by Tom Twitchel
My right wrist, and my hand with it, was handcuffed to the rail of the hospital bed. That didn’t seem right—or fair, since I was counting feelings. I jerked it a couple of times and the other end of the cuff banged noisily against the rail.
Yup. Captured. But why?
The answer, or part of the answer, opened the door to my room. A blond uniformed police officer poked his head into the room.
“You’re awake.” A statement, not a question.
“Yeah.” I lifted my right arm and jangled the cuff. “What’s up with this? The last thing I remember is getting bonked on the head and waking up in a warehouse with a bunch of goons.”
The officer, probably not much older than Maddy’s uncle, Ty, nodded. “Can’t really comment on that. Sorry. There’ll be someone here soon to talk with you.” He shut the door.
Dressed in ultra-uncomfortable, backless and majorly embarrassing hospital jammies, I was left to wonder what had happened. Where was Justine? Where was Breno? I seemed to remember Miss Hoch screaming at me through a haze of fire, but the details were evading me.
How long had I been in the hospital? That’s when panic set in. I had to get to Mr. Goodturn and warn him about Miss Hoch. She’d be after him. Then I remembered the plot at school. Was it Friday yet? I looked out the window and saw a dim light. Either dawn or dusk. Did anyone know I was in the hospital? Had Oso actually died? Seemed like a definite. Justine—God, I hoped she was okay. I said a prayer for Oso. He seemed to have gotten his wish; he was free from his gang but not the way he had wanted.
I felt horrible, but I didn’t cry. I was too drained.
So I stewed and pondered until the door opened again.
This time a man wearing a suit and tie opened the door, nodded to the officer sitting outside, and then stepped into the room and closed the door.
He took a seat next to the bed. Not your traditional detective I thought. I was sure that was what he was even though he wasn’t wearing a gun or a badge. His short brown hair looked stylish enough, he wasn’t sporting a paunch and he didn’t have movie star good looks. Your average Joe, pale and cleanly shaven. He also wore a self-satisfied smirk.
I didn’t like him right off.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Crappy. Thank you,” I responded sulkily.
Shifting easily in the chair, he crossed his legs. “You seem to have been through quite a bit. I’m Detective Danton and I have some questions for you. What do you remember?”
No attorney? No relatives? At least Mr. Goodturn pretending to be a relative? I wasn’t in a question-answering mood.
“What day is it?” I asked.
“Friday,” he responded amiably enough.
“What time?”
“Seven in the morning. You have some place to be?”
“Yeah. School. I’m a kid.”
“You won’t be going anywhere for a while. What school do you attend?” he asked, in a way that was just cagey enough that a few things came into focus. He didn’t know who I was.
“Where are my friends?” I asked, feeling a rising anxiety.
“Which friends? What are their names?” Cagey again, designed to get information and not give it out.
“How long have I been here?” I demanded.
“Since very early this morning. You’ve been unconscious since we found you. The others are not doing as well as you. You’re the only one talking, so far.”
That did not sound good.
I raised my hand and rattled the handcuff, raising my eyebrows.
He made a face and shook his head. “With what we found in that warehouse we thought it best to restrain you until we can reasonably remove you from the suspect list. And protect you, of course.” He smirked.
Fair enough; two could play that way, I thought. “Okay, well, I’m not talking to you or anyone else without an attorney present. You guys call that being lawyered up. Right?”
Shaking his head, he swore, “I fricking hate TV.”
Getting up, he tugged down at the front of his jacket, squaring it across the shoulders, stared at me for a second and then turned to leave.
“Hey, are my friends okay?”
Turning back from the doorway, he grinned at me. “That’s a two-way street smartass. You don’t answer my questions, I don’t tell you jack.”
“Wait. Okay. I’ll answer some questions,” I rasped.
Arching an eyebrow the detective gave me a lopsided smile. “Really? All of a sudden you want to cooperate?”
“Yeah. I want to know if my friends are okay.” I did, but I was afraid to know.
“Mmm. Okay, but I’d like my questions answered first,” he said with a smirk.
