The Lost Gate (21 page)

“All done?” said Eric. “Let's go.”

“Give back the laptop and the iPad,” said Danny.

“What? You're not getting soft on me, are you?” asked Eric.

“I found the family. The father's dead. The others are unconscious and probably dying. We're not going to go trying to sell a laptop that came from this house.”

“Shit no,” said Eric. “What have you got me into?”

“Me? Got
you
into it? You are a piece of work.” Danny took the proffered bag. “The iPad?”

“I put it in the bag,” said Eric.

Danny went back through the gate into the safe room. He took the iPad and laptop out of the case and wiped them down, then set them near the safe. Then he went back up the ladder and picked up the phone. No dial tone. Dead. The lines must have been cut by the first burglars.

Danny left the house for the last time. “Come on,” he said to Eric. “We've got to find a phone.”

“Phone? Why a phone?”

“To call the cops and tell them about this so they can maybe save the ones who aren't dead yet.”

“None of our business!” said Eric angrily. “We were never here. It's that simple.”

“But we
were
here,” said Danny, walking north toward Nebraska. There were businesses at Nebraska and Massachusetts. Eric followed him. Grabbed him by the arm. “Stop it, man!”

Danny snatched his arm away and then made a gate to Nebraska and Wisconsin, even farther away but near a Metro station.

There were a couple of churches—St. Ann's Catholic and Wisconsin Avenue Baptist. They'd have phones. And if they were closed, so much the better—no need to ask permission or make explanations.

The Baptist church had some kind of meeting going on, but the doors of the Catholic church were locked. Danny gated his way into it, located the parish offices, and gated inside. Nobody there. He picked up the phone and called 911. He gave them the address of the house he had been burglarizing and told them what they'd find inside the safe room accessed from a trap door in the floor of a closet in the master bedroom. “The man's very dead, but I think the others might be alive. Three of them. I'd send ambulances.”

“We're dispatching them right now. Where are
you,
young man?”

“I won't be at the house. I'm not coming anywhere near it, never again.”

“Who
are
you? Are your parents around? Can I talk to one of them?”

Do I sound like a
child
? thought Danny. “I'm not from around here,” he said aloud. “A tourist.”

“Please stay on the line—I have someone here who needs to speak to you.”

But Danny figured they were just trying to keep him immobilized while a cop car headed for him. So he wiped the phone on his shirttail, then set it on the desk without hanging it up. He went back through the gate into the main meeting room, then through the other gate to Nebraska and Wisconsin. Nobody seemed to notice him arrive, and judging from the lack of disturbance, nobody had seen him disappear a few minutes ago. But people in cars don't notice pedestrians unless they've got nothing else to watch when they're stopped at a light.

Danny quickly found the gate leading back to where he had left Eric, and went through it.

Eric was about a hundred yards away, walking with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. They could hear the sirens heading toward the murder house. Danny didn't want to run to catch up with Eric, or some passing cop might think he was “fleeing the scene.” Danny had read enough mystery novels to know how to behave. So he gated his way to some bushes just ahead of Eric and stepped out to confront him as he passed.

Eric nearly had a heart attack. “Don't do that!” he said angrily.

“Sorry. I called the cops.”

“Yes, I hear the sirens. Thanks for doing it while I was still close to the crime scene, moron!”

“There's restaurants and stuff up on Wisconsin, we can eat.”

“With what money?” asked Eric. “I seem to remember your getting
nothing
out of that house except stupid, stupid trouble.”

“The money from
my
begging that you've got in
your
pocket,” said Danny. “We weren't even going to do the job today, remember? And now we're not going to do that house. So we can afford to spend exactly as much on lunch as we were planning to in the first place.”

“First rule of being a burglar—you don't call the cops,” said Eric.

“Are you a human being or not?” said Danny. “There were two innocent women and an innocent little girl, probably dying, and they'd just spent a couple of days in the same room where the girl's daddy was dead and rotting.”

“Exactly—they'll never recover from the experience, their lives will be shitty, they'll wish they had died, so what exactly did you accomplish?”

“If I hadn't called the cops it would have been the same thing as murdering them myself.”

“No, it wouldn't,” said Eric. “It would be the same thing as never going into the house and therefore not knowing.”

“But I
was
inside the house and I
did
know. What's
wrong
with you?”

“What's wrong with
you
!” demanded Eric. “You're nothing but a liability.”

“Okay, fine, I get it,” said Danny. “Seeya back at the house.” And he gated straight to the attic bedroom in Stone's house. He went down the stairs to the bathroom, peed, washed his hands, and then headed down to the kitchen to find something in the fridge.

As he ate the sandwich he had thrown together, it occurred to him that there was a dead man in a safe room who would never eat another sandwich in his life. And there was a little girl who would have a good many years before she could look the world square in the face. Yet it did not make Danny's sandwich taste any worse, or take away any of his pleasure in it.

Am I no better than Eric, then? Able to tune out the suffering of others as if it mattered not at all?

No. I'm enjoying this sandwich because I already did all that I could. And because I was hungry—
I
was. Nobody else feels my hunger, and nobody else is half as interested in feeding me. This is the body I have, and since evolution developed it so that it registers pleasure when it eats, I have nothing to be ashamed of in taking pleasure while others suffer.

At least that girl knew her father loved her when he died. At least she didn't ever have to find out that both her parents would be perfectly willing to kill her if one particular thing happened to be wrong with her.

Yet with that thought—of his parents, of their willingness to put him in Hammernip Hill, of the Family with their strange hatred for their own kind—he found that the sandwich lost its savor for him.

Well, isn't that interesting. Other people's grief salts my food, but my own grief makes it bland. Tasteless. Nauseating, even.

