It was a striking image, Deborah falling up out of her desk chair and all over her new partner, but however vivid the picture, it made no sense to me. "Why would you fall all over your partner?"

She shook her head. "Maybe you noticed he is like stupid good-looking?" she said. "If you haven't, you're the only one in the entire fucking building. Including especially Deke."

I had noticed, of course, but I didn't see what his ridiculous good looks had to do with anything under discussion. "Okay," I said. "I noticed. So what?"

"So he thinks I'm going to throw myself at him, like every other chick he's ever met," she said. "Which is nauseating. He's dumber than a box of rocks, and he sits there on the corner of my desk flossing his perfect fucking teeth and waiting for me to tell him what to do and if I have to look at him for two seconds longer I'm going to blow his fucking head off. Get in the car," she said.

Deborah had never been one to disguise her real feelings, but even so, this was quite an outburst, and I just stood for a moment and watched her as she climbed into the car and started the engine. She revved it for a moment and then, to make sure I got the message that she was in a hurry, she hit the siren in a brief whoop that startled me out of my reverie and into the passenger seat. Before I even had the door closed she had put the car in gear and we were rolling out of the lot and onto the street.

"I don't think he's following us," I said as she hit the gas hard and accelerated out into traffic. Deborah didn't reply. She simply swerved around a flatbed truck piled high with watermelons and sped away from the station and her partner.

"Where are we going?" I asked, clinging for dear life to the armrest.

"The school," she said.

"What school?" I asked her, wondering if the roar of the engine had hidden an important part of our conversation.

"The rich kids' school Samantha Aldovar went to," she said. "What's it called, Ransom Everglades."

I blinked. It didn't seem like a destination that required this much haste, unless Deborah thought we were late for class, but here we were, hurtling through traffic at a dangerous pace. In any case, it seemed like good news that, if I survived the car trip over there, I would face nothing more life-threatening than a possible spitball. And of course, considering the school's economic and social status, it would almost certainly be a very high-quality spitball, which is always a consolation.

So I did no more than grit my teeth and hang on tightly as Deborah raced across town, turned onto LeJeune, and took us into Coconut Grove. A left on US 1, a right on Douglas, and a left on Poinciana to cut through to Main Highway, and we were at the school, in what would certainly be record time, if anybody kept track of that sort of thing.

We went through the coral rock gate and a guard stepped out to stop us. Deborah showed her badge and the guard leaned in to examine it before waving us through. We drove around behind a row of buildings and parked under a huge old banyan tree in a spot that said RESERVED FOR M. STOKES. Deborah shoved the car into park and climbed out, and I followed. We walked down a shaded walkway and into sunlight, and I looked around at what we had all grown up thinking of as "the rich kids' school." The buildings were clean and looked new; the grounds were very well kept. The sun shone a little brighter here, the palm fronds swayed just a little more gently, and altogether it seemed like a very nice day to be a rich kid.

The administration building ran sideways across the center of the campus, with a breezeway in the middle, and we stopped at the reception area inside. They had us wait for the assistant something-or-other. I thought about our assistant principal in middle school. He had been very large, with a Cro-Magnon forehead that looked like a knuckle. And so I was somewhat surprised when a small and elegant woman came in and greeted us.

"Officers?" she said pleasantly. "I'm Ms. Stein. How can I help you?"

Deborah shook her hand. "I need to ask you some questions about one of your students," she said.

Ms. Stein raised an eyebrow to let us know that this was very unusual; the police did not come around asking about her students. "Come into my office," she said, and she led us a short way down the hall and into a room with a desk, a chair, and several dozen plaques and photographs on the walls. "Sit down, please," Ms. Stein said, and without even a glance at me Deborah took the one molded plastic chair opposite the desk, leaving me to look for a spot on the wall free from framed memories so I could at least lean in comfort.

"All right," Ms. Stein said. She settled into the chair behind the desk and looked at us with a polite but cool expression. "What's this about?"

"Samantha Aldovar is missing," Deborah said.

"Yes," Ms. Stein said. "We heard, of course."

"What kind of student is she?" Deborah asked.

Ms. Stein frowned. "I can't give you her grades, or anything like that," she said. "But she is a pretty good student. Above average, I would say."

"Does she have financial aid to come here?" Debs asked.

"That's confidential information, of course," Ms. Stein said, and Deborah gave her a hard look, but amazingly, Ms. Stein did not seem to wither. Perhaps she was used to intimidating glares from the wealthy parents. It was clearly an impasse, so I decided to help out.

"Does she take a lot of teasing from the other kids?" I said. "You know, about money or anything?"

Ms. Stein glanced at me and gave me a that's-not-really-funny half a smile. "I take it you think there might be a financial motive for her disappearance," she said.

"Does she have a boyfriend, that you know of?" Debs said.

"I don't really know," Ms. Stein said. "And if I did, I'm not at all sure I should tell you."

"Miss Stern," Debs said.

"It's Stein," Ms. Stein said.

Deborah waved that off. "We are not investigating Samantha Aldovar. We're investigating her disappearance. And if you stonewall us, you're keeping us from finding her."

"I don't really see-"

"We'd like to find her alive," Deborah said, and I was proud of the cold and hard way she said it; Ms. Stein actually turned pale.

"I don't…" she said. "The personal stuff, I really don't know. Perhaps I could get one of her friends to talk to you…"

"That would be very helpful," Deborah said.

"I think she's closest to Tyler Spanos," Ms. Stein said. "But I would have to be present."

"Go get Tyler Spanos, Miss Stein," Deborah said.

Ms. Stein bit her lip and stood up, heading out the door without nearly as much cool composure as she'd had coming in. Deborah settled back in her chair and squirmed a little, as if trying to find a comfortable way to sit in it. There wasn't one. She gave up after a minute and sat up straight, crossing and uncrossing her legs impatiently.

My shoulder was sore, and I tried leaning on the other one. Several minutes went by; Deborah looked up at me two or three times, but neither one of us had anything to say.

Finally, we heard voices drifting in through the door, rising in pitch and volume. That lasted for about half a minute, and then there was relative quiet again. And after several long minutes in which Deborah recrossed her legs and I switched back to leaning on the original shoulder, Ms. Stein hurried back into her office. She was still pale, and she did not look happy.

"Tyler Spanos didn't come in today," Ms. Stein said. "Or yesterday. So I called her home." She hesitated, as if she were embarrassed, and Deborah had to urge her on.

"She's sick?" Debs said.

"No, she…" Again, Ms. Stein hesitated and chewed on her lip. "They… She was working on a class project with another student," she said at last. "They said she's, ah, in order to work on it… they said she's been staying with the other girl."