“What about her?” Phineas was suddenly entirely alert.
“On the police radio. They broadcast her description and name.”
“Oh.” Energy went out of him just as suddenly and completely as it had exploded in him.
O’Meara looked closely at him. “I’m sorry, Phineas. But the good news is, this isn’t New York. Or Los Angeles. Or Boston, Detroit, New Orleans . . . Besides, it doesn’t do any good to worry—”
By then she was in the kitchen, putting her big bag down on the table, turning around to ask him, “Where is your father? I’m going to make a mug of tea, is that all right? Do you want something, Phineas? Tea? Milk? Hot chocolate?”
He shook his head. He sat down at the table. She moved around the kitchen and he didn’t even bother looking to see what she was up to. He felt like he had a body, but he wasn’t connected to it. He felt the way the mummy might feel, with a body that didn’t count for anything, and her face a portrait on wood, still looking out but having nothing to do with her body at all. And somebody smashing away at her feet.
Weird, he felt weird.
O’Meara put a mug of hot chocolate down in front of him. She sat down facing him, dipping her tea bag up and down in her mug.
“Everybody runs away at least once,” O’Meara said.
Phineas shook his head. Not true. He never had, and out of all the people he knew, only two had ever, and there were maybe three older siblings who had. That wasn’t everybody.
O’Meara’s face looked like a cat when it’s trying to be friendly, but doesn’t know how because it’s a cat. “Okay, I know it’s not everyone, it’s not even a majority, it’s just lots of people who do. I was just trying to make you feel better.”
“Althea wouldn’t run away,” Phineas said. His voice sounded normal to him, which was a relief.
“But if she didn’t, then what has happened to her?” O’Meara asked. She was sorry right away she’d said that. “Isn’t there any clue?”
“There was something on her desk that looked like a note. To me, my name is on it, but it’s just doodling. That’s all. She just left the hospital, when we were there with the mummy after we’d found her. When the mummy was being X-rayed. Althea just walked out.”
O’Meara stirred her tea and sipped from the spoon. “Can I see it?”
See what? Phineas wondered. Now what was she talking about? Although, he ought to admit it, it did feel better not to be sitting alone on the stairs, waiting.
“Phineas? Are you in there? Can I see the note to you? Can you get it? Or can I?”
Phineas got up from the table and went up the stairs to Althea’s room. He picked up the sheet of paper and decided to leave the light on. Althea was afraid of the dark.
Dumb, it was dumb and he knew it. That was a dumb reason for doing anything, especially something useless, but he let himself go ahead and do it because at least it was something.
O’Meara studied the paper. She read it a couple of times. She turned it upside down and sideways. She held it up to the light and looked through it. “I guess you’re right,” she finally said. “That’s just nonsense, Kill Every Noodle. You might as well say Kiss Eddie Noonan.”
“Or Klingons Envy No One,” Phineas said. He blinked his eyes, furious.
“I’m so sorry, Phineas,” O’Meara said. He could feel coming out of her, as real as if you could actually see it, a warm protective feeling. A mother feeling. His friends’ mothers had said that to him, “I’m so sorry,” in just that soft voice, had poured that feeling all over him, when they heard he was moving. He hated it. It made him choke up, and he didn’t want to sit around, choked up. His friends were much easier to deal with, they just said “That sucks,” and kicked something.
“This sucks,” Phineas said. He didn’t have room to kick the table, so he gulped down some hot chocolate.
“It’s okay with me if you feel like crying,” O’Meara said. “I don’t blame you, I feel like crying too.”
She wasn’t all bad, Phineas guessed. A few tears had trickled out, and he brushed them away.
“I’ll never tell anyone you’re not perfectly macho,” O’Meara said with a little smile, her own eyes filming over with tears. “Just think of me as an aunt. Someone you know, someone safe, your favorite aunt.”
