Relic (12 page)

“Yes,” I said, “that's what we saw.” Lisa nodded, hesitantly, in agreement.

“Hanson. Mitchell,” Detective Peters called over her shoulder. “Could you guys come over here for a second?”

I groaned when the two men stepped up. “Colin, you idiot,” I muttered. Officer Hanson and Officer Mitchell were identical to the two men Colin had just described, right down to the windbreaker and goatee. If it wouldn't have made me look nuts (or more nuts), I would have stood up and punched Colin right then and there. Not that I would have done a lot better, I supposed. I felt my face flush, and Lisa lowered her chin.

“What's up, Peters?” the officer in the green windbreaker asked.

“Oh, I'm just wondering if you two are planning on robbing the museum later this evening.”

“Um, no,” the officer with the goatee said. “But plans can change. Do you want me to let you know if we change our minds and decide to steal some dinosaur bones later on?”

“Yes, please,” Peters replied. “Thanks, guys, that'll be all.”

The two officers turned and walked away snickering. Great.

“Let me guess,” she said, glaring at Colin. “The men you saw and those two officers shop at the same place?”

Colin stammered for a couple seconds, a series of random syllables that made him, and, by association, us, seem completely out of touch with sanity. The detective looked each of us, one by one, directly in the eye.

When her gaze settled on me, I gulped and gripped the armrest on my chair. Maybe if I explained, not the whole truth, but enough for her to know we weren't making it up…I tried to work out what I could say in my head, but everything seemed to end with the Society being compromised. “We didn't actually see any—”

“Don't,” Peters warned, her slender finger pointing at my face. “You helped that Russian fellow who was getting mugged, and then the three of you tried to help your neighbor not too long ago, so I know you're good kids. But I've been doing this job a while, and I'm pretty good at telling when people are lying. You guys are the worst liars I've seen in a while.” Her eyes narrowed. “You didn't overhear anyone planning a robbery, did you?”

Her words scratched me like sharp branches. She was right: we were lying. And it was ruining the whole thing. Not that the truth would have been any better, but maybe if Colin hadn't bungled it with his stupid descriptions, or if I hadn't messed up and put her on edge in the first place, things would have gone a bit better.

“Here's what I'm going to do,” Peters said. “I'm going to give you just ten seconds to walk back the way you came and I'll forget this ever happened. I won't say a couple kids tried to file a false police report; I won't call your parents. It'll be just between you and me. Ten seconds.”

“Sounds good,” Colin said.

He and Lisa stood and turned for the door. But I couldn't move. I couldn't just walk away from this. I leaned forward. “Please, Detective Peters, could you just have a patrol car drive around the museum at…” I paused, if the deaths were supposed to happen at 12:40, the actual break-in would be at least ten minutes earlier—or maybe fifteen? How long did it take to break in, get caught, and kill someone? I took a guess. “Around 12:25? Just have a car loop the block at that time, please?”

Her mouth became a thin line, and she stared hard at me for several seconds. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

Colin heaved me to my feet and dragged me through the door we had come through, down the corridor, across the lobby, and out the main entrance before our seconds expired. None of us seemed to care that the rain hadn't let up or that we were drenched again. We just lowered our heads and slogged our way to the bus stop.

Silently.

 

The bus pulled up about fifteen minutes after we made it to the stop. By then, we were no less drenched than if we'd just crawled out of a pool. I collapsed onto a seat at the back and dropped my head into my hands.

“I'm sorry, guys,” Colin said after the bus lurched forward. They were the first words any of us had spoken since we'd left the precinct, and it just made frustration flare in my chest. Colin added, “I just didn't expect someone so small to be so intimidating. I got flustered and then I just—”

“We know what you did,” I snapped. Colin stared at the floor.

“It's not all his fault, Dean,” Lisa said, “and you know it.” I couldn't remember the last time Lisa had come to Colin's defense, and given how Colin looked up suddenly, I bet he was just as confused.

“What do you mean it wasn't all his fault?” I asked. “Of course it was.”

