Deviant (28 page)

“Yes, exactly. And you'll be breaking your word.”

Bob smiled. Danny wondered how old he was. He thought thirty, maybe thirty-three? It was hard to tell. Too old for pinkie swears. Danny was too old for pinkie swears.

“Look, I want you to promise that you won't say anything,” Danny said.

“If you're right, this is a potentially dangerous situation, Danny. You should contact the Sheriff's Department,” Bob insisted.

“What good will that do? They already think they caught the right guy.”

“The FBI, then,” Bob said.

“As if the FBI is going to get involved in a catnapping case. Come on, Bob. You and I both know they'll laugh me off the phone line.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“And besides, nothing's going to happen. I'm just going to stake out her house and no one's going to come by, and if they
do
come by and steal her cat while she's up at
The Lion King
, all I'll do is take some vid of them with my Handycam.”

One of the guys working on the road crew grunted. Bob looked at Walt, who couldn't care less that he wasn't working, but Bob figured his fellow prisoners might start to get resentful if he was doing less than his fair share.

“Son, I'd better get back to work, but I've got a compromise,” Bob said. “Why don't you do this stakeout
plan from the comfort of your own bedroom? You say you can see the back of your house from Tony's?”

“Yes,” Danny lied.

“OK. Go to your bedroom, turn off your light, and watch Tony's house from there. If you see anything out of the ordinary, call the cops. OK? Stake out the house from your room.”

“OK. And you won't tell anyone what I'm going to do?”

“If you promise me that you won't leave the house under any circumstances.”

Danny nodded. “I promise.”

“Don't lie to me. You'll stay inside? You won't try to be a hero?”

“I'll do it that way if you'll keep this to yourself.”

Bob grinned. “It's a deal, then.”

“I gotta go,” Danny said.

“OK,” Bob said. “I got to get back to work.”

Danny looked at him.

“What?” Bob said.

There'd been something bothering Danny. He needed to know. He bit his tongue. Then unbit it. “Why'd you kill that dog?” he asked.

Bob lost his smile and looked at the ground. “I don't know, son. It was a mean thing to do, that's for sure.”

“I don't believe you. You know why you did it. You've got a PhD in this stuff.”

“Yeah, I've read hundreds of cases. I've read about practically every serial killer that ever was, and I don't
know why any of them did it. Who knows why anybody does anything?”

“I'm not asking about them, I'm asking about you.”

“Well, it wasn't to show off … I don't think so, anyway … I don't know. And it wasn't out of malice … And I didn't even know the girl who owned it.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

Bob shook his head. “No, I didn't enjoy it.”

“So why did you do it?”

Bob stroked his goatee. “I guess so I could prove to myself that I was still alive. Does that make any sense? I was a nobody, in a nowhere place. Someone who had fallen through the cracks. I needed to show myself that I was alive and I could only do that by taking a life.”

“I don't get it,” Danny said.

“Me neither. Maybe that's why I've been looking for answers all these years. We want to understand ourselves. At the Oracle in Delphi there was a sign above the entrance that said ‘Know Thyself.' That's what I've been trying to do.”

Me too, Danny thought.

“I'm sorry, Danny. I gotta go back to work.”

“OK. And don't worry about me, I'll be careful.”

“Be better than careful, Danny. Be smart.”

Danny said good-bye to Walt and was about to go home when Walt actually came up with a good suggestion for once. “You should go through the clear-cut and find your mother,” he said. “It's almost five o'clock, you can get a ride home with her.”

“Go to the casino?”

“Sure.”

It was a decent idea, but Danny couldn't help but roll his eyes and say “Thanks, Walt” with a sarcastic edge.

He walked to the end of the unfinished road and sure enough the casino parking lot was only a short hike through what used to be forest but was now a muddy, pothole-filled wasteland that resembled a World War I battlefield. Of course, when Walt's crew got here the potholes would be filled in, the site leveled, tarmac poured, white lines painted, and anyone who wanted to could drive to a brand-new Indian casino.

