The Astral, or, Till the Day I Die. V. J. Banis

if her tragedy ought to be, must be, unique. Hers was a pain she did not choose to share. She didn’t want to be a “case.”

      Agent Chang seemed to understand. “We think these men have done this before,” she said, gravely sympathetic.

      Catherine wanted to help, truly. She gave them what she could, though it seemed little enough.

      “It was an old truck, black, rusty. A GMC, I think.”

      “And you didn’t see the license plate? No, of course not,” she answered herself. “Can you describe the men for me? There were two of them?”

      “Yes, two men, one burly, I barely got a glimpse of his face; he was big, that’s all I know, like a bear. Short hair. Dirty. The other one, the one who...the one nearest me, his hair was longer, almost to his shoulders. He was tall. Six foot, at least, and skinny. A hard face, savage, high cheek boned, a mole on his chin. Large nose, crooked.”

      “Like it had been broken?”

      “Yes, it might have been. It bent to the right, here.” She indicated with her finger. “Green eyes. Yellow beard, unkempt, scraggly. No, not blond, yellow. Like it had been dyed.”

      “Voice?” the man asked; a policeman, she remembered, though not his name.

      She had to think. “A drawl. Southern, maybe.”

      Later, she worked with the police artist, over and over as he worked at a laptop, plastic transparencies appearing one atop the other, going through the process repeatedly, refining the image he was creating of the man with the yellow beard.

      “Yes,” she said to the face he finally offered her, “that looks like him.” As nearly as she could remember. Remembering was painful, doubly so—the pain in her head and the pain in her heart. She had mostly been trying not to remember.

      She was less helpful with the sketch of the other man. Despite more than an hour of work with the artist, she couldn’t really say if the result looked much like him or not.

      “I barely looked at him,” she said with a weary sigh. “Not more than a second or two. I might recognize him if I saw him again, but....” She shrugged.

      “Anyway, we’ve got one of them.” Chang said emphatically, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Desmond, we’ll find them. We’ll get these monsters, I promise you.”

      “You’ve got to go now,” the little Filipina nurse, Millie, told the federal agent. “She has to rest.”

      Catherine was grateful for Millie, as grateful as she could be now for anything. Millie understood, she asked no questions, offered no well-meaning condolences. She simply did everything she could to ease Catherine’s discomfort.

      Agent Chang got up obediently to go. Catherine looked at her, into her eyes. She was well intentioned. Catherine knew she was. She meant her words to be comforting. What comfort could they give her, though? Becky was gone.

      * * * *

      “That’s got to be the worst thing that can happen to a mother, losing a child,” Conners said outside the hospital room. “Has to be a special kind of hell, doesn’t it?”

      “It is,” Chang said.

      “My mom always says she hopes she goes before I do.”

      “Every mom says that,” Chang said.

      He started to say something more, but when he glanced sideways at her, her grim expression discouraged him from pursuing what was obviously an unwelcome topic. “At least this time we can eliminate the parents,” he said instead. Incidents like this made headlines but it was rare for a child to be snatched off the street. Most cases involved family or close friends.

      “It was ballsy,” Chang said. “Grabbing her in broad daylight, and in such a public place.”

      “Super ballsy. Weird ballsy, actually,” Conners agreed. “But maybe it means we have a better chance of catching them. Easy to trip up when you’re that bold.”

      “Let’s hope so.” She wanted that. Wanted it very much. “Those bastards.”

      Though at five foot four inches she had barely qualified for the Bureau, her success rate in nabbing the perpetrators of child kidnappings and abuse was the best in the agency. Not, she insisted often, that she had any special skills or was any smarter than anybody else. Simply, she wouldn’t quit. She pursued her quarry with relentless determination until, most times, she finally tracked them down.

      To her way of thinking, the men she pursued were the worst of the worst. It was trendy today to regard even these criminals as victims themselves: of their own childhood, or abuse, or some other circumstances beyond their control. She had no such compassion for them. She thought the earth would be a better place if they were removed from it, and she had made it her job to accomplish that as often as possible.

      Her doggedness was legend among her fellow agents. It had earned her, as well as a modicum of envy, a respect that few of the Bureau’s women agents enjoyed. They called her “The Bulldog,” and thought she didn’t know.

      Conners was silent, not wanting to intrude on her thoughts. Crime in Los Angeles was the province of the Los Angeles Police Department, but a child kidnapping was one of those special circumstances that brought the F.B.I. into the picture. Some L.A.P.D. officers resented working with the Bureau. In particular, he had been razzed for having to work with a female agent. He didn’t mind, though. He had worked with Chang before, knew her nickname. Everyone agreed she was the best. “The Bulldog always nails them.”

      There had been some snickering suggestions, too, that she was a dyke. He doubted that. He had yet to catch any particular sexual signals from her, though his instincts told him that if anyone were ever able to melt that glacier of ice that she wore so blatantly, they would probably discover a volcano waiting underneath. Truth was, he thought she was cute. Small-breasted, hard-bodied; even the kinky red hair turned him on.

      He had been careful not to act on that feeling, however, though he had been plenty tempted. There was also a story told that she had torn the balls right off of some guy who had tried to jump her. He was ninety-nine percent sure it was another piece of malicious dirt, but he was careful, both literally and figuratively, to keep his dick out of their relations. Much as he would truly like to be the one who melted that iceberg, he also truly wanted to hang on to the family jewels.

      On the other hand, you couldn’t always keep those naughty pictures from slipping into your mind.

      As for Chang, if she could have her druthers, she would work all her cases alone, but it didn’t happen that way. Protocol demanded that she liaise with the L.A.P.D. That being the case, she much preferred Conners to the other officers she had worked with in the past. He was the only one who hadn’t treated her with sometimes barely concealed resentment, even disdain.

      He was also the only one who had not hit on her at the first opportunity. She was mostly grateful for that fact. She had no—absolute zero—interest in getting involved with anyone, had neither the time nor the energy nor the inclination. Her job was her life.

      She had enough womanly vanity, though, to be a tad disappointed at his total lack of interest. He was good-looking: nothing flashy, but nice. Only a few inches taller than her, short for a cop. That, combined with a boyish and astonishingly innocent face—he must get carded every time he walked into a bar—made him look more like a college kid than the experienced police officer she knew he was. He was stocky, with firm muscles and enormous hands that suggested real strength, and the way he held himself, the way he moved and walked, told her that he was most likely dynamite in the sack—and damned well knew it.

      She’d had a thing with a guy just like him in college, the last real thing she’d had with any guy. She had broken if off cold after two breathless weeks. He was just too good. She couldn’t afford the distraction. Not then, not now.

      As if he had read her thoughts, he glanced at her and flashed a grin. Nice teeth, she thought, and then, Jeez, Roby, like you’re