Seconds Away (17 page)

CHAPTER 36

I could smell
the charred remains of the Bat Lady’s house.

It was eight
P.M.
—not too late. Night had fallen. I had a flashlight, but for now, standing on the sidewalk, the streetlight gave me enough illumination. A few wooden beams from the house remained upright, stretching up into the darkness like fingers on a giant hand.

“Hey.”

I turned. It was Ema. “Hey. How did you get past Niles?”

“Are you kidding? He’s so happy I have a friend, he practically shoved me out the door.”

I smiled. I thought about how wonderful the hug we shared earlier had been and tried to sort through my feelings about it. Ema was my friend. My very best friend. That was where that overwhelming sense of warmth came from, right?

We slowly approached the house. I kept my flashlight off because I didn’t want the neighbors to see. We stopped at the crime-scene tape. Ema turned to me, shrugged, and ducked under it. I followed her up those front porch steps and inside the house. There was debris all over the floor.

“This was the living room,” I said to her.

The light was getting pretty dim now. I still didn’t want to use the flashlight, but I figured that maybe the light of my mobile phone would do the trick. Ema did the same.

“What’s this?” she asked.

The frame was shattered, but I recognized it right away—the faded color photograph of the five hippies.

“Is that . . . ?” Ema pointed to the attractive woman in the tight T-shirt in the middle. Across her chest was the Abeona butterfly.

“Yep,” I said. “I think it’s Bat Lady.”

“Wow. She was kind of hot.”

“Subject change,” I said, and Ema smiled. I tried to pick up the frame from the sides, but it pretty much fell apart. I slid the picture out and slipped it into my pocket. I figured that it might come in handy at some point.

The old record player had been damaged. There was no vinyl on the turntable, but I did manage to find the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Who albums. I doubted that they were in working condition anymore. I looked for the album that Bat Lady seemed to always play—
Aspect of Juno
by HorsePower—but it had either been burned completely or . . .

Or what?

“Should we head to the garage?” Ema asked.

I shook my head. That had been the original plan. We would go to the garage, try to break in, see if we could find the tunnel. But the tunnel I had gone through had led from the garage to the basement below us, to a door that no longer existed between the kitchen and this living room. With the garage locked, wouldn’t it be simpler and probably more productive to simply go in reverse—to start in the living room, go down to the basement, see where it led?

Okay, the basement door was gone. So was most of the kitchen. I tried to picture the house’s layout as it had been before the fire. I moved closer to where I thought the basement door would be. The remnants of the second floor and roof had collapsed over it. I started to pull up the plywood, trying to dig through the rubble. Ema joined me.

We worked in silence, removing debris, carefully moving it to the side. When I stopped and thought about it, we were, in fact, tainting a crime scene. I was already in plenty of trouble, but what about Ema?

“We should stop,” I said.

“Huh?”

“We’re tainting a crime scene.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Ema kept on digging.

“Seriously,” I said, “this was a mistake.”

“You didn’t tell me what happened with Detective Waters.”

Ema was trying to distract me, but that was okay. “He got pretty annoyed with me.”

“Annoyed how?”

“Annoyed like he wants me to stay away from it all.”

“Annoyed like we got it right about Rachel’s father?” Ema asked.

“Yes.”

“Whoa.”

“Remember I told you about those two hoodlums talking to Mr. Caldwell right after I left?”

“What about them?”

“Detective Waters had a picture of the guy with the scar. He said he was dangerous.”

“So they have to be drug dealers.”

“Or at least bad guys.”

“And you saw Rachel’s dad being all friendly with them.”

“Yes,” I said.

“So then we still believe that Rachel found something incriminating about her dad—some kind of package that backed what her mom had said about him?”

“Yes,” I said, back on the floor, moving debris. I tried to make sense of it. What had Rachel done with the package? Had her father gone ballistic when he found it missing?

Had Scarface?

Ema stopped digging. “Mickey?”