“It
was
my fault,” Colin agreed.

“It wasn't
totally
your fault,” Lisa said sternly. “But you are an idiot for giving a cop's description to another cop. I mean, what the heck were you thinking?” Colin shrugged, and Lisa added, “It really doesn't matter, though. That cop wasn't buying our story from the minute we walked in there.”

“She might still send a car,” Colin said. “She might. And if she does, that might be all we need to stop the robbers.”

“Sure, Colin,” Lisa said. “That's not wishful thinking at all.” She lowered her voice and muttered, “We'll have to call Archer.”

“Archer.” I groaned. “Great. We've been part of the Society for, like, a day and already we have to call and say we couldn't do it on our own.” Several long seconds passed, and when I looked up, Colin was grinning. “What?” I asked.

“You said we.” His smile widened. “You said ‘
We've
been part of the Society for a day,' not just
you've
been part of it. Thanks. I thought that maybe with my screw-up back there you might not want me to…you know…”

“Yeah, well, we'll see if you're still thanking me when we're trying to stop some burglars and security guards from killing each other tonight.” That made Colin laugh, but it made a fist-sized knot form behind my ribs. Still, I forced a smile and jabbed Colin's shoulder.

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Are you guys going to kiss or something? Because if you're all done making up, we better make that call.” She fished her cell out of her purse and held it out. Water beaded off the surface, and the display, or at least parts of it, flickered like it was having a seizure. She blinked and gasped. “Oh no. It got soaked in the rain. My parents are going to kill me!”

I pulled mine out of my pocket and it was just was wet as Lisa's, and just as broken. “Mine too,” I said, groaning.

Colin smirked. “I'm not sure if you can have visions of yourself, but at least if Lisa's parents are going to kill her, you can give her the heads up twenty-four hours before they do.”

I cringed a bit at the thought of seeing one of my friends in a vision. Colin pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and held it up. It was just as wet as mine and Lisa's, but the display was clear. “They do make waterproof phones, you know.” He pressed the speed dial and handed it to me.

 

***

 

I called Archer six times and left two messages before the bus arrived at our stop. Lisa stopped me when I tried to call for the seventh time; she said I was going to scare him off. I was pretty sure you couldn't scare someone who had the same kind of visions as me, but I decided not to push it.

“Where is he?” I wondered out loud.

“He'll get your messages,” Lisa said. “Don't worry.” Her voice shook, and I was pretty sure she was just as worried as I was. We trudged down the puddled sidewalk. The rain had eased from a torrent into a sprinkle that I barely felt because I was already so wet.

“We can't just wait for him,” Colin said. “We can't just hope he gets the message or that he's going to handle it for us. Remember what he said? How we're supposed to handle things on our own?”

“Not something like this,” Lisa insisted. “He told us to call him if it didn't go well at the police station. I'd say it didn't go very well.”

“Fine,” Colin snapped, “we called him. Do you really want to just sit around and wait to see if everything works out?”

“Colin's right,” I said before Lisa could argue back. “We have to do something.” Our options were pretty limited. We had tried the police, and we'd called Archer. That left only one option that I could see, and by the way Lisa was chewing her lip and Colin was nodding, they knew what I was going to say. “We'll have to go there.”

“Unless Archer calls,” Lisa said.

“Unless Archer calls,” I agreed.

After a few more minutes, Colin said, “It won't be that tough, guys. All we have to do is sneak out, bike down to that little park across from the museum, and just call the police if we see anything.”

“And why didn't we just do that in the first place?” Lisa asked sarcastically. “Oh, yeah, because last time we did that, Dean's neighbor got killed.”

“This is different,” Colin said.

“He's right,” I said. “What else can we do?”

“The guards have real guns, Dean,” Lisa said. “Guns that shoot real bullets. I don't want to get shot.”

“None of us
want
to get shot,” Colin said.

“We'll stay in the park,” I said. “We'll do what Colin said and call the police as soon as we see anything suspicious. The police department isn't so far away from the museum; it'll take them, like, two minutes to get there.”

