Any Second

by Kevin Emerson

  The officers were opening a pair of metal cabinets beneath the stairs. One filled with chemicals and electronics. Another filled with canned food.

  “Over here,” said the commander, by the back wall. A squat tunnel led into the earth. Clanging and thumping from in there, and then daylight. Eli peered in and saw two officers crouched beside a small stepladder, looking up. “Comes up right beside the car.”

  “Do you remember being down here?” Pearson asked Eli as she surveyed the room.

  “I think he took me in and out this way, but I never saw it.” Eli looked at the single plate. At the little stove. Over in the corner, he spied a green plastic bucket sitting beneath a fold-up toilet seat on metal legs. “How long since he’s been here?”

  “We’ll have to do a detailed analysis.” Pearson moved to the metal closet and picked up a bottle of habanero sauce, a can of beans. “Dated next year. But these things have long shelf lives.”

  “Detective.” One of the officers was running his fingers up and down four cables that hung from the ceiling. “USB,” he said.

  Pearson dug into her bag and pulled out a tablet. “Here.” She connected the cable, tapped through settings, and a window popped open. It showed a distorted view of the street in front of the house, partially blocked by leaves. “He had a camera system.” She unplugged the first and tried a second. This time, a view of the alley.

  “Is that important?” Maya asked.

  “It means it’s possible that he saw our initial surveillance.”

  “Like he might have been here?” Eli asked. “Three days ago?”

  Pearson shook her head. “It doesn’t prove anything.” She continued plugging the cables into her tablet to check their feeds.

  Something caught Eli’s eye, and he moved to the sink. Spotless inside. Everything put away, except for a small glinting object: an inch-tall plastic robot with orange feet and a clear domed head through which you could see its inner gears. It had a key on its side like you could wind it up. Eli checked over his shoulder. Everyone still preoccupied with other parts of the room—

  He slipped the tiny robot into the pocket of his hoodie and returned to Maya, who was staring at the cot, or maybe just into space, hugging herself.

  “Why would he live like this?” she wondered quietly.

  The Purpose demands sacrifice. “Maybe so no one could tell he was here.”

  “It’s so weird,” said Maya, “and, like, lonely.”

  Had Gabriel been lonely? Was that why he took me?

  I loved you.

  STOP. These thoughts felt like a trap. But he turned the little robot over between his fingers, picturing Gabriel as a kid in that room upstairs.

  “All right,” said Pearson. “Let’s clear out and let the full forensics team get in here.”

  They headed up the narrow staircase. As they crossed through the red dark room, Eli paused. Took a long slow look. The blue blanket on the floor, the bowl, the plywood-covered window and its sliver of light.

  You miss it. You miss the Purpose. No one cared about you like I did.

  NO. But he’d been here for so long…

  Maya took his hand again. “Hey. Let’s go.”

  Eli nodded. Strode through the door.

  October 13

  They crossed the backyard, past the now-open trapdoor, which was in the shadow between the car and the fence.

  Maya looked back at the house. Its worn paint. The way that, in the window of Eli’s room, you could sort of tell that the curtains were pressed against the glass by the plywood behind them. The lawn tangled with weeds. Little details, and yet otherwise there was no real sign that this house could possibly contain such evil.

  No one spoke until they had gotten into the car and started down the alley.

  “Doesn’t look like the press has been tipped off yet,” said Pearson, scrolling through her phone with one hand, “but still, why don’t you both duck for a minute while we pull onto the street?”

  Maya slouched down, her insides knotted, one hand inside her hat. “How are you doing?” she asked Eli.

  “Fine.” He stared straight ahead.

  “Come on,” said Maya, elbowing him. “I’m not fine. That was a lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, we’re clear,” said Pearson. “Maya, I’ll take you home first.”

  Maya sat up and gazed out the window. She watched the little houses slide by, all normal-seeming. Why would you think otherwise? And yet what secrets, what closed-off rooms and hidden basements lurked in each of these little dwellings? There was no way to know.

  Her fingers came away with a few strands of hair and she pushed them into her jacket pocket. Felt herself listing, the waves around her getting bigger. A Serenitab would be good, but she didn’t have many left, and the nights before the jazz concert would be minefields of nervous energy. She imagined being home in a few minutes, her mom’s questions, not to mention the mushroom cloud she’d been ignoring on her phone, of Eli having to go home…

  “Hey,” she said. “Do you want to get food or something?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. We could go to Red Mill.”

  Eli looked at her and blinked. Like he was returning from far away. “Yeah.”

  “Would that be all right?” Maya asked Pearson. “Just for like an hour?”

  She looked at them in the rearview mirror. “I can see if the detail that was going to be at your house can reposition,” she said to Eli. “You both need to clear it with your parents.”

  “What about him?” said Eli.