“Trade. One question at a time. Me first,” I said, shaking my head and regretting it immediately.
He frowned. “I could just get an order. Hold you for questioning without any bargaining.”
“No prison can hold me,” I said glaring at him, more from the headache than from any desire to get in a staring contest.
“Houdini? You gonna finish that quote smartass?” he paused, shook his head. “All right. Ask your question.”
“Who did you find in the warehouse with me?”
“You and two other males, both Caucasian.” He grimaced. “How’d you end up in that warehouse?”
I could see that he was going to stretch things out.
“My friend Justine and I got jumped outside my apartment building, knocked out and we woke up there.” He raised his eyebrows at how much I had given him in one shot. “You didn’t find a teenaged girl?”
He grinned maliciously. “Just wasted a question there, pal. No. Just you and two men, but I’ll throw you a bone. One of ‘em is seriously injured. Still at the hospital. Had a fricking card sticking in his eye. Know anything about that?”
No, Justine? Or Miss Hoch? One of the guys they’d found was the whiny little henchman. I didn’t think my nerves or my heart could take much more. I was also thinking that being blatantly honest would work in my favor. “Yeah. I did it. I’m like a ninja. He was going to shoot me so I flipped a card in his eye. And another one in his hand.” I figured I had nothing to lose. “What does the other guy you found look like?”
The expression on his face was hilarious. I would have laughed if I wasn’t feeling sick about Justine and worried about Baffle. He didn’t know if he was being jerked around or what.
“Uh, he’s in his thirties. Big. Not bright. Also no help because he’s suffering from some kind of serious shock. Barely talking.”
Breno. They hadn’t found Oso either. How was that possible?
“Next one kid: There was blood all over the floor. Most of it came from somebody other than you and the two men we recovered. Where did it come from?”
I didn’t hesitate. “The skinny guy you found had a big ugly friend who shot someone else they had kidnapped. I think they killed him.” No reason to tell him about Oso or my tenuous relationship with him. “How did you find us?”
He was still processing what I had said about Oso, who they obviously hadn’t found.
“Anonymous phone call.”
I frowned at him. He grinned at me.
“Okay kid, my turn again. What’s your name?”
Unfortunately for him, I didn’t plan on answering any more questions. I shrugged.
Apparently, he didn’t care. He just shook his head.
“Okay, Houdini. We’ll figure out who you are eventually. I guess I got enough for now, except for that ridiculous bit about you being a card throwing ninja.” He frowned at me and glanced at the door to the room. “We’ll have you under guard if I need to ask you more questions.”
“I hope the officer guarding the door has a fallback career option,” I cracked. I wasn’t planning on sticking around.
“That’s cold. You really think you can disappear?”
“No shackles or leg irons can restrain me,” I intoned.
“Geez. You
little… You’re cocky. You know that? How do you think you’ll manage to pull that off?” he asked, assuming I wouldn’t actually tell him.
“The key is—”
“your mind,” he finished, paraphrasing my last Houdini quote. “Whatever kid.” He gave his head a quick shake, like trying to clear cobwebs, walked to the door and opened it. “You should know you’ve been concussed recently. You’re not in good shape. The docs here told me your EKG shows a history of concussions. Dangerous. You should really plant yourself until you get better.”
He walked into the hall and closed the door behind him without looking back. I figured he wasn’t the most popular guy wherever it was that he worked.
I tried to reason out what had happened. The two bad guys had been out cold, but they probably woke up well before I had been found. Justine and Breno had been tied to chairs so they had to have been found with me. Oso had gone down and had been bleeding badly. It seemed unlikely that he had survived, but I didn’t know for sure he was dead either. And then there was Miss Hoch. The memory of fire persisted, but I couldn’t remember what it meant. Breno had been screaming something, but I couldn’t recall what. So, based on what Danton had said, at least three of us had been found and the others weren’t talking yet. And Miss Hoch had been living within striking distance for God knew how long. Mr. Goodturn was totally vulnerable.