“Okay,” Phineas said, smiling himself at the thought of his mother’s sister, Aunt Liz, a small, neat woman with huge eyes and curly hair, a lawyer. “The lawyer who ate Milwaukee,” they called her. She was seriously awe inspiring and about the opposite of what O’Meara was thinking of.
“Divorce is always hard on the children,” O’Meara said now, her finger on the message Phineas was supposed to give his mother. This time she didn’t look at him. “She sounds upset about it.”
“There isn’t any divorce,” Phineas said.
“Then why isn’t your mother here?”
“She got a job offer,” he said. “In Oregon.”
“But you didn’t go with her,” O’Meara pointed out, as if he didn’t know that.
“Dad got this job offer.”
O’Meara nodded her head. “I can dig it. How come you kids are with your dad?”
“We all talked it over.” O’Meara was nosy, but she was all right, Phineas decided. Besides, it was easier to have the air filled with words than with the silence of unnamed fears. “Since Dad was on a school schedule it’s easier for him to take care of us—and Mom’s working for a congressman, which means irregular hours, and being home less of the time.”
“Which congressman?”
“Harlow.”
“You’re kidding.”
Phineas shook his head.
“You’re serious.”
Phineas nodded his head.
“Oh, wow. Is she ever going to come here, so I can meet her and find out what he’s really like?”
Phineas didn’t know. And didn’t care. “What I’m trying to say is, Althea isn’t upset, or, at least, she understands the reasons. She was part of the decision. She could have gone with Mom.”
“Maybe it’s easier when you’re married,” O’Meara said. “My boyfriend—I just broke up with him, two months ago, after being together more than a year, so we were serious—he wanted me to quit my job and go to Florida with him. And get married, it’s not as if he was trying to take advantage. But I have this job. . . .” She took a swallow of tea. “Anyhow, if you all agreed on this, how come Althea’s telling you to ask your mom to get a divorce?”
Phineas didn’t know. “She doesn’t mean it.” Unless, of course, she did. “She blames people, she likes to know whose fault something is, she likes to be sure of that.”
“So she blames your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t blame anyone.”
“Come off it, Phineas,” O’Meara said in that superior, grown-up, I-know-better-than-you voice.
Phineas wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “I’m twelve years old, I’m just a kid,” he said. “I’m a twelve-year-old kid—as long as the icebox is full I’ll be happy.” He sounded like a wiseass, he knew; but that was better than sounding like a wimp. “The marriage is their problem, not mine. I’ve got problems of my own. Like, Althea.”
“Who is so unhappy she ran away.”
A seriously dumb remark. Phineas knew that Althea wouldn’t run away, as surely as he knew it was now 9:50. He just shook his head. “She didn’t.”
“But if she didn’t, then where is she?” O’Meara pointed out again.
“That’s what I’m worried about!” Phineas yelled. He pushed his chair back from the table. He stomped out of the kitchen, stomped into the living room, jerked on the TV, and sat down in a chair in front of it. O’Meara stayed in the kitchen, which was lucky, because if she’d followed him he’d have really yelled at her.
The moving pictures, in color, with sound, played in the box, but he didn’t really see them and whatever noise they were mak
ing didn’t penetrate his ears. Between his ears, there was a dead land. Like the no-man’s-land of World War I. Yellow light fell down over him, and he sprawled out across the overstuffed chair as if he were watching TV.
* * *
The phone woke him. Blatt blatt, it sat him up in his chair. Blatt blat, but before he’d collected himself to answer it O’Meara already had it.
“No, he’s not in,” she said. “May I take a message? I guess you could call me the baby-sitter, if you want to. At the moment that’s what I’m doing.”
The TV had been turned off. It felt like about midnight. His father hadn’t come home. O’Meara hung up the phone and came to the door of the living room. “She didn’t leave her name. I’ve got to go, Phineas. There are a couple of stories I have to write for the morning edition. Do you want me to come back? After?”
“No.” He sat up and rubbed his head behind the right ear. “No, thanks. But thanks.”
