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us unable to get our
minds off the previous subject. I started thinking about Dominic,
and as if reading my mind, Carlos said, “I talked to Dominic while
you were in there with Lilith.”
    “ Oh?”
    “ He wants us to meet him
in the media room when we get back.”
    “ Sounds like he has
something for us.”
    “ He always has something
for us. The kid’s got game. Doesn’t he?”
    “ That he does.”
    “ Hey, you know he’s trying
to think of a good name for the baby. He said he’d take
suggestions.”
    “ Isn’t that something he
should keep between him and Ursula?”
    “ No. Ursula is cool with
it. Said in her day the husband always picked the baby’s
name.”
    “ We’re not in Ursula’s
day.”
    “ I know. I suggested
Guinevere.”
    “ From the King Arthur
legend. Nice. But what if it’s a boy?”
    “ What if what’s a
boy?”
    “ Ursula’s baby. What if
she has a boy instead of a girl?”
    “ Man, do you not listen to
anyone but yourself. What’s it like up there with just your own
voice rolling around your head like wind through a
mailbox?”
    “ What the hell are you
talking about?”
    “ Were you or were you not
sitting at the table with us at the Olive Garden, the five of us;
you, me, Ursula, Dominic and Lilith, when Lilith told us that the
first born to a witch is always a girl?”
    “ Last week?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ I was there, but I don’t
remember Lilith saying any such thing.”
    “ Well she did.”
    “ I must have gotten up to
go to the bathroom.”
    “ No. You were sitting
right there, buttering your bread sticks and dipping them into your
bowl of marinara sauce. You remember now?”
    “ No, and I think I’ve had
enough of this conversation, as well. Why don’t you turn the radio
back on?”
    He did, and for the next twelve minutes we
listened to commercial-free classic rock at such absurdly high
decibels, I thought my ears would bleed. It was the best thing I’d
heard all day.
    Carlos and I met up with Spinelli in the
media room at the Justice Center. He looked tired, and I guessed he
hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, what, with keeping Ursula
company at nights when she couldn’t sleep, and then staying up all
day at work. I offered to finish his shift for him so he could go
home and sleep, but he wouldn’t have it.
    “ Besides,” he said.
“Ursula’s been feeling better and doesn’t really need me
now.”
    “ Good,” I told him,
“because we really could use you here.”
    After catching Dominic up on what we learned
at the Brewbaker’s, we had him catch us up on what he’d done so
far.
    “ I got Kelly’s
pic-scrip-n-stats uploaded in the NCIC computers and––”
    “ Whoa-whoa-whoa.” I held
my hand up to stop him. “Wait a second. What did you say you
uploaded on the NCIC?”
    “ Her
pic-scrip-n-stats.”
    “ What is that, like alien
talk?”
    Carlos said, “Picture, description and
statistics.”
    Dominic pointed at him and nodded.
“Yeah.”
    I shook my head. “Continue.”
    “ Like I said, I got her
pic-scrip-n-stats uploaded in the NCIC computer. I also furnished
that same information to the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children.” he checked his watch. “About fifteen minutes
ago the first Amber Alert went out over all the local radio and TV
stations from here to Boston. In another ten minutes, electronic
highway signs light up with Kelly’s name all along the I-95 and
I-94 corridors, as well as on Routes 1, 114, 128, and 129. By the
six o’clock news, everyone along the entire Eastern seaboard will
have been exposed to Kelly’s name and face.”
    “ Nice,” I said. “Good
work. Now let’s hope someone out there actually pays attention to
those alerts.”
    “ All we can do is try,”
Carlos remarked.
    Dominic said, “I’ve been looking at that
picture of Kelly. She’s really a cute kid. Isn’t she?”
    “ She is,” I
said.
    He shook his head. “Why would anyone want to
do this to such an innocent little