See How They Run

Bethany Campbell

ABOUT THE BOOK

A gifted teacher for special-needs children, Laura Stoner loves her charges, especially eight-year-old autistic twins Rickie and Trace Fletcher. But an ordinary day on the school playground turns into a nightmare when shots ring out and an old man lies dead. By witnessing the drive-by shooting, the boys become innocent targets of a dangerous syndicate. Now U.S. Attorney Mike Montana is tasked with getting the boys and their beautiful, determined teacher out of harm’s way.

But it’s getting harder by the minute. There’s a leak inside the Witness Protection Program and no matter how fast or far they run, the bad guys spot their every move. Part of Mike wants to deny the fierce, possessive attraction growing for Laura. But desire wins, and soon he’s in over his heart, aware that nothing means more to him than getting them all out of this one alive.

Contents

ONE

“You can set your watch by him,” one of the teachers had said.

That’s exactly what the twins did every weekday afternoon on the playground. The boys were eight and very handsome. They had dark hair and blue-gray eyes fringed with black lashes. They wore identical military watches, large and unbreakable.

Each day when the tall old gentleman appeared, rounding the corner, the boys’ eyes glittered with interest. They would look first at their watches, then at each other. The watches should say 2:07, and if they did not, the twins adjusted them, because the old man always appeared at 2:07.

The old man carried himself with great dignity and walked with a silver-headed cane. His white hair was expertly barbered, his jaw always cleanly shaven. It was winter, so he wore an expensive overcoat of dark gray, a white muffler, a black fedora, and black leather gloves.

He came from the direction of the really expensive brownstones, and that’s where Laura imagined he lived. She recognized his shoes as Guccis, six hundred dollars a pair. This meant that each shoe had cost exactly twice as much as her winter coat. She smiled wryly whenever she thought of that.

The boys counted the number of steps that took the elderly gentleman down the block past the school. On the average, it was 339. On the one-hundred-first step, he reached the edge of the schoolyard with its high wrought-iron fence.

The twins clung to the black bars of the fence like two solemn monkeys, staring at him and counting with all their concentration.

Every day the old gentleman gazed straight ahead, his face unreadable, as he passed them. Yet he always acknowledged the boys. He would raise his hand and tip his black hat, ever so slightly, as he reached the place they stood, grasping the fence.

“Good afternoon,” the old gentleman would mutter, without making eye contact. “Good afternoon.”

Perhaps, Laura thought with amusement, it was his habit to repeat himself, or perhaps he meant to give a separate and equal greeting to each twin.

The boys did not smile, and kept their faces as dignified as his. They hated wearing hats, so had none, but touched their fingertips to their foreheads in a return salute. “Good afternoon,” they would chorus back, mimicking his tone. “Good afternoon.”

Then, at approximately his one-hundred-twenty-fifth step, the old gentleman would turn his face slightly, his dark eyes meeting Laura’s hazel ones. Although he was nearly seventy, he was still a handsome man, and he knew it, she could tell. He’d nod at her and touch the brim of his hat. She’d smile and nod back.

“He’s got the hots for you,” Herschel, one of the other teachers, had once said.

“Rich, old—and with the hots for me?” Laura had replied with a rueful smile. “I should be so lucky.”

But the elderly gentleman’s glance almost did seem to convey sexual interest, and she admired him for harboring youthful thoughts, even felt a certain affection for him, although they’d never spoken.

She was still young—twenty-eight—and knew she was fairly attractive, but New York was full of women who were younger and far more beautiful. She didn’t care; she wasn’t hunting for another husband. She’d had one, and he had been more than enough.

Her only vanity was her richly colored auburn hair, which was thick and waving; she wore it long. She used little makeup and let her freckles show. She always had freckles, even in winter.

This afternoon, the wind was cold and brisk, so she’d used her plaid muffler as a scarf, covering her ears and tying it under her chin. She stood a few yards from the twins, watching them, her hands deep in her pockets. Behind her came the shouts of other children playing.

The gray sky had started to spit needles of sleet. Laura would be grateful to see the old gentleman round the corner, for that meant recess was almost half over, and soon she would be back in the warmth of the classroom.

The twins, as usual, clutched the fence rails, ignoring the other children, watching for the man. Their winter jackets and gloves were alike in all but color. As usual, Trace wore blue and Rickie red. The boys were so identical that many people could tell them apart only by this color coding. They seemed even to breathe in unison, their breath rising in synchronized plumes toward the sky.

Their hands tightened on the fence when they saw the man coming. The air was so cold that his ears were red and his usually controlled face looked almost pained. His white muffler was wound around his neck, and his coat collar was turned up. He seemed to exhale smoke as he walked, as if he were an elderly and benign dragon.

Perhaps because of the cold, he walked a bit more swiftly than usual, and Trace frowned, trying to keep count of the man’s steps. When the old man passed the boys, he lifted his hat, just barely.

“Good afternoon,” he said, not looking at them, striding on. “Good afternoon.”

They saluted stiffly, their eyes following him. “Good afternoon,” they echoed. “Good afternoon.”

