Dear Santa Part 5

"The man in the car," Sprite said at once.

"He's afraid of the big man in the black car."

"What car would that be?" Katherine asked.

"I saw it by our house the day after Coyote went away, and yesterday too. The man didn't get out. He sat inside the car and looked over at Tooley's place. He did that for a long time."

Sprite heaved a sigh as if the long speech had ended up to be more than she started out to say and she was glad to have it over.

Katherine patted the child's arm approvingly while Vic and Stefan exchanged worded glances. Men in parked cars watching children were a concern of everybody who worked with kids.

"Did you get a look at the man?" Vic asked.

Sprite drew back a little, and her small hand darted to her mouth again.

"This is Mr. Maltese," Katherine said in the mesmerizing tone that already had Vic as well as Sprite, and maybe even Stefan, under its spell.

"He's a good friend of mine."

Vic felt a ridiculously irrational surge of warmth to hear himself described that way by her. Sprite's fist unclenched and moved slowly away from her fnouth as she looked at Vic with a nervous gaze that went straight to his heart. No child this young should have to be so suspicious and scared. Vic saw way too much of that in his line of work, and he never stopped being upset by it.

"Vica"Mr. Maltesea"wants to know if you saw what the man in the car looked like," Katherine said. She caught Sprite's self-protecting hand where it wavered between her mouth and her lap and held it gently.

"You can talk to Mr. Maltese. He knows Coyote. And he's a good man."

She said those last words so sincerely that Vic's heart couldn't help but swell once more.

"I just saw the top of his face," Sprite said.

"The car had windows you can't see through, but his window was rolled down a little."

Vic was careful to speak in a non-startling way, as Katherine had been doing.

"Do you remember what the part of him you could see looked like?"

Sprite put her other hand on top of Katherine's. The little girl looked as if she was hanging on for dear life, as fear opened her wide eyes ever wider. Vic wished he could be asking her to forget, rather than to remember.

"He had shiny black hair," she said in little more than a whisper.

"What made his hair shiny?" Katherine asked.

Sprite thought for a minute.

"He looked like he just came out of a swimming pool. Like his hair was wet."

"You mean it was slicked back?" Vic asked.

Sprite nodded. Vic didn't want to press her further, but he had to.

"Did you see anything else about the man in the black car?" he asked.

The knuckles of Sprite's small hand were white from clutching on to Katherine's.

"His eyes," Sprite said barely loud enough to be heard. "He had very scary eyes."

TEN BROECK STREET, where Tooley Pennebaker and the Bellaway children lived, had known better days. In the mid-nineteenth century wealthy families of powerful men had made their homes here. Back then, the street was referred to as Millionaires' Row. Vic enjoyed reading the history of this town he'd grown to care about. He didn't enjoy looking at how far some parts of that town had fallen. Here on Ten Broeck Street, the facade of beautiful old St. Joseph's Church was off-limits now behind scaffolding that warned of falling debris. The row houses in this last block before Clinton Avenue were too sad and dingy these days to be called anything like Millionaire's Row. Just Barely Making It Row is more like it, was the thought that crossed Vic's mind as he looked around.

Vic hadn't wanted to bring Katherine along on this chase after a scary-looking man in a black car. All of that might be more the creation of a little girl's imagination, or the waking memory of a nightmare, than anything having to do with real life. Still, there was the possibility of danger. And definitely there was a boy in some kind of trouble. Katherine's confession in the car earlier told him she'd already had trouble enough in her life, and Vic didn't' want to expose her to more of the same. Unfortunately, when he tried to drop her off at the center, she'd refused to get out of the car. So here they were.

"What we're suspecting is a child molester," she was saying.

"Isn't that right?"

"It's one of the possibilities," he answered in a grim tone.

There was nothing he hated more than the kind of animal who preys on children. Vic could feel his rage heat up just thinking about it.

"But, if that's the case, why would Coyote run of Why wouldn't he just tell somebody at the center? We make a big point of letting kids know they can do that and that they should. I'm sure they do the same thing at the school. Why wouldn't he just talk to someone, you for example?"

"Unless the creep is a member of Coyote's family. Kids are more reluctant to talk when that's the case."