I shook away the thoughts and looked toward her voice. The debris was gone now. I could see steps leading down into the basement. I bent low, took out my flashlight, shined it down into the hole.

Nothing much to see.

“I’m going down,” I said, “alone.”

“It’s cute when you get all macho bossy on me,” Ema said, “but no. I’m going too.”

“The floor up here may be weak. It could collapse.”

Ema looked as though someone—me, I guess—had punched her in the stomach. “You think I’m going to break the floor?”

“What? No. Listen, I need you to be my lookout.”

She wasn’t appeased. “Excuse me?”

“Someone might come. Be my lookout.” I grabbed her shoulders and made her look up at me. “Please. Just this once. For me?”

“Just this once what?”

“Don’t be a pain in the butt. I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s all.”

The tears in her eyes broke my heart, but she nodded through them. “All right, go. I’ll be your”—she wiped her eyes and wiggled her fingers at me—“lookout.”

I didn’t wait for her to change her mind. I quickly started down the steps into the black hole. Now that I was pretty much out of view, I turned on the flashlight. I descended slowly.

“What do you see?” Ema called down in a whisper.

“Give me a second.”

The basement was, as you might expect, dingy and dusty and, well, old. There were rusted pipes and broken glass and old cardboard boxes filled with who knew what. There were spiderwebs in the corner and mud on the floor. The mud could have been wet soot from the fire, but I suspected the origin was somewhat older. Okay, the garage would be behind me and to the left, ergo, that was probably where the door to that tunnel would be.

Found it.

“Mickey?”

“I found the door to the tunnel.”

“Wait for me.”

“No. Hold up.”

The door was made of some kind of reinforced steel. I remembered that from my previous visit with Shaved Head. There were other doors and corridors too, but he wouldn’t let me go down them. I grabbed the door handle. Locked. I grabbed it again and shook.

“It’s locked,” I said.

“So now what?” Ema asked. “Oh, enough. I’m coming down too.”

Ema started down the stairs. I swung my flashlight in her direction—and that was when I saw it. I stopped, retraced the beam back to the spot on the floor, and stared. Ema came up behind me.

“What is it?”

I said nothing.

“Wait,” Ema said. “Is that a picture of Ashley?”

I nodded. Ashley. The girl we—Rachel, Spoon, Ema, and I—had risked our lives to rescue.

“That’s the portrait you saw upstairs?” Ema asked.

I nodded numbly.

“So somehow her picture survived the fire.”

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean, no? You said you saw it upstairs with, like, thousands of others, right?”

“Right.”

“So now it’s down here—somehow it survived the fire,” Ema said.

“No.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“There were thousands of pictures up there. Yet only one managed to float down to the basement, make it all the way through the debris, and end up on the floor right in front of the door to the tunnel?”

Now Ema looked skeptical.

“Forget the odds of any photograph making that voyage,” I said. “What are the odds that the one that does happens to be the girl we rescued?”

Ema swallowed and said, “You have a better explanation?”

“Sure,” I said.

“What?”

I felt a chill even as I thought it. “Someone left it for us.”

“Why would someone do that?”

I picked up the photograph of Ashley. I turned it over. On the back, there was a butterfly with two animal eyes on the wings. The Abeona butterfly. It looked like the other butterflies I had seen—and yet the coloring was just slightly different.

The eyes were purple. Like the one on Rachel’s hospital door.

It hit me like a surprise wave on the beach. “Oh my God,” I said.

“What?”

“I think I know where Rachel hid the package.”

CHAPTER 37

Here was how Spoon
answered the phone: “Spoon Central.”

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“Dad and I are watching the season-three
Glee
season finale. For the fourth time. Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“It’s very moving.”

“I’m sure.”

“Don’t worry. I have it on DVD. You can borrow it. Did you know that Lea Michele was the original Wendla in
Spring Awakening
?”

“Yeah, that’s great. Listen, Spoon, can you get out?”

“Get out? You mean, like, out of this house?”

“Yes.”

“And do you mean, like, now?”

