Silence (12 page)

ERIC DROVE EMMA HOME and parked on the street.

Emma opened the car door and then turned to Eric. “If you need to go home before Amy’s party, I can send you the directions to get there.”

He blinked. “Amy’s party?”

“Remember? We spoke about it before we left school?”

He shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

“If you think she looks good in school, you’ve never seen her when she’s actualy trying.”

He didn’t smile. “And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go hit the computer and then cal Alison.”

“And?”

“Get ladders,” she replied quietly. “And go back to Rowan Avenue. If we’re lucky, we can figure out what needs to be done before Amy’s party.”

“And if you’re not?”

“If I’m not,” she said starkly, the half smile deserting her face, “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about it.”

“Emma you can’t go in there blind. You have no idea what you’re doing!”

“No, I don’t. I’m going to try to find out more before I head out there.” She turned toward the door and then turned back again. “I don’t understand what you’re afraid of, Eric. I don’t understand what’s going on with you. What I understand, at the moment, is that that child is somehow stuck in that house. And I want to get him out.”

“To what end?”

She stared at him. And then she got out of the car without looking back, and shut the door.

The phone rang. Eric listened to it, his hands stil gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white. Prying his fingers free, he picked up the phone and stared at the screen while the ring died into silence. He looked up to see Emma and got a brief glimpse of her ridiculously named rottweiler before her front door closed.

When the phone rang again, he answered.

“Yeah.”

“Eric—”

“Rowan Avenue?”

“Ten days ago.”

Eric whistled.

“Eric?”

“Ten days. I would have guessed three, tops.”

“Ten days. I would have guessed three, tops.”

The silence was cold. “And why would you have guessed that?”

Eric shrugged. He realized that this wasn’t likely to convey itself over the phone and decided he didn’t care enough to put the gesture into words.

“Eric, what is happening there?”

“Not much. I’m going to Amy’s party tonight,” he added, just for the momentary amusement of silent outrage on the other end of the line. It came and was folowed by brief spluttering, an added bonus.

“Eric, did you find the Necromancer?”

Eric counted four uses of his name in six sentences, which was about as far as he could push it without things getting ugly.

“Yes.”

“Good. Dead?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You arrived too late.” It wasn’t a question.

Eric was not one of nature’s natural liars. He said nothing, which was neutral. It was also not enough.

“Eric, did you arrive too late?”

“No.”

The silence that folowed his monosylabic confession was long. “…No. And the Necromancer is not dead.”

“No.”

“You need backup.”

“You need backup.”

“Not realy.”

“And I’m sending it.”

“If you send Chase, I won’t guarantee he’l survive.”

“If he doesn’t, I’l come myself.”

Fuck.

Emma had to work not to put her fingers through the keyboard.

It was almost not worth the trouble. Yes, Eric was a stranger.

Yes, they had no history. Yes, he knew something about her that she did not know herself, and he wasn’t about to share. And yes, if it came down to it, she knew somewhere in the back of her hindbrain that if she did something wrong, somehow, he would kil her.

She also didn’t doubt that he could, and that was strange, because it wasn’t something she usualy worried about. What she usualy worried about was saying the wrong thing, alienating her friends, or pissing off her mother or her teachers. And it was beside the damn point. He knew that there was a child trapped in that house, and he didn’t care.

Google was not slow to load answers to her query, and she looked at them, opening the first five in tabs. She began to read, and as she did, anger at Eric dimmed. She didn’t like to hold on to anger, and she let it go.

Only one person had died in the fire—Andrew Copis, four years of age. Cause of fire: under investigation. From the sounds of it, though, the fire hadn’t started in Andrew’s home; it had started one house down. The wals were not cinderblock, and started one house down. The wals were not cinderblock, and the fire had spread. Maria Copis, Andrew’s mother, was twenty-eight years of age. She was a divorced single parent; her ex-husband was not in residence. She had—oh.

Three children. Andrew was the oldest; she had an eighteen-month-old girl and a two-month-old boy. She had picked them up, and carried them both out of the house. The little girl had suffered smoke inhalation.

She had not been able to carry Andrew at the same time, and she had screamed at him to folow her. And he had screamed at her to carry him. A brief moment of outrage at al news reporters came and went. How could you ask a mother something like that?

Emma closed her eyes. She knew, now, why Andrew stayed in the house.

It was a few moments before she could read again, but she did. Andrew had died of smoke inhalation; the screaming, the deep breaths required to scream, hadn’t helped. He had suffered burns as wel by the time the firefighters reached him, but it wasn’t direct fire that had kiled him.

The firefighters had gone into the building; the building at that time had supported their weight. They were al heavier than Emma, especialy with the gear they wore. They’d gone in through the second story windows. Check.

She sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. How was she going to talk a terrified, hysterical four-year-old out of a burning building if she was trapped in the same burning building?

same burning building?

She puled her phone out of her pocket and caled Alison.

She told Alison everything.

Everything except the part about Eric not having to kil her— which of course implied that he might have to kil her— because there was no way to say that without causing panic. Then she waited while the silence on the other end of the phone stretched out.

She finaly said, “I know it sounds crazy.”

Alison replied, “Em, I saw your father. We al did. I don’t think you’re crazy. But it does sound kind of crazy.”

Emma reminded herself, as her shoulders eased down her back and she relaxed, that there were reasons she loved Alison.

“What are you doing?”

“Googling. I’ve got your article on the fire,” she added. “Oh.”

“Three kids. Two of them had no hope of walking out of that place on their own,” Emma said softly.

“Did you write down where Andrew’s buried?”

“I don’t think I know,” Emma replied. “I think there was a service that was open to the public, but I don’t think it mentioned the burial site. Why?”

