, cheerful young men in baseball hats, and unnaturally tall young men in basketball shorts crowded every inch of wall space. Bookshelves held trophies, a dusty, much autographed football on a stand, a shelf and a half of multicolored and multisized yearbooks, and several generations of the school mascot, a bear. On the wall behind the door was a yellowed list of scholarship students, three years old. Three small photos of a women's basketball team huddled together in the corner.
Hawkin moved directly to the bookshelves, pulled out an old yearbook, and took it to the cluttered table. After flipping through it for a moment he opened it flat at the formal portraits of the senior class.
The third photograph was of Vaun. To her left smirked a pair of sun-bleached twins named Aaronson; to her right another blond face looked out, a chubby boy with the euphonic name of Alexander Alarzo. Framed by the blond, tan, smiling faces, Vaun's hair seemed immensely dark and her startling eyes were a luminous near-white on the page. The photographer had caught the hint of amusement in her still face, and she looked an exotic creature set down inexplicably amongst the oblivious natives. Down the page the pattern of black and white rectangles of near-adults was broken by a famous, or perhaps infamous, picture of Richard Nixon gesturing a V-for-victory sign. Beneath that picture it said, "Marie Cabrera," and under that, "Escaped our Camera."
An uncomfortable premonition stirred in Kate. Hawkin turned the page. Marcia Givens to Richard Larson. One more page, and again the presidential visage grinned up at them. "Andrew Lewis. Escaped our Camera."
"Damnation." Hawk slammed the book shut.
On cue, the door opened, and the flustered pink face looked in. The upturned little nose twitched.
"Would either of you like a cup of coffee?" She spoke in a more normal voice, the masses in the outer office having miraculously departed. (To their lockers? wondered Kate. Surely not all of them!)
"Not right now, thanks," said Hawkin. "Maybe later. We do need a telephone, though. Is there a direct outside line, one that doesn't have any other extensions?"
"Oh!" The pink face got pinker, and she sidled into the room and planted her solid backside against the closed door. She looked so like some television caricature of a blue-rinsed lady thrilled at the chance to assist a professional sleuth that Kate had to bite down a giggle. The secretary spoke in a whisper that could be heard in the hallway.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Zawalski has a private outside line, right in his phone. You just punch the last button, number nine, on the bottom, and he's the only one that has access to it. I mean, his phone is the only one. I mean, it's perfectly private."
She grew so pink during this speech that Kate began to worry that something internal was about to burst, and was relieved when Hawkin gravely thanked the woman and gently pushed her out the door, closing it firmly behind her.
"You go ahead," he said to Kate. "When Zawalski shows up I'll have him take me to see the art teacher and then head for the playing fields."
"I don't see a phone book."
"Start with Trujillo, then. I'll get you one."
Kate sat at the large desk and began punching numbers. She heard Hawkin's jovial voice calling, "Hey, beautiful—" before the door cut it off. She had barely finished giving the code of her billing number when he reappeared, laughing, giggles spilling through the door behind him, and tossed the thin book onto the desk. "So long, schweetheart." He sneered, and disappeared.
She shook her head. What an odd man was Alonzo Hawkin.
She met Hawkin on his way back to the office, walking with a man who looked more like a retired accountant than the force behind that massive display of homage to physical prowess. This little white crow of a man hopped along next to Hawkin (who looked, she realized, as if he had played football at one time) bobbing his head and flapping his hands energetically. His birdlike quality extended even to his handshake, feathery skin over frail bones, and he fluttered on to the office while Hawkin and Kate spoke quietly.
"Trujillo says there's no change, but she's stabilized enough that they're talking about taking her off the machines tomorrow. The lab results are in—it was chloral hydrate in the whiskey. Your classic Mickey Finn, plenty to put her to sleep after one drink, and she had two large ones, on a totally empty stomach. The stomach contents also show remnants of some kind of cold pills, which may have contributed to it. The doctor Trujillo talked to says the reaction was 'unexpectedly profound,' but not unheard of. Funny she didn't taste it."