Stoneskin's Revenge (32 page)

“Right!” Abner called back, then aimed a searing glare at Calvin. “I'll be seein'
you
again right soon, never fear.”

*

The rustle of something slithering through the bank of kudzu ten yards to her right made Robyn start. She swallowed nervously and peered out from where she'd been avoiding the current sprinkle in one of the range of bricked-in archways that comprised the lowest level on the back side of the old Whidden Hotel, but found her view blocked by a stack of two-by-four scaffolding. (The building was presently undergoing a lull in restoration and the supporting clutter of construction materials and equipment in its long-neglected hinder regions made it an ideal base for clandestine activities—when it was not obstructing Robyn's line of sight.) Leaning against a granite pillar across from her, Don merely added apprehension to his already grim and unhappy expression. “What?” he began. “I—”

Robyn had just raised a finger to shush him to silence when a final scrabbling ended in a frustrated grunt and indecipherable mutter that was probably profane. She gave herself a mental kick in the butt for being so jumpy. It was only her brother, failing at stealth at last. For his part, Don simply exhaled slowly and looked relieved.

“Your turn, sis.” Brock grinned from under the coat of grime he'd had so much fun applying twenty minutes before. It was rain-streaked now, and he looked even scruffier than when Calvin had seen him.

“Took you long enough,” Robyn snorted. “What'd you find out?”

Brock eased in beside them and casually commenced removing the clothing he had liberated from an unmonitored dumpster near the point where the railroad track crossed the town line. He seemed enormously pleased with himself.

“What about
Calvin
?” Robyn persisted. “You
did
find him, didn't you?”

“It's 'bout what Don told us to expect,” Brock panted, tugging on fresh jeans. “They've got him in a cell on the second floor. He looks okay, but he's
real
worried, you can tell. The rest is just like we figured: he ain't escaped 'cause he don't have his scale. That's what we've gotta get.”

“What
I've
gotta get,” Robyn corrected sourly.

“It was your choice that I check things out,” Brock told her, looking up for an instant before applying himself to the grime on his face and arms with considerable assist from the drizzle.

“Fortunately,” he continued, “Don was right about their security bein' really sloppy. All I had to do was wander in and look homeless and lost, and then ask 'em where my mother was, and keep my eyes open while I got the lay of the land. But then they started askin' me stuff I couldn't answer real good, and then I tried to split, but one grabbed me, and I bit her.”

“What
kinda
stuff?”

“Oh, just my name and all.”

“What'd you tell 'em?”

“That I didn't remember. I was tryin' to play poor little shell-shocked runaway. Made a big deal outta suddenly actin' scared, like, and tryin' to get away. ‘Accidentally' knocked a bunch of stuff over, and then tipped the water cooler over on a computer and shorted the lights out. After that it was a cinch to zip into the hall, lock the doors, and trash the fuse box and fire alarm.”

“Oh, so
that's
what all those bells and whistles were about? We could hear 'em even down here.”

Brock grinned so wide Robyn thought the top of his head would fall off. “Yeah. Neat, huh?”

“Yeah,” Don echoed. “So they were exactly where I told you, right?”

“Dead on—good thing your mom's fellow gave you that tour that time.”

“Yeah,” Don chuckled in spite of himself. “Told me every way there was to break into that jail. Bet he never thought I'd use it against him, though!”

“So where
is
the scale?” Robyn inquired pointedly.

“Downstairs somewhere: room marked STORAGE.”

“Well,
that's
just great! How'll I get down
there
?” Brock frowned abruptly. “Well,” he began, “that may be kinda complicated. I guess I better draw you a picture.”

“Get at it then, before I lose my nerve.”

Brock stuck his tongue out at his sister and picked up a piece of rusty rebar with which he began sketching in a sheltered pile of sand. Before Brock's mission Don had already drawn a gridwork like a tic-tac-toe board, but now Brock was filling some of the squares with smaller ones. “Okay,” he began, indicating the top-middle section: “We're here behind this old hotel, graveyard's to the left, depot to the right.” He paused to inscribe a prickly looking line above the map. “These are the railroad tracks we followed in, and right beyond them's the river.”

“I'm
not
stupid,” Robyn noted sarcastically. “Besides, Don already told us that much.”

“Just gettin' you oriented,” Brock went on patiently, pointing to the rectangle inside the central square. “Courthouse's in the middle—that's the funny-lookin' buildin' with the tower. Jail's to the right—the east, I guess. Entrance to the west, toward the courthouse. Calvin's on the second floor—that's up one flight of stairs—but the stairs go down at least one level below the street, too, which would jibe with what Calvin said 'bout there bein' a tunnel between the jail and the courthouse.”

“A
tunnel
!”
Don slapped his forehead in frustration. “Shoot, yeah! I
forgot
about that, or you coulda probably used
it
to get at Calvin.”

Brock regarded him incredulously. “You
know
about it?”

Don shrugged. “Everybody's
heard
of it, but not many folks know for sure, 'cause I don't think it's really supposed to be there—or to be used. I think it was part of the Underground Railroad, or something, 'cept that they supposedly closed it up when they redid the courthouse back in the fifties 'cause it wasn't on a public level. Rob showed me a door that was s'posed to go to it that time he gave me that tour and all; but he said he didn't have a key or nothin'. I don't think he was supposed to talk about it anyway; leastwise he looked kinda funny when he mentioned it to me, like he'd slipped up or somethin', and he made me promise not to tell.”

“So much for promises,” Brock inserted, winking at his sister.

