Sketchy Behavior (12 page)

She left.

I looked at the drawing. A man in his early thirties wearing a hood and aviator glasses looked back at me.

“Think it will help?” I asked Detective Masterson.

He picked up the pad. “I think you are a very talented artist. And beyond that, you have a natural affinity toward forensic sketching, Kate.”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.”

“You put the witness at ease, you asked questions that went beyond the description, and you really made her feel comfortable enough to tell you what she saw.” Detective Masterson was smiling proudly at me. “I think you did great.”

I smiled.

I stretched my hands out in front of me, popping my knuckles. My fingers were sore, but my headache was worse. I chugged another cup of water and stood, stretching.

“Well, how did it go?” Deputy Slalom asked, walking in.

“She did great, sir. Here’s the sketch.” Detective Masterson handed the pad to the deputy.

Deputy Slalom took it and studied it for a minute, eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” he said. “Send this to all the news networks and let’s get some flyers made. I want the hermit who lives four counties over to know what this guy looks like. Got it?”

Detective Masterson grinned at me. “Yes, sir.”

T
HE SKETCH WAS ON THE FIVE O’CLOCK NEWS WHEN WE
got back to my house. Mom had apparently just gotten home; her car was making those weird popping and hissing sounds like when you first turn the engine off. Dad still wasn’t there yet.

She was sitting in the living room watching Ted Deffle on KCL when DJ, Detective Masterson, and I walked in.

The picture I drew was plastered on the TV. Mom looked over at me from the sofa.

“Your work?” she asked.

I nodded and sat next to her. She put her arm around me.

Ted was talking. “This is the description of a man thought to be the shooter at last Sunday’s parade, which left a member of our fine police force in the hospital. If you recognize this man, please call the hotline number listed on the screen. All calls are considered anonymous.”

The picture changed back to Ted’s fake-sun-tanned face. “In other news, people are still talking about the devastating events that occurred at the May Day parade …”

“So,” Mom said, turning Ted to mute. “You skipped school and went to ‘the dentist.’ “ She looked at DJ and Detective Masterson, then back to me. “Your idea or theirs?”

“Mine,” I said. “The skipping school part, at least.”

“Uh-huh. Remember last year when you caught mono? You
refused to stay home and sleep? I basically had to tie you down in bed because you were so worried about missing school.” She looked at me in the eyes. “Today doesn’t sound like you.”

“Does anything that’s happened in the last week sound normal?” I asked. “Other kids’ parents are flipping out about their kids’ safety now. There was like a third of school who wasn’t there today, thanks to me.”

Mom sighed. “So, you left.”

“Maybe it’s better if I just stay here for a while. Maddy can bring me my homework and I’ll keep up with everything here.” I gasped. “Maddy!” She was supposed to come over today after school and I totally forgot about it.

I don’t have a cell phone. What if she waited on my front porch for an hour before finally giving up? Or worse, what if a news crew was here and they made her give an interview?

Or much worse …

I shut my eyes, not wanting to think about
that
scenario.

“She left a message saying she wasn’t going to be able to come over today after all,” Mom said, patting my arm. Then she looked at me wryly. “She had a dentist appointment.”

Detective Masterson started laughing. DJ smiled.

Mom just smiled and sighed. “Your father is on his way home, so I’m going to go start making dinner. We can talk about the you-staying-home-from-school idea when he gets home.” She ran her hand through the back of my hair, like she used to when I was a little kid, before she stood and left the room.

Detective Masterson sat down in the recliner. “So, no more school for you?” he asked.

I sighed. “What if the other kids’ parents are right and I’m just a big bull’s-eye to all of them?”

The muted TV was flashing the picture I’d just drawn again, along with the hotline number.

“How many calls do you guys usually get on stuff like this?” I asked.

DJ sat on the opposite end of the couch from me and sighed, looking over at Detective Masterson. “Um … maybe a good two hundred? Three hundred depending on how publicized the case is.” He shrugged. “Most of them are from people who swear they saw that man in front of them in the grocery store.”

“Do you go check all of them out?”

Detective Masterson nodded. “Unless they are completely ridiculous, then yes, we do.”

It seemed like a lot of busywork to me, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I reached for the phone, because I needed to tell Maddy to get my homework for me.

She answered her cell phone on the second ring. “Well, if it isn’t Kate Escape,” she said, and I could hear the grin in her voice.