He kept moving briskly. One of the other children, Janine, ran up to Laura, asking for help in retying her shoe. “Of course,” Laura said, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder. But she waited, first, to exchange her usual silent greeting with the old gentleman.

His dark eyes met hers. He raised his gloved hand to his hat. He nodded.

Then a long staccato burst of noise split the winter air, and the side of the old gentleman’s face exploded into blood. His remaining eye rolled upward, his shattered jaw fell, as if to cry out, but no sound emerged.

Blood blossomed on his chest like red carnations sprouting in full bloom, and blood spurted from his legs, which danced, sinking beneath him. He lurched like a broken puppet toward the street and fell in a ruined heap. His wounds steamed like little mouths exhaling into the cold.

The children screamed, the teachers on the playground screamed, pedestrians screamed, and one woman with a Lord & Taylor shopping bag sat on the sidewalk, screaming as blood poured down her face.

Laura moved on sheer instinct. She wrestled Janine to the ground before the old gentleman hit the sidewalk, and she held her there, her body thrown over the girl’s. Shooting, Laura thought in horror, ducking her head, somebody’s shooting at us.

A bullet ricocheted shrilly off the pavement of the playground, and one of the children—William, perhaps?—screamed even more loudly.

Her face hidden, she heard Herschel’s agonized cry. “He’s hit! He’s hit!”

Then the shooting stopped and she heard the squeal of tires. Without the shots, the air seemed to ring with silence—except for the screams, of course, but they hardly registered on Laura’s consciousness any longer.

“He’s hit! He’s hit!” Herschel’s voice was broken. She looked over her shoulder, biting her lip. Herschel knelt above William, who flailed and writhed, holding his arm.

The other children were crying as teachers tried to drag them back inside the safety of the school.

Numbly Laura clutched the sobbing Janine closer to her chest. She forced herself to look at the old gentleman again. He lay motionless on the sidewalk in the welter of his blood.

His beautiful overcoat is ruined, she thought illogically. And just as illogically, a line from Macbeth ran through her head: “Who’d have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?”

So much blood.

Then, with a shock, she realized that Trace and Rickie still hung onto the fence as if hypnotized, staring at the corpse. They alone of all the children were not crying or shrieking.

They regarded the dead man, the dark pool of blood, the screaming wounded woman, with wooden faces. Their hands still gripped the fence bars, and a slow, thin stream of scarlet ran down Trace’s cheek, dropping to stain the bright blue of his coat.

Oh, God, he’s shot, Laura thought in panic. She rose and stumbled to the boys although Janine screamed out for her to stay.

Quickly she examined Trace’s cheek. It bled profusely, but he didn’t seem to notice. He acted irritated that she had pulled him away from the fence.

Janine got to her feet and lurched toward Laura, hysterical. She grasped her around the waist and wouldn’t let go. “Shh, shh,” Laura told the girl, her voice shaking. “We’ll go inside. We’ll be fine inside.”

Rickie, too, was annoyed to be pulled away from the fence rails and clung to them more tightly. “Shots,” he said. “Shots. The man got shooted on the hundred-and-twenty-ninth step.”

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, wrenching him from the fence. She was terrified that whoever had opened fire would return and shoot again.

She wrapped one arm around the bleeding Trace, the other around Rickie. Janine still hung onto her waist, wailing hysterically.

In the distance, sirens shrilled. “The police are coming,” she told the children, struggling to herd them inside. “The police will be here, and we’ll be safe.”

“The car come by,” Rickie said, frowning studiously. “The car shot. Hit the man.”

Trace touched his own cheek, then regarded his bloodied glove impassively. He nodded. “The car shot. Hit the man.”

A drive-by shooting. Here—in front of our own school, in front of these poor children, Laura thought. The world’s gone crazy. The world’s mad.

Somehow, Laura maneuvered her little brood inside the school. Shelley Simmons, the speech therapist, had collapsed onto the hall floor and leaned against a wall, holding one of the younger children, his face hidden against her chest. Both wept uncontrollably.

“I’ve called nine-one-one,” Mrs. Marcuse, the school’s director, said, struggling to exert control. “The police will be here. An ambulance will be here.” She held up her hands as if beseeching them for peace, but there was none.

Jilly, the oldest student, crouched in a corner, hugging herself, her expression full of terror. She covered her eyes with her hands, as if she could block out what she had witnessed.

Oh, my God, that they should see this—Laura thought, still in shock—that children should see such a thing.

Fanny Mayberry, the cook, appeared, staring at the chaos without comprehension. Herschel had William’s thin body stretched on the floor, and was using his own jacket as a compress to stop the bleeding of the boy’s arm.

“Fanny, take Janine,” Laura said, trying to thrust the clinging girl to the other woman. “There’s been a drive-by shooting. Trace is hurt, too.”

“My Lord, my Lord,” Fanny said, folding Janine in her arms. “What a world! You come to Fanny, honey, you be fine.”