Justine and I had been missing for about seventy-two hours. I didn’t think there was a waiting period for filing a missing person report but I knew from my mom’s departure that police typically expected a person reported missing to show up in a couple of days, sometimes three. So they didn’t look too hard unless circumstances surrounding a disappearance looked suspicious. If the thugs that had kidnapped Justine and me had hidden her car there wouldn’t have been a serious search for a while. The bad news was that the police would likely show up at my apartment at some point. I was probably screwed in Seattle if that happened.
If it was Friday morning, Munger and his ship of fools were only a few hours away from potentially hurting a lot of people and framing Baffle. I had to choose between warning Mr. G and doing my best to prevent the bloodbath in the gym. I didn’t even have to think it over to know what Mr. Goodturn would tell me to do. I had places to go and things to do. I looked at the wall clock. It had been five minutes since the detective had left. I watched it for another five minutes.
Then I knacked the handcuffs, being careful not to make noise as I lifted my wrist out of the cuff and let it dangle from the rail. I slid out of bed and almost fell on the floor, I was so dizzy. My head still hurt like crazy, but at least I didn’t feel like puking anymore. My mouth was pasty and I couldn’t stand my own breath. There was a water pitcher and a plastic cup on a table next to the bed. I poured myself a glass and drank it quickly. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror by the bed and saw my face—huge, dark circles under my eyes and a bandage that covered most of my scalp. Gingerly, I removed the bandage. My hair was totally jacked up. I looked like an extra from a zombie movie. Experimentally, I touched the back of my head. Yep, still hurt—bad
My clothes were in a closet and I pulled them on as quickly and quietly as I could. My phone was missing and my wallet was sleeping in Justine’s car somewhere. They had probably confiscated my phone to do whatever it is that cops do to phones taken from suspects. I was pretty sure that was illegal, but I was short on legal advice at the moment. Keeping one eye on the door the detective had exited through, I walked over to the door to the bathroom, quietly pulled it shut, walked over to the bed and violently rattled the handcuffs and then quickly limped to the door and camouflaged myself.
At first, I thought I was going to have to do it again but the door opened, the young officer’s head poked in, and then he pushed the door wide and burst through the doorway. He stared at the cuffs and then ran to the bathroom door as I slipped out. Struggling to stay camouflaged, I walked slowly down the hall. The cop ran back into the hall, talking loudly into a walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder. Freezing in place, I watched him race down the hall, hospital staff staring wide-eyed as he dashed by. I had to stop a few more times whenever a nurse or a doctor did a double take of what probably looked to them like a section of wall moving. A clock on a wall in a nurses’ station communicated how very little time I had to save Baffle’s sorry ass and try to spare a lot of people from getting hurt. Without money, I wouldn’t be riding the bus so I did something I felt terrible about. I stole some cash from a purse hanging on the back of a chair where a harried and tired nurse was seated, filling out paperwork and filing forms. I promised myself I would pay her back if I lived.
My nerves were frayed by the time I got outside, where, of course, it was drizzling. I started walking to a bus stop as fast as I could, wishing I had a cell phone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I arrived at school damp, sweaty, beat and scared. I had missed all of my morning classes and lunch—for three days. Walking to the gym parking lot, I felt a sharp pain of loss as I thought back to Justine and me being in this same spot a little over a day ago. Shambling up to a side door, I knacked the lock and slipped inside.
Our gym is big enough to hold four thousand people. There are three levels and it covers a lot of square footage. I was overwhelmed. Where should I start? Where would someone hide guns and fireworks, or explosives? I figured high locations were probably out—too little damage. The foundation was a solid slab of concrete so there was no basement to check out. Standing quietly in a corner, I let my eyes travel over the interior. Where would I hide fireworks, or rather, where would Baffle suggest to Coby and Rusty they should hide them? I was looking for a location or locations that would create the best visibility and provide the most dramatic effect.