I sighed. Ema stood next to me. We were back on the street, heading toward Kasselton High. “Yes, I mean now.”

“I’m still grounded, remember? Why, what’s up?”

“I need to get into Ashley’s locker,” I said.

“Ah,” Spoon said, “I knew something was wrong with that.”

“With what?”

“With Ashley’s locker. See, there was a Sevier combination lock on it.”

“So?”

“So the school only issues Master Lock. If a new student had taken over Ashley’s locker, that would be what they used. A Master Lock. The school would never permit a Sevier.”

It just confirmed what I now realized when I looked at the photograph. Bat Lady or Shaved Head or someone high up in the Abeona Shelter had left it on the basement floor so the message would be loud and clear:

Help Rachel.

That was our current assignment. Forget the fire. Forget finding Bat Lady or Shaved Head. Our first assignment had been to save Ashley. Now we needed to save Rachel.

“When the episode ends, it’ll be my bedtime anyway,” Spoon said. “I’ll get my warm cup of milk, climb into bed, turn out the lights, and then I’ll climb out the window. What do you think?”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll stick a couple of pillows under the blanket so it looks like I’m still in there. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Your choice, Spoon.”

“Okay, the show is almost over. I’ll meet you by that same door as last time.”

Then another thought struck me. “Wait,” I said.

“What?”

Ema looked at me, confused. How could I explain this? Spoon was just a kid. Yeah, we all were, but he seemed younger. He was home innocently watching
Glee
with his father. I couldn’t ask him to come down here and illegally break into the school again.

I was about to tell Spoon to forget it—to stay in his nice cozy bed and drink his warm milk—but then I remembered something else. Spoon was his own person, and he could make his own decisions. Hadn’t he told me that he’d even been arrested once? Maybe he wasn’t such an innocent, and maybe I shouldn’t act like I was his overprotective big brother.

Plus, last time Spoon broke the rules, he had saved Ema’s life.

“Something wrong, Mickey?” Spoon asked.

My grip on the phone tightened. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to get him in any more trouble, but we needed him. “Nope, nothing. We’ll see you soon.”

I hung up. Ema and I huddled by the school’s side door. There are few places more empty and lifeless than a school at night. It was after nine
P.M
. by the time Spoon joined us.

“Put these on,” Spoon said. “To hide our faces.”

He handed Ema and me masks. He kept one for himself. But these weren’t, say, ski masks, like you might expect.

“Are these . . . ?” I began.

“Yup,
Lion King
masks,” Spoon said. “Ema, I gave you Mufasa. I was going to give you Pumbaa, but he’s a warthog and, well, I figured you’d kill me.”

Frowning at the mask in her hand, Ema said, “You figured right.”

“So, Mickey, you’ll be Pumbaa, and I’ll be”—he slipped on the mask—“Timon. See? Timon and Pumbaa?
Hakuna matata
. Come on, put yours on. It will be practical yet fun.”

I didn’t move.

Spoon lifted his up and frowned. “There are surveillance cameras inside. If something goes wrong, we don’t want anyone recognizing us.”

I looked at Ema. She shrugged. He had a point.

Spoon slipped the mask back into place so that he was now a smiling meerkat. “Mickey, with your height you should also hunch over. In fact, we should all alter our gait. Ema, maybe instead of your usual angry strut, you could twirl or something.”

“Twirl?”

“Or something. So they can’t identify you.”

“I’m not twirling,” Ema said.

“Or something.”

“I’m not or something-ing either.”

“I think the masks will be enough,” I said.

Spoon shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

We moved toward the school door. Spoon swiped his card key. I heard a click, and the door opened. I looked over at Ema for assurance, but instead of her face, I saw Mufasa’s. Well, Mufasa looked pretty resolute, so I followed Spoon inside.

“There’s no audio recording in here,” Spoon said. He used his regular voice, no stage whisper or even “indoor” voice. The sound was loud in this still corridor, jarring and echoing. “There are cameras in every hallway. They are shot from above, but since we have masks on, this doesn’t matter much.”