He set down the sandwich.

“Shit,” he said aloud. Even in DC, they could reach out and wreck things for him.

9

O
RPHANS

Danny had made up his mind that he was not going to become a burglar, even before Eric got back to Stone's house. For that matter, he was sick of partnering with Eric on anything.

Yes, Eric had shown him the ropes and helped him stay alive and get to DC. But hadn't Danny figured out shoplifting all on his own? There were a few moments of extravagant drama—or was it comedy?—before he got out of Wal-Mart, but he
got
out, didn't he? With the clothes he wanted. It's not like he owed his life to Eric. More like he owed a few meals and rides to him. A debt that could be satisfied with cash—not one that required Danny to let Eric tell him what to do, day after day and job after job.

They had parted company that first day in DC, back on the Mall. If only Danny had been more careful when he gated into the Library of Congress. If only Eric hadn't followed and watched him. Then he'd be completely free of him.

Of course, then Danny wouldn't have found his way to Stone's house. Or would he? Stone's door was open, but not to everyone. And Stone hadn't been bothered by seeing Danny gate into the attic room. Or if he was, he hadn't shown it, last night or this morning. Stone knew things, and maybe he could help Danny figure stuff out. That is, unless he was tied in with one of the Families. In that case, Danny would simply gate away and hope that
this
time the lesson about not trusting strangers would stick.

Then Eric got back, and instead of coming into the kitchen to try to boss Danny around—or even apologize—he went straight to the TV and switched on the local news.

“Danny, you here?” Eric called loudly. “Get in here, man, you want to see this!”

If Eric hadn't said “man,” Danny would have told him to go rub his butt on a splintery board. But somehow “man” made it seem more like they were equals. In fact, “man” was sort of a cool way of saying “please.”

Anyway, Danny came into the living room eating an apple—the sandwich was an hour and a half ago—and there on the screen was a reporter outside the house Danny had gated into.

“Mr. Wheelwright had retired from electronic game design and announced his intention to devote the rest of his career to managing his and his wife's charitable foundation, which is funding the development of prosthetic limbs and other devices that wire directly into the brain.

“Again, Abel Wheelwright is dead, murdered in the course of a home invasion. His wife, Eleanor Wheelwright; their daughter, Hannah; and Mrs. Wheelwright's personal assistant, Dana Redd, are being treated for dehydration and various minor injuries. All are listed in fair condition.

“Police are asking for any information about the child who called 911 to report the situation in the Wheelwright house. Without that phone call, it's likely that Wheelwright's widow and daughter and Ms. Redd would have died.

“According to the police, this child is
not
a suspect but is believed to have been inside the house and may have further information that the police need in order to apprehend the perpetrators of this crime.”

As police contact information appeared on the screen, the station played Danny's voice on the 911 call. Eric turned around and grinned.

Ced was in the room, too, and set down his book to look at Danny. “That's you, isn't it?”

Danny shrugged. “Who can tell?”

“
You
can, buddy,” said Ced.

“It's him,” said Eric. “We were there. My boy there's a hero.”

“That's not what you said earlier,” said Danny.

“What did I know then?” said Eric. “It was cold. I was tired. You saved three people. That's a good thing.”

“Maybe there's a reward,” said Ced.

“Maybe I'm not going to let them find me,” said Danny.

“Why not?” Ced asked.

“ ‘Yes, Officer, I was in the house looking for peanut butter to make a sandwich, while my friend Eric waited outside to receive any sandwiches I might bring out to him. Then we returned to Mr. Stone's house near Lincoln Park, the place where I was molested by Nearly Naked Lana about thirty seconds after I arrived there.”

“Why would you bring
her
into it?” Ced protested.

“Why wouldn't I?” said Danny. “If anybody reports that I'm the 911 caller, I'll make sure I bring down the whole house.”

“This kid is a real biter,” said Eric, somewhere between proud and annoyed. “Whatever might make us a buck, he completely rejects and does the opposite.”

“And whatever might get us caught with our pants down, Eric wants to do,” said Danny.

“Hey, you're the one took your
own
pants down,” said Eric.

Ced was a little upset by that. “
Nobody
took his pants down. Well, a couple of inches but it was a
prank.
”

“Lana was not pranking,” said Eric. “And besides, I was talking about earlier yesterday, before we got here. When Danny mooned a couple of security guards who were hassling us.”

“You
mooned
a
cop
?” asked Ced, admiringly.

“He was three feet away,” said Eric. “I mean, he spread his cheeks and
starred
him!”

“I'm glad the women and the girl are doing fine,” said Danny. “That's
all
I care about.” He went back into the kitchen.

Stone was sitting there. “So you made the news,” he said.

Danny nodded and went to the fridge.

“Yeah, I've been doing great things since I got here.” Danny felt bitter and knew he sounded that way, too.

“Saved some lives, that's not nothing,” said Stone.

“And mooned a cop—I sure wish they had a video of that on YouTube. You can imagine how proud I am.”

“So you're a kid.”

“The cousins moon each other all the time. Especially when they…” He almost said “when they're in clant form,” but surely there was a limit to his stupidity, and maybe this was it—to avoid saying “clant” in front of a stranger.

“So it was a reflex,” said Stone.

“I'm just one big reflex,” said Danny. He thought of his response to Lana. The fact that he still thought about that moment and wished he had kissed her. Touched her. And yet was ashamed of feeling that way.

“You're thinking of Lana,” said Stone.

Danny almost jumped, he was so startled. Could Stone read his mind? “Who
are
you?” he asked.

“A man who was once thirteen,” said Stone. “Oh, come on, I saw you blush.”

“I don't blush.”

“I saw your face redden and a weird kind of half-smile come to your lips.”