The Chase Page 0,9

with Slug's house. Of course, they hadn't been able to search directly, but one of the kinder detectives had let them know that there was no paper house in either of the boys' homes.

"Dee, you and Michael can start there and cover everything west over to, say, Anchor Street. Audrey and I can cover everything east over to where Landana turns into Sycamore. Remember, it's the girl we want now."

"In other words we're canvassing the entire south side of town," Michael said with a groan. "Door to door."

"Obviously we won't cover it all today," Jenny said. "But we'll keep at it until we do." She looked at Dee, who nodded slightly. Dee would keep Michael at it.

Audrey didn't look particularly happy, either "We've been to a lot of those houses before. What are we supposed to say when they tell us they already have flyers?"

Dee grinned. "Tell them you're selling encyclopedias." She hustled Michael into the Bug.

Audrey shook her head as she and Jenny got back into the Spider and drove away. The top was down, and the wind blew stray wisps of copper-colored hail out of her chignon. Jenny shut her eyes, feeling the rushing air on her face.

She didn't want to think about anything, not about the psychic, not about Zach, not about Tom. Especially not about Tom. Underneath she'd had some faint hope he might show up at the Center after school. He was avoiding her, that was it.

Her nose and eyes stung. She wanted him with her. If she thought any more about him, about his hazel eyes with their flecks of green, about his warmth and his strength and his easy devil-may-care smile, she was going to cry.

"Let's go over by Eastman and Montevideo," she heard herself saying. The words just came out of her mouth, from nowhere.

Audrey cast her a spiky-lashed glance but turned south.

Eastman Avenue, the scene of so many recent riots, was almost deserted. Jenny hadn't been there since the day of Tom's birthday, the day she'd walked there to buy a party game. As they approached Montevideo Street, everything Jenny had experienced the last time she'd been here-the blue twilight, the footsteps behind her, the fear-came back to her. She almost expected to see P.C. in his black vest and Slug in his flannels walking down the sidewalk.

Audrey turned the corner on Montevideo and stopped.

The mural on the blank wall still showed a street scene. In the middle of the mural was a realistic-looking store with a sign reading: More Games. But it was just paint and concrete. Flat. There was no handle sticking out of the door.

Behind that blank wall she'd met Julian, in a place that wasn't a real place after all.

Scraps of paper lay in the street. One was the bright yellow of Summer's flyer.

Jenny felt suddenly very hollow. She didn't know what she'd expected to find here, or even what had made her come.

Audrey shivered. "I don't like this place."

"No. It was a bad idea."

They drove north, backtracking. They were actually near Summer's house now, in the kind of neighborhood where cars tended to be slightly dented, on blocks, or in pieces in the side yard. The afternoon seemed brighter here, and on the sidewalks the usual kids with sun-bleached hair and freckled limbs or night-black hair and brown limbs were running around.

They parked the car by George Washington Elementary School and put the top up.

At every house the spiel was the same.

"Hi, we're from the Summer Parker-Pearson Citizen's Search Committee. Can we give you a flyer ... ?"

If the people in the house looked nice, they tried to get invited in. Then came the transition from "We're looking for Summer" to "We're looking for an important clue in her disappearance"-meaning the paper house. And today, "We're looking for somebody who might know something about her"-meaning the Crying Girl with the long dark hair and haunted eyes.

Most of all, though, they tried to talk to kids.

Kids knew things. Kids saw things. Usually the adults in the houses only listened politely, but the kids were always eager to help. They followed along on their bicycles, suggesting places to look, remembering that they thought they might have seen someone who could possibly have been Summer yesterday, or maybe it was the day before.

"The paper house is really important, but it could be dangerous. Anybody could have picked it up, thinking it was a toy," Jenny told one nine-year-old while Audrey kept his mother occupied. The nine-year-old nodded, his eyes