She played with her stack of rubber bracelets. “It’s like Uncle Sal said: they’re working me too hard. I even have to go back in tonight, as soon as I scarf down some of Uncle Sal’s home cooking. What took you downtown? Are you still looking for that missing gangbanger? Did you think you’d find him in the Prudential building?”

“Yep. Selling bonds out of the fiftieth-floor office. Actually, I’m going back out to Joliet tomorrow afternoon. Johnny Merton, the head snake charmer, has agreed to see me again, and I’m hoping the murder of Sister Frances may jolt him into telling me something.”

“You’re going out to the prison tomorrow?” she repeated, looking at me anxiously.

“Why not?”

She bit her lips. “Just … uh … I don’t know … you’re still hurting, I mean.”

“I’m a renewable resource.” I took a hamburger from Mr. Contreras and sat up to keep it out of Peppy’s mouth. “I’m like Hercules, except I regenerate my spleen, my skin, and my brain every morning.”

She laughed in a distracted, forced way and changed the subject, also in a distracted, forced way. She fed most of her hamburger to Mitch, then got up to leave.

I followed her to the side gate. “Petra! What is wrong here?”

Her large eyes filled with tears, and she stared at me for a long pause, then said, “Leave me alone, can’t you? Do you have to pry into everybody’s business?”

“No,” I said slowly. “No, of course not. But you’re acting—”

“I know what I’m doing. Leave me alone!” She slammed the gate.

“You haven’t been riding her over your place being torn apart, have you?” Mr. Contreras and the dogs had bustled over to join us.

I shook my head. “I wish now I had gone to her office today. Maybe I will after I get done with Johnny tomorrow.”

But the next day was when I came back from Stateville to find that intruders had been in my office and wrecked it with the force of an F5 tornado. That was when I found Petra’s white rubber ONE bracelet on the cement apron outside my back door. That was the night I spent with Bobby Mallory and the FBI trying to find any trace of my cousin.

After that sleepless night, my uncle Peter and aunt Rachel arrived. My uncle unleashed his own F5 on me, blaming me, at high volume, for anything that might have gone wrong with Petra. I tried to ride out the storm without fighting back because I knew raw rage was the only way he was able to express his fear. I was afraid, too, and so was my aunt. Finally, after several hours of his useless screaming, Rachel took Peter downtown to meet with the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge.

33 - LOSING A FOLLOWER

33

LOSING A FOLLOWER