Laura knelt before Trace. She snatched off her muffler and dabbed it against his cheek. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

He ignored her question. He frowned at the door. “Car shot thirty times,” he said, jutting his lower lip out petulantly. “Hit the man nineteen. The man didn’t finish the walk. Got to finish the walk.”

“He can’t finish his walk. Trace, look at me. Tell me if you’re hit any place else. Do you hurt anywhere else?”

Stolid, he didn’t answer. He stared at the door instead, and Laura thought that maybe the wound in his cheek was only superficial. She kept her muffler pressed against it, willing her hand not to shake.

“I saw the license,” Rickie said quietly. “It was MPZ one oh four eight one nine.”

Trace nodded. “MPZ one oh four eight one nine. The man should finish the walk.”

The hall was overwarm, almost stifling, but Laura suddenly went cold. Once more a peculiar silence enclosed her, blocking the riot of sound.

“What?” She clutched Trace’s jacket by the lapel. “Say that to me again.”

He frowned more irritably. “MPZ one oh four eight one nine. The man should finish the walk.”

Her heart beat painfully hard as she turned to Rickie. “You saw the license number?”

“MPZ one oh four eight one nine,” he said.

My God, she thought with a rush of adrenaline. They both got the license number. Of course. Of course.

The knowledge gave her a numbed comfort. The police would be pleased. They would find the monster who had gunned down the kindly, dignified, harmless old man, wounded the woman on the sidewalk, hurt William and Trace. They would catch the gunman, lock him away, make the world safe again.

But when the police came, they were not pleased.

“Now calm down, calm down,” ordered the officer in charge. His name was Detective Valentine, and Valentine was an unlikely name for him. He was a tall, disheveled, heavy man who needed a shave and gave off an aura of sweat and cynicism. He had gathered them in the school cafeteria.

But few of the children calmed down, and Shelley Simmons still could not stop crying. When an officer tried to comfort her, she slapped at him and cried harder because he wore a gun. The medics should have given her a sedative, but in the confusion, nobody had thought of it.

The woman on the sidewalk had been critically wounded, and the bone in William’s upper arm had been nicked. Both the woman and the child had been strapped onto gurneys and loaded into ambulances that sped screaming away. The school had been bedlam.

Trace’s cheek had been cleaned and patched, and now Laura sat beside him, trying to keep him from scratching at his bandage. He muttered to himself, his dark brows drawn together. Rickie sat on Laura’s other side, humming.

“Listen!” ordered Valentine, eyeing his weepy audience with disgust. “Did anybody see the whole thing? Just answer me that.”

Nobody replied. Janine set up a fresh wail, and Herschel leaned his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands.

“I said,” Valentine repeated, his lip curling, “did anybody see the whole thing?”

Laura waited, her heart hammering, to see if any of the other adults had witnessed the shooting, but nobody spoke.

“We did,” she said so quietly nobody seemed to hear her. “We did,” she said again. She had her arm around Trace, the better to restrain him from scratching at his cheek.

Trace didn’t want to be touched and tried to squirm free. His brother stared impassively at the detective and kept humming.

Valentine had dark, bulging eyes that reminded Laura of a bulldog’s. He trained them on her with no friendliness. “All three of you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “They got the license number. They saw the gunman clearly.”

The room suddenly became quieter. Valentine stared at Trace and Rickie. They ignored him. Trace muttered. Rickie hummed.

“They seem calm enough,” Valentine said, almost grudgingly. “Will they talk?”

“Yes. I—think so.”

He nodded. He looked askance at Janine blubbering in Fanny’s embrace, at Jilly huddled in the farthest corner, at Shelley Simmons still openly weeping.

“Where can we talk?” Valentine’s voice wasn’t kind.

“In my office. Down the hall,” Laura said. “Room One-E.”

“Room One-E,” said Rickie.

“Room One-E,” Trace repeated, trying to shake off Laura’s hand.

One of the children, Fergus, began to make a strange, mournful yipping noise. “I want my room!” Fergus cried. “I want my bed! My room! My bed!” He yelped again, more stridently and unhappily than before.

Valentine sighed. “Let’s go to One-E,” he said. Weariness mingled with contempt in his voice. “Eagan, take over here. Oliphant, come with me.”

He and Oliphant, a slim young black officer in uniform, accompanied Laura and the twins to her office. Trace muttered, frustrated that he couldn’t scratch at his bandage. Rickie kept humming.

Laura’s office was small but cheerfully decorated. Looking down from the walls were framed posters of Mr. Spock of Star Trek, Ariel the Little Mermaid, and Simba the Lion King. In the corner stood a small work table with a child’s colorful, simple puzzle on it. Four shelves were crammed with books, both adults’ and children’s.

Tacked on one bulletin board were children’s drawings and snapshots of the students and staff. On another bulletin board, student charts displayed gold stars. Some charts had many gold stars. Some had few.

Valentine lumbered to Laura’s desk and, without asking, sat down heavily in her chair. She didn’t like that. The uniformed officer, Oliphant, pushed aside a pile of her papers and sat on the corner of her desk. She didn’t like that, either.

