All cats see in the dark.

Midnight is a cat…

“Officer,” Tate said calmly, offering a casual smile, “you’ve got nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing. I'm not going anywhere. If you check him out, if you send a couple officers out to his house then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Anything. No hassle. We have a deal?”

One of the detectives sighed. He shrugged and stepped out the door.

Therefore Midnight sees in the dark.

Tate pictured Megan, bound and gagged, lying somewhere in a basement. Matthews standing over her. Undressing. It was a terrible image and, once thought, wouldn’t go away.

“Have you ever had sexual relations with Amy Walker?”

He tamped down his anger. “I’ve never met her,” he answered.

“Did you send your daughter off somewhere because she knew you were stalking Amy Walker? And did you fabricate a kidnapping charge?”

“No, I didn’t do that.” Struggling now to stay calm, to stay helpful. Really struggling. He looked at the doorway through which the other cop had disappeared. Were they sending a hostage rescue team to Matthews’s house? Or just patrol officers? Matthews could trick them. He could lull them into complacency-oh, yes, he had the gift too. Tate now understood.

You can’t negotiate with someone like Matthews. You need to act- immediately.

The silence of the deed.

“Did you kill Amy Walker?”

“No, I did not.”

“When was the last time you drove your daughter’s car?”

“A month or so ago, I think.”

“Is that how your fingerprints got on the door handle of her car?”

“It would have to be.”

“Could we run through the events just prior to her disappearance once more?”

“Prior?”

“Say, for the week before.”

Tate glanced out the door, squinted. Looked again. The second detective came back into the cubicle. Tate asked, “Did you send a team to his house? I should have told you to send hostage rescue. Not regular officers. And don’t listen to him. Whatever he says, Megan’s there, in the house. Tell whoever’s on their way not to listen to him.”

“He wasn’t home.”

‘What?” Tate asked. He didn’t understand. The officers couldn’t have gotten there so quickly.

“I called him. He wasn’t home.”

“You called him?” Tate’s heart stuttered.

“Relax, sir, I didn’t tell him anything. Just asked him to give us a call about some parking tickets.” The slick young cop seemed proud of his cleverness.

“Jesus Christ, you don’t have to tell him anything. Are you crazy?”

“Sir, we don’t have to pay any attention to your story at all, you know. We’re doing you a favor.”

Tate sat back, glanced into the hail again.

After a moment he looked back at the officers again. Closed his eyes and sighed. “You win. Okay, you win.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“I’ll waive my rights and tell you everything I can think of. No confession but a full statement about my daughter and Amy Walker But I want some coffee and I’ve got to use the john.”

They looked at each other and nodded.

“I’m coming with you,” the first detective muttered.

Tate laughed. “I was a commonwealth’s attorney for ten years. I’m not going to escape.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Tate gave a disgusted sigh and walked into the scuffed halls, which resembled a suburban grade school, He ambled to the men’s room and pushed inside. The detective was directly behind him.

He stood at the urinal for an inordinately long time. When he’d finished and washed his hands he stepped to the door and pushed it open, bumping into the woman who was juggling three large law books and several pads of foolscap, which tumbled to the floor.

“Sorry,” Tate said, bending down to pick up the books.

Bett McCall glanced at him, said, “No problem.” And slipped the pistol out of her purse and into his hand.

Tate didn’t even pause to think-he simply spun around, shoved the Smith & Wesson into the belly of the shocked detective and pushed him back into the men’s room as Bett calmly retrieved the books.

In one minute Tate had gagged and cuffed the furious cop and relieved him of his gun. He tossed it in the wastebasket.

“The cuffs too tight?” he asked. The detective stared angrily. “Are they too tight?”

A nod.

Tate snapped, “Good.”

And stepped out into the corridor as a faint rumble arose in the john, like a low-Richter earthquake. The detective was trying to pull down the stall.

When he’d looked into the hallway from the interrogation room he couldn’t believe that he’d seen her standing there, motioning with her head down the hall. “How did you get in here?” he asked as they walked briskly toward the exit.

“Told them I was a lawyer.”

“You cite a case or two?”

“I could have.” She smiled. “I memorized the names of a couple on your desk. I was going to tell the desk sergeant I had to see my client because these new cases had just been put down.”

“It’s ‘handed down,’ “Tate corrected.

“Oh. Glad he didn’t ask.”

“I don’t know if we can get out that way. I came in under my own steam but the desk officer might know I’ve been arrested.” He looked back down the corridor. “Five minutes, tops, till they come looking.”

She rearranged the books she was carrying so the cover showed. A school hornbook, Williston on Contracts.

He laughed. “That’ll fool ‘em.” Then asked, “You got my message?”

She nodded. “I called Konnie and his assistant told me you’d been arrested. I couldn’t decide whether to get a lawyer or the gun. I figured we didn’t have time to wait for public defenders. My car’s outside.”

The old Bett McCall might have meditated for days, hoping for guidance. The new one went right for the Smith & Wesson.

They paused just before they turned the corner beside the guard station. He took a breath. “Ready?”

“I guess.”

“Let’s go.”

Tate started forward, Bett at his side. The guard glanced at them but out they strolled without a hitch, signing the “time departed” line in the logbook scrupulously-one a phony prosecutor and one a phony defense lawyer and both of them now felons.

Aaron Matthews was driving, seventy, then eighty miles an hour.

Anger had given way to sorrow. To the same piercing hollowness he’d felt in the months after Peter had died in prison. Sorrow at plans gone wrong, terribly wrong.

Matthews had been at his rental house, off Route 29, waiting to see if he’d finally stopped Tate Collier. He believed he had. He’d given up on the subtlety, given up on the words, given up on the delicious art of persuasion. Stiff with anger, he’d dragged the Walker girl, screaming, from the trunk of his car. Said nothing, convinced her of nothing-he’d just slashed and slashed and slashed… All of his anger flowing from him as hot and sudden as the blood from her body. He’d called from a pay phone to report seeing a body then had sped home.

There the phone had rung. He hadn’t answered but listened to the message as the officer left it. Some bullshit about traffic tickets. “Give us a call when you get home. Thank you.”

It meant, of course, that they knew about him. Or suspected, at least.

How had it happened? Why hadn’t they just tossed Collier into the lockup and ignored him? Maybe he had actually convinced them that he was innocent and that Matthews had kidnapped the girl. The fucking silver-tongued devil! An angry, sorrowful mood exploded within Matthews like napalm.

It was only a matter of time now before they found Blue Ridge Facility. They knew his name, they’d find out his connection there, and they’d find Megan.

He stared out the window for a moment. Then closed his eyes.

In a perfect world, moods don’t burn you like torches, juries work pure justice and revenge befalls sinners in exact proportion to their crimes. In a perfect world Matthews would have kept Megan McCall as his child forever, a replacement for Peter. And Tate Collier would have lived in despair all his life, never knowing where she was-knowing only that she’d fled from him, propelled by undiluted hate.