Totally disconcerted, he actually answered.
"Yeah, I drive it."
"Well, don't worry, parking gets easier as you gain experience. Now if you'll pardon me, boys, I've got things to do." She thrust a hand into the pocket of her running shorts and when she looked up, she found herself staring into the ends of a matched pair of 9-mm automatics.
Afterward, she thought it amazing that she hadn't been frozen with terror, in the sights of two small cannons manned by lunatics, but at the time all she felt was incredulity. She slowly stretched out her arm and let the key chain dangle from her fingers, and the two sheriff's deputies straightened up, beginning to look sickly.
"You stupid shits," she said conversationally. "How long have you two bozos been out of the Academy? A week? You don't go waving your gun around unless you're prepared to use it, and you don't use it unless you're prepared to spend six months filling out the goddamn forms. For Christ's sake, can you possibly think that a person dressed like this could conceal anything bigger than a Swiss army knife?"
She gestured at herself, and the two louts looked again at the nylon running shorts and the damp and clinging tank top, then finished bolstering their guns.
"We had a report, ma'am…" began the shorter one, the driver, with no trace now of a drawl.
"Some old lady in one of those houses over there no doubt, who saw me poking around and took me for a mad bomber. And now she's watching you making asses of yourselves."
"Yes, ma'am. But do you mind telling us what you were doing?"
"This is a public park."
"Now, look you —"
"Shut up, Randy," hissed the driver.
"But Nelson —"
"Nelson?" snorted Kate. No wonder he had a chip on his shoulder. She stood and waited for further grumbles of authority, but there was more apprehension than aggression in their faces.
"No, I'm not going to file a complaint. But you two better think three times before you pull that kind of damn fool stunt again. I don't expect to have to ID myself every time I go for my keys, and it's too damn hot to wear a uniform."
Kate waited an instant before this penny dropped, and she was suddenly aware that she felt better than she had in a long time. Happy, even. She stepped forward and held out her hand to Nelson.
"Inspector Kate Martinelli, SFPD. Homicide."
She was still feeling marvelously cheerful as she pulled her car in beside Nelson and Randy's black-and-white in the parking lot of a nearby hamburger joint, and she could feel the bounce in her steps as she accompanied the two looming uniforms inside. She ordered a large iced tea, excused herself to scrub her face and hands in the rest room, and then joined the men at the table, where she flipped her ID onto the table and sat down.
"Okay," she said without preamble. "What I was doing there in that weird outfit was looking for a boy. Friend of mine met him in the park a few times; he disappeared five days ago. He told her that he lived there, in the park, so I thought I'd have a look. He was telling the truth, but he's not there now, hasn't been for a few days, by the look of it, left behind some things of value - a ring, a couple of odd earrings, pair of shoes. He's a light-skinned Hispanic male, age maybe fourteen or fifteen, five seven, slim, no distinguishing marks except for a chip on the top right incisor, calls himself Dio and his name may be Claudio, hung around the park a lot. Any bells?"
"Sounds like half the kids in the park, come summer," Nelson said, all business now and damned glad if nobody referred to that little episode earlier.
"This one was a loner, would've avoided group activities, didn't use the pool or take classes, just drifted. Talked to a young girl a lot; she's twelve, five four, black braids, hazel eyes, slightly Oriental-looking. Pretty, acts older than her age."
"She sounds familiar. Reads a lot?"
"That's her."
"I remember a boy," said Nelson. "Never talked to him, though."
"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep an eye out for him. He hasn't done anything, not that I know of, and he sounds the kind of kid who, if he's been pulled into the game or onto the needle, might cut all ties."
"Some self-respect, you mean?" asked Nelson. He wasn't a total loss, then, in the brains department.
"Might be salvaged," she agreed. "Well, gentlemen, it's been real. When you find out who made the call about that dangerous madwoman in the bushes, you might ask her if she's seen our young man. Here's my card, and my home number." (Handing out a lot of these lately, she reflected.) "Give me a ring if you get anything. Thanks for the drink."
Kate drove the thirty miles home without thinking of much of anything, parked on the street in front of the house, and let herself in the front door. When she closed the door behind her, she was hit by the miasma of a house that was not merely empty but abandoned. She stood in the hallway of the house and heard its silence, smelled the staleness beneath the remnants of the breakfast Jules had cooked, and thought how happy she had once been to come home to this place; remembered how she and Lee had loved and labored to free it of its decades of neglect, remembered how she and Lee had loved. It had been their joy and their delight, and now its walls rang with emptiness: no Lee upstairs or in the consulting rooms on Kate's right, no Jon making magic in the kitchen or down in the basement apartment listening to his peculiar modern music, none of Lee's clients, none of Jon's impossible friends, no nothing, just the ache of its emptiness and Kate, standing in the hall.
She poured herself a glass of wine, ignoring the clock, and trudged up the stairs. At the top, not meaning to, she found herself in Lee's study, standing at Lee's desk, opening its right-hand drawer, and taking out the letter from Lee's mad aunt that had begun all this:
My dear niece,
We have only met twice during your life, and as during our brief second meeting you were clad only in a pair of wet diapers, you probably do not remember me. I trust that you are at least aware that your father had a sister. If not, then I imagine this will come as a considerable surprise. Nonetheless, he had, and I am she. Hard to think of my brother - young enough to have been my own baby, come to think of it - as a man of fifty, but as I turn sixty-eight this year, that would have been the case. Except that he died in uniform, you never saw him, and I was kept from you by your mother, because I reminded her of her great loss, or so she said.
I returned to this country a year ago, taking up residence on an island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca that has no electricity and virtually no neighbors. I find it a delightful contrast to Calcutta, and is not contrast the spice of life? Upon my return, I instructed my lawyer to find what he could about my family members, which may explain why I am writing to you now. He seems to have employed a private investigator - a curious thought - who charged what seemed to me an excessive amount of money for a folder full of newspaper clippings. I apologize for inadvertently trespassing upon your privacy, had I known that I was doing so, I would have instructed the man to desist.
Thus I have learned of your injury, and although I was certainly distressed to hear of it, I understand that you are progressing rapidly, and as, after all, you could hardly stagger about when last I saw you, I suppose one could say that from my viewpoint there has been little change.
Which brings me to my purpose in writing, other than to arrange for an annual exchange of Christmas cards and other nonsense. If you are ever wishing a period in an extremely rustic retreat with an ill-tempered old woman who has no time for sympathy and no craving for service, my island is at your disposal. It is not set up for a disabled person, but then neither is it set up for a sixty-eight-year-old woman with malaria, so we would be evenly matched, and no doubt would cope.