Both men stared at her. Valentine raised his hand and made a beckoning motion, as if coaxing her to respond quickly and without nonsense. “You?” He nodded at Laura. “Who are you? What’s your job here?”

“I’m Laura Stoner. I’m a teacher.”

“Age? Address?”

She told him she was twenty-eight and gave him her address, which was in a neighborhood far more modest than the school’s. With an air of industry, Oliphant wrote the information on a notepad.

“How long you worked here?” Valentine asked. He picked up her appointment book and flipped through it idly. His presumption irritated her.

“We can do a puzzle,” Trace said suddenly. He spoke so loudly that it startled Oliphant, who darted him a questioning look.

“We can do a puzzle,” Rickie agreed. He had begun to fidget. She held both boys by the hand, and both were squirmy.

“Stand there,” she told them firmly. “Be still. You can do a puzzle in ten minutes.”

Both immediately looked at their watches. Rickie nodded, a bit sullenly. Trace continued to try to pick at his bandage.

“Don’t touch your bandage, Trace,” she said, just as firmly. “Look,” she said to Valentine, “can you hurry? They’re restless. And upset.”

“Let ’em do the puzzle,” Valentine said without smiling. “And you—you can sit.” He nodded at the chair opposite the desk as if it were his office, and he was giving her permission to use her own furniture. He apparently found something of interest in her appointment book. He stared at the page, nodding idly.

Laura, shaken as she was, felt a stab of anger. She had intended to help the police, not be patronized by them. She held herself straighter.

“They’ll do their puzzle when I tell them they can,” she said evenly. “I don’t want to sit—you’re in my chair. I’ll stand. And please put down my appointment book. You’re not here to investigate me.”

Valentine, unsmiling, only raised a brow. Oliphant slipped her a noncommittal glance. “He asked you how long you’ve worked here, Miss Stoner,” Oliphant said in a velvety voice. “You didn’t answer.”

“Three years.”

“Before that?” Valentine said. He glanced at a few more pages in the appointment book, then made a show of setting it back on her desk, but not in its original place.

“Before that I was getting my master’s at Columbia,” she said. “And before that I taught public school. And before that I was in college at Penn State. And before that high school in New Castle, Pennsylvania. And before that, junior high in New Castle. And before that grade school in New—”

“All right,” Valentine said, cutting her off. “Now, I got to question you. One at a time. The kids first. I don’t want any allegation they were coached. So leave and wait outside the door—”

“That isn’t possible,” Laura said. “They won’t talk without me here.”

Valentine stared morosely at the twins. He tented his fingers on the desktop. He attempted a fatherly smile, but it seemed merely sarcastic. “What are your names, boys?”

Neither looked at him, and neither answered.

Valentine leaned toward them, still trying to smile. “What are your names, boys?” he repeated.

Trace stared at the floor. Rickie squinted at the ceiling.

“They’re upset, and they won’t talk to strangers,” Laura said. She was right, and she knew it. “Ask them whatever you have to. I won’t coach them. And I haven’t.”

“This isn’t regular procedure—Miss Stoner.”

“This isn’t a regular day for us—Detective Valentine.”

He sat back in her chair. He still wore his hat, brim pulled down, and his overcoat, unbuttoned. He took off the hat and set it on her stack of papers. His hair was thinning and slicked tight to his scalp. It gleamed, as if oiled or dirty. “What are their names?” he asked tonelessly.

“Tell the man your name, Trace.”

Trace glanced at his watch, stared at the floor, and said, “My name is Trace Francis Fletcher. I’m eight years old. I go to Stephenson School. I live there.” He gave his address and telephone number.

“Very good, Trace,” Laura said, smiling. “Now you, Rickie.”

Rickie continued to study the ceiling with narrowed eyes. “My name is Richard Mark Fletcher. Call me Rickie. I’m eight years old. I go to Stephenson School. I live there.”

He gave his address and telephone number in the same singsong voice that Trace had used.

Oliphant stole another glimpse at the boys. His expression had grown guarded, measuring.

Valentine, who clearly didn’t understand children, gave them another small, false smile. He put his elbows on the table and folded his hands together. “Now, boys, suppose you tell me what you saw this afternoon on the playground. Can you tell me what you saw? If you do a good job, I’ll have Officer Oliphant here buy you some ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” Trace said, his voice shrill. “Ice cream!”

“No, Trace,” Laura said calmly, “you can’t have ice cream. You can have juice. Tell what you saw. Tell what happened to the man with the cane.”

Trace frowned harder. Laura repeated her instructions. Trace took a deep breath. He cast an unfriendly glance at Oliphant but still did not look at Valentine. “The man turned the corner. The man took one hundred and twenty-nine steps. The man fell down.”

Valentine pursed his lips and stared at Trace with dissatisfaction. “What is this—a hundred twenty-nine steps?”

“They’re interested in numbers,” Laura said and pressed on, choosing her words carefully. “Trace, tell what you heard when the man fell.”

“Shots,” Trace answered without hesitation. “Thirty shots.”

“Tell what the shots did,” Laura said.

“Now, wait,” Valentine said, irritably, “you’re prompting him—”

“Nineteen shots hit the man.”

