"What are you doing?" Juhle asked.
"Getting her out of here. Her mother had her tied up."
"She let you just take her?"
"I explained the situation, gave her the forms."
"Still. Anybody sees you or she come screaming out raising a stink, the people here…"
"The mom's gonna learn to live with it. I do this for a living, okay? There's a technique." I was walking quickly, breathing hard. "You got a car nearby?" I asked. "I'm three blocks away. Mistake."
"Yeah, but anybody comes out-"
"That's why I'm in half a jog here, Dev," I snapped, cutting him off. I indicated Keeshiana. "I'm worried about her."
"My car's just down here, around the corner," Juhle said, and led the way for us, double time.
3
2000
Deputy Director Wilson Mayhew left a polite note in my cubicle asking if I could please come to his office at my earliest convenience. There was nothing ominous about the summons except that it was the first time I'd had any personal contact with Mayhew since we exchanged cordial hellos at the Christmas party two years before. At that time, finger right on the pulse of those he supervised, he had asked me what my connection was to the CPS. Since I'd only been with the department for eight years back then, and ever since Mayhew himself had come aboard five years before, I told him to keep it between us, but that I was really FBI, working under-cover to ferret out the pimp who was running the illegal-alien child-prostitution ring out of the CPS. Surely he'd heard of it.
After that, at least he knew who I was.
So that October afternoon, I found myself standing in front of the DD's desk in his third-floor office on Otis Street.