The Unseen

by Hines

  He placed the bit against the gypsum board wall and methodically started to turn the crank, one revolution every two seconds. The drill sank into the chalky surface and began coring a small hole. When he eyeballed a half-inch depth and felt the resistance lightening just a bit, he backed out the drill. If he kept drilling and went all the way through, he was likely to take off a chunk of the surface on the other side and attract attention.

  He looked at the hole. Perfect.

  Next, he found a small nail tacked into one of the shelves in the room; he took the nail, put it in the drill hole until it met resistance, then gave a quick tap. Now he had a small pinhole in the utility closet, offering him a view of three customer tables when he pressed his eye against the wall. Couldn’t see the order counter, which is what he’d prefer, but this wasn’t the time to be picky. After hours, he could punch holes and build observation decks all around the shop if he wanted to.

  Now it was time to check his work from the other side, clear the bathroom for a few minutes. He backtracked, closing the closet door behind him, then unlocking and pushing open the small window on the opposite wall, and finally unlocking the men’s bathroom door and walking back out into the shop.

  “Thanks,” he said to the pleasant woman behind the counter, and heard her say “Come again” as he walked out the breezeway and the front door.

  Little did she know.

  Without stopping, he immediately went around the corner of the building and circled around the block to the alley at the back. He’d already seen an exhaust vent jutting out of the brick wall there. Scanning the alley to make sure he was alone, he took the utility knife from his backpack and pried the exhaust fan away from its mooring on the brick wall. He set the fan on the ground and scrambled into the massive ductwork behind it, then turned around and pulled the fan back into place behind him.

  Normally he never trusted ducting, but this was a commercial space with an industrial fan and HVAC system; he knew it could hold his frame for a short distance, and that’s all he needed.

  He scrambled down the duct, slid out one of the panels, and looked into the space beyond. Following his instincts, he stepped across a few rafters, then dropped down through the utility closet that still had ceiling tiles in it from a previous remodel. Perfect.

  Now inside the closet, he put a wedge under the door from the bathroom and went back to the pinhole. No one at any of the three tables he could see, but that was okay. Someone would come. Someone with an interesting history to tell.

  He placed his ear against the backside of the gypsum board, listening to the thrum of the HVAC system around him, punctuated by occasional conversation in the doughnut shop. He couldn’t make out any words, but again, that was okay. Just knowing he was there, near the conversations, calmed the vibration in his own chest.

  He went into his semi-catatonic trance, standing absolutely still and peering through the pinhole. Cold, he was ice-cold. Simply because he wanted to be.

  Now. What had happened? He’d been discovered, yes. Someone had been able to trace him. How?

  He thought immediately of Donavan. Was it any coincidence that this happened the day after his first “chance” meeting with Donavan? He thought probably not.

  A young man, maybe in his late teens, walked into view and sat at one of the tables. Good. He was long and lean, shaved head.

  Probably an athlete of some kind.

  He was just out of school for the day, Lucas decided. He liked to drop by this doughnut shop on his way home from school three, maybe four, times a week. Had always been a latchkey kid; his mother worked swing shifts, so she wasn’t ever home when he returned from school. Still, he’d stayed out of the drugs, embraced sports—played third base on his high school’s baseball team. Never knew his dad, like so many kids these days.

  The kid took a bite out of his doughnut—glazed, good choice—set it down on a napkin, and retrieved a notebook and pen from his backpack.

  Yes, that was part of the kid’s ritual. He wanted to be a writer. Couldn’t afford a computer, but that was okay; his notebook and pencil worked just fine, especially for his free-verse poetry. He read a lot of Yeats, Whitman, all the classics. But he was most drawn to the unconventional stylings of William Carlos Williams. Lucas himself had discovered these poets and others on weekly trips to the library near the orphanage.

  Lucas felt his heart beat once. Just once. When he slipped into his observation state, his body went dormant. Once he’d taken his pulse and found it was only 20: about one beat every three seconds.

  Another thump.

  Donavan. He needed to investigate Donavan. But was that all?