Oliphant looked up again. “That’s flukey, man. He got hit about twenty times, all right. How he know that?”

“Trace,” Laura said quietly. “Tell me where the shots came from.”

“The car,” he answered. “The car was big. The car was blue. The car said ‘Cadillac’ The car said ‘de Ville.’ ”

“Now—wait a minute,” Valentine interrupted. “What’d he say? We got all kinds of conflicting witnesses on that car. Is he sure? Is he one of those kids that knows cars—?”

Oliphant’s face had gone taut. “Jesus,” he said under his breath.

“Trace,” Laura said. “You said you saw a license number. Tell me the number.”

“Now, wait a minute—a license number?” Valentine asked, skepticism in his bulldog eyes. “He’s just a kid—”

Trace cocked his head as if Valentine’s voice annoyed him. “The number was MPZ one oh four eight one nine.”

Rickie nodded absently. “The number was MPZ one oh four eight one nine.”

Oliphant scribbled furiously. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Sweet Jesus.”

Valentine merely stared at Trace, his brow furrowed, his mouth set cynically.

“Thank you, Trace,” Laura said. “That was very good.” She turned to Rickie. “Rickie. What happened today to the man with the cane?”

Rickie stopped staring at the ceiling and began to stroke his own cheek, one finger at a time, never using his thumb. He answered her questions as Trace had, almost verbatim.

“Tell me the license number,” she said at last.

“MPZ one oh four eight one nine,” said Rickie.

“MPZ one oh four eight one nine,” Trace echoed.

“Go radio headquarters,” Valentine ordered Oliphant. “Tell them to put an APB on the number.”

Oliphant got up swiftly from the desk and gave the twins a wary look. “Like, that’s spooky, man.”

“Like, that’s spooky, man,” Rickie repeated as Oliphant left the room. His childish voice mimicked the officer’s inflection.

“Like, that’s spooky, man,” Trace said.

“What is this?” Valentine demanded. “This is weird. I never saw nothing like this. Can I believe these kids?”

“Can I believe these kids?” asked Trace.

“Absolutely,” Laura said with confidence.

“Absolutely,” repeated Rickie in the same tone.

“Why are they saying everything we say?” Valentine asked, his nostrils flaring.

“Why are they saying everything we say?” Trace said.

“Why are they saying everything we say?” Rickie said.

“Why are they saying everything we say?” Trace said again.

“Don’t echo, Trace,” Laura said, shaking her head. “Don’t echo, Rickie.”

“We can do a puzzle,” Trace said, looking at his watch. Rickie, too, looked at his watch. He pressed his lips together and nodded.

“Yes,” she agreed. “You can do a puzzle. Sit at the table.”

They marched to the table, pulled out the two chairs, and sat. Rickie pushed the child’s puzzle away.

Laura went to a shelf and took down a jigsaw puzzle. “It’s a new one,” she told them, taking the cellophane from the box. “It doesn’t make a picture.”

They waited stolidly. She was proud of finding the puzzle. It was labeled “Highly Difficult” and contained a thousand pieces. On both sides, it was black.

Carefully she poured the pieces of the puzzle to the middle of the table. The boys began to spread them out, sorting. Rickie immediately found four pieces that fit and locked them together.

Laura moved to her desk and set down the puzzle box so that Valentine could see it.

Trace, who was obviously more tired than Rickie, began to mutter loudly. “Blue rhubarb,” he said emphatically. “Blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb.”

“Cows can fly,” Rickie said, apropos of nothing. “In outer space. Cows fly in outer space.”

Valentine looked up from the puzzle box and at the twins. He regarded them with something bordering on horror.

“Why do they talk like that?” he demanded. “What’s this ‘blue rhubarb’? What’s he mean, ‘Cows fly’? What’s with the repeating?”

Laura pressed her lips together and searched for words.

“Blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb,” chanted Trace.

“Cows can fly,” Rickie said, sounding bored. “MPZ one oh four eight one nine. MPZ one oh four eight one nine.”

Valentine swore, his expression more horrified than before. It was as if he was staring at two serpents, not two little boys.

He swung his head so that he faced Laura. “These kids aren’t right in the head, are they?” he challenged, contempt in his voice.

“These children are special,” she said. “And I have to get them their juice. I promised them.”

She went to the small refrigerator on the counter and took out two containers of apple juice. She opened the snap tops and carried the juice to the table.

Mechanically Rickie muttered, “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Trace said, quickly fitting the puzzle pieces together. “Blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb.”

Valentine stared at them again as if repelled. “These kids are retards—retards.”

Laura turned to face him, putting her hand on her hip. She knew his contempt could not hurt the boys. It would not even register on them. “The correct word is autistic, Mr. Valentine. But I’d prefer you use the word ‘special,’ as the staff does.”

He swore and turned his gaze back to her, his eyes glittering angrily. “That’s what the ‘special’ in this school means? It’s a school for morons and nut bars?”

Laura gave him a withering look. “This school serves children with special needs. What kind of school did you think it was?”

