The Merchant of Death (14 page)

“I gotta be honest,” said D'Angelo as he led them through the station. “I thought you two were pulling a number on me until I spoke with Captain Hirsch.”

“What did he say?” Mark asked.

“Ask him yourself,” said the sergeant as he opened a door and motioned for Mark and Courtney to enter. The two walked into a conference room with a large metal table surrounded by eight chairs. It was a plain room with a huge mirror that covered most of one wall. Sitting at the head of the table was a pleasant-looking man wearing a suit. When the kids entered
he stood up and smiled, but both kids sensed that he was troubled. Good. He should be. There were troubling things going down.

“Hi, guys. I'm Captain Hirsch,” the man said. “Thanks for coming back.”

Courtney went right up to the mirror and stuck her nose to the glass while cupping her eyes to block out the light.

“This a two-way mirror?” she asked. “Who's back there? You interrogating us?”

Hirsch looked to D'Angelo and the two chuckled. “Yes, it's a two-way mirror,” said Hirsch. “But nobody's back there and we're not interrogating you.”

Courtney kept trying to look through the mirror. She didn't believe him.

“Why don't you two sit down and relax,” said the sergeant.

Mark and Courtney took seats next to each other at the table. D'Angelo stood by the door. Hirsch sat down and looked at the kids. The kids looked back at Hirsch. Hirsch nervously pulled at his eyebrow. It seemed as if he didn't know where to begin, so Courtney being Courtney, decided to kick things off herself.

“So how come you suddenly believe us about the Pendragons?” she asked Hirsch.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pendragon are good friends of mine,” he said. “My son Jimmy plays basketball with Bobby.”

“Jimmy Hirsch!” shouted Mark. “I know him. Strong forward.”

Captain Hirsch nodded. This was good. Now they had an adult on their side. And he was a cop. A captain, no less. Now things were going to start happening.

“When was the last time you saw Bobby?” he asked them.

Mark knew the answer, but it was up to Courtney to give it.

“Last night at his house,” she answered. “About an hour before the game.”

“Did he say anything that would make you think he was going away?” came the next question.

Courtney and Mark looked at each other. They knew exactly where Bobby had gone. If the story on the parchment were true, then they knew how Uncle Press had taken him on the back of his motorcycle and left for a place on the far side of the universe called Denduron. But neither of them were sure if the outlandish story was really true, and they didn't want to sound totally insane. Besides, the pages didn't explain what had happened to the Pendragons' house. Mark and Courtney had decided before going to the police that they'd stick to the facts that could be proved. And it was pretty easy to prove that the house was gone. So without discussing it again, they both decided to stick with the original plan.

“I was talking to Bobby at his house,” answered Courtney. “His uncle Press came in and I left. That's the last I saw him.”

Captain Hirsch looked down at a piece of paper where he had written some notes.

“Right. Uncle Press,” he said out loud, though it seemed like he was thinking it more than saying it. Hirsch looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not. He looked to Sergeant D'Angelo for guidance.

“I think you should tell them, Captain,” said the sergeant.

“T-Tell us what?” asked Mark.

Obviously these policemen had some disturbing information. Captain Hirsch stood up and paced nervously.

“After you spoke with Sergeant D'Angelo, he told me about your visit,” began Hirsch. “Frankly, he didn't believe you because he couldn't find any information on the Pendragons.”

“But you know them,” interjected Courtney.

“Yes, I know them,” said Hirsch. “I've been to their house many times.”

“And the house is gone!” added Mark.

Hirsch didn't continue right away. He looked at the two kids, then to Sergeant D'Angelo. Finally he said, “Yeah. The house is gone. This may be a small police department in a small town, but we have access to pretty much any piece of information that's part of the public record,” he said. “After you came in here, we did a computer search for the Pendragons . . . and found nothing.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing'?” asked Courtney. “No police record?”