He made a right turn. We followed.

“That’s Mrs. Nelson’s classroom. Do you know what Dad told me? She keeps her old underwear and socks underneath her desk. And not the sexy kind. I mean, have you seen Mrs. Nelson? Shudder, right? But Dad says she has an amazing sock collection. All different colors and styles. Do you want to see her sock collection?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s okay. The classroom doors are never locked. Fire hazard or something. Oh, unless there’s a lockdown. Do you know what that is? See, every classroom has a panic button under the teacher’s desk. In case of a school shooting or some kind of emergency, it sets off an alarm and the school goes into lockdown. Cool, right?”

Mercifully we arrived in front of Ashley’s locker. Spoon examined the lock. “Yep, just as I suspected. A Sevier combination lock.” He shook his head. “Pitiful, really.”

“You have a key to open it?”

Timon looked at me. It was so weird to look at your friend and see someone else’s smiling face. “No, of course not. It isn’t regulation.”

“So what should we do?” Ema asked.

Spoon took out a tire iron, slid it through the lock’s loop, and turned it hard. The lock snapped open as if it were made of porcelain.

“Voilà,” Spoon said.

That was when I heard a noise. I froze. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

“Hear what?” Spoon/Timon said.

I looked over at Ema/Mufasa. I stared at her mask as though I could read her face that way. “Ema?”

“Let’s just hurry.”

Spoon cleared away the leftover lock debris. When he was done, he stepped back and gestured for me to take over. I reached forward, grabbed the metallic latch, and lifted it up. I opened the locker and peered inside.

There was a gym bag.

I pulled it out and dropped it on the floor. The three of us surrounded it and peered down through our masks. I bent down, took hold of the zipper, and pulled it open. The sound echoed through the still hallways, sounding like a giant rip. For a moment, no one spoke. We just stared down.

Then Spoon said, “O. M. G.”

The first thing I noticed was the money—bundles and bundles of cash, wrapped up in rubber bands. It was impossible to say how much. Ema reached down and picked one up. She started fingering through the bills of Ben Franklin.

“They’re all hundred-dollar bills,” Ema said.

“Did you know,” Spoon said, “that Benjamin Franklin was an expert swimmer?”

“Not now, Spoon.”

Ema moved a few packs of bills to the side, and that was when we saw the plastic bags loaded with white powder.

“Do you think those are drugs?” Spoon asked.

“I don’t think they’re baby powder,” I replied.

“We need to get this to the police,” Ema said.

Spoon stood back up. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“We just illegally broke into the school,” Spoon said, with a tinge of agitation in his voice. “We illegally broke into this locker. Do you know how much trouble we’ll get in?”

“He has a point,” I said.

“And who’s going to believe that we just found it?” Spoon continued, raising both arms in the air excitedly. “Suppose they think we’re the drug dealers. I’ve already got a rep, you know. They’ll send me to the big house.”

“The big house?” Ema repeated.

“The slammer, the joint, the pen, up the river, juvie, the clink—”

“Okay, Spoon,” I said.

“We can’t tell anyone we found this,” Spoon insisted. “Don’t you see? Imagine a tasty morsel like me in a prison.”

“Relax,” I said. “No one is going to prison.”

“And suppose they do believe us?” Spoon continued. “Suppose we tell the truth and they believe us and it all traces back to Rachel. How is she going to explain this?”

Silence. Even Ema knew that he was making sense.

“We need to think,” I said.

“Quickly,” Spoon added.

“We can’t just let it go either,” Ema said. “We know what happened now. Rachel’s mom goes on a rant about how evil her father is. Rachel investigates. She finds this bag. She hides it and contacts the Abeona Shelter, right?”

I nodded, remembering my conversation with Shaved Head. He had thought that maybe Rachel had given me the package. She hadn’t. I wondered why Rachel hadn’t told me about it, but now I understood. Her mother was killed over this package. Rachel herself was shot. If she told me where it was, well, she’d be putting me in danger too.