“I’ve left my number, home and at the paper, right by the phone.” She had her bag over her shoulder. “If you hear anything, I sure would like a call.”
Phineas nodded.
“Can I come back tomorrow? In the morning?” It was the first time he’d ever heard her sound unsure.
“Yeah, of course,” he said. He would have said more, but he was wishing her out of the house. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate her coming by, but he was beginning to have an idea and her questions distracted him. His idea was that if he were going to kidnap Althea, there would be a reason.
O’Meara left.
So if he could think of a reason, Phineas thought—
Blatt blatt. He shot out of the chair and ran to get the phone. But it was only his father. “I’m at the police station. Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Phineas answered. Neither one of them needed to ask if the other had heard anything.
“I’m going to stay here.”
“Okay” Phineas said. “I’ll hold the fort here.”
At least he knew where his father was.
Phineas went back to the living room but didn’t turn on the TV. He’d almost had an idea. He closed his eyes to try to chase it down again. Having to do with kidnapping, and with motive. And for some reason he kept remembering what his father had said—days ago, Phineas couldn’t place how many days ago—about effect preceding cause.
But what effect? And what cause? He wished he was good at thinking. He felt like he was trying to run down a rabbit, to catch it with his bare hands. If you had a weapon it was easier to bring down a rabbit. Rabbits ran faster than he could. Trying to run a rabbit down, with your bare hands . . .
* * *
The next time Phineas woke up, it was deep night. Maybe one-thirty, he thought. He didn’t know why he bothered thinking that, because he knew what he was going to do. He knew where he might find Althea. He didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t care where the idea had come from. He didn’t even wonder whether he was right or wrong. He just knew where to look.
He was out of the house and running under dark trees and a dark star-filled sky, with no further thought.
CHAPTER 17
Halfway there, Phineas stopped dead in his tracks.
He needed a flashlight. He’d never be able to find her without a flashlight. He ran back home.
In the kitchen, he took his father’s big Maglite out of a drawer. He was panting as he ran out of the house again. The screen door slammed shut behind him. He could have jogged for hours and never gotten out of breath, but running full out was taking it out of him.
He slowed down and ran at a jog. The sense of urgency was mostly his own nerves. It was the same feeling he had when he played soccer and he was trying to work the ball down the field for a goal, a hurry up feeling that would come over him, no matter how much time there was left in the half. He made himself breathe deeply. Plenty of time, he told himself.
He jogged through darkness along the path, between tall leafy trees and tall bushy evergreens. Buildings loomed up ahead of him, dark black squares. He ran between them and up to the largest blackest square, the library.
Phineas stood at the foot of the steps, looking at the locked doors. He could have hit himself in the head with the flashlight.
He hadn’t thought.
He should have called his father, who had a key.
He never thought ahead, thought things out.
And now what could he do?
Just what the thief had done. The big windows to the reading room had stone ledges at their bottoms. He’d break a pane of glass and unhook the window. The thief hadn’t had to break it, but he would. He’d tell Mrs. Batchelor, and he just about knew what she’d say, and he was sorry but—
By then, he’d jammed the flashlight into the waist of his jeans and was shoving through the bushes. The ledge was about shoulder height, and stuck out a good six inches, wide enough to stand on, once he’d—with both hands, his sneaker toes clambering at the bricks for purchase—gotten up so his weight rested on his hands on the ledge. He worked a knee up, and onto it, until he was kneeling on it.
With one hand on the bricks that framed the window, as if he could actually hold on, he used the other to pull the long flashlight out of his jeans. Gently, he thought, but even if he fell over backward the bushes would cushion him. Think, he told himself, and because he thought he remembered that the windows lifted up, like the tall windows in old-fashioned school rooms, with catches at the center. He hung the flashlight over his right shoulder, and swung it forward.
Nothing happened. He tipped his head back, looked at the pane of glass he was aiming for, and swung again, an overhead smash.
A cracking sound, and he swung again. It would make a mess on the floor, but he had sneakers on, he’d be okay. He put the flashlight back into his jeans.
