“What? No, I’m not.” I punch the window button, then lean my head out to yell. “Thank you, Wanda, wherever you are.”
Cavallo smiles, but just barely. When we hit FM-1960, I point right and she turns left.
“I need to get back,” she says.
“Fine, but there’s a lead I want to follow up while we’re out here.”
She sighs. “What?”
“That youth pastor from yesterday. I want to swing by and rattle his cage.”
“There’s no point.”
“Just turn around, all right? Pretty please? You can drop me off. I’ll hitch a ride back with some uniforms.”
She glides into the left-turn lane, tapping her fingers on the wheel. When the light changes, she whips the front around late, giving the tires a squeal, then pours on the gas. The woman always drives like she’s chasing someone. Or being chased.
Finding Carter Robb is easier said than done. His office at the church proves empty, and the number I worm out of the secretary goes straight to voicemail. According to Cavallo, who’s decided to stick with me for the moment, he runs after-school programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, trading slices of pizza for a captive audience to evangelize. But Hannah’s disappearance trumps the usual schedule.
“All he does anymore is make copies of the flyer,” the secretary says. “Then he posts them all over the place. Sometimes the youth group kids go with him.”
“You have any idea where I could intercept him?”
She fingers the beads around her neck in thought. “His wife teaches at Cypress Christian School – no relation to the church. There’s a coffee place across from there, Seattle Coffee. His home away from home, I think.”
“I know where it is,” Cavallo says.
This turns out to be only partly true, as she proves by hunting around for twenty minutes while I dig through the Key Map and try to navigate. When we finally locate the coffee shop, there’s no sign of Robb, so I persuade Cavallo to take me to the school where his wife teaches. We page her from the office, then wait.
After a few minutes I check my watch.
“You’re not like the other homicide detectives,” Cavallo says.
“So you know a lot of them?”
She gives me a look like I’m an idiot. “They’re mostly big talkers. Gift of the gab. But not you. You’re more of a brooder, aren’t you?”
“Maybe I’ve got more to brood about.”
“I always expect them to be depressed,” she says. “Doing that kind of work, seeing what they see. But I guess you develop an immunity. I don’t think I could.”
“You might surprise yourself someday.”
Cavallo starts to reply, then looks past me. “Here she is.”
Gina Robb can’t be a day over twenty-five, but in her cardigan and cat-eye glasses she’s serious enough for an elderly librarian. She’s pinned a swag of dishwater blond hair back with a tortoiseshell barrette, exposing a swath of pale forehead. Under the cardigan, she wears a flower-print dress that flares at the hips, a self-consciously vintage look.
“You wanted to see me?” she asks, looking from one of us to the other, uncertain whom to address. “Are you from the police?”
I glance at my dangling shield. “How can you tell?”
She parries my attempt at humor with a grave frown. “Has something happened?”
“No, nothing like that,” Cavallo says.
I would never have picked this girl as Robb’s type. Proof, I suppose, that opposites attract, bookworms pairing off with jocks and vice versa. For some reason it makes him more interesting.
“We’re trying to find your husband,” I say. “Any idea where he might be?”
Her gray eyes flick toward the wall clock. “At church?”
“We checked. They said he might be out distributing flyers.”
“I guess that’s where he is then.”
“We checked the coffee shop,” Cavallo says. “They told us he hangs out there sometimes.”
She nods. “Sometimes.”
Either she’s trying to make this hard, or she’s genuinely baffled by our questions. “Would you mind giving him a call? Maybe he’ll pick up if he sees it’s you.”
Her hands fret the hem of her cardigan. “We haven’t dismissed class yet. I should really – ”
“Please,” Cavallo says. “Just humor him, ma’am.”
She moves slower than a reluctant snail, but she does move, her hand sliding into the drooping cardigan pocket, returning with a tiny sliver of a phone, which she thumbs open without glancing down. She punches a speed-dial button and puts the phone to her ear.
“Baby?” she says. “I’m still at the school. Yeah. Listen, the police are here looking for you. I don’t know… All right, here you go.”
She hands me the phone.
“It’s Roland March,” I say. “We met yesterday. I was wondering if we could have a chat.”
“Right.” He sounds wary. “You want to meet at the church?”
For some reason I don’t, and I tell him so. “How about I drop in wherever you are?”
“All right.”
“You’ll have to tell me where that is.”
A long time passes. His wife looks up anxiously while Cavallo consults her watch.
“Mr. Robb?”
“I’m… I’m sitting in the van. Outside James Fontaine’s house. Trying to work up enough nerve to go knock on the door.”
I walk alongside the red church van, giving the roof a nice tap, then climb into the passenger seat. Robb doesn’t even glance over. His eyes are fixed on the house across the street, a rather palatial brick mansion dating from the late seventies or early eighties with concrete lions on either side of the front steps. Not the crib I’d have expected for a Klein High weed dealer, but I can’t think why not. Where else is he going to live? We’re in the suburbs, after all.
I rap the plastic dash with my knuckle. “You really shouldn’t be doing this. For one thing, you’re not exactly keeping a low profile.”
“I’m not really trying.”
“For another thing – and I shouldn’t even be mentioning this – we’re already keeping an eye on this kid.” I crank the rearview around, glancing back at Cavallo, who’s still behind the wheel, leaving this one to me. “Putting up flyers is one thing. That’s great. But conducting your own stakeout? Not so much.”
“I’m not here to spy on him,” he says. “I wanted to confront him.”
“Won’t he still be in school?”
He looks at me for the first time. “He’s on suspension.”
“Didn’t the school year just begin? He didn’t waste any time.”
Robb wears cargo shorts today, along with Converse sneakers. His black T-shirt imitates the popular milk advertisements, but says got JESUS? instead. After meeting the wife, something tells me he chooses his wardrobe for ironic effect.
“Let me level with you,” I say. “When I saw you yesterday, something didn’t seem right. You were squirrelly. Like our being there made you nervous. So I started wondering what you’d have to be nervous about. Why don’t you save me the trouble and just tell me?”
“I’m not nervous about anything.”
“Really? ’Cause let me tell you something. What you’re doing right here, it’s abnormal. This is not how people react to situations like yours, not when they’re on the level.”
He runs a hand through his spiky hair. “How do they react?”
“Not like they’re guilty.”
“That’s how you think I’m acting?”
“Am I wrong?”
He reaches out and straightens the rearview mirror, reclaiming the territory. “How am I supposed to answer a question like that?”
“You have a guilty conscience, Mr. Robb. I want to know why.”
Human physiology is a funny thing. No matter how cool we think we’re playing it, most of us don’t have poker faces. Our tells can be ludicrously on target. Robb’s a perfect example. His top lip clamps down over the bottom, forcing the tuft of hair on his chin to pop out like porcupine quills. He’s literally biting down the words, and he has no idea.
“Come on,” I say, jabbing his arm. “Just tell me what you’re holding back. You’ll feel better.”