“Because,” Alison replied, “I don’t think you’re going to be able to get Andrew to leave that house without his mother.”

A lot of reasons why she loved Alison. “You don’t think so, either?”

“No. We can try,” she added. “With what we’ve got here, we can try. But…”

can try. But…”

“I know.” Emma got out of her chair and walked toward the window. “We could probably find her in the phonebook. She’s a divorced single parent, now. How many Copises could there be?”

“There could be an unlisted one.” Alison hesitated—her breath was different when she was trying to figure out which words to say. “But I have no idea how we’re going to approach her.”

Emma had avoided thinking about that as wel. Pacing in her room, her phone against her ear, she thought about it now. And grimaced. “Me either. But even if we look like a couple of lunatics, wouldn’t it be worth listening?”

“We’re not going to look like lunatics. We’re going to look worse. We’re going to look like the meanest, most vicious, malicious people ever.”

Emma tried to imagine Alison in this context and failed utterly.

“We have to try,” she said quietly.

“I know. But we have to find her first, and we’re probably not going to manage that tonight. If we knew where the grave was, that might be the best way to meet her in person.”

“It’d be the worst place to approach her, though.” She glanced out the window again and saw that Eric’s car was stil parked in the street in front of her house. She turned, and ran into Petal, who had decided that it was time to be taken for a walk. “Not now, Petal,” she told him, scratching behind his ears.

But dogs can be particularly dense when it comes to But dogs can be particularly dense when it comes to understanding English. He padded out of the room and appeared again two minutes later, dragging his leash across the carpet and wagging his stub. “I have to take Petal for a walk,” Emma said, surrendering.

“Cal me when you get back?”

“I wil. Maybe I’l have thought of something useful by then.

Maybe we could pretend to work for the insurance company or something. I mean, we only have to get her there.”

“Single mother of two.”

“Ugh. Later,” she added, hanging up. She picked up the leash that was attached to her dog in the wrong way—mostly by his mouth—and changed that.

Eric’s car was stil in the street, and he was stil behind the wheel, when Emma left the house and locked up behind herself. Most of her anger had evaporated, but a smal core of it remained, and she hesitated while Petal tried to drag her down the walk.

Then, squaring her shoulders, she dragged her dog down to the street and rapped on the front passenger window. Eric turned his head to look at her, and then he nodded and got out of the car. “You’re walking your dog?”

“I’m about to be walked by my dog. Subtle difference.”

He smiled at that, and it was the comfortable and genuine smile that she liked on his face. She surrendered the rest of her anger, then.

“You want company?” Eric asked.

She shrugged. “If you’re going to just sit here in the car, you She shrugged. “If you’re going to just sit here in the car, you might as wel join us.”

She didn’t realize where she was walking. Petal was doing his usual intense inspection of anything that might be a garbage can.

Given that it wasn’t a colection day and he wasn’t always the brightest dog, that took him a little too close to the actual houses.

Eric laughed, and Petal was thankfuly old enough not to find this flattering. He did find it slightly encouraging, but that was probably a Hal fault; if people were laughing, they were a lot less likely to order you to heel.

“No ladders?” he asked, as Petal decided that forward was better than sideways and actualy let them gain half a block of sidewalk before he started barking at a squirrel.

“No…”

“No?” When she looked at him, he shoved his hands in his pockets and continued the slow, meandering strol that was walking her nine-year-old dog.

“We’l need them later,” Emma told him.

“I didn’t think you’d given up, if that’s any consolation.”

“Not realy.”

He shrugged. “Later?”

“Alison doesn’t think that Andrew wil leave the house if his mother’s not there.”

“You told Allison?”

“She’s my best friend. There’s not a lot about my life that she doesn’t know.”

“And she didn’t think you were insane.” It wasn’t realy a “And she didn’t think you were insane.” It wasn’t realy a question, but the last few words did tail off in a slight rise.

“She’s my best friend,” Emma said again. “Look, Eric, she sees the world in a way I don’t. She picks up things I might miss.

I do the same for her when she asks.” And even when she didn’t, sometimes, but Emma had gotten better since junior high.

“And she wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought, she was just more certain.”

Eric shook his head again. “Emma,” he said, raising his face to the bower of old maples that lined the street. “I give up. I just…

give up.”

Petal tugged at the lead, and they picked up their pace a little, coming to rest at the side of a busy street. Petal turned left, and Emma turned with him. “Is that a good thing?”

“What?”

“Giving up.”

“Depends on you who you ask, but I can guarantee that some people aren’t going to like it.” He looked at her. “How are you going to contact the child’s mother?”

“His name is Andrew. Drew for short.”

“You didn’t get that from him.”

“Google is your friend,” she said. “But the nickname? His mother is screaming it. Or was. He can hear her, and I’m almost positive that’s what I’m hearing.”

“He’s strong,” Eric said quietly.

“He’s dead. What difference does strength make to the dead?”

“Wel,” he said, sliding his hands out of his pockets as Petal “Wel,” he said, sliding his hands out of his pockets as Petal ran back. “There are always ghost stories. You’ve heard them.

I’ve heard them.”

“Yes, but when I heard them, I didn’t think they were true.”

His smile was both faint and genuine. “The sightings are often false,” he told her, “if that makes any difference.”

“Not much at this particular moment. And besides, I don’t want to hear about the false ones.”

“Al right. The real ones, then. Ghosts don’t tend to haunt things. Your father doesn’t, for instance, but he’s here.”

She spun on her heel. There was no sign of her father.

“Sorry. By ‘here’ I mean he’s dead, and of the dead, but he’s not throwing furniture at people’s heads in a fury.”