“No, I mean absolutely nothing,” said Hirsch. A hint of frustration was creeping into his voice. “No birth certificates, no driver's licenses, no social security numbers, no bank accounts, no deeds, no electric bills, no school records, no credit cards, no nothing! The Pendragons didn't just disappear—it's like they never even existed!”

Hirsch paced faster. He was getting upset because what he was saying didn't make sense, yet it was true.

Finally Mark said, “B-But they do exist, don't they? I mean, we know them.”

“I know!” snapped Hirsch. “I've had dinner at their house. I've driven Bobby to Boy Scouts. Here's another one for you: We scanned back copies of the newspaper where Mr. Pendragon works and couldn't find a single article he had written. But I remember reading them. I've discussed some of those articles with him.”

This was getting stranger by the second. Disappearing is one thing. But having someone's whole history vanish seemed downright impossible.

“W-What about Uncle Press?” asked Mark nervously.

“Again, nothing,” answered Hirsch. “There is nothing we can find to prove that any of these people ever existed. . ..”

“Except in our memories,” added Courtney.

That was a chilling thought. If what the captain said were true, the only thing left of Bobby and his family were the memories they all held . . . and the parchment papers in Mark's bag. Captain Hirsch sat back down at the table and looked to the kids with pleading eyes. This had turned his orderly policeman's mind inside out.

“Kids,” he said with a touch of desperation. “Help me out here. If there is anything you can add, anything that might help us figure out what happened to the Pendragons, please tell us.”

Mark and Courtney had plenty to add. It was all sitting in Mark's backpack on the table in front of them. All they had to do was slide it over to Captain Hirsch. He would read the pages and take over. That's what adults did. They took over and fixed things. It wasn't Courtney's call—the letters were to Mark. If they were going to tell the police about the pages, it would have to be Mark's decision.

Courtney saw that he was staring at the pack. She knew exactly what was going through his mind. He was debating whether or not to give over the pages. He then looked to her and they made eye contact. Courtney wished that she had some way of helping him make the decision, but she honestly didn't know the right thing to do. So she gave him a slight, helpless shrug that said, “You're on your own.”

“Well?” asked Hirsch. “Can you guys think of anything else?”

Mark took a deep breath, turned to Hirsch and said, “No. We're just as confused as you are.”

Decision made. Courtney picked up on Mark's lead and added, “Yeah. We're pretty freaked out.”

Hirsch took a deep, tired sigh and stood up saying, “Okay, we're going to start an investigation. Tell your parents, tell your friends, tell anybody who'll listen. If they hear anything about the Pendragons, have them call me. Okay?”

Courtney and Mark nodded. Hirsch then gave each of them a business card with his phone number on it. Mark grabbed his pack and they headed out.

Once they were out of the building, they walked silently for a long while. The police station was right near Stony Brook Avenue, which was the main business street in town. Most of the shops and restaurants were there. Since there was no mall in Stony Brook, the “Ave” as they called it was where everybody hung out. But Courtney and Mark weren't interested in any of the temptations that the Ave held that day. They walked by the CD Silo without even a glance into the window; they weren't tempted by the smell of the best french fries in the world coming from Garden Poultry Deli; they had no interest in ice cream from The Scoop; and they didn't even think of going to the library. The front steps of the library was where everyone stopped first on a trip to the Ave because you were sure to find someone you knew there.

But not today. Not for Courtney and Mark. Somehow these familiar haunts didn't seem so familiar anymore. Everything looked the same, but the last few hours had opened their eyes to the possibility that the world didn't work exactly the way they thought it did. Between Bobby's adventure and the strange disappearance of the Pendragons, everything they'd ever believed was thrown into question. With thoughts like this running through their heads, somehow grabbing a box of fries at Garden Poultry Deli didn't seem all that appetizing. So the two walked past the usual places where their friends hung out and went into a small, quiet pocket park that was sandwiched between two buildings. They sat down on a park bench and stared at the ground.

Finally Mark looked to Courtney and asked softly, “Should I have told them about Bobby's letter?”

