“Got it, Konnie. Go ahead.”

The detective explained that he had called the Leesburg police and spoken to a detective there. “Here’s what happened. This old lady, Greta Hanson, fell and broke her hip last week. Fell down her back stairs. Serious but not too serious. She’s eighty. You know how it is.”

“Right.”

“Okay, today she’s tanked up on painkillers, really out of it, and she hears her son-your Dr. Hanson-hears him telling her that it looks like the end of the road, they found cancer, she only has a few months left. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The pain’s gonna be terrible. Tells her it’s best to just finish herself off, it’s what everybody wants. He’s pretty persuasive, sounds like. Leaves her a syringe of Nembutal. She says she’ll do it. She sticks herself but a nurse finds her in time. Anyway, she’s pretty doped up but tells ‘em what happened and the administrator calls the cops. They find the son in the gift shop buying a box of candy. Supposedly for her. They collar him. He denies it all, of course. What else is he going to say? So. End of story.”

“And this all happens fifteen minutes before Bert and I are going to talk to him about Megan? It’s no coincidence, Konnie. Come on.”

Silence from Fairfax.

“Konnie. You hear me?”

“I’m telling you the facts, Counselor. I don’t comment otherwise.”

“She’s sure it was her son who talked to her?”

“She said.”

“But she was drugged up. So maybe it was somebody else talking to her.”

“Maybe. But-”

“We can talk to Hanson?”

“Nope. Not till the arraignment on Monday. And he’s probably not gonna be in any mood even then.”

“All right. Answer me one question. Can you look up what kind of car he drives?”

“Who? Hanson? Yeah, hold on.”

Tate heard typing as he filled Bett in on what Konnie’d said.

“Oh, my,” she said, hand rising to her mouth.

A moment later the detective came back on the line. “Two cars. A Mazda nine two-nine and a Ford Explorer. Both this year’s models.”

‘What colors?“

“Mazda’s green. The Explorer’s black.”

“It was somebody else, Konnie. Somebody was following Megan.”

“Tate, she took the train to New York. She’s going to see the Statue of Liberty and hang out in Greenwich Village and do whatever kids do in New York and-”

“You know the Bust-er Book?”

“What the hell is a buster book?” the detective grumbled.

“Kids at Jefferson High are supposed to write down anybody who comes up and offers them drugs or candy or flashes them.”

“Oh, that shit. Right.”

“A friend of Megan’s said there’d been a car following her. In the Bust-er Book, some kids reported a gray car parked near the school in the afternoon. And Megan herself reported it last week.”

“Gray car?”

“Right.”

A sigh. “Tate, lemme ask you. Just how many kids go to that school of hers?”

“I’m not saying it’s a good lead, Konnie-”

“And just how many parents in gray cars pick ‘em up?”

“-but it is a lead.”

“Tag number? Make, model, year?”

Tate sighed. “Nothing.”

“Look, Counselor, get me at least one of the above and we’ll talk… So, what’re you thinking, somebody snatched her? The Amtrak schedule is bogus?”

“I don’t know. It’s just fishy.”

“It’s not a case, Tate. That’s the watchword for today. Look, I gotta go.

“One last question, Konnie. Does she have cancer? Hanson’s mother?”

The detective hesitated. “No. At least it’s not what they’re treating her for.”

“So somebody talked her into believing she’s dying. Talked her into trying to kill herself.”

“Yeah. And that somebody was her son. He could have a hundred motives. Gotta go, Counselor.”

Click.

He relayed to Bett the rest of his conversation with Konnie.

“Megan was seeing a therapist who tried to kill his mother? God.”

“I don’t know, Bett,” he said. “You saw his face. Did he look guilty?”

“He looked caught,” she said.

Tate glanced at his watch. It was two-thirty. “Let’s get back to Fairfax and find that teacher. Eckhard.”

Crazy Megan finally gets a chance to talk.

Listen up, girl. Listen here, kiddo. Biz-nitch, you listening? Good. You need me. This is serious… You’re not sneaking cigarettes in the Fair Oaks mall parking lot. You’re not flirting with a George Mason junior to get him to buy you a pint of Comfort or Turkey. You’re not sitting in Amy’s room, snarfing wine, hating it and saying it’s great, while you’re like, “Sure, I come every time Josh and Ifuck…

Leave me alone, Megan thought.

But G.M. won’t have any of her attitude. She snaps, You hate the world. Okay. What you want- A family is what I want, Megan responded. That’s all I wanted.

Oh. Well, that’s precious, her crazy side offers, nice and sarcastic. Who the fuck doesn’t? You want Mommy and Daddy to wave their magic wand and get you out of here? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, ain’t going to happen, girl. So get off your fat ass and get out.

I can’t move, Megan thought. I’m scared, I’m tired.

Up, girl. Up. Look, he- And who is he?

Crazy Megan is in good form today. What difference does it make? He’s the bogeyman, he’s Jason, he’s Leather face, he’s Freddy Krueger, he’s your father- All right, stop it. You’re like so… tedious.

But C.M.’s wound up now. He’s everything bad, he’s your mother giving Brad a blow job, he’s the barn at your father’s farm, he’s an inconvenient child, he’s a whispering bear- “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Megan screamed out loud. But nothing stops Crazy Megan when she gets going. It doesn’t matter who he is. Don’t you get it? He thinks you’re locked up tight in your little padded cell. But you’re not. You’re out. And you may not have much time. So get your shit together and get the hell out of here.

I don’t have any clothes, Megan pointed out.

That’s the girl 1 love. Oooo. The sarcasm is thick as Noxema. Sit back and find excuses, Let’s see: You’re pissed ‘cause Mom’s off to Baltimore to fuck Mr. Rogers and do you say anything about it? No. It rags you that Dad fits you in around his dates with girls who’ve got inflatable boobs but do you bitch about it? Do you call him on it? No. You go off and get drunk. You have another cigarette. What other distractions can we come up with? Nail polish, CDs, Victoria ’s Secret Taco Bell the mall the multiplex a boy’s fat dick gossip…

I hate you, Megan thought. I really, really hate you. Go away, go back where you came from.

lam where I came from, Crazy Megan responds. You may have some time to fuck around like this, whining, and you may not. Now, you’re buck naked and you don’t like it. Well, if that’s an issue, go find some clothes. And, no, there’s no Contempo Casual around here. Of course, I personally would say, Fuck the clothes, find a door and run like hell. But that’s up to you.

Megan rolled to her feet.

She stepped into the corridor.

Cold, painful. Her feet stung from kicking the wall. She started walking. Looking around, she saw it was a rambling place, one story; and built of concrete blocks. All the windows had thick bars on them. With the padded cell, she figured it was a mental hospital but she couldn’t imagine treating patients here. It was totally depressing. No one could have gotten better here.

She found a door leading outside and pushed it. It was locked tight. The same with two others. She looked outside for a car, didn’t see one in the lot. At least she was alone. Dr. Peters must have left.

Keep going, Crazy Megan insists.

But- Keep. Going.

She did.

The place was huge, wing after wing, dozens of corridors, gloomy wards, private rooms, two-bed rooms. But all the doors leading outside were sealed tight and all the windows were barred. Every damn one of them. Two large interior doorways had been bricked off sloppily with cinder blocks and Sakrete-maybe because they led to less restricted wings. Dozens of the large concrete blocks that hadn’t been needed lay scattered on the floor. She picked up one and slammed it into a barred window. It didn’t even bend the metal rods.