  “Gabriel?” Pearson said. “Sorry—Stephen. We should use his name. We’ll see what the forensics sweep uncovers, but for the moment, I don’t think there’s any more reason to believe that he is in the vicinity than before. Even less, now that we found his house.” Pearson’s phone buzzed. “And…okay, the press has caught wind of our activities.”

  Maya fished her phone from her pocket. Just the sight of it made her heart somersault. She turned off airplane mode, blurred her eyes as alerts started flashing—

  Take the dog to the vet! (Eighty-six likes.)

  —and messaged her mom. We’re going to stop for Red Mill. Eli is kind of shaken up. For about an hour. Okay?

  “Am I bait?” Eli asked Pearson.

  “What? No, absolutely not.”

  “You mean like for Gabriel?” said Maya.

  Eli nodded.

  “Guys, no,” said Pearson. “We would like to catch him, of course. But we’re not using you, Eli. Your safety will always be our top concern.”

  Eli didn’t react, just returned to his phone.

  Maya’s mom replied: Is it all right with the police? Will they be there?

  They’ll be watching.

  Her response seemed to take forever. Is it helpful for Eli to have you there?

  Yes, Mom. Maya rolled her eyes. Sure, it was nice that Mom was being understanding, and she was probably worried, but you could also practically hear her saying: See how you’re a hero?

  Okay.

  “My mom’s cool with it,” Maya reported, sliding her phone back into airplane mode. “What about yours?”

  “She says it’s okay. Melissa will come get me.” Eli looked at Pearson. “My mom wants you to call and fill her in.”

  “Tell her I definitely will, but”—Pearson’s phone buzzed again—“I need to get back to my desk and keep things moving. Calls are starting to flood in and I have to update all the different departments and agencies.”

  “She’s not going to like that,” Eli said to himself.

  “What do you mean?” said Pearson.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?” Maya asked.

  Eli frowned. “Sometimes it’s like she cares more about the case than how
I’m doing. If she’d been there today, she would have been asking about every detail.”

  Pearson sighed. “We’re aware of your mom’s online activities regarding Gabriel. She’s actually crossed paths with our agents, without knowing it.”

  “Has she done anything wrong?”

  “No, but…I have to admit that she’s one of the reasons we still have a detail watching you. We don’t want her pursuing any leads that could put her in danger. There are some pretty sketchy characters lurking online.”

  “Is that why you said you couldn’t bring her along today?”

  “Essentially.”

  “It was just so hard for her.”

  “It’s probably hard for you now,” said Maya.

  Eli shrugged and looked out the window.

  Pearson dropped them off in front of Red Mill. “The detail is en route,” she said. “I’ll wait in the lot until they arrive.” She pulled around to the side of the building, leaving them standing in front of the restaurant.

  Maya looked up and down the street, couldn’t shake a feeling that they weren’t safe. That there were eyes, agendas, lurking behind every closed window of every house.

  “How do you do it?” she asked Eli.

  “Do what?” he said, his gaze lost in the pavement.

  “Not be afraid.”

  “I’m always afraid.”

  “Well then, how do you handle it?”

  “I think I’m just used to it.”

  “I don’t want to get used to it.” And besides, that was no way to live. Maya took his hand. “Come on, let’s go bravely eat some greasy burgers.”

  The line began just inside the door, the restaurant packed with families, clusters of teens and twenty-somethings. Shouts and sizzle from behind the counter. Only after they’d stepped into line did Maya consider that there might be kids from school here, that they might be seen. Also surprised Pearson hadn’t thought of that, though she’d had a lot on her plate. But then, maybe everyone would actually be safer if they knew each other’s pasts and secrets. Maybe then they wouldn’t be so fractured and lonely, and people like Gabriel wouldn’t be able to do the things they did, might not even get to the point of doing them in the first place.

  “Hey,” the pink-haired girl behind the register said. “You gonna tell me what you want?”

  “Oh,” said Maya. “Sorry, um…” She looked at the menu and laughed.

  “What?” Eli asked.

  “I was about to order a garden burger, but then I remembered how Janice always gave me shit for ordering them. She told me I should get a cheeseburger, since I liked them best.” For an hour or so, she’d nearly put the whole photo situation out of her mind. Now it roared back.

  “Do you like cheeseburgers best?”

  “I think so? It was just weird. She tried to control everything I ever did. So now a part of me kind of hates cheeseburgers, even though I love them. Everything got flipped around.”

  “She seemed scary.”

  Maya laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Should I take the next order?” said the pink-haired girl.

  “No, sorry. I’ll have the chicken sandwich. Never tried that,” she said to Eli. “Want to split onion rings? Janice hated those.”

  “Are they good?”

  “They’re why you come.”

  They got their trays and sat on stools at the narrow counter along the front window.

  A slapping sound echoed from around the corner. Eli flinched, glancing around quickly.

  “It’s just the bathroom door,” said Maya.

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. How often does that happen?”

  “A lot. It’s probably going to be worse now.” He sipped his soda.

