She returned with a scrap of paper on which a bold hand had written “Duncan MacLachlan” along with a phone number. With a small shock, Jane recognized the name. Captain MacLachlan was regularly in the news. He was the unlikeliest of all mentors for a twelve-year-old boy.
Jane copied the phone number and thanked Lupe, then, thoughtful, made her way to her car. Aside from the intriguing and possibly worrisome involvement of Captain MacLachlan, she wasn’t surprised by the visit, but she was dismayed. Clearly Tito couldn’t stay long-term with his sister. He might have been better placed in a foster home while his father was behind bars, but there were never enough good foster homes, and he’d been lucky to have a family member willing to take him. Lupe’s husband had probably still been around, too. Jane could understand why the placement had been approved, probably with a sigh of relief and a firmly closed file.
She drove a couple of blocks, then pulled over to make notes while her impressions were fresh. She jotted questions and directions to herself, too. What about the other siblings—perhaps one of them was now in a better position to offer a home to Tito? Find out what friends he was spending so much time with. Imperative to talk to teachers. Did he go to the Boys & Girls Club? After-school programs? Probably not at his age. Any other community organizations? She had no record that he’d been in trouble with the law, but she’d find out. Reading between the lines of what Lupe had said, Tito was ripe for exactly that. MacLachlan? she wrote in the margin. Was Tito in a juvenile court-ordered program of which the family court remained unaware?
The father’s release date was only two weeks away, and Jane wanted to have a good sense of other possibilities for the boy before then. And, of course, she would make the trip to Monroe to speak with Hector Ortez. She had to do all of this around running her own business, however.
Lucky, she thought wryly, she had no social life to speak of.
Driving home, she tried to recall what she knew about Duncan MacLachlan. She’d never read or heard anything to make her think he was “nice.” Although that wasn’t fair.
In the department, he was only one step below the police chief. He was exceptionally young to be in that position, still in his thirties, Jane had read. He looked older, she’d thought when she saw his picture in the paper or brief segments from press conferences on the local news. That might only be because he was invariably stern. If he ever smiled, the press had yet to capture the moment.
She was a little disconcerted by how easily she recalled his face. She did remember staring at a front page photo of him in the local daily. She’d left that section of the newspaper lying out on her table for several days for reasons she hadn’t examined but had to admit, in retrospect, had involved a spark of sexual interest. Not that she would have pursued it even if she’d met the guy in person—he was so not the kind of man she would consider dating even though courthouse gossip said he was unmarried. But that face…
The photo wasn’t from one of his staged appearances; she suspected it had been taken with a telephoto lens, as he strode away from a crime scene. He was listening to something another man beside him was saying. His head was cocked slightly and he’d been frowning, more as if he was concentrating than annoyed. His face was…harsh. It might be the seemingly permanent furrows between his dark eyebrows and on his forehead that aged him. She’d had the probably silly idea that he could have been a seventeenth-century Calvinist minister—unbending, judgmental, yet unswervingly conscious of right and wrong.
Those Calvinist ministers probably hadn’t had shoulders like his, though, or the leashed physical power that his well-cut suits didn’t disguise.
So, okay, she’d never heard anything to make her doubt his integrity, but that still begged the question: why in heck was he interested in Tito Ortez?
On the notepad, she circled his name. Twice.
She would most definitely be finding out what he had to do with a rather ordinary boy whose father was about to be released from prison.
“SEE IF YOU CAN MATCH that shot,” Duncan taunted, bouncing the basketball to the boy. He used the ragged hem of his T-shirt to wipe sweat from his face as he watched Tito move into position inside the free throw line and concentrate fiercely on lining up his shot. It was probably too far out for him; he was small even for his age and his arms were scrawny, but he didn’t like to fail, either. Duncan had come to feel a reluctant admiration for his determination.
He bent his knees, the way Duncan had taught him, and used his lift to help propel the ball when he released it from his fingertips. It floated in a perfect arc and dropped through the hoop, barely ruffling the net.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Tito did a dance, and Duncan laughed.
“Very nice.” He held up his hand for a high five, and the boy slapped it. “I’m being too easy on you.”
“I’ve been practicing,” Tito admitted. “It stays light so late. Now that I have my own ball.” Duncan had given him one. “There’s hardly ever anyone here in the evening. I have the court to myself.”
They played soccer, too, and Tito was better at that, but for reasons mysterious to Duncan the boy was determined to become an NBA-quality basketball player. His father, he had admitted, was only five foot nine, and his mother was little—he’d held up a hand to estimate, and Duncan guessed Mama wasn’t much over five foot tall—but he was going to be bigger than his father. He was sure of it. And he could be a point guard—they didn’t have to be as tall, did they?
No, but Duncan suspected that six feet tall or so was probably a minimum even for the high school team. Still, Tito was only twelve, and who knew? He might have a miraculous growth spurt. No matter what, he might excel in PE, and being good at anything could make a difference to him right now.
Besides…they were enjoying their occasional evening hour or Sunday afternoon on the concrete basketball court behind the middle school, or on the soccer field. Duncan often suggested pizza afterward, or sometimes a milk shake. Tito was slowly opening up to him, although Duncan was still unclear why he lived with his sister and where his parents were. He occasionally wondered uneasily whether the family might be here illegally; perhaps the parents were around, but avoiding the cop who was inexplicably befriending their son. He couldn’t be sure and had decided from the beginning that he wouldn’t go out of his way to find out.
Looking cocky, Tito passed the ball to him. Duncan drove in for a layup, easily evading the boy’s feint at him. Tito tried to copy the move and thumped the ball against the backboard nowhere near the iron hoop. Scowling, he retreated and tried again, and again.
Duncan’s cell phone rang. Irritated, he jogged over to where he’d left it outside the painted line on top of his sweatshirt. It was displaying a number he didn’t recognize. He almost didn’t answer, but a glance told him Tito was occupied, yelling at himself as he dribbled away from the hoop, then turned to begin a new drive.
Duncan answered brusquely, “MacLachlan.”
A very feminine voice said, “Captain, my name is Jane Brooks. I’m a Guardian ad Litem for the family court. I understand you know Tito Ortez.”
His gaze went straight to the boy, leaping to rebound another missed shot. Tito looked at him in inquiry, and Duncan held up one finger. Tito nodded and dribbled the ball in for another attempted layup.
“Yes,” Duncan said. “May I ask what your interest is?”
“As I said, I’m…”