“I don’t know,” Valentine almost snarled. “Some of ’em was crippled or something. I thought it was a cripple school. Only these two look so normal, I didn’t know—how’m I supposed to know—?”

Laura crossed her arms and looked away angrily. She didn’t tell him they didn’t use the word “crippled,” either. Some of the children had cerebral palsy in addition to mental retardation. And Fergus, who had been brain-injured in a car accident, was in a wheelchair.

“For a minute,” Valentine said angrily, “I thought I got dream witnesses here. Kids who know cars. Very observant kids. With good memories. I thought maybe this is a school for the special smart. Now you tell me they’re loons.”

Laura swung back to face him. “Don’t call them names,” she ordered. “They do know cars. They are observant. They do have good memories.”

“Yeah?” Valentine challenged, his mouth twisting. “How do I know they aren’t just repeating what they’re told? They’re like two parrots, goddamnit.”

“No,” she argued. “They’re children with a condition. Sometimes they repeat what they hear. It’s called echolalia.”

“Yeah?” Valentine said again. “So how do I know it ain’t you they’re echoing, or whatever the hell you said? I mean, who’s gonna believe a kid who says ‘blue rhubarb’ all the time, or that cows fly? Christ, lady, you realize you just had me send in a report based on the testimony of two—two retards?”

Laura clenched her fists atop the desk and leaned toward Valentine. “I said, don’t use language like that. What they said is right. I’d swear to it. They’re never wrong about numbers. They may be handicapped in some ways, but they’re gifted in others. In observation. In—in dexterity. In spacial perceptions. But especially in numbers. About numbers they’re never wrong—never.”

“Oh, shit,” Valentine said bitterly. “Why’d I get outta bed this morning?”

“Believe me,” she said earnestly. “It’s true. They’re never wrong about numbers.”

Valentine looked away from her. He put one hand to his temple. “Shit,” he said again. “Shit and blue rhubarb.”

“I can’t tell you how many steps that man took,” Laura pleaded. “But they can. It’s what they do. I didn’t notice the sort of car. I didn’t count the shots. I didn’t see a license number. But they could, and they did.”

Valentine swore again. “What’s this supposed to be? They’re like that guy in that movie? That Tom Cruise thing? These kids are like that—that Rainman guy?”

“Yes,” Laura said, eagerly springing on his words, even if they weren’t quite accurate. “Like Rainman. Exactly. Some people call them ‘idiot savants,’ wise idiots. They’re below average in some skills, but in others they have a sort of genius—”

“Wise, schmize, a idiot’s a idiot,” Valentine said blackly. “Besides, a movie’s a—a work of fiction. That rainman guy wasn’t real.”

“He was based on real people, people like these boys,” Laura argued. “Look at that puzzle. Could you do it? I couldn’t.”

He glanced with distaste at the twins bent over the puzzle. They were working swiftly, and had assembled almost a fifth of it already.

“I wouldn’t want to,” he muttered. “I got enough puzzles in my life.”

“That’s not the issue,” Laura said. “Could you do it? That fast?”

He shrugged. He swore again. He still had his overcoat on, and sweat was starting to bead his face.

“When was your birthday?” Laura asked.

He scowled. “What? Now we’re gonna play astrology?”

“I’ll show you what they can do. When’s your birthday?”

“April twenty-seventh, 1941,” he muttered. “Curse the day.”

Laura rose upright again and turned to the work table. “Rickie—tell me what day of the week was April twenty-seventh, 1941.”

Rickie did not look up from the puzzle. “Sunday,” he said without hesitation.

She turned back to Valentine. “Well?” she said.

He looked both displeased and startled. “He got lucky.”

“Try him on anything,” she challenged.

“My sister got married in 1963,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “September seventh.”

“Rickie,” she said, “what day of the week was September seventh, 1963?”

“Saturday,” Rickie replied without looking up.

She picked up her appointment book. She looked back to the first part of the year. She pointed to an entry in January. It said, “Rickie excused. Dentist—filling. 1:30.”

“Rickie,” she said carefully, “the dentist gave you a filling. Tell me the time and place.”

Rickie took a drink of juice and wiped his mouth. He picked up a puzzle piece. “January eighth. Friday—one-thirty. The office has an aquarium. Thirteen fish. Six striped ones. Four black ones. Three gold ones.”

She flipped through the book. She saw the entry reminding her of Herschel’s birthday party in July. She pointed it out to Valentine. “Rickie, when was Herschel’s birthday party?”

Rickie yawned. “July fourteenth. Wednesday—three-thirty.”

She reached to her desk, picked up her calculator. “Rickie, tell me the number of candles on Herschel’s cake.”

“Twenty-nine.”

Laura held the calculator so that Valentine could see it. She punched in the numbers. “Rickie, what’s twenty-nine times twenty-nine?”

As soon as she said it, she hit the equals button.

“Eight hundred forty-one,” Rickie said, almost as quickly as the number came up in the calculator’s window.

“What’s eight hundred forty-one times eight hundred forty-one?” she asked, punching in the numbers.

The number 707,281 displayed almost simultaneously as Rickie said it.