Katherine shook her head, and coils of fair hair tumbled around her face from beneath her knit cap. Vic did his best to concentrate on what she was saying instead of on how the chill of the afternoon had brought a bloom to her cheeks, or the way the car heater was now turning her skin dewy.

"I don't think it's a family member," she said.

"Otherwise, Sprite would probably have recognized him or at least made an a.s.sociation with the car."

Vic would have liked to ask her how anybody could be so smart and so beautiful at the same time, but the still-sensible part of his mind told him how corny that would sound. He nodded instead and turned the car heater down a little. Maybe the rising temperature was starting to addle his brain and that was why all he could think about was the way Katherine's mouth naturally curved up slightly at the corners.

When he started wondering what it would be like to place the tip of his tongue there, he knew he had to say something to distract himself.

"Maybe the kid was too afraid or too ashamed to tell someone," Vic said off the top of his head.

Katherine shook her head again.

"That doesn't sound right to me either. If the man in the black car was a child molester, that would make him a threat to Sprite, too. From what Stefan Piatka said, Coyote is very protective of his little sister. I believe that if he thought she was in danger he'd go to somebody for help, no matter how frightened or embarra.s.sed he might be. I have a feeling we've got something other than the usual garden-variety child predator here."

"Do you have any ideas about specifically what that other something might be?"

The reminder of the reality of how much danger Coyote could be in was bringing Vic's head out of its fog of l.u.s.t or infatuationa"or whatevera"fast.

Katherine sighed.

"I don't have a clue, really. Except that I don't like the sound of a shiny new car in a neighborhood this marginal."

"I agree with you there," Vic said.

"Those kind of characters usually come into a neighborhood like this because they're up to no good."

"I'd like to take a closer look."

Her hand was on the door handle and pulling it backward before he could react. She had the door open and was about to get out of the car by the time he could grab her arm. "I'm not sure you should do that," he said.

She turned slowly to look down at his grip on her arm.

"You have a habit of latching on to women, don't you," she said in a tone that made him let go of her immediately.

"Sorry," he said.

"But I thought we already decided that with Sprite back at the school and Coyote on the run and Tooley Pennebaker at work this time of day, according to the school records, their apartment must be deserted."

"I want to take a loOk at it anyway."

She put one foot out of the car, and Vic had to restrain himself from grabbing her again. That was obviously a no-no with her, especially after the way he'd behaved last night.

"What if the bogeyman in the big car is around?" he said.

"Don't you think he'd have figured out the same things we did about the place being deserted this time of day? If he really is watching for Coyote, then we can a.s.sume he wouldn't waste his time here right now."

She slid the rest of the way out of the car then and shut the door behind her with a resolute slam. Vic had no choice but to follow.

KATHERINE HAD MORE than one reason for getting out of the car. The rising tension in there was about to make her jump in her skin. It wasn't just Vic's blasting car heater that warmed her face to the flush she could feel creeping downward to other parts of her. As she sat there talking to him, she'd been unable to ignore the charges of challenge leaping back and forth between them, and that challenge had everything to do with the fact that he was a very s.e.xy man. She'd known many men she thought of as attractive, but very few struck her as s.e.xy. Maybe none had ever struck her this hard. Certainly, something had changed between them in the time they'd spent together. Something had altered the way she viewed Vic Maltese. She could actually feel her temperature mount when she was around him no matter how cold the weather might be. She stepped onto the frigid sidewalk and could see her breath steam in front of her. Still, her cheeks and the back of her neck flamed.

He'd wanted to leave her behind earlier. Now she wished she could do the same with him. These new feelings about Vic came to her entirely unbidden and weren't particularly welcome. She'd been a long time without a man in her life, even longer without a man in her bed.

She'd been taken entirely by surprise when she turned toward him just moments ago in the car, and experienced the unmistakable impact of a spark darting straight from his eyes into hers and, from there, along her nerve endings and through her blood. She knew instantly, of course, what it was. She simply hadn't known it was going to happen.

Meanwhile, he was at the moment following her out of the car, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Katherine hurried into the crunch of snow just off the curb. She started to congratulate herself for wearing more sensible boots today. Then she remembered Vic practically carrying her across the parking lot last night and how that had embarra.s.sed her into wearing the flat, rubber-soled footwear she had on today. Which in turn reminded her that she had been on close terms, if you could call it that, with Vic for less than twenty-four hours now. He shouldn't be igniting pa.s.sions in her, or whatever it was he did, anywhere near so soon. As a matter of fact, she didn't want him, or anyone else, igniting anything in her at all. She had her share of burn scars already.