  Something else was bothering him, and he didn’t want to admit it.

  Sarea.

  So where you live anyway?

  She had asked that; he heard her question rattling inside his mind. She’d asked where he lived, and he had told her he was staying near Howard. Then Donavan, and the rearranged totems, and . . . this. Was she part of it?

  Maybe. He didn’t want her to be, but maybe.

  He should investigate her as well.

  The lean kid at the table turned a page in his notebook. He worked fast. That was good, Lucas decided. Part of the kid’s style: he slammed out the verses as they came to his brain, then poured them out through his pencil to the waiting pool of the page. The kid was preparing, practicing, for an upcoming poetry slam. He kept it hidden from the other guys on the baseball team; no way you’d want to admit to writing poetry in a dugout filled with testosterone. But that made it a secret joy, and secret joys were the best ones of all.

  Lucas knew that very well.

  FOUR

  THE LIVEWIRE, THE HANGOUT DONAVAN HAD SO ADMIRED, DIDN’T SEEM very live at all. Lucas guessed it had once been a pub or bar; no windows anywhere in the place. Dark concrete floors and ceiling, drab gray walls. Abstract artwork hung on the walls with museum lights focused on each canvas. Bad call, Lucas decided, after taking a close look at a couple of the pieces.

  He ordered a cup of coffee and a Danish, then sat down at one of the free computer terminals along the wall.

  He launched the Firefox browser and watched it load the home page, which, not surprisingly, was The LiveWire’s home page. “COME GET WIRED!!!” the page said in overly enthusiastic all caps and exclamation points, floating over a giant cup of coffee.

  Come get wired. Yeah, he got it.

  He typed in infiltration.org and pressed the Enter key. After a few seconds the page loaded, offering several articles on the art of infiltration, along with a photo section and forums. He clicked on the forums.

  The third thread from the top was titled “Anyone know Humpty?” He clicked it. As expected, it was a thread started by Donavan, just this morning at six thirty. The post breathlessly exulted about his foray into the steam tunnels at Howard and included a link to photos of the CUB.

  No mention that he’d never actually been in the boiler room.

  Surprise, surprise.

  The post finished by saying he’d met a fellow traveler who went by the street name Humpty. He hadn’t been able to find any posts from a Humpty at any of the typical online outlets and wondered if anyone else knew who Humpty was.

  Two replies to the post exulted over the photos and said they’d never heard of a Humpty. A third reply also loved the photos but ignored the Humpty question.

  Lucas clicked on the profile for “DonavanRox” and read. It listed a few interests (Washington Redskins, Halle Berry, The Matrix but not Reloaded or Revolutions), and a link to his MySpace page.

  The MySpace page blared a hip-hop song, and Lucas immediately turned down the volume. Amazingly enough, “DonavanRox” also gave his full name on his MySpace profile: Donavan Roxwell.

  Lucas shook his head, wondering why people were so willing to give away information about themselves online.

  He opened a new tab in the browser and went to Google to search for “Donavan Roxwell” and “District of Columbia.”
No hits. Then he started filtering through all the suburbs around the DC area, finally hitting on a phone listing and address for “Donavan Roxwell” and “Silver Spring, MD.” The address was 4403B, Rock Harbor Apartments.

  He had an address and a phone number. He looked at his watch: 3:30 p.m. Decision time. For as long as Lucas could remember, he’d never broken into anyone’s home; it was his own code. Public buildings only, because . . . because he didn’t quite know why; he’d never questioned it before, in the same way he’d never questioned the light from the sun. It was just a fact of his existence. And now here he was, looking up addresses and thinking of breaking into someone’s home for the first time.

  He expected to feel self-disgust, something inside telling him this was a line never to be crossed. That voice was there, but it was overpowered by a new voice, one that demanded he find out who was on his trail—who had been at the Blue Bell, who had dared to invade his own space.