Twenty minutes to Colorado Springs, five to Manitou Springs, two to Cobalt.

With some difficulty Danny avoided the potholes and the mud and climbed over a three-foot wall to the casino parking lot.

There were half a dozen cars and Juanita's XC90 in a space by itself near the entrance.

Danny had a spare car key on his key ring but he decided to go inside and find his mother. He'd gotten only ten feet through the entrance of the casino before the security guard he'd talked to a few days earlier intercepted him.

“Kids aren't allow—oh, it's you. Are you looking for Mrs. Brown?”

“Mom. Yeah.”

“I'll take you to her office.”

“She has an office?”

“Of course.”

Dan Flight of Eagles led him through a door marked
NO ENTRY
into the administrative center of the casino. Danny had been to the Eye in the Sky Room once at the Glynn Casino, where the Glynn's one thousand surveillance cameras were monitored by a group of professional observers watching 24/7 for cheating by players and spectators and also by dealers and pit bosses.

This admin area, of course, wasn't as huge, so it was even more of a surprise to see that his mother's office was so big that it had two leather sofas and its own bathroom.

His mother, however, was not inside, so the guard called her over the walkie-talkie.

“Danny's here? Tell him to wait. I'll be there in five,” Juanita said.

“She says to wait,” the guard said.

“Yeah, I heard. I'm not deaf,” Danny replied.

The guard looked at him and frowned. Danny saw the look and said, “What?”

The guard shook his head. “You are young.”

“That's what everybody says, but I'm not a kid, I'm practically a grown-up.”

“Then perhaps you should act like one,” Dan Flight of Eagles said.

“Is that what a good Cherokee would do?” Danny snapped.

The guard smiled and shook his head. “Where does your anger come from?” he asked.

“My anger? I'm not angry about anything, bro. I got everything I want, apart from cable,” Danny said.

“Can I tell you a story?” Dan Flight of Eagles said.

“As long as it's not the one about the three bears. I heard that one already,” Danny said.

“When I was your age, I got a job at a bakery in Colorado Springs. In the bakery itself. The back room, where it was a hundred and twenty degrees. I had to take the baked goods out of the oven and bring them on trays to the front of the shop. I hated that job. The owner, Mr. Farley, used to call me Tonto. I hated him. So you know what I did? I used to spit on my hand and smear it on the bread and the muffins, so when all those white people ate an expensive muffin they were eating my spit. And you know what that made me?”

“Yeah, a freakin' sociopath,” Danny said.

“A coward. It made me a coward. The customers weren't the enemy. Mr. Farley wasn't even the enemy. It was me. I was the one I had to deal with. You understand?”

Danny nodded. “I think so,” he said.

Juanita arrived and embarrassingly kissed Danny on both cheeks.

“Mrs. Brown,” Dan Flight of Eagles said. And with a look at Danny, he excused himself.

“Are you OK?” Juanita asked.

“Yeah, school got canceled. They found the guy who's been killing cats, and your buddy there, Chief Little Feather, thinks I'm a chicken and not Cherokee enough.”

“What? He said that?”

“No. No, he didn't. All the rest is true though.”

“They canceled school?”

“Yup. Celebration, I guess. They caught that dude who killed the girl's cat.”

“Really? Well, that is good news. He is obviously a very crazy person who needs help.”

“Yeah, I guess so. What about your day?”

“It's been a day,” Juanita said. She looked harassed, tired. She had black rings under her eyes and her face had a gray tinge.

“Everything all right?” Danny asked.

“Oh yeah, everything's fine, really … just having a few problems with the plumbing. I don't know why you can't get a decent plumber in this state. In Las Vegas you can put a call in at midnight and a plumber will be there in fifteen minutes. Remember when we lived in that apartment building on Bellaqua and the washer under the sink came off?”

“Yeah. I remember. Walt said he could fix it, but of course he couldn't. We all could have drowned in there.”

“That guy came in five minutes. I can't get the plumbers here to show up for their appointment on time. It's so crazy. You waste so much of your day getting people to do their jobs properly.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Danny said, and gave his mother an uncharacteristic kiss on the cheek, which cheered her up.