He reached in and stretched his hand up. His hand reached in through the broken pane, reached in, and up again, and twisted until his fingers could feel along the top of the window. His fingers found the latch, and figured out how to slip it open.
Phineas pushed up at the top of the broken pane, carefully, using the back of his forearm. Sharpness moved against his skin, but didn’t penetrate. The window rose a little.
He pulled his arm back and slid his foot into the narrow opening at the bottom. Gently, he bent his knee to lift his foot to lift the window.
It slid smoothly up. Well made, he thought, and well maintained. Not nearly as hard to move as you’d think from its size it might be. He bent his left knee, letting his left hand run down the bricks, and got first his right leg, then his left, and then, sliding down over the low shelves under the windows, his whole body into the reading room.
It was creepy, the big empty room filled with books and magazines and newspapers, but he didn’t need the flashlight to cross it and get out through the big doors. It was the emptiness that made it creepy, the sense of the whole empty building, around and above and below him. It was an ominous silence, a dangerous, hostile silence. A waiting silence. He could hear himself breathing.
His breath came faster, shorter.
Stop, Phineas said to himself. Think. Keys, he told himself, thinking about what it was he wanted to do. He crossed in front of the checkout desk and entered the librarian’s office. If the door had been locked, he’d have had to break another window—but the door wasn’t locked. Mrs. Batchelor’s desk was a flat clear surface, with a tall wooden chair behind it. Phineas pulled out the central drawer and aimed his flashlight into it. Paper clips, marking pens, thumbtacks, piles of library cards—he closed the drawer.
He felt like James Bond, working silently in the solitary darkness, flicking his light on when he needed it, then off for secrecy. He felt like he knew what he was doing. The top right drawer had stationery with the college emblem on top of each sheet. Phineas opened the top left drawer next. He was willing to bet keys would be kept in a top drawer. It was the kind of thing Bond would know. The light flicked on and there they were, three keys on a
ring. Phineas grabbed them and turned off the flashlight.
Because he didn’t know who might see him, he didn’t want to be seen.
He closed the drawer, then left the office, pulling the door closed behind him. Nobody would ever know he’d been there.
Except for fingerprints, he reminded himself. It wasn’t as if he ought to be feeling so awfully smart.
Yeah, but it wasn’t as if he was a real thief, anyway. He was just seeing what it felt to feel like one.
Phineas unlocked the door to the stairway, and went through. The heavy metal door swung closed behind him, latching itself. The darkness in the stairway was as thick as fog. Phineas was almost surprised to see that the beam of light from the flashlight wasn’t murky. Flashlight shining on the steps, keys in his right hand, he went on down.
At the foot of the stairs, one hand on the cool railing, Phineas stopped again. He needed to think. If you knew you made mistakes because you didn’t think ahead, then you ought to plan for that. He didn’t know exactly how many rooms there were, down here in the cellars. He didn’t know what the map of the corridors looked like. He knew how to get from the parking lot entrance to the collection room, room 015, and that was all he knew.
But Althea wouldn’t be in the collection room. He was willing to bet on that. In the collection room she’d be found right away, practically. If Althea was down here, and he had a feeling she was, it wasn’t so that she could be found right away.
How come he thought that? How come he was so sure of it? It wasn’t James Bond he was thinking like, it was the criminal. How come he was thinking like a criminal?
His feet had brought him to the parking lot entrance, which put him at one far corner of the rectangular cellar. Trying to think.
First find Althea, he told himself, then you can pay attention to your criminal talents. He heard his own voice whispering the words.
He knew why he was whispering to himself. It was because it was so creepy, so dark and silent, with only the flashlight beam lighting his way. All he could see was the area of light, on the linoleum floor and flowing up onto cinder block walls painted white. Every nerve cell on the outside of his body was quivering. He felt as if all of his nerves had rushed to the edges of his body and were waiting there, alert for trouble.