  He sighed. Besides, it wasn’t like he was going to make this a habit. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that. He needed to find out what was going on, quell a potential danger, and that called for him to do things he wouldn’t normally do. It would just be Donavan’s apartment—someone, he was now sure, who hadn’t met him by accident. Donavan had to be the key to it all, and Donavan had invaded his own privacy, hadn’t he? This was a righteous cause, a case of self-defense. And there was no guilt in self-defense.

  He swallowed, not wanting to admit how much his nerves tingled when the decision solidified in his mind. He could be there in fortyfive minutes on the Metro. If Donavan worked regular office hours and commuted, Lucas could have a couple hours alone in apartment 4403B.

  ABOUT FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, ROCK HARBOR APARTMENTS WOULD HAVE been a new development, and probably a place you’d want to live. Now, however, the whole place had the feel of a slowly sinking ship; the guard gate wasn’t even staffed and, from the looks of it, hadn’t been used for a few years.

  Lucas found building 4403 and walked around the perimeter. He didn’t like newer buildings very much; less wasted space, fewer opportunities to slide into various nooks and crannies. But he always liked a challenge.

  First things first. He went to 4403B and rang the doorbell. Waited. Knocked a few times. No answer. Even better, no barking dog inside. Donavan had proven himself to be a bit lax on security issues, so Lucas guessed he’d find a hidden key somewhere.

  He felt on the framework above the door. Nothing. Same under the welcome mat, generically marked Welcome Mat. That Donavan was a real joker. He turned, spied a mostly dead plant of some kind in the corner by the railing. He tipped the planter and found the key hidden beneath.

  Well, at least Donavan hadn’t hidden it on the sill above the door.

  The key slid into the deadbolt and turned easily. Lucas returned the key to its hiding place, went inside the apartment, and shut the door behind him, sliding the deadbolt back into place.

  After a short, five-foot hallway, the apartment opened into a large room consisting of a living area, a small dining area, and a kitchen. Farther along, the hallway continued with a doorway at the end and a turn to the left he was sure led to a second bedroom.

  He could smell old cheese, leftovers from last night’s late snack, perhaps. But beneath that smell was another: mold, as if the apartment had been steeped in moisture at one time and never really dried.

  Lucas went to the phone first. He pressed the caller ID and looked for numbers that appeared more than once. He wrote those numbers down, then pressed the answering machine button to play saved messages. Two messages were of the “Hey, give me a call” variety, but the third sounded interesting.

  A woman’s voice: “Hi, Donavan, just wanted to talk to you about Howard, wondering if you found anything interesting. Call me when you get a chance.”

  Was it Sarea’s voice? He played the message again. No, it didn’t quite sound like her, but he couldn’t rule it out.

  He took out the receipt Sarea had given him, looked at the number, scrolled through all the caller ID numbers again. No matches.

  That made him feel a bit better.

  Okay, enough of this. He needed to get ready for Donavan’s return.

  He went down the hallway and checked out both the bedrooms and the bathroom. One bedroom, which was obviously Donavan’s, had a running computer on a Kmart Blue Light Special desk. He moved the mouse. No open documents or applications. He looked under recent documents, found a list of addresses. Those might be important, but he didn’t have time to copy them right now. Instead, he let his eyes flick over the list, committing the names to memory.

  He opened the Firefox browser to check recent pages loaded into the cache. Donavan’s MySpace page, a couple other blogs, forums at infiltration.org . . . and something called the Creep Club.

  He scrolled to the Creep Club page and let it load. A username and password came up. Unfortunately, Donavan didn’t have the autofill feature turned on. Lucas could change that, turn on the autofill, and capture Donavan’s username and password. But Donavan seemed like something of a computer geek and would likely notice. Lucas had other ways of finding that information.

  After closing the active browser window, he explored the closet. Dropped acoustic tile ceiling in here as well—no surprise, as that was the cheapest ceiling to install.

  Inside the closet, he pushed aside one of the tiles, clicked on his flashlight, and shined it above the ceiling.

  Donavan lived on the top floor of the apartment building, so wooden ceiling joists and particleboard were hidden above the tiles. Good. Wood was faster to work with than concrete.