“Yeah, but that still doesn't tell
me
how to get to the basement—since you've pretty well blown the direct approach!”

“Yes it does!” Don countered, more perkily than heretofore. “'Cause if there
is a
tunnel from the jail to the courthouse, that's where it comes out! That's
where
the door Rob showed me is.”

Brock's face was a-beam. “All
right
!”
he crowed.

Robyn regarded them dubiously. “So all I've gotta do is get myself out from behind this derelict hotel without being noticed, then get into either the jail or the courthouse without attracting attention, then find a scale in a three-story building, and
then
get
it to somebody on the second floor of a jail…”

“Piece of cake.”

“Bullshit!”

“Sis!”

Robyn glared at him. “I'll do it,” she snapped, “just to show you I can!”

“Go to,” Brock challenged gleefully.

“Just as soon as it stops raining,” Robyn told him. She rummaged in her backpack until she pulled out a bar of soap, which she handed to her brother. “Now why don't you see if you can get your golden locks back like they oughta be again.”

“Yeah,” Brock chuckled. “They'll be lookin' for a dirty little black-haired kid, and they'll get a squeaky-clean blond one instead.”

As if it were a spotlight highlighting his impending transformation, the sun chose that moment to finally slide from behind the heavy clouds—though it was still drizzling steadily, and looked even more threatening to the north and east.

Brock glanced at it hopefully. “Good omen?”

A shrug from Robyn. “Calvin'd probably say so.”

“So what're you waitin' on?” Don asked edgily, and Robyn could sense him drawing into himself again. That was bad too, for as long as he was busy—helping them shift camp, or hiking here, or planning Calvin's escape—he was okay. But she wondered what would happen when he finally had time alone.

“Sis?” Brock prompted.

Robyn sighed. “Nothin', I reckon,” she replied, “I guess I'm off to the wars. Brock…soon as you get your hair clean you probably oughta sneak up top and keep an eye out from the shadows, just in case anything happens. And, Don…” She paused, staring at the boy thoughtfully, not wishing to leave him alone, nor yet to place him in a situation where he might be noticed—though they'd all agreed that he
would
go to the cops if their wild plan hadn't borne fruit by dark. “Don,” she repeated, “I guess you oughta hang out down here until we get back. But if we're
not
back in, say, an hour…you probably oughta just go ahead and turn yourself in and tell what you know, 'cause they'll have us by then anyway.”

Don nodded absently and sat down, his back firmly lodged against his security pillar.

“Sorry,” Robyn apologized, “but it's the best I can do in a pinch.”

“Like I said, I'm tough,” Don mumbled dully, and fell silent.

Robyn sighed once more, and—after a bit of additional discussion during which she clarified Brock's observations and Don's directions as well as she could—made her way nonchalantly up the opposite bank from the one Brock had used, then darted across the side street and entered the graveyard from the hotel side. The main gate was to her left; the courthouse diagonally beyond it. Robyn took a deep breath and started toward them.

*

“Uh…excuse me,” Robyn whispered five minutes later, “but I…uh…could you, like, point me to a
restroom
?”

The gray-haired man behind the tag-office window looked up at her wearily and motioned to his right. “Down the hall, it's marked.”

Robyn nodded and cast a glance back toward the glass doors through which she had entered the west end of the courthouse.
A storeroom in the basement of the jail, huh?
And one she had to get to via a secret tunnel. Shoot! Might as well have been a needle in a haystack. Still, if Brock had the balls to make a shambles of the jail, she supposed she could do no less to the courthouse.

“Down the hall,” the man repeated, and Robyn realized she'd been standing there gawking—which might attract suspicion, the last thing in the world she needed.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, and trotted off. She made a show of going into the ladies' room, remained there perhaps a minute, then reemerged, trying to look irritated and uncomfortable, which did not in fact take much effort. An instant later she was back before the tag window.

“Yes?”

“Uh, I'm sorry, but…well, I've got a…a
female
problem, and the
machine's,
like,
empty.
Is there maybe another…”

“Upstairs.”

“Thanks.”

Good, her plan was working, Robyn thought, as she made her way toward the staircase to the right of the door. Nobody'd think anything about somebody roaming around the building looking confused now—or if they did, she had a witness to her rationale. With possible opening lines still jumbling through her head, she strolled casually into the stairwell, then made a very loud and obvious show of going upstairs but only paused at the first landing and slipped quietly down again, not exiting this time on the main floor. A quick check showed at least two underground levels—the topmost with more offices and such, their windowsills level with the lawn—but the stairs continued down another flight to terminate in a gray steel door that read SUBBASEMENT: MAINTENANCE STAFF ONLY.

She hesitated there, fingering the flashlight in her purse and wondering if this level was more or less analogous to the basement of the jail; and—more to the point—if what Robert had told Don about the connecting tunnel was even true.

Well, there was no way she'd find out without looking. Taking a deep breath, Robyn twisted the doorknob. It did not move, but fortunately had one of those simple sort of locks that acquiesced easily under the assault of a determined credit card, in which art she'd had considerable practice at various summer camps. An instant later, Robyn found herself peering around the doorjamb into a long, dim chamber filled with boilers and pipes and humming machinery. Blessedly, the space was not brightly lighted, and a lot of what
was
present was blocked and dimmed by the plethora of machinery, so she felt relatively secure scouting along the perimeter. Assuming Don's hasty instructions
were
accurate, there ought to be some sort of opening on the other side leading to the tunnel that ran to the basement of the jail. She only had to navigate the length of the room to find out.