Matthews offered another conspiratorial smile then glanced at a girl bending down to pick up a ball. Gave a faint sigh. Eckhard followed his gaze and nodded.

The girl stood up. Eckhard said, “ Nancy. She’s nine. Fifth grade.”

“Pretty. You wouldn’t happen to have any pictures of her, would you?”

“I do.” Eckhard paused. “In a nice skirt and blouse, I seem to recall.”

Matthews wrinkled his nose. Shrugged.

He wondered if the man would take the bait.

Snap.

Eckhard whispered, “Well, not the blouse in all of them.”

Matthews exhaled hard. “You wouldn’t happen to have any with you?”

“No. You have any of yours?”

Matthews said, “I keep all of mine on my computer.”

One of Matthews’s patients had seven thousand images of child pornography on computer. He’d traded them with other pedophiles while he’d been serving time for a molestation charge; the computer they resided on was the warden’s at Hammond Falls State Penitentiary in Maryland. The prisoner had written an encryption program to keep the files secret. The FBI cracked it anyway and, despite his willingness to go through therapy; the offense earned him another ten years in prison.

Matthews said, “I don’t have too many in my collection. Only about four thousand.”

Eckhard’s eyes turned to Matthews and they were vacuums, He whispered a long, envious ‘Well..

Matthews added, “I’ve got some videos too. But only about a hundred of them.”

“A hundred?”

Eckhard shifted on the bench. Matthews knew the teacher was lost. Completely. He’d be thinking: At worst, it’s entrapment and I can beat it in court. At worst, I can talk my way out of it. At worst, I’ll flee the country and move to Thailand… As a therapist Matthews was continually astonished at how easily people won completely unwinnable arguments with themselves.

Still, you land a fish with as much care as you hook it.

“You seem worried…,” Matthews started. “And I have to say, I don’t know you, and I’m a little nervous myself. But I’ve just got a feeling about you. Maybe we could help each other out… Let me show you a couple of samples of what I’ve got.”

The teacher’s eyes flickered with lust.

Always the eyes.

“That’d be fine. That’d be good. Please.” Eckhard cleared his excited throat.

Oh, you pathetic thing…

“I could give you a computer disk.” Matthews suggested.

“Sure. That’d be great.”

“I only live about three blocks from here. Let me run up to my house and get some samples.”

“Good.”

“Oh,” Matthews said, pausing. A frown. “I only have girls.”

“Yes, yes. That’s fine,” Eckhard said breathlessly. A bead of spit rested in the corner of the mouth. Desperately he asked, “Can you go now?”

“Sure. Be right back.” Matthews started up the street.

He turned and saw the teacher, a stupid smile on his face, grinning from ear to ear, looking out over the field of his sad desire, rubbing his thumb over the disposable camera.

In the drugstore once again, Matthews walked up to the pay phone and called 911.

When dispatch answered he said urgently, “Oh, you need somebody down to Markus Avenue right away! The sports field behind Jefferson School.” He described Eckhard and said, “He took a little girl into the alley and pulled his, you know, penis out. Then took some pictures. And I heard him ask her to his house. He said he’s got lots of pictures of little girls like her on his computer. Pictures of little girls, you know… doing it. Oh, it’s disgusting. Hurry up! I’m going back and watch him to make sure he doesn’t get away”

He hung up before the dispatcher could ask for his identity.

Matthews didn’t know if snapshots of a fully dressed little girl in a school yard next to frames of a man’s erect dick (Matthews’s own penis, taken in the drugstore rest room twenty minutes ago) were an offense, but once the cops got a search warrant for the man’s house Eckhard would be out of commission-and a completely unreliable witness about a gray Mercedes or anything else-for a long, long time.

By the time he was back on the street, walking toward his car, Matthews heard the sirens.

Fairfax County apparently took children’s well-being very seriously.

Tate and Bett arrived at the school yard, taking care to avoid the main building, just in case the clean-cut young fascist of a security guard had happened to glance inside the Bust-er Book after Tate and Bett had left and found twenty pages missing.

But volleyball practice had been canceled for today, it seemed. Nobody quite knew why.

In fact the yard was almost deserted, despite the clear skies.

They found two students and asked if they’d seen Eckhard. They said they hadn’t. One teenage girl said, “We were coming here for the practice.”

“Volleyball?”

“Right. And what it was was somebody said it’s been canceled and we should all go home. And stay away from here. Totally weird.”

“And you haven’t seen Mr. Eckhard?”

“Somebody said he had to go someplace. But they didn’t tell us where. I don’t know. He was here earlier. I don’t get it. He’s always here. I mean, always.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“ Fairfax someplace. I think.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Robert.”

Tate called directory assistance and got his number then called. There was no answer. He left a message. He looked out over the school yard for a moment and had a thought. Tate asked his ex-wife, “Where did she hang out?”

“Hang out?” Bett asked absently. He saw her looking into her purse, eyes on the letter containing her daughter’s searing words.

“Yeah, with her friends. After school,”

She looked up. “Just around. You know”

“But where? We’ll go there, ask if anybody’s seen her.”

There was a long hesitation. Finally she said, “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not?” Tate asked, surprised. “You don’t know where she goes?”

“No,” Bett answered testily “Not all the time. She’s a seventeen-year-old girl with a driver’s license.”

“Oh. So you don’t know where she’d spend her afternoons.”

“Not always, no.” She glanced at him angrily. “It is not like she hangs out in southeast D.C., Tate.”

“I just-”

“Megan’s a responsible girl. She knows where to go and where not to go. I trust her.”

They walked in silence back to the car. Bett grabbed her phone again and her address book. She began making calls-to Megan’s friends, he gathered. At least she had their numbers, if not Megan’s boyfriend’s. Still, it irked him that she didn’t seem to know much basic information-important information-about the girl.

When they arrived at the car she folded up the phone. “Her favorite place was called the Coffee Shop. Up near Route fifty.” Bett sounded victorious. “Like Starbucks. All right? Happy?”

She dropped into the seat and crossed her arms. They drove in silence north along the parkway.