“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “I think Dad put a sedative or something like that in Mom’s drink.”

“Tell us more about this,” Graydon said, looking grim.

SO we heard about the Bloody Mary, the mortar and pestle, the pills. Joe Travers, the detective from Huntington Beach, was madly taking notes. Travers either had kids of his own or had questioned children before, because his manner with Carrie quickly won her over. I suppose the fact that no one was trying to stop her from being honest with him helped.

With Zeke Brennan’s able advice, I was able to be honest, too-I just didn’t tell anyone how much I’d wanted to kill Cleo. I was glad for Zeke’s guidance. People who make lawyer jokes should think about how well they’d do with trial by ordeal.

Graydon Fletcher said the name Cleo was familiar to him, although he had not seen her since she was a teenager. “I don’t know if it’s the same person,” he said. Then he pretty much described her exactly, in a younger form.

“Where could we find her?” the detective asked.

“I have no earthly idea. But I will ask my family members to cooperate completely with you.”

An urgent bulletin was issued regarding Roy Fletcher and the children who were with him. The Huntington Beach police were searching for photos. None were on the walls of Roy Fletcher’s home, but Carrie mentioned a digital camera. “Dad kept a few of our pictures on his computer,” she said, although she couldn’t provide a password. That frustrated her, but then she said, “Wait! My camera. Remember, Grandfather? You gave it to me the last time you came to see us. I took our pictures.” She described where it could be found in their room. “Genie might have taken it with her, though,” she cautioned, “when she put my things in the car.”

I marveled as she told us about Genie’s Plan B, thought up on the spur of the moment when she found my voice mail was full. None of these kids were dull-witted.

“Do your brothers and sister look like you?” Detective Travers asked.

“No, we were all-” She broke off and gave me a questioning look. She was already wondering if anything she knew of her family history was true.

“Mr. Fletcher,” I said to Graydon, “Carrie was raised to believe that she was legally adopted at birth. She’s since realized that Bonnie-Victoria-was her birth mother. Do you know any of the details of the adoptions? Did you ever see adoption papers?”

“Why, no. So many of my children have gone on to become adoptive or foster parents…oh.” He looked stricken and fell silent.

Priorities were agreed upon, and the first was to find Roy Fletcher and the children-their legal status was less important than finding them alive.

The next was to locate Cleo Fletcher. When I mentioned that she was dressed as a Las Piernas cop, I was told that Officer Dennis Fletcher’s uniform (reported stolen weeks ago from Fletcher’s Dry Cleaning) had been left behind in the car, and presumably she was wearing something else now. So far, no one knew where she had gone since I saw her dive away from the BMW.

When we were all talked out, a question arose regarding Carrie. Blake had all the papers to prove he had the right to legal custody, but apparently he had studied up on reunions like these and was taking it slowly. As a result, Carrie had gone from being wary of him to being openly curious. She sat next to him and talked to him while I was being questioned separately.

By the time we were calling it quits for the day, a social worker was on the scene as well. When she asked Carrie what she would like to do, Carrie looked at Graydon, and even at me, then turned to Blake and said, “I’m not three anymore.”

“No,” he said, “you’ve grown up.”

“It might be fun to see Squeegee again. And there’s this song I want to ask you about…”

WHEN she left, Graydon Fletcher seemed to age before my eyes.

“Dad,” one of his attorney offspring said, “we’d better get you home.”

“Yes,” he said, “yes.” But before he left, he took hold of my arm with a gnarled hand and reassured me that he was going to do all he could to discover what Giles and Cleo and Roy had been up to. He repeated this reassurance to the Las Piernas detectives.

“Please, please don’t judge the rest of us by their actions,” he said, and released my arm.

I wanted to trust him. I wanted to believe him.

If I hadn’t met Cleo and Giles earlier in the day, I might have been more open-minded. Instead, I wondered if Graydon Fletcher’s family was helping Roy and Cleo flee the country while he distracted us. If they had escaped, they probably had two young boys and a girl with them. A girl who might be Caleb’s sister-living proof of Mason Fletcher’s innocence-with them.

CHAPTER 47

Tuesday, May 2

3:50 P.M.

HIGHWAY 138

CLEO had familiarized herself with the area she had chosen in the desert, so she knew which way she must travel to reach any sort of dwellings. She was in good physical condition, if a little scraped up, and the hike had not been difficult, even carrying her duffel bags. She had stolen a car, a small Honda, from the first home she found. The fuel gauge was nearly registering empty. She didn’t want to risk being videotaped by a gas station security camera, so she drove that to the edge of the nearest cluster of homes that passed for a neighborhood out here. She abandoned the vehicle after thoroughly wiping off anything she had touched-and she had been careful not to touch many surfaces. The Honda would keep police busy searching this area.

Stealing the motorcycle had been easy. She would have preferred to steal a car, but the owner of the motorcycle had been the most careless of his neighbors, and she didn’t have a lot of time to spare. The coveralls had helped her move from house to house without causing alarm-she moved in a determined way, a meter reader or other workman. Opportunity presented itself on her fifth try.

The motorcycle was kept in a garage, but the garage was unlocked. The bike’s key was in the ignition, and the helmet sitting right on it. She mentally called her unknown donor of transportation a fucking idiot.

Putting all her gear on the bike had been problematic, but the owner of the motorcycle had bungee cords on his workbench, and after she changed into her warmest clothes, the bags were less bulky.

The motorcycle owner’s head was a little bigger than hers, so she had to stuff one of her shirts into the helmet to serve as a liner. It looked weird, but no one would see it, because she would keep the face shield on.

She carefully closed the garage door and rode back toward the place where she had abandoned the Honda.

She was careful not to go too near it, but one advantage of wide-open spaces was that you could see a fuss being made from a distance, and clearly, law enforcement and media were already on the scene. She called Irene Kelly a fucking idiot, too.

She cut across an empty dirt road, then made her way to Big Pines Highway. The road twisted and climbed into the San Gabriel Mountains. Soon she was riding through Angeles National Forest. Earlier in the week, what had fallen as rain in Las Piernas arrived here as soft spring snow, although the low, plowed heaps along the roadside were already slushy. So far, the road remained clear, but wet with runoff. There was some traffic, but not enough to be irritating.

SHE kept herself going through the earliest part of the process of escaping the desert through sheer will. For a time, the mountain road required all her concentration. Eventually, though, her thoughts turned to that horrible set of moments in the desert, when she thought she might die.

Until today, she had been in control in every situation. Her careful planning, her preparations, her training were all aimed toward minimizing variables that could result in her death or arrest.