My vision blurred and then coalesced. The four massive steel pillars that supported the risers and the roof seemed to jump out at me. I limped quickly to the nearest pillar. There was no place to hide anything where it wouldn’t be seen. Then I noticed deep scratches on the painted concrete floor that led away from a big metal commercial trashcan that was pushed up against the pillar. The can had been moved from its normal spot where a faint circle of rust remained. Shaking, I looked into the open-mouthed can. Moving wads of paper towel out of the way, I found what they had hidden.
It was a bomb. The whole thing was the size of a loaf of bread. Several sticks of explosive were wired together around a lumpy package. I tore a small hole at the corner of the package and some familiar sand-like material dribbled out. The bomb had a cell phone taped to it with one wire leading from the phone to a nest of wires that led to separate metal fuses inserted into each stick of explosive. A series of movie images shuttered through my mind. The infamous “Which wire do I cut?” scenes. I had no help and no time to go through that kind of nerve wracking guessing game.
This had to be Baffle’s design, carried out by Munger or Witkowski. When Baffle and I played video games, or he tried to explain his gift for computer hacking, he repeated one philosophy like it was a mantra: “Don’t overthink it. Simple and straightforward is always best. Guys that fall in love with complexity are idiots.”
Closing my eyes, I pulled the wire attached to the phone. No explosion.
Dropping the explosives back into the trashcan, I pulled the phone’s battery, threw it in the trash, put the un-powered phone in my pocket and ran to the next pillar. Because of my leg and the distance involved, it took me about ten minutes to disarm all of them. It seemed so obvious once I knew what to look for, but that was in keeping with Baffle’s philosophy. When I’d hit all four trashcans and tossed all of the phones under some bleachers, I started to congratulate myself when I heard a loud noise from one of the main entry doors. When I looked at the clock, I realized I was out of time, someone was unlocking the gym. Stumbling back from the stairs I searched desperately for a place to hide.
I shambled to the main floor where a temporary surface had been placed over the basketball court and hundreds of chairs had been
set up in neat rows. Spinning slowly, I looked for a place to hide. I’d been missing for days. If I got spotted, it would cause a scene and I’d blow an opportunity to finish what I’d started.
If I staked out on an upper level, I would be too far away when they walked in, so I had to pick a vantage point that would provide good viewing but not isolate me, and fast. A few sweaty moments later, I settled on hiding in the wings on stage. It was the only place where I could see the entrance and potentially be close enough to intervene. My heart was pounding; I couldn’t afford to be discovered.
My leg aching like it hadn’t in years, I climbed the stairs to the stage and shuffled into the right wing, looking over my shoulder at the entrance doors, and hid in between the folds of the gigantic curtains. Lowering myself into a sitting position, I tried to collect my thoughts. I’d found the explosives, but the bullets worried me. They meant there was another dangerous variable and I had no idea how it was going to come into play. If I stayed alert I could mess that up too. My head started to droop. As freaked as I was, the fatigue was overwhelming.
The oversized doors at the front of the gym opened and people poured in, running for seats. I concentrated on hiding and camouflaging myself. Students were buzzing and faculty members looked either bored or giddy. While the seats were being quickly filled, I scanned faces looking for Munger or Witkowski. It would be difficult, not to mention stupid, for them to sneak into the assembly but they weren’t long on brains so I kept looking. If I were right about the guns, they would make an appearance at some point. The followers they had left behind after they had been expelled didn’t have the chops, or the craziness, to start firing away in front of the collective student body. Only Munger and Witkowski were big enough sociopaths to commit to that kind of lunacy. I chafed at the fact that I had to hang out and make sure there wasn’t something else that could go off. I said a silent prayer that Mr. Goodturn was safe.
When the building was almost at capacity, I noticed Baffle sitting in the third row from the stage. He must have come in a side door. He looked very sweaty and nervous, wearing a sickly smile. There he was trying to get in good with the wrong crowd and he didn’t know he was being set up and possibly injuring hundreds of people. I knew he was being duped. It was his way. So smart but totally clueless when it came to almost anything else. I’d managed to spare him being humiliated, not that he’d ever give me credit for that.