“What?” I asked.

“Kate Escape. It’s what everyone at school is calling you since you left this morning. Personally, I think it’s kind of catchy.” She sighed. “Wish I’d come up with it.”

Fabulous. Now I’m a juvenile delinquent and I have a trendy new nickname. Dad was going to make me memorize his calculus books for fear that I’m morphing into the next resident at the juvy hall near here.

“Clever,” I said.

“So, why’d you leave, Kate?”

“Everyone is scared when I get there. All the parents are rioting. It’s better for me to just stay home.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about the parent thing. They asked my dad if he was going to go.”

“Did he?”

“Kate, considering he didn’t even make it to my junior high graduation, what do you think?”

True. Bad question to ask. Maddy’s parents tend to use stuff to make up for their lack of affection. They missed junior high graduation and gave her the complete set of
Friends
DVDs. Her shiny brand-new Tahoe? She had been asking them for weeks to try and
make it to the huge school debate that she was in, and both her mom and dad had promised to be there. Then they didn’t show.

So, they gave her a car.

Maddy rarely talked about it.

Part of me figured that’s why she had such bad taste in boys.

“Anyway, I had a dentist appointment this afternoon, so I’m sorry I didn’t come by. But I’m cavity free and the dentist said that for as straight as my teeth are, I should never need braces.”

“Nice,” I said, looking at the TV. DJ had switched it from the news to a baseball game.

“Yeah. And I didn’t finish there until almost four, so I just decided to come home instead.”

“That’s fine,” I said. The pitcher had now thrown six pitches to the same batter.

This is why I dislike baseball.

Actually, sports in general. What’s the point?

Answer — there is no point. It’s a bunch of grown men in weird costumes accomplishing nothing.

I was never a big fan of those little-kid sports movies.

“Maddy,” I said, before I forgot. “I think I’m going to stay home tomorrow, so could you bring my homework by after school?” Tomorrow was Friday. Maybe something drastic would happen over the weekend, and I could go back to school as just boring old Kate Carter. None of this Kate Escape business.

“You’re staying home? This isn’t because of what those mean old parents were talking about, is it? Because, gosh, Kate, they are just being ridiculous.”

I thought about Officer DeWeise getting out of the hospital today and shook my head. “Maybe not so ridiculous, Maddy.”

“Whatever.
I
think it’s ridiculous.”

“Anyway. Could you just gather up my homework for me?”

“I guess. I still think you should just come to school. But yeah, I’ll get your homework. Need anything dropped off?”

I knew I had a big math test on Monday, but maybe the policemen
could get my teacher to let me do a makeup. He hated giving makeups.

“I don’t think so. Not right now, anyway.”

“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then.”

We hung up.

Friday morning dawned bright and sunny, and my eyes popped open at six forty-five out of sheer habit.

I was going to live to be one of those old people who couldn’t sleep in if someone paid them.

I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but my brain was already buzzing.

What if someone had identified the sketch I drew? What if that man was in prison right this very minute? What if Detective Masterson was making pancakes again for breakfast?

My stomach growled.

I sighed and gave up on going back to sleep. There was a stack of calculus textbooks from Dad next to the bed.

“I’m just worried that you’ll be bored at home,” he’d said last night at dinner.

Because calculus is usually the first thing I turn to when I get bored.

Mom had another option. “Why don’t you get out that journal I gave you a long time ago and start writing down some of your thoughts?” she’d suggested.

That sounded about as fun as the calculus, considering my thought processes these days.

She’d given me the journal back in the eighth grade, and I’d written in it once.

Mom gave me this journal so I will grow up to be a healthy
,
active adult who cares about her psyche and her community.

Yay.

And that was all I’d written. I was pretty certain that journaling was not going to be my stress-relief method of choice.

I finally got out of bed at seven and went to take a shower. DJ was already up — his air mattress was already stowed out of the way. He and Detective Masterson were alternating sleeping on the mattress in the hallway during the night.

I had no idea how they still managed to carry on an intelligent conversation when they each only got about four hours of sleep every night. But I’d yet to hear them complain about being tired or even seen them yawn.

Policemen are a different breed of males.

I pulled on a pair of black track pants, white socks, and a white short-sleeve T-shirt after my shower. I ran the blow-dryer over my hair and decided to skip the straightening iron today.