She smiled at him. “Hey, your little friend Tony was looking for you. She left a message. She said it was important.”

“For me? How did she get your number?”

“Oh, I swapped numbers with her mother. You wanna call her back? You can use my phone.”

“Sure. I'll talk to her. Thanks. Hey, Mom? Walt said you could give me a ride home. Is that OK? If not, it's easy to skate.”

“I can give you a ride. In about twenty minutes?”

“That's fine.”

“I'm going out for a bit; I'll give you some privacy to talk to your friend,” she said, and her face had assumed a knowing expression that Danny didn't like at all.

“I don't need privacy, we're just talking about boring stuff, you can stay,” Danny said, but Juanita just grinned and exited.

“Hmm,” Danny said, annoyed. He touched his mother's iPhone's Contacts icon and scanned through the list until he found “Meadows.” He touched the screen and the number dialed. He wondered if this was Tony's phone or the house phone and, if it was the house phone, was he going to have to talk to her father? He had a brief episode of panic but after eight or nine rings Tony's voice came on: “Hi, I can't get to the phone right now. Unlike you losers, I have a life. But if you leave your name and number and you're very, very lucky, I might get back to you.”

“It's Danny. Mom said there was something you wanted to talk to me about. I guess I'll talk to you another time,” he said, and hung up.

He guessed everyone must have already left for
The Lion
King
in Denver. They were always telling people not to bring their phones to theaters, so she'd probably left hers at home. He went back into the main menu and touched the green Phone icon and then pressed the icon for Juanita's voice mail. She seemed to get a lot of messages on a standard day, but finally he found two from Meadows.

He played the first message: “Hi, Danny, it's me. Listen, it's not too late to change your mind. Give me a call before five if you do. And you know what? If you're worried about my dad, don't be. He can't even come tonight. He's gotta go on up to Fort Collins instead, so think about it, OK?”

The second message was a little more interesting: “Danny, it's me, Tony. I was thinking about what you were saying earlier, so I did a little investigating on my own. You'd be proud of me, I was just like Lois Lane—you know, intrepid reporting, not like that clown flying around the world saving people. Anyway, yeah, I did some digging and I got some good stuff. Don't want to say over the phone, so you should come by Saturday if you want. You're intrigued, I can tell. Anyway the upshot is that you were right. Yeah, you heard me. You were right. Drop in before we go if you can, otherwise I'll see you tomorrow. Talk to you later. Bye.”

Danny hung up and went to find his mother.

“Mom, can we go home now? I want to try and talk to Tony before she leaves for Denver,” he said.

“Is there anything the matter?”

“No. Nothing. I just wanna talk to her.”

When they got home it was nearly six o'clock and Tony's
house was empty. The lights were off, the doors locked, the cat flap swinging in the breeze.

The cat flap. Dog flap, really.

Flaps. Plural.

One at the front of the Meadows house and one at the back.

Big enough for a kid to fit through?

Hmm.

Danny looked at the sky. It was dark, and thick clouds were blotting out the moon and stars.

With a guaranteed-empty house and the moon concealed, this was a perfect night to break in … Whatever Tony's information had been was going to have to wait.

The night felt right.

He crossed the cul-de-sac and ate dinner with his mother and Walt. It was spaghetti, and Danny made a point to say how delicious it was. He complimented Walt on his sauce and he cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher.

Then he went outside and hung up a sheet next to the garage light.

He skated around the cul-de-sac to check that everything was normal.

Everything was normal.

“Think I'll take an early night,” Danny said, just after eight thirty.

“OK darling, and tomorrow's Saturday so we can go somewhere, maybe to the movies,” Juanita said.

“That'd be great,” Danny muttered.

“'Night, son,” Walt said.

“Good night. Oh, and guys? Keep the garage light on, please. I've put a sheet out there with some glue on it to catch moths; it's for a school project,” Danny said, and retreated to his bedroom to wait.