“Let’s not worry about being a rat,” I said. “Rats can be heroes, too. Do you know where we can find Avis’s baby?”
“No, no, I don’t know that. I’m a friend of Larry Foster? He said I should call you. Are you near a computer?”
“No, but my phone is pretty slick. What should I look up?”
“I want to show you some pictures. On Facebook. But I don’t want to give you my password.”
The kid was worrying about a password — something she could change in a couple of keystrokes — but I didn’t want to go balls to the wall with her. Willy was a minor. She didn’t have to talk to me at all.
“What if I meet you at your dorm?” I said. I signaled to the waitress to b
ring me my check.
“Not there. I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you,” Willy said.
I stifled a groan and told her I’d meet her at the entrance to 850 Bryant in an hour.
“I’ll be there,” Willy told me.
Was she going to help me find Avis’s baby? Or was this going to be another lead to nowhere?
I put a ten and a fiver on top of the check and left Louis’ still hungry.
Chapter 44
IT WAS JUST ABOUT TEN and an overcast sixty-four degrees when I rolled the window down a few inches for Martha and left my car in the lot across from the Hall.
Willy Steihl was not outside the large granite cube where I worked, so I waited on the corner, tapping my foot as traffic breezed by at a steady clip even for a Sunday.
Ten minutes later, a cab draw up curbside and I opened the door for young Willy Steihl. She said hi and, keeping a good six feet between us, followed me through the double glass doors into the red-marbled lobby of the Hall of Justice.
Willy took off her belt, put it in a tote, and went through the scanners at the entrance. I badged security and took the girl with black hair, black clothes, and a bite-me expression up to the squad room, where the swing shift was at work.
I asked Sergeant Bob Nardone if I could use my desk, and he said, “Sure, Boxer. And I should do what? Work on my air computer?”
“Get up, Nardone. Heat up your coffee. Take a break. We won’t be long.”
I commandeered the desk chair, and Willy Steihl stood beside me as I logged on to my account. Then I gave the girl my chair so she could enter her information on my computer.
She hunched over the keyboard as she typed in her password and ID, saying, “Give me a second, okay? I’m opening the folder I was telling you about.”
I was drumming my fingers on my desk as Willy Steihl tapped on the keys. Finally she said, “Got it.”
I turned the monitor toward me and stared at a picture of a soccer game. Kids were flying across the field, the ball was in play, and people were cheering at the sidelines. A typical high-school sports event.
“See,” she said. “This was us against the Warriors. I was taking pictures of Larry.”
She enlarged the picture, focusing not on the field but on the people watching the game. I saw Avis Richardson with her profile to the camera, wearing Burberry-plaid pajama bottoms and a school sweatshirt that effectively hid her pregnancy.
She was standing very close to a tall, dark, and handsome man who, to my eyes, was definitely not a student.
Willy clicked the mouse and another picture came up, then another, and with each picture she enlarged the frame and closed in on Avis Richardson. In one of the pictures, I saw that Avis’s hand was tucked into the hand of the good-looking man.
“Who is that?” I asked Willy.
“That’s Mr. Ritter. He teaches sophomore English,” she said.
“What are you implying, Willy? Don’t make me guess.”