She kept throwing challenges out to Rickie. He met them effortlessly, until Valentine seemed impressed in spite of himself.

She started to push in another set of numbers, but Valentine gestured for her to stop. “No more,” he said, shaking his head. He gave Rickie another cold look. “He’s a goddamn freak.”

Laura was infuriated. But Oliphant opened the door and reentered. Because now she and Valentine had an audience, she tried to temper her reply, but she still spoke with passion.

“He’s not a freak,” she said. “They’re not freaks. They’re human beings, just like you and me.”

“Human beings,” Valentine muttered, as if he held the entire species in contempt.

Laura clenched her fist. “Listen,” she said from between her teeth. “They can help you find out who killed that lovely old man. He was always such a gentleman. He never really talked to us, but he was always so nice—”

Oliphant cleared his throat. He walked to the desk. He gave Laura an ironic sideways glance, but he spoke to Valentine. “They got a make on the victim.”

“Yeah?” Valentine said. “Well?”

“Well, hang on to your ass. It’s ‘Saint Frankie’ Zordani.”

The name meant nothing to Laura, and she was surprised by Valentine’s strong reaction. “The hell you say,” he said, as if in a mixture of shock and awe. It was the first time she had seen the man show an emotion other than suspicion or disapproval.

Valentine turned his attention back to Laura with a smile that was close to a sneer. “Well, well,” he said with false pleasantness. “This wasn’t your average ‘Let’s drive by and kill somebody’ shooting. This wasn’t random. This has got interesting.”

“Interesting?” Laura said, doubt in her voice. What she had seen was terrible, shocking; how could he find it interesting?

Valentine’s superior smirk stayed in place. He nodded. “Your ‘lovely old man’? ‘Such a gentleman’? Who was ‘so nice’?”

“Yes?” she asked with a frisson of foreboding.

“A drug lord,” Valentine said with satisfaction. “This wasn’t any random violence you witnessed. This was planned. It was a hit. A major drug war hit.”

Her scalp prickled, and a cold lump formed in her throat. She couldn’t speak. Planned? A hit? she thought sickly. A drug lord and a drug war?

“The D.A.’s office wants a statement. Then they want those kids in protective custody. Maybe the woman, too,” Oliphant said. “Immediately.”

Valentine nodded. He rose and picked up his hat from the desk. He looked Laura up and down.

“Get your coat,” he ordered. “And the kids’. They’re material witnesses in this—if what they say can hold up in court. Let’s go.”

“Protective custody?” Laura said, stunned. “Material witnesses? Court? You mean these children might be in danger?”

“Worry about number one, lady,” Valentine said. “You might be in trouble yourself. You got yourself in the middle of something big. Oh, you’ve done it up right, no mistake.”

A tide of horror swept her. It had never occurred to her that she had to do anything more than have the boys tell the police about the license number. Now Valentine was talking about courts and witnesses and drug wars and protection—it was incomprehensible. “But—” she protested. “But—”

Valentine gave a snort of cynical laughter. “The D.A. ain’t gonna believe this. We got witnesses—but they’re eight-year-old idiots.”

Don’t use that language, Laura wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat. She could only stare at Valentine’s unsympathetic face.

“Blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb, blue rhubarb,” said Trace.

“Cows fly in outer space,” said Rickie.

TWO

His name was Montana, but he was from New York.

He’d been born on a Friday the thirteenth when it was raining. His mother, who was superstitious, had cried, believing he would die young.

But Montana had been one of those people convinced he was immortal, so he became a cop. They say a cop is washed up the day he learns he isn’t immortal.

Montana had realized he was merely human one night in a dark alley behind a crack house when he was twenty-seven. It hadn’t washed him up; rather it had baptised him in lightning and fire. He had nearly died. But he had risen, born again, more scrappy than before.

His injury would keep him off the street, where he had been crazy about the adrenaline rush of pitting himself against the Bad Guys.

Well, as his Uncle Eddie always said, there was more than one way to skin a cat. Montana hung out now with the Federal Attorney’s office, an assistant. He was still after Bad Guys. He still had a slightly fanatical gleam in his eye.

Of late he needed fanaticism to fuel him. He’d been assigned to help make a case against an annoying young marijuana czar, Dennis Deeds. Building a case against Deeds was like building a wall out of clouds. The guy had come out of nowhere and kept dodging back into it. He was as elusive and insubstantial as a ghost.

Montana missed the thrill of a big-time hunt. He wanted a case that was large, sweet, and juicy. The Deeds investigation was small, dry, and plodding. But this afternoon, something had come down in the attorney’s office, something big.

Montana’s superior had temporarily taken him off Deeds’s ephemeral trail and sent him over to West Fifty-seventh, to the Organized Crime Task Force offices.

Frankie Zordani had been clipped. The task force wanted to talk to Montana, and he had no damned idea why.

Now Montana sat cooling his heels in the waiting room of Isaac Conlee, no less, who was the highest-ranking FBI man with the task force. Frankie Zordani had been clipped—Montana couldn’t get over that.