“Meanwhile,” Ema continued, “Rachel’s dad or those bad guys are wondering what happened to the bag. They figured out that Rachel must have taken it . . .”

“No,” I said. “They probably figured that Rachel’s mom had taken it.”

“Right. So they went after her, and, well, we know what happened next.”

“She ended up dead.”

Spoon said, “We gotta go. Let’s just put the bag back in the locker and try to think it out.”

“That won’t work either,” I said. “The lock is broken. We can’t leave it in an unlocked locker.”

“So what do we do?” Ema asked.

“You give it to us.”

I spun toward the rough voice. The two men I spotted in the souped-up car at Rachel’s house were there. Both men were carrying guns. Scarface, the one Detective Waters had warned me about, said, “Nobody move. Put your hands up.”

“But if we’re not supposed to move,” Spoon began, “how can we put our hands up?”

Scarface pointed his gun at Spoon’s chest. “You being a smart mouth with me?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said in the calmest voice I could muster. “We’re all doing exactly what you tell us. You’re in charge here.”

“Bet your butt I’m in charge,” Scarface said, turning his attention back to me. “Now take off those stupid masks.”

Spoon: “But if we’re not supposed to move—”

“Spoon,” I interrupted. I shook my head at him to shut him up. We all took off our masks and dropped them on the floor.

Scarface pocketed his gun, but his partner was still at the ready. The partner was a huge guy. He wore his sunglasses indoors in the dark and sported the blankest expression I had ever seen on his face. He looked like a bored, cold killer, like he would just as soon shoot us as not, no biggie. I didn’t know what to do or say, so for now, I just stayed silent.

Scarface walked over to the gym bag. He bent down and looked inside.

“It all there?” Sunglasses asked.

“Seems to be,” Scarface said. He stood and grinned at me. “Thanks for finding our stuff for us, Mickey.”

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“Simple really. We figured that either Rachel or Mommy stole our little package from Daddy. So we got a hold of her cell phone records. Seems she called you right before the big bang-bang, so we figured, hey, maybe you, her boyfriend, helped her hide it. So we started following you. Easy-peasy, right?”

The baby talk, to put it mildly, was unnerving.

“Right,” I said. “You got your stuff. You can go now.”

Scarface grinned at Sunglasses. The corner of Sunglasses’s lips twitched. I didn’t like that twitch.

Scarface zippered the bag back up. “When we followed you to that burned-up old house, well, for a second I thought maybe she hid the stuff there and it got burned up. That would have been very, very bad.”

“But that wasn’t the case,” I said, trying to stand a little taller. “Your stuff was here the whole time. Now it’s yours again.”

“Yep,” Scarface said. “I see that. Only one problem.”

I swallowed. The small stone of fear in my chest started expanding, making it hard to breathe. “What’s that?”

“You guys. I mean, you saw our faces.”

“We won’t say a word,” Ema said.

Scarface turned his attention to her now. As he moved closer to Ema, I tried to slip between them, but he stopped me with a glare. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. They were cruel eyes, the kind that enjoyed hurting others—the kind, I realized with mounting horror, that would never listen to reason.

“You expect me to just trust you, sweet cheeks?” Scarface asked. His face was mere inches away from Ema’s now. She looked as though she was about to cry. “You expect us to just, what, let you go?”

“My arms are getting tired,” Spoon said. “Can I put them down?”

Scarface spun toward him. “I told you not to move.”

“Well, yes, you did, but then you had us move twice—once to put our hands up, once to take off our masks.” Spoon slid toward the right. “So that whole ‘don’t move’ thing? It seems more like a guideline than a hard, fast rule, you know what I mean? So I was hoping, seeing how my arms are getting really tired—”

And then Spoon did the unthinkable.

With all attention on the inanity of what he was saying, Spoon suddenly leapt at Sunglasses. The move surprised everyone, me included.

Next thing I knew, the gun went off. And Spoon fell to the ground, bleeding.