Kisscut

Jeffrey tried to do something with his hands other than beat the man into the ground. He held out his palm, saying, "Give me your wallet."

The man did not hesitate to do as he was told, nor did he protest when Jeffrey took a small spiral notebook out of his pocket and recorded the information.

"Here," Jeffrey said, throwing the wallet so hard at the man that it popped off his chest before he could catch it. "I've got your name now, and your address. You ever come back in this store again, or even think about hanging around that day care, my friend in there will beat the shit out of you." Jeffrey waited a beat. "You understand me?"

"Yes, sir," the man said, his eyes on the ground.

"What's this Web site?" he asked.

The man kept staring at the ground. Jeffrey started to take a step toward him, but the man backed up, holding up his hands.

"It's a girl-lovers newsgroup," he said. "It moves around sometimes. You gotta search for it."

Jeffrey wrote down the phrase, though he was familiar with it from the class.

The man took another drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke in for a second. He finally let it go, asking, "That all?"

"That kid," Jeffrey began, trying to keep his composure. "You ever hurt that kid…"

The man said, "I've never even been with one, okay? I just like looking." He kicked at a rock with his shoe. "They're just so sweet, you know? I mean, how could you hurt something that was so sweet?"

Without thinking, Jeffrey slammed his fist into the man's mouth. A tooth went flying, followed by a stream of blood. The man dropped to the ground again, prepared to take a beating.

Jeffrey walked back to the store, a sickening feeling washing over him.

Chapter Nine

Robert E. Lee High School was what locals called a "super school." This meant that the building was designed to house about fifteen hundred students from the three cities comprising Grant County. As it was, the school was still not large enough, and temporary classrooms-what other people called trailers-were in the back of the building, taking over the baseball field. Grades nine through twelve were offered here, while two middle schools served as feeders for Lee. There were four assistant principals and one principal, George Clay, a man who from all accounts spent most of his time behind his desk pushing paperwork for the governor's i

Brad fiddled with his hat as they walked down the hallway, his police-issue sneakers thumping against the floor. Without thinking, Lena had started to count his steps as they walked up the locker-lined corridor. The place was in-stitutional in its ambiguity, with its bright-white tile floor and muted cement-block walls. To match the school's colors, the lockers were painted a dark red, the walls a darker gray. There were posters cheering the Rebels to victory on every available blank space, but this served more to clutter than to encourage. Bulletin boards urged students to say no to drugs, cigarettes, and sex.

"It seems so small," Brad said, his voice a hushed whisper.

Lena did not roll her eyes at this, though it was hard. Since they had talked to George Clay, Brad had been acting like a high school freshman instead of a cop. Brad even looked the part, with his round face and wispy blond hair that seemed to fall into his eyes every three seconds.

"This is Miss Mac's room," he said, indicating a closed door. He glanced through the window as they passed by. "She taught me English," he said, pushing back his hair.

"Hmm," Lena answered, not looking.

All the doors on the hall were closed between classes, and all of them were locked. Like most rural schools, Lee had taken precautions against intruders. Teachers walked the hallways, and there were two officers, what Jeffrey called "deputy dogs," in the front office in case anything bad went down. As a patrolman, Lena had been called to the school more than her share of times to arrest drug dealers and brawlers. In her experience, perps picked up from school were a hell of a lot harder to deal with than their adult counterparts. Habitual juvenile offenders knew the laws governing their arrests better than most cops, and there was no fear in them anymore.

"Things have changed so much," Brad said, echoing her thoughts. "I don't know how the teachers do it."

"The same way we do," Lena snapped, wanting to cut off the conversation. She had never liked school and was not comfortable being here. Actually, since her interrogation of Mark Patterson, Lena had felt off. She was experiencing an odd mixture of self-assurance from being able to co

"Here we go," Brad said, stopping in front of Je

"How'd you do that?" Brad asked.

"Only geeks use the combinations."

Brad blushed, but covered for it by taking things out of Je

Lena peered into the narrow cabinet, thinking that Je

"That's all," Brad answered, going through the books Lena had already checked.

Lena opened the notebook, which had a puppy on the cover. There were six colored tabs, one for each period, dividing the paper into sections. Almost every page was filled, but as far as she could tell there were only class notes. Je

"She must've been a good student," Lena said.

"She was thirteen and in the ninth grade."

"Is that unusual?"

"Just means she skipped a grade," Brad told her, stacking the books back in the locker the way they had found them. He checked the packet of gum to make sure it was just gum. "She sure was neat."

"Yeah," Lena agreed, handing Brad the notebook. She waited while he thumbed through it, looking for something she might have missed.

"She wrote real neat," Brad said in a sad voice.

"What'd you think of her on the retreat?"

Brad pushed his hair out of his eyes. "She was quiet. I hate to say that I barely noticed her, but the girls pretty much kept to themselves. Mrs. Gray was supposed to be there to help out with them, but she got sick at the last minute. I didn't want to disappoint everybody, and the deposits were nonrefundable…" He shook his head. "The boys were a handful. I had to spend most of my time looking after them."

"What about Je

"Well…" Brad's forehead wrinkled as he thought. "They didn't do much, is the thing. The other kids skied and had fun. Je

"How'd they act?"

"Kind of like they had their own language. They'd look at me and giggle, you know, like girls do." He shifted uncomfortably, and Lena could see exactly why the girls had giggled. Brad probably knew as much about teenage girls as a goat did.

"They didn't act strange?"

"Stranger than giggling for no reason?"

"Brad…" Lena said. She stopped herself before she told him why the girls were laughing at him. Telling him they probably thought he was a dork would only make him pout, and Lena did not want to deal with that for the rest of the day.