  “You don’t believe Pearson that Gabriel’s far away?”

  “I think I do, but the fear is still there. He also— Never mind.”

  “What?”

  “The anniversary is coming up.”

  “Thirteen days away,” said Maya, adrenaline shooting through her, “but who’s counting?”

  “Sometimes I worry that maybe he’s not done with me.”

  “Well,” said Maya, “now he’s gotta deal with us.” She made fists like a boxer, coaxing a quick smile from Eli. “How are you holding up? That must have been hard, in there.”

  “It was, but I feel a little better now. How about you?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, fine. The thing that freaked me out was that it looked so normal from the outside.” Maya nodded out the window. “Now I look around and every single house is a Schrödinger’s cat of psycho abductors.”

  “A what?”

  “Have you heard of Schrödinger’s cat?”

  “Nope. But you know a lot of really smart stuff, so I’m sure it’s true.”

  “Well—okay, first of all, thank you.” She smiled. “It’s this idea that if you put a cat in a box with some poison—”

  Eli’s face paled. “Why would you do that?”

  “No, I mean, I wouldn’t. I don’t think anybody actually did. It’s just a thought experiment, but it uses a cat.”

  “Gabriel made me kill cats.”

  Maya’s mouth fell open. “Are you serious? Oh man, I had no idea. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

  He shook his head. “If you worried about everything that might connect to my past, there’d be nothing to talk about.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  Eli bit into an onion ring. “Don’t even get me started about the bunnies.”

  “Oh God, really? Bunnies?”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  Maya gaped. “You’re kidding! You jerk!” She play-punched his shoulder.

  His smile grew. Maya’s laugh burbled out of her and the next thing she knew they were both cracking up, covering their mouths to stifle their laughter as nearby customers looked over.

  “We should absolutely not be laughing,” said Maya.

  “I know,” said Eli. They cracked up again. But then his face darkened. He looked at her seriously. “Thank you for not treating me like I’m broken.”

  “Well…right back at you.”

  “So what is the cat thing?”

  Maya waved her hand. “Oh, it’s just the idea that until you look in the box, you don’t know if the cat is dead or alive, so both realities kind of exist. Except they don’t actually. In the box, the cat is definitely one or the other. But in your experience, it could be either. It has to do with probability and quantum mechanics. I was just saying that, until you know there’s no psycho in each house, there is some probability of one being there.”

  “But thinking that way makes the world terrifying.”

  Maya shrugged. “Tell me about it. Science is cold, man. I mean, I guess there’s also a probability that each of those houses has an entire room full of chocolate, but I only ever think about that bad stuff.”

  “What bad stuff?”

  “Well…” Maya collapsed an entire onion ring into her mouth. Felt her chest constricting as she chewed. This was usually the part where she shut up. “Sometimes I just freak out and feel like, what’s the point? Why love something, or try at something, or care about something, when nothing is safe? It feels too dangerous. And I can see myself being too afraid to say what I want to say, or feel what I feel, and I know I shouldn’t drift, but I can’t stop it. And some of that is the trauma—I’m supposed to call it that—of the DOL, but some of it was there already. Maybe it always will be.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But that’s not even all. And for the record, no more apologies, okay? I feel even worse because all these people are trying to help me, and I’m not loving them back, or not showing it at least, and it’s like, how can I be so selfish? Ex
cept then I also think: why don’t they feel it too? That close proximity to death, the probability of the dead cat, right there, all the time. Are they blind? Ignorant? Or am I the dumb one for not being able to ignore it? But then it seems more like maybe everyone is messed up and suffering, but we’re all hiding it, trying to be something we’re not. God, it all sounds so ridiculous when I say it out loud.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Eli. “Gabriel called people sheep. He said everyone was complicit in the world being unfair.”

  “Oh man, I don’t want to be looking at the world like a psycho.” Maya shook her head. “Maybe it’s not that they’re complicit, but more like we’re all too afraid to tell each other the truth. Like we’re all part of this universal costume party. I mean, I wear this hat, but it’s a costume. The real me is that photo, but I can’t show it. Today proves that.”

  “People suck.”

  “Yeah, but it’s like, why? Even Gabriel looked normal when he was a little kid, but what happened? And how come nobody knew? I’ve had this reporter hounding me to do a one-year-later story and I feel like this is the stuff I’d start saying, but then that seems like a bad idea.”

  “Why?” said Eli. “People will listen if it’s coming from a hero.”

  Maya rolled her eyes. “Come on. You and I both know I wasn’t a hero. It was just dumb luck.”

  “I believed in you.”

  A warm little sunburst inside. “Well, okay, but if your bomb had worked…”

  “I thought you said it was time-locked.”

  “Oh, well, yeah. But—”

  “Besides,” said Eli, “sometimes I think about how if I’d been one minute later walking home from school, maybe Gabriel never gets me. It goes both ways.”