Stones and Spark (25 page)

My alarm is already set. For 1 a.m.

The night air is so cold that silver clouds bloom out of my mouth as I run down our alley. I cross Monument Avenue—the road is deserted—and hide behind Stuart Circle Hospital.

Taking out my new cell phone, I punch in the number for Officer Lande. My fingers are cold, stiff. A shiver rattles down my back as I hold the phone to my ear, thinking about how much Drew hates being cold. Not just the temperature, but that it represents a lack of thermal energy.

Please, wherever she is, keep her warm.

"Officer Lande speaking."

"It's Raleigh."

The pause is long enough for me to guess what she's thinking.
It's 1:16 a.m.—why are you calling me?
So I answer.

"I'm calling because I need to talk to you. Now."

***

The black and white police cruiser swoops down West Avenue, creeping behind the hospital until she sees me jump out of the bushes. I yank open the back door, drop into the hard plastic seat, and feel the heat shroud me like an electric blanket.

One last shiver creeps up my back.

Officer Lande turns in her seat, studying me through the metal cage separating the front and back seats.

"And your parents know you're out here, again?"

"And you're going to law school?"

"Law school?" She frowns. "No. Why do you say that?"

"Because my dad says only lawyers ask questions they already know the answers to."

She has the kind of skin my mom is deathly afraid of—freckled from too much sun—and when she smiles, the freckles rise like bubbles.

"It's an honest question," she says. "I'd like an honest answer."

"My mom isn't all . . . " I hunt for words, the words I've learned not to say. "My mom doesn't think I'm her real daughter, okay?"

Another frown. "Who does she think you are?"

"Some spy. An impostor. Is Titus Williams in jail?"

"Now you're the lawyer." She turns around, facing the windshield.

"I know he's in jail," I admit. "But I don't know why."

"Titus Williams is a person of interest in the disappearance of Drew Levinson."

"If I wanted an official statement, I could read the newspaper."

She barely hears me. Her radio is crackling, bursting with the letters and numbers I used to hear in court when people read police transcripts. The Hundred Code, according to my dad. Officer Lande's radio is talking about a "possible four-one-five" in Jackson Ward. She seems to be listening to the report, so I glance out my window. I've been worried one of our neighbors will see me out here. Or see her cruiser—and me inside the cruiser. They're sure to ask my dad what's going on.

I slide down in the seat.

The radio goes quiet. She turns in her seat again.

"It's very serious, Raleigh."

"No kidding, that's why I'm out here in the freezing cold."

"I mean about Titus."

She waits for me to say something.

"He always seemed like a nice guy."

"Yeah, well, professional athletes think they're above the law."

"I don't think he does."

"Really?" The metal cage fractures her severe face. "Did he tell you two girls not to come into his restaurant?"

"No. But he once kicked out a guy who cursed in front of us. And then he apologized to me and Drew that we had to hear it."

"Great." Officer Lande's face doesn't change. "Did he ever approach you outside of his restaurant?"

"No."

"What about Drew?"

I don't say anything. Before seeing Titus at that baseball field, I'd say no. But now . . . ?

"Okay," she says. "Did he do anything that would keep you two coming back each week?"

"Not really."

"Raleigh. Tell me."

"Free shakes. Whoever got there first got a free shake." My stomach knots at the thought.

She nods. "Were you ever alone with him?"

"No."

"What about Drew?"

An invisible rope tightens around my ribcage. I can barely breathe. "Drew always got there first.”

"But this Friday she didn't show up at all?"

"If there was something going on between her and Titus, I would see it."

"Raleigh, don't be naive."

That word. Again! But maybe she's right. Drew didn't tell me she was moving. She didn't tell me about that baseball field. Or the quarry. Or—

"I'm going to tell you this," Officer Lande says carefully. "It's for your own protection. We haven't even released it to the media. But somebody tipped us off and we found the paper trail on Titus Williams. Raleigh, do you know what statutory rape is?"

"When an adult has sex with a minor, even a consenting minor."

"There was a restraining order against Titus Williams that said he couldn't be within a hundred yards of any minor. Do you know how far that is? An entire football field."

"And he broke it by having us in his restaurant," I say, remembering what my dad told me.

"Except one thing," she says. "That restraining order ran out Friday. The very same day Drew goes missing."

My ribs, it's like they're stabbing me. I suck in a breath. "So why wasn't there a court case?"

"What?"

"If he did rape somebody—why wasn't there a court case?"

"How do you know there wasn't?"

"Because a restraining order isn't the same thing as a court order."

"How do you know all this?"

"And since there's a minor involved, I'll bet the restraining order was sealed. And that's why the media doesn't know about it. Yet."

She shakes her head. "I want to know where you learned this stuff."

My dad. That's how I know all this. And my second bet would be that my dad tipped off the police to the paper trail on Titus Williams.

The judge? He read every sealed word of that restraining order.

That's what my new cell phone is all about.

"Just so you know, I'm not naive."

"You're young."

"So?" My voice is too forceful. But I don't care. "Unlike everyone else, I refuse to jump to conclusions. You get a hypothesis, you test it. Even if that idea looks right at the start, you test it. And besides, there's something called the presumption of innocence, unless somebody suddenly abolished the fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendments."

"Wow," she says.

"What?"

"You should go to law school."