“We won't leave that little park?” Lisa asked. “Not for anything?”

“Not for anything,” I said.

She turned to Colin, who put his hand on his heart and smiled. “Not for anything,” he said. “It'll be easy. Remember, Detective Peters might make police patrol the area anyway, so the robbers might not even show up.” He turned and muttered, “But I wouldn't count on that.”

“We'll have to sneak out around midnight,” I said. I pointed at a small gathering of trees a dozen or so meters from where we were standing. “Let's just meet right there at midnight. It won't take long to bike down there.” I scratched my chin.

Lisa pointed at Colin. “Don't forget your phone.”

“Yeah, yeah, don't worry, I won't.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “C'mon, guys, this is great. It's happening. Show some enthusiasm. We're going to save some people tonight. Aren't you excited?”

Lisa and I looked at each other, then back to Colin, and we both answered at the same time.

“No.”

 

Mr. Overton had called from the museum to tell my mom that he appreciated my apology, so when I got home my parents were in a good mood.

“He said he wouldn't let Sok back into the museum,” I said during dinner.

“Sock?” Becky asked. She turned to my mom. “He just called that monk a sock?”

I rolled my eyes. “It's S-O-K, and it's his name, genius.”

“At least you tried, Dean.” My mom smiled. “I'm very proud of you.”

“Me too,” my dad said. “It was very grown up of you, Dean.”

“Yeah, you're a real big boy now,” Becky chimed in. She clapped her hands and added, “Maybe you'll stop asking to sleep in Mom and Dad's room now.”

“At least I don't play with pieces of poop,” I said.

“Gah!” Becky yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you that they're fossils? Fossils are like stones. They're perfectly clean to touch.”

My dad chuckled. I think sometimes he liked it when Becky and I fought. Like maybe he thought we were a couple of test subjects in an experiment on sibling rivalry or something. Or maybe there was a book out there in psychotherapy land that said it was healthy when brothers and sisters fought. I wondered if he'd think it was healthy if I tied my sister up and tossed her in a closet.

I spent the rest of the night trying to look innocent, which wasn't easy because my nerves made me jump every time someone spoke to me, and I had a constant feeling of nausea that would only let up if I kept moving. As a result, I paced every room in the house. Becky said it looked like I had to pee and kept asking me if I was wearing my special rubber underwear. When Becky turned on some modern-day princess movie later in the evening, I pretended to be annoyed and said I was going to bed. I pulled on a pair of dark jeans and a black, long-sleeved shirt, pulled the covers up to my chin, and waited.

It wasn't the first time I'd snuck out of the house at night, but it was the first time I'd done it so early. By eleven o'clock, most of the house was silent. My parents often read in bed, and if I listened carefully, I thought I could hear them talking. I waited another forty-five minutes, during which I tried my best not to move an inch. It was the longest forty-five minutes of my life.

A few minutes before midnight, I slid out of my covers and positioned my pillow and some clothing under my blankets to make it look like I was still there. I slipped on my shoes and climbed onto the roof.

Even though it had stopped raining shortly after dinner, the shingles were still slick. I had to crawl to the edge. Just below the rain gutter was a wall of lattice that rose up behind my mom's small flowerbed. It used to be covered with this big climbing vine, but my dad chopped the vine out when it started taking root in the side of the house and cracking the mortar. The lattice was as easy to climb down as a ladder.

As soon as my feet hit dirt, I grabbed my bike and raced to the meeting spot.

 

***

 

Colin was already waiting, which didn't surprise me at all. His room was on the first floor of his house, so he just had to jump out of a window. Also, his parents were the soundest sleepers in the world. A couple years ago, he had a sleepover at his house with at least a dozen guys from school. We played video games all night long, and no matter how loud we got, we could hear Colin's dad snoring upstairs. I figured his mom must sleep with earplugs or something. Colin could probably sneak out wearing drums as shoes and not get caught.