  Lucas stood on a chair he retrieved from the dining room and slid aside the ceiling tile directly above Donavan’s desk. He took out his tools and started working.

  Half an hour later, with the chair safely returned to the dining room, Lucas was cocooned in another webbed hammock, hanging directly over Donavan’s desk with a clear view of the screen through a pinhole in the tile.

  He went still, silent, listening as his heart rate slowed.

  Now all he had to do was wait.

  But sometimes, waiting brought unwanted memories. Memories of who he once was, who he once wasn’t. He thought of the orphanage, which had nursed his early inclination for infiltrating because of his bedroom near the window in the converted attic. He remembered the many long nights, after being sent to bed; opening the window, crawling onto the roof, and listening to the sounds of dogs barking and cars humming. Most of all, watching the lights of the city—just across the Potomac, yet also across the universe.

  Even then, so many years ago, the demonic mnemonic, wherever it had come from, had haunted him: Humpty Dumpty had some great falls. Even on the nights when he lay out on the roof of the building, his arms splayed behind his head, his subconscious would eventually take over as he dozed, repeating the maddening, yet somehow comforting, phrase. He didn’t know why. He only knew that he couldn’t scrub it from his head, no matter what he tried.

  Even his dreams were filled with the demonic mnemonic. Not images of the nursery rhyme character, but of the words themselves. They floated in the empty spaces of his REM sleep, filling in the voids, the letters of the words creating backdrops of scenery everywhere he looked inside his dreams.

  Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.

  A scratching sound brought him back. For a few moments he was disoriented as he quickly stuffed all the memories back into their locked box. Where was he?

  Oh yes. Donavan’s apartment. And that scratching sounded very much like a key sliding into a deadbolt lock.

  He heard the front door open down the hallway. Then nothing for a few seconds. A glass clinking, maybe.

  More silence.

  He caught a flash of Donavan walking by—dressed in a suit, certainly not what Lucas had expected—then he moved out of sight into the closet.

  After a few minutes, Donavan returned and sat at his desk directly below Lucas, now wearing cargo
shorts and a T-shirt. More like it.

  Lucas noticed Donavan was wearing earbuds, the end of them disappearing somewhere in the pocket of his cargo shorts. An iPod listener.

  Donavan hummed an unrecognizable tune as he keyed in a Web address. The username and password screen appeared, and Donavan fingered the keys.

  Lucas studied, letting his mind record the scene as Donavan’s fingers tapped the board.

  A few seconds later, a simple white screen with black type appeared on the monitor, with CREEP CLUB in all caps at the top. Below it, a variety of forum threads spooled out.

  Donavan scanned the threads, checked his watch, uttered a curse, and closed the browser.

  Obviously, he was late for something.

  Seconds later he was out of view, and Lucas listened until he heard the front door close and the deadbolt slide back into place.

  He waited silently for five more minutes. Donavan struck him as the type who might forget something and need to come back—especially if he were running late.

  When Lucas felt confident Donavan had left for a while, he slid the tile out of its track and swung himself out of the hammock and to the floor. After wrapping his webbing and replacing it in his backpack, he sat down at Donavan’s computer and opened the browser once more. At creepclub.com, he watched the screen come up as before, asking for the username and password.

  Lucas sighed, cleared his mind, and rewound the images of the last several minutes. When he came to Donavan’s hands, poised over the keyboard, he let the image play in slow motion.

  He put his hands over the keys and mimicked the strokes that played in his mind. Username: DonavanRox. Password: HalleBerry.

  And with that, he was in.

  The main screen and its forums loaded on the monitor, and a post at the top of the forum said: August 23 Meeting, 8:00 p.m. ; Stranahan Building. He opened the thread and read four names and times: Donavan—15 minutes; Hondo—15 minutes; Clarice—10 minutes; Boomer—10 minutes.

  August 23. Today’s date. Lucas looked at his watch. 7:27 p.m. He smiled.

  He had a very good idea where Donavan was going in such a hurry. And after another quick visit to his old friend Google, Lucas had an address for the Stranahan Building.