"Do you know which apartment is theirs?" Vic asked from the other side of the car.

He seemed to want to keep his distance from her as well. She hoped that was what he would do.

"The file at the center listed the apartment only as B,"

she said, ducking her head against a sharp blast of cold she couldn't help but feel even in her present, rather overwrought state.

Katherine continued across the two-lane road. There wasn't much in the way of traffic. The workday activity of State Street and Capitol Hill was many long blocks from here. The house where the Bellaway children lived with their aunt was no worse for wear than the rest of the block but no better off either.

There was a stoop outside the house. Katherine climbed the seven cement steps to the door and checked out the smudged nameplates beneath the doorbells. The Penne-baker plate had "1F" in parentheses after the B. "According to this, I'd guess they're on the first floor in the front, but I can't tell which side of the building that is," she said.

Vic had stopped at the foot of the steps to the stoop. He didn't look like he was about to move closer. Katherine suspected he might have felt the electrical thing between them as well. Maybe he didn't care to be zapped by it again any more than she did. He only nodded in response to her comment.

"I'm going to ring the bell," she added.

She pressed the flat b.u.t.ton that appeared as if it might t once have had the l.u.s.ter of mother-of-pearl. Nothing happened She pressed the bell once more, harder this time, :;4 and a sharp buzz was audible then from what sounded like the right side of the first floor. Katherine waited a long moment but heard nothing more from inside the building. She buzzed again and listened again.

"Like I told you before," Vic said.

"I don't think anybody's at home this time of day, unless Coyote came back here and he's hiding inside."

"And, if he's hiding, he won't answer the bell."

"That would be my guess."

From the stoop, Katherine tried the handle of the door to the entryway of the building, but the door was locked. She cupped her hands around her face and peered through the gla.s.s in the door.

She couldn't see much of anything through the curtain that covered the pane.

"I think I'll take a peek through those windows," she said, indicating the pair that ab.u.t.ted the edge of the stoop.

"Be careful," Vic said.

"You don't want anybody to see you."

He was right. Anyone inside observing her surveillance could be alerted in time to run off, if they hadn't been so alerted already.

Or, a neighbor might notice Katherine snooping around and call the police. She gazed up and down the street but saw no one, not even a face behind a frosty window. She proceeded cautiously to the edge of the stoop and leaned just far enough over the rail to peek around the frame of the first window. What she saw made her pull back and flatten her body against the wall.

"Vic," she said in the loudest whisper she could manage without guaranteeing she'd be heard by anyone who happened to be inside.

"Come here."

She made a quick, beckoning arm motion she hoped would communicate her urgency.

"What?" he asked.

She pressed her gloved finger to her lips.

"Shh."

He apparently took her seriously because he said no more and stepped as noiselessly as was probably possible for a man his size onto the steps.

"What's wrong?" he whispered when he got to her side. "It looks like the place has been trashed."

ii! Chapter Seven *! i Once they had called the police, Katherine retreated across : Ten Broeck Street to lean against Vic's car. Her coat was smudged with winter road soot from its dusty metal surface, but she didn't care.

She breathed deep and drew in air as needle-sharp as Chicago's notorious frigid wind had ever I : been.

She wished she could will her heart to freeze as solid as the ice at the corner of Vic's windshield. In the instant it took for that thought to form and fade away, Katherine understood she should will her heart to freeze against him as well.

Her gaze darted to Tooley Pennebaker's stoop, where Vic stood on the sidewalk with one booted foot on the bottom step as he leaned to listen to the much shorter policeman at his side. A dark lock of Vic's hair fell forward as he leaned down. He shoved the lock back with an impatient swipe of his hand, and she felt the movement like a touch.

She turned quickly away. No matter how confused she might have been emotionally during these past difficult months, there was one thing of which she was absolutely sure. She must not set herself up for loss and devastation again. She was still too vulnerable to risk that.

After Daniel's death, she'd pushed her feelings as far down beneath the surface of herself as she could get them to go.