As Mafiosi went, Zordani was a nice old gentleman. He hardly ever killed anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. The task force had been trying to nail him for years but couldn’t touch him.

Now he’d been nailed to the sidewalk in his own blood. God, not the task force, would have to sort out his sins. Montana idly wondered if God viewed income tax evasion as seriously as the IRS did.

Conlee’s secretary, a pale, prissy-looking blonde with a long nose, listened to a low voice on her intercom, then looked at Montana, as if sizing him up. “You may go in now,” she said.

I may go in, Montana thought. My, my. He rose and crossed the office. The door to Conlee’s office was metal and needed a new coat of paint. He opened it.

Conlee, behind his desk, rose to greet him, shook hands, and pretended not to notice that Montana shook left-handed.

“Michael Montana?” Conlee said. “I’m Conlee, FBI liaison.”

“I go by Mick,” said Montana. Conlee was about forty, short for an FBI man, only five foot seven or so. But he was powerfully built, and he had that FBI look—the conservative haircut, the clear, cold eyes, the three-piece suit, the air that said he voted Republican and would do so unto death.

Montana was taller, six feet even, and deceptively lean. He looked one-hundred-percent Italian, which he was, and nobody would ever guess he had spent his youth serving as an altar boy, which he had.

“Have a seat,” said Conlee, and gestured at the institutional-looking chair before the desk.

Montana sat and remembered not to slump or cross one leg over his knee. He had spent seven years on the vice squad, a division not noted for its etiquette. He still had trouble tolerating wearing a suit every working day.

Conlee sat again at his desk. His office conveyed the usual FBI spartanness. On the wall behind him, a framed photograph showed the President looking noble and presidential.

“I’ll get directly to the point,” Conlee said, his cold eyes taking Montana’s measure.

“Good,” said Montana, measuring Conlee in return.

Conlee stared at a report on his desk. “This afternoon, at approximately fourteen-oh-eight, Francis Zordani was shot to death in front of the Stephenson Special School. The weapon was an Uzi. The car was a Cadillac de Ville. Two witnesses got the license number. We haven’t found the car yet.”

Montana’s adrenaline gave a small rush. An Uzi? That probably meant something ominous.

Conlee nodded, as if he could read Montana’s suspicions. “Colombians, we think,” he said. “We traced the license. The car was stolen, probably two days ago, but not reported.”

“You’re sure it’s Colombians?” Montana asked. When it came to bloodshed, he’d rather deal with the Mafia any day. The Mafia had standards, at least. They were incredibly low, but they were standards. The Colombians were wild men, crazy as coots. They’d kill you if they didn’t like the way you tied your shoes.

“Yeah,” Conlee said with weary disgust. “We found the guy the car belonged to. Their idea of a joke, we suppose, to use his car. He was another Mafioso, Markie Scarlotti. Waterfront enterprises. His body was found this morning. They gave him a necktie.”

Montana sat up straighter. A necktie was a form of cut throat, a signature of the Colombians. The murderer slashed the victim’s neck so widely he could shove the tongue down through the wound.

Conlee said, “A neighbor walking a dog saw three Hispanic-looking guys—young, well-dressed—going into Scarlotti’s place two nights ago, late. He said they were speaking a foreign language. It sounded like Spanish to him. He didn’t know what they were saying.”

Montana narrowed his eyes.

“Right,” Conlee said, “it could be a drug war. We don’t know if this is a Cartel or just a couple of crazy cowboys. We hope it’s just a few loose cannons.”

“Both Scarlotti and Zordani hit? Do you have any idea why?”

“No. None.” He paused and gave Montana another of his chilly stares. “But this is probably gonna get ugly before it’s over.”

“I’d agree,” Montana said.

“The reason I called you in is that I’ve got witnesses to protect.”

Montana was surprised but tried not to show it. If the witnesses were important, the Colombians would try to kill them. It was as certain as the law of gravity. But why drag in an attorney?

“Why me?” he asked. “You’ve got your own men.”

Conlee frowned. “The task force wants to make this an interdepartmental effort. More flexibility. Less predictability.”

More red tape, less control. He doesn’t like it, Montana thought, but said nothing.

“Officially, it’s still on NYPD turf,” Conlee said. “But it looks like it’ll be our case. We’re stepping in now because this could involve both the Mafia and the Cartels. So we want to be like God. To move in mysterious ways. We don’t want anything we do to be anticipated.”

Again Montana said nothing, waited for Conlee to go on.

“We also,” Conlee said, “want the Colombians to know if they move against us, they aren’t fucking around with one of us. They’re by God fucking around with all of us. Maybe even they’ll think twice.”

“I see,” said Montana.

The Colombian drug kingpins had so much money they thought they were omnipotent. They didn’t like people who got in their way, and if they couldn’t buy somebody off, they killed him. It was a simple system and highly effective.

But the central task force wasn’t merely people. It was a monolith composed of other monoliths, the FBI, the IRS, the NYPD, the Federal Attorney’s office. It could tap into the DEA, as well—the whole big alphabet soup bowl of law enforcement.