"No way." All that time in my dad's courtroom has showed me what happens to a person who argues for a living.

"Since you put it that way," she says, "let's go through a hypothesis. What time does Titus open for dinner on Friday?"

"Four or four-thirty, I think."

"And the last time someone saw Drew was what time?"

"Three . . . " My voice trails off because Tinsley and Sandbag were the last people to see her, I think. "We should probably say three-ish."

"Okay, three-ish. That means ninety minutes from when she was last seen to when he's opening his restaurant. What if she met him somewhere, like the quarry or—"

I hate it. The whole idea—it's possible. I hate it.

She keeps going.

"Drew loves baseball, and Titus Williams played in the major leagues. What if Titus asked her to meet him somewhere? And he told her it was a surprise, maybe for you. Do you think she would tell you, honestly?"

The chill comes back, running up my spine, triggering an image of an umpire. Titus. A baseball umpire for kids' games—but that restraining order said he couldn’t be near kids. I want to ask Officer Lande but it's too much to say. Closing my eyes, I try to see his face, whatever expression he showed when I said Drew was missing.

But all I see is the sun, so bright it's blinding.

Drew was there, standing on that same soil. She had to be. Where else would she get those red icicles? Did she watch him ump games? Maybe she really does know him better than I do. They both loved baseball. What if they talked before I got there on Fridays? What if Titus just threw out that cursing guy to fool us? What if all along he was planning to do something to Drew?

What if—whatifwhatifwhatif.

The warmth inside the car is suffocating. I reach over, trying to open the window. But my hand just slides over the things. There's no button, no door handles.

"I've got to talk to him," I say.

"Who?"

"Titus."

"Raleigh, he's in custody."

"I can still talk to him. Unless there's some gag order."

The cage divides her hard face into quadratic crystals. She stares at me a long time.

"I don't know," she says.

"Can you please call somebody who does?"

"Raleigh, it's almost two in the morning."

"And cold, and Drew's still out there," I say. "Somewhere."

A detective meets us in the parking lot of the Richmond city jail. He's a short guy and his nose is shaped like a light bulb. It's also red, which makes him look like he should be hanging out with those dwarves who worship Snow White.

Sneezy, Grumpy, Sleepy. But definitely not Happy.

He sneers at Officer Lande and points at me. "This is what you hauled me down here for—her?"

I'm still sitting in the back seat of Officer Lande's cruiser, but now her window is open, the cold air sliding into the car. It feels damp, almost marshy. Just west of here the James River carves a path around the jail, like it's trying to create a moat.

"The missing girl is her best friend," Officer Lande explains. "She knows the guy you took into custody, Titus Williams. She wants to talk to him."

"At two in the morning."

"That's right."

"You call Holmgren?" he asks, apparently referring to Detective Holmgren, the one who drove me to the quarry.

"Yes. Holmgren said to call you."

"Course he did, two in the morning, I'm sick as a dog." He plops his fat hands on his knees and leans into the open window by Officer Lande’s face. She immediately shifts away, putting space between them.

He turns and wheezes at me.
"Hey, where's your parents?"

Sandbag has told us we have a duty to correct bad grammar whenever we hear it. Which would mean saying, Y
ou mean, where
are
my parents
? But Sandbag wouldn't understand the bigger correction, which is what I give the dwarf detective.

"Parental notification isn't required if I'm talking to somebody already in police custody."

He sniffs, stares at me for a long moment, then looks at Officer Lande. "Who's this, Nancy Drew?"

But before she can say anything, his face scrunches up, swallowing his eyes. In the next split second, he sneezes into the open window. Officer Lande slides toward the passenger seat.

Standing—which doesn't make him that much taller than when he was stooping—the detective tugs a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his light-bulb nose, and returns the disgusting rag to his pocket. It makes me feel sick, and it makes me think of that forensic geology case Teddy made me read--the snotty handkerchief whose dirt convicted a killer.

"Simon," Officer Lande says from across the front seat. "What's the harm? Let her talk to him."

He leans in again. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"It's not ‘Sweetheart.’"

"Course not." He makes a face. "So what is it?"

"Raleigh." I don't want to give my last name, since a steady parade of Richmond detectives marches though my dad's criminal courtroom every day, so I keep talking. "And I would appreciate it if you'd let me talk to Titus because I'm probably the only person in Richmond who knows both the victim and the alleged perpetrator."

He looks at Officer Lande. "Where did you find this kid?"

"Simon," she says. "This is the kid who found the shoe."

His beady eyes widen. "You're the kid who found that shoe?" He suddenly smiles. It gives me the same creeps I got at the quarry with Mary Wade Cavanaugh. "Why didn't you say so?"

***

Way back in April, after we found Big Man’s Burgers, Drew showed me one of her collectible baseball cards. It was Titus, from his days playing for Atlanta. The white uniform looked tight on him, the red BRAVES stretched across his huge chest. He held a baseball bat slanted over one shoulder, but what I couldn't stop staring at were his biceps. His arms looked like forged-iron cannonballs. Even in the diner, with a paunch pushing against his apron, Titus looks powerful—The Big Man himself.

But now, as he shuffles into the brightly lit visitor's area at the city jail, an orange jumpsuit floats around him like a deflated life raft. The numbers stenciled on his chest look nothing like that word BRAVES.