“I don't know,” was Courtney's reply. “I don't know what to think anymore.”

Mark tried to put his feelings into words. “I have a feeling,” he began, “that there's an important reason Bobby is sending me his story.”

“Why? We haven't even read what he wants yet,” said Courtney.

“Yeah, I know. But I think it's more than that. I've got a feeling that something big is going on and Bobby's only one part of it. There's some serious stuff going on here. I mean like, cosmic stuff. Am I being weird?”

“Weird?” chuckled Courtney. “How could anything sound weird now?”

“Exactly! The idea of Travelers who understand languages, and territories, and flumes that send you across space and time . . . that stuff changes everything we know about how things work.”

This made Courtney fall silent. Mark was right. Up until now she was only thinking about Bobby and the Pendragons. But the implications of what they were reading were totally huge. Too huge to comprehend.

Mark continued, “As we were sitting with the police, I thought about what might happen if I gave them Bobby's story. I came up with two possibilities. One was that they'd announce it to the world, there'd be a huge furor and we'd be smack in the center of it. Remember, I might still get more pages. I don't think Bobby would want that kind of uproar, especially if he wants me to help him. If he did, he would have started right off by telling me to take his story to the newspapers.”

“What's the other possibility?” asked Courtney.

“The exact opposite might happen. The stuff Bobby wrote about might be so disturbing to the world that they'd bury the
whole thing and pretend it never happened . . . kind of like the aliens from Roswell, or the Kennedy assassination. People don't like to hear that their nice, orderly world isn't what they thought it was. I wouldn't blame them; I'm not so thrilled about it myself.”

“There's a third possibility,” added Courtney. “People may think we're responsible. Everyone always wants easy answers and the easiest answer is that we made the whole thing up. It would be easier for people to think it's all a hoax than to believe there are people who jump through wormholes and travel through the universe.”

It was hard to believe that only a few hours ago their biggest concern was that Bobby Pendragon had missed a basketball game.

Courtney looked to Mark and asked, “What do you think we should do?”

Before he could answer, someone reached in from behind, grabbed his backpack and yanked it out of his hands! Courtney and Mark looked up in surprise.

“What'cha got, Dimond? More magazines?” It was Andy Mitchell, the kid who caught Mark in the boys' room reading Bobby's first journal. He fumbled with the clasps on Mark's pack, trying to open it.

Mark jumped to his feet, shouting, “M-Mitchell. G-give it back!”

Mark lunged at him, but Mitchell danced away.

“Aw, c'mon,” laughed Mitchell. “Don't you want to share?”

He held the pack out toward Mark. Mark swiped at it, but Mitchell pulled it away and laughed.

“How bad you want it back?” Mitchell taunted. “Bad enough to swim with the rats for it?” He backed toward a storm drain in the curb. It was plenty big enough for the pack to fit through.

“Don't!” Mark shouted desperately.

Mitchell dangled the pack over the drain. “What'll you give me for it?”

“What do you want?” asked Mark nervously.

Mitchell thought for a moment, then spotted something on Mark's hand. “I'll trade the pack . . . for that big old ring”

Mark couldn't give up the ring, no way. But he didn't want to lose the pages, either. He hadn't read what Bobby wanted him to do yet.

“Think fast, Dimond,” snickered Mitchell as he dangled the pack over the storm drain. “The pack or the ring . . . pack or the ring.”

Mark didn't know what to do. Suddenly, a steely-strong hand clamped down on Mitchell's wrist. He looked up and came face to face with Courtney. She had been calmly watching the scene from the bench. She might not have known how to deal with the mysterious disappearance of Bobby and the Pendragons, or the fact that the world had just turned upside down, but the one thing she knew how to handle was a bully like Andy Mitchell. She squeezed his wrist and stuck her nose in his face.

“Drop that in the sewer,” she said through clenched teeth, “and you're going in after it. . . headfirst.”

They stood that way for a long moment. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Mitchell smiled.

“Jeez. I was just kidding around,” he said.