Bricker glances at the photographs lying on the desk beside him, and then he squints at the screen again. “What about them?”

“Do you remember that man and woman being passengers on the bus you drove from Killeen to Houston earlier today?”

“Why wouldn’t I remember them? Or at least her. She’s maybe almost sixty, but she’s still a looker, and she sure had an eye for me. A lot of the ladies think us bus drivers are romantic figures, always off to some far place.”

“What do you mean, she had an eye for you?” According to what Gottfrey knows about Clare Hawk, this doesn’t sound like her. “How could you tell she had an eye for you?”

Leaning back in his chair, Bricker smiles smugly and shakes his head. “No offense intended, but if by your age you haven’t learned to see the love light shining in some beauty’s eyes, you probably can’t never be taught how.”

When Vince Penn snickers at this statement, Gottfrey restrains himself from putting the bus driver in his place with a sharp rebuke and from shooting Vince dead, thereby removing him from the script.

“Mr. Bricker, can you tell me where they got off the bus?”

“It was a full-booked run, door-to-door, no in-betweeners. They got off in Houston.”

“You remember seeing them get off?”

Bricker broods for a moment. “They could’ve got off while I was at the exterior luggage compartments, getting people’s bags.”

“Did this man and woman have luggage?”

“I think … maybe just carry-on … maybe none.”

“Well, the problem is, we’ve reviewed the security video in Houston. They never disembarked there.”

The look of bewilderment underlying Bricker’s other expressions takes command of his rubbery face. “I don’t know what that means.”

“When all the passengers have received their luggage, do you return to the bus to be sure everyone has gotten off?”

“I generally walk the aisle, take a look around. Wasn’t anyone there.”

“Is there a lavatory on board the bus?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you always check the lavatory at the end of a trip?”

“Sometimes.”

“Why not always, routinely?”

Getting defensive, Bricker says, “I don’t clean toilets. Only reason to check the lav is if there’s a couple passengers you think might have a habit, one of them might go in there to shoot up, so you find a junkie dead of an overdose.”

“Has that ever happened to you?”

“No. But I heard of it.”

“So you didn’t check the lavatory this time?”

“There wasn’t any obvious freak aboard. They were a straight-arrow bunch, nice and quiet from Killeen to Houston.”

“What happens to the bus after you’ve off-loaded the luggage and all the passengers are gone?”

“I drove a different bus to San Antone. The one from Killeen, it was cleaned, fueled, serviced as needed, got ready for its next leg. I don’t know maintenance routine. You’ll have to ask somebody else about maintenance routine. Can I go now or am I in trouble?”

“Why would you be in trouble, Mr. Bricker?”

“No good reason. But the law does get it wrong sometimes.”

After a silence, Gottfrey says, “You aren’t in trouble. But I would be remiss if I didn’t make sure you understood that lying to an agent of the FBI is a crime.”

After a silence of his own, Bricker says, “I didn’t lie. What would I have to lie about? I just drove from Killeen to Houston.”

“I’m happy for you, Mr. Bricker. I’m happy you didn’t lie. When people do lie, we always find out sooner or later.”

51

THE FRECKLE-FACED LITTLE BITCH keeps smirking at Janis Dern. She’s been told to keep her smart mouth shut or it’ll be taped shut, so she doesn’t speak. But the kid can mock and insult with a look as well as with a word.

If Francine, the eldest of the four Dern sisters, wasn’t still alive, Janis would need to consider that this tomboy bitch is the very reincarnation of the other.

To discourage rebellion against this illegal detention, the ten employees have been locked in Stable 2. The exits from the long building are being guarded by Pedro and Alejandro Lobo.

Some of the detainees have spouses or others who expect them to return home at a certain time. They have made carefully monitored phone calls to explain that they will be working late. Very late.

The family poses a different problem. They draw strength and confidence from one another. As a unit, they’re dangerous. To better manage them and to prevent them from conspiring to do something reckless, they have been separated.

Here at the house, Alexis Longrin is shackled to a chair at the kitchen table, watched over by Chris Roberts. Chase Longrin has been locked in a windowless half bath off the downstairs hall, sitting on the toilet, cuffed ankle to ankle and wrist to wrist, with a trammeling line that links the cuffs and prevents him from standing.

Paloma Sutherland, who has left Sally Jones alone to block the driveway with the Cadillac Escalade, is with the two younger girls—eight-year-old Daphne and six-year-old Artemis—in the bedroom that they share. Paloma has a way with younger children. They might even like being imprisoned by her. Anyway, Daphne and Artemis are too young to have been fully corrupted by twelve-year-old Laurie, though Daphne earlier exhibited moments of spirited resistance.

Janis has assigned herself to the oldest of the Longrin girls.

Posters decorate Laurie’s room. Horses standing proud. Horses galloping. Airborne skateboarders performing ollies and flips. A solemn Marine in the Corps’ most formal dress mess uniform, right arm across his chest, hand on the hilt of his Mameluke sword.

Laurie’s ankles are zip-tied to the front stretcher bar of her desk chair, preventing her from getting to her feet. Her left hand is likewise bound to an arm of the chair.

Janis leaves the girl’s right hand free, as an insult. “You need one hand to pick your nose. You look like a girl who picks her nose a lot. Do you eat your boogers? You sure look like a geek girl who eats her boogers. You want to give me the screw-you finger, don’t you? That’s the kind of crude, rude girl you are, so I left your hand free for that, too. But you know what? If you give me the finger, I’ll use the butt of my pistol on it, like a hammer, break all three knuckles. You’re done giving me shit. I won’t take any more.”

Laurie neither sulks nor cringes timidly. She sits in stoic indifference, though she is alert to everything Janis does.

A bookcase contains perhaps a hundred volumes, paperbacks and hardcovers, all young-adult novels. Janis has never read any of the books, has never heard of any of the authors. But she spends a few minutes examining the collection, making little sounds of derisive amusement or sighing or shaking her head, conveying contempt for the girl’s puerile taste in literature.

She searches the dresser drawers as well, disarranging the contents. She withdraws some garments for a closer look and then drops them on the floor, treading carelessly on them when she suspects the items are ones the girl particularly likes.

Finally she picks up a side chair and carries it to the desk and sits, facing Laurie. Janis says nothing, but only stares at her prisoner’s profile.

After a while, Laurie glances at her, expressionless, and then turns her head forward once more to contemplate the desk.

“What’s all this shit on the walls?” Janis asks.

Laurie says nothing.

“It’s okay, you can talk. I won’t tape your mouth shut. What kind of girl’s room is this, anyway?”

“It’s stuff I like.”

“I don’t see any girl things.”

“Horses are girl things. Lots of girls love horses.”

“Okay, but what I don’t see is any girly things.”

Laurie says nothing.

“When will you turn thirteen?”

“Next month. What’s it to you?”

“Do you skateboard?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s with the semper fi T-shirt and the poster? You want to be a Marine someday?”

“I could be if I wanted.”

From a distance of maybe two feet, Janis stares at the girl’s profile in silence. Finally she says, “So are you a lesbo?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Other girls, real girls, they’d have posters of boy bands.”

“Boy bands and actors—that’s not who’s cool,” Laurie says.

“So who do you think is cool? Girl bands, actresses with long smooth legs and wet mouths you could kiss?”

Laurie faces Janis again and glares at her. “You’re disgusting. Crude and stupid.”

Janis smiles knowingly. “So who do you think is cool?”

“People who do what’s right but tough to do, what takes guts, what takes a spine.”

“Well, you know, it takes a spine for a lesbo to out herself,” Janis taunts.