"Then there may be cops. I figured out what happened. How long do you think it would take them?"
She brings her left hand up to clear an errant wisp of hair from her eyes, and the wide bracelet slides up her arm. Rafferty sees the deep white scars crisscrossing the inside of her wrist. There are at least a dozen of them: She had hacked at herself frantically. She realizes what he is looking at and lets her arm drop. The bracelet slips back into place, masking the scars.
"You'll tell your sister."
"If I see her."
"Here's how she can reach me." He writes his name and phone number on a page in his notebook and tears it out. She tugs the bracelet down and reaches for it. "You'll give it to her."
She folds the paper in half without even looking at it. "If she gets in touch with me."
"Of course," Rafferty says. "If she gets in touch with you."
Miaow's eyes are swollen and red, but the smile she gives Rafferty is the broadest he has seen all day.
"You two getting along okay?" Rafferty asks.
"She's quite a girl," Hank Morrison says. He is sitting next to Miaow on the couch, which in itself is a good sign. "You're a lucky man, Poke."
"I know."
"Hey, Miaow," Morrison says. "There are some kids outside, and I'll bet you already know a few of them. Why don't you go out and see?"
"I want to be here," she says.
"Not now. Poke and I need to talk alone, just like you and I did."
"Are you going to talk about me?"
"We might say how wonderful you are," Morrison says. "We might talk about how smart you are and how well you take care of Poke. But mostly we're going to talk about Poke."
Miaow visibly loses interest. "I already know about Poke."
"So you don't have to listen."
She turns to Morrison, face set. "But you're not going to talk about-"
"We both promise," Morrison says, and Poke holds up three fingers and then crosses his heart for emphasis.
"Promise so hard you'll die if you break it."
"I do," Morrison says.
"Me, too." Poke watches her slide down off the couch and walk to the door. "I promise, Miaow," he says again.
"Don't break it," she says to him. "I don't want you to die."
"I wouldn't dare die. You'd kill me."
"You're silly," she says severely, pulling the door closed behind her.
"Whew," Morrison says. "You weren't kidding about her will-power."
"She's going to rule the world."
"She's been through a lot. It's a miracle she's so…I guess the word is 'intact.'"
"She's a miracle," Poke says. "I never knew I could love anybody so much."
"Well, which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?"
"Up to you."
"The good news is that I haven't got any reservations at all about the way things are between the two of you. I'd stake all my experience that you've got a normal, loving relationship, and that's nine-tenths of the battle."
"What's the other tenth?"
"That's the bad news. I'm not happy with what she's told me about the situation at home, Poke. From what Arthit said, I thought you were a writer, some kind of academic or something. What she's been describing to me sounds like something out of a Schwarzenegger movie."
"It's just that-"
Morrison leans forward. The lines around his eyes no longer soften the blue of them. They're as cold as Freon. "You're sleeping in your living room with a gun because you're afraid some goons are going to kick the door in. The goons who beat you up a few days ago. Does that sound like a stable environment for a kid?"
"It's not as if this happens much, Hank."
"You're carrying a gun right now."
"Shit," Rafferty says, tugging automatically at his jacket. "I didn't think you'd seen it."
"You're wasting my time," Morrison says. "You've got a wonderful kid there, and you're living like a juvenile delinquent. You can't even sit through the meeting without running off to get into a sword-fight or something. Why would I help you adopt her when you might just make her an orphan again?"
"It's not that serious."
Morrison sweeps a hand toward his desk. "This is how serious it is. Those papers are the forms you have to fill out to move forward with this. Two minutes after you and Miaow came into this room, I decided to ask you to fill them out today. Well, I'll tell you what, Poke. I'm going to put them back in the drawer until you've convinced me that you're capable of giving that little girl a stable environment."
"Hank," Rafferty says. "This situation-it started out simply and got very bad very quickly. I began by trying to help a young woman whose uncle disappeared here in Bangkok, and I wound up stumbling over the worst, most violent child pornography you can imagine." Morrison's face goes absolutely still, and he sits even straighter. "I can't drop it, Hank, but I don't really think we're in danger. I haven't met a lot of child pornographers, but I doubt they'd hurt anyone their own size."
"These pictures," Morrison says slowly. He stops and sits forward, as though he has cramps. "You said violent." Rafferty nods. "Are they of Asian kids?"
"Yes."
"Mostly ten, eleven, twelve? Mostly girls?"
Rafferty feels a wave of discomfort. "And a few boys."
Morrison takes a breath deep enough to empty the room of air. "Tied up, being tortured?"
Rafferty meets his eyes. "My turn to ask a question. Why do you know about this?"
"Poke." Morrison puts out both hands, palms forward, a gesture that says Stop. "I work with these kids. I've worked with them for twenty years. There isn't much that's happened to them that I don't know about." He gets up, not going anywhere, just moving to move. "How could I do this job if I didn't try to understand their lives?" He stops pacing and puts his hands on his hips, looking down at Poke. "These pictures. Do they have a title?"
Rafferty can't think of any reason not to tell him. "The AT Series."
"My God. Is this man in Bangkok?"
"If he's alive, he's in Bangkok."
"But he may not be alive?"
"I'm glad to say, Hank, that I think, actually, he's not."
"Hallelujah, it's Christmas," Morrison says. "But then what are you looking for?"
"The person who probably killed him. And, if I can find them, the names of anybody he might have shared his hobby with."
"Where'd you get the pictures?"
"Out of the guy's apartment."
Morrison's mouth opens, and he closes it again. "I don't know why I'm so surprised. I always figured the fucker was based here."
"For about twenty years," Rafferty says.
"I know some of these kids," Morrison says. "They've been torn into tiny pieces."
"Hank," Rafferty says, and his tone brings Morrison's head around. "Superman was one of them."
As they cross the orphanage playground, Miaow reaches up and takes Rafferty's hand. He gives hers a slight squeeze and gets back a grip that makes his knuckles crack.
"I love you, Miaow," he says.
Miaow squeezes even harder.
Rafferty's emotions are a skein of conflicting feelings: revulsion at what he saw on Ulrich's computer, a mixture of pity and horror caused by the sight of the scars on the wrist of Doughnut's sister, a hatred of Claus Ulrich so intense it vibrates in his chest. Against those are the exhilaration he feels about the interview and Morrison's reluctant reconsideration of Superman in light of the fact the boy was one of Ulrich's victims. He might be able to help him after all.
And Morrison had let him fill out the forms. On this front, anyway, Rafferty thinks, everything may work out. The idea makes him so happy he laughs out loud, and Miaow looks up at him, grabs his arm with both hands, and presses her head against his hand.
For Rafferty, time stands still.