After all, it was just me and the cops stuck at home today. And when someone has seen you talking in your sleep, you just don’t have the same motivation to fix your hair as you did before that.

I did put on a little bit of makeup, though, to cover the dark circles under my eyes. Apparently, I still wasn’t sleeping very well. I added some mascara and went to go see where everyone was.

Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. DJ was leaning against the island counter reading the paper, and Detective Masterson wasn’t around, which meant no pancakes.

Lolly was sleeping on the kitchen floor.

“Morning, Katie-Kin,” Mom said, smiling at me. “How did you sleep?”

I shrugged, because that seemed like the safest answer.

“See, Claire? Even when she doesn’t have school, Kate is up and ready to get to studying and increasing her knowledge. Isn’t that right, Kate?” Dad said.

“Sure, Dad,” I said, because again that seemed like the safest answer.

Since Mom had stopped buying me Crispix, my only choices for breakfast were Mini-Wheats or some weird granola stuff Mom liked.

I sighed. Mini-Wheats had a weird texture to me.

“There’s toast too, honey,” Mom said.

It sounded better than my other choices. I put two slices of bread in the toaster.

Detective Masterson walked in then, putting his cell phone in the pocket of his jeans. “Good morning, Kate,” he said.

I nodded to his pocket. “Any leads on the sketch?”

He just gave me a short laugh. “Any? How about four hundred and thirty-nine? Apparently, everyone and their grandmother has seen this guy around town.”

Mom looked up from her section of the paper. “Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?”

Detective Masterson shook his head. “Not really, ma’am. Whenever a well-publicized case like this is using a hotline,
everyone
wants in on the action. We can legitimately throw at least half of those tips into the garbage.”

“Plus, since he was wearing sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt, it makes it even more likely that we’ll have a lot of tips that are just no good,” DJ added.

My toast popped, and I spread a healthy layer of peanut butter all over it. I carried it over and sat down at the table with Mom and Dad.

“So the other half of the tips?” Dad asked.

Detective Masterson said, “We’ve got men checking those out today. A team from St. Louis came up and has been assisting Deputy Slalom in this investigation. Missourians are ready to relax again when they leave their houses.”

Mom and Dad finished breakfast and then left about thirty minutes later. I was sitting on the floor in the living room petting Lolly when they headed out the door for work.

“Be careful,” Dad said in his new way of saying good-bye.

“Journal,” Mom said. “Try to write in your journal. And I’ll call you later today.”

They left.

I rubbed Lolly’s silky ears, and she moaned like a cat. I reached over and pulled the remote off the coffee table. Surely something interesting was on TV at eight o’clock on a Friday morning.

I flipped through the channels for ten minutes. Or surely not. There were old sitcoms I’d never heard of playing reruns, Regis and Kelly were cracking not-so-funny jokes to an audience who was probably paid to laugh at them, a show where women found out they were pregnant in the delivery room, which just sounded ridiculous to me, and then a few true-crime shows.

I stopped on one of those, even though I knew I probably shouldn’t be watching this stuff right now.

Detective Masterson came in before I really caught what was going on in the plot. So far, it was about an attorney who had a history of representing criminals who were most likely guilty and getting them off scot-free.

“What are you watching?” he asked, frowning at the TV.

I clicked the guide to see what the name of the episode was. He read it and immediately started shaking his head.

“Nope, nope. Sorry, Kate. You have enough nightmares as it is,” he said, yanking the remote from my hand and turning the TV to Regis and Kelly.

Fabulous.

The day passed by very slowly. I watched mindless TV, painted my toenails, played tug-of-war with Lolly, and organized my bookshelf.

When I finished with my bookshelf, I looked at the clock, expecting it to be at least almost three and Maddy on her way here.

It was eleven. In the morning.

I sighed. I would never make it under house arrest. There was probably a good reason my parents never had to ground me. This was awful.

I went back out to the living room. Detective Masterson was reading something from a three-ring binder, and DJ was on the phone in the kitchen. Lolly sat with her head resting on the detective’s feet. She would probably miss them when they didn’t have to live here anymore.

“Bored out of your mind yet?” Detective Masterson grinned at me when I walked in and slumped on the couch.

“I don’t understand why people skip school on purpose,” I said. “There is absolutely nothing to do here.”

“You could start on those calculus books,” he said, grin widening.