Found

CHAPTER 20

Ema was quiet in the elevator.

“Let’s take the first bus up to Connecticut tomorrow,” I said. “We could be up at Jared’s school by ten.”

“Okay,” Ema said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I frowned at her.

“I know how much you want to be part of that team,” she said.

“And I know that scares you,” I said.

“What?”

“You think I’ll start hanging out with them instead of you?”

Ema shook her head. “You’re so thick sometimes.”

“That’s not it?”

“No, that’s not it.”

We were outside now. The night air was cool, and I welcomed it. Hospital air is always stilted and heavy. It is hard to breathe in a hospital. I stopped a moment and sucked in a deep breath.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Never mind.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. What?”

“With some people, you tell them the oven is hot, they don’t touch it,” Ema said. “But other people have to touch the oven. They have to feel the pain.”

I frowned again. “That’s deep, Ema. And isn’t it supposed to be a frying pan?”

She stopped and put her hands on my arms. I saw her eyes in the moonlight look up at me. We just stood there a second and a weird thought hit me:

I wanted to kiss her.

I don’t think I ever consciously thought about that before. We had always been squarely in the “friend zone.” But looking down on her in this wonderful light, I wanted to cup her face in my hands and kiss her.

“You’re going to touch the oven,” she said. “I want to protect you from that pain. But I can’t. I can only tell you that when it hurts, I’ll be there for you.”

“And I’ll be there for you,” I said. “Always.”

“Always,” Ema repeated.

We stared into each other’s eyes. I don’t know how long. I was about to move my hands to her face when someone driving by us honked and yelled, “Get a room!”

That broke the spell.

Ema’s hands slid off my arms. She took a step back. We both turned and started for home. We walked in silence for a while. Neither of us would raise this. We would both just pretend the moment never happened. With each step it seemed farther away, as though we were leaving the near kiss in the hospital parking lot. The tension eased.

We were becoming just friends again.

When we reached the intersection, Ema surprised me by starting down the road toward Bat Lady’s now-burned-down house. I stayed right by her side.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“There are tunnels under the house. That’s what you told me.”

“Right.”

“And last time we went down to the basement, we found a clue.”

“You’re thinking maybe we can find another?”

Ema shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

I had thought the same thing, of course. It was dark out now. It would be easier to approach without being seen by neighbors. Then again, the night also made an already spooky place even spookier. We stopped on the sidewalk.

Up ahead of us, the house’s collapsed remains stood in menacing silhouette. The streetlights were dim. The house had been built right along the woods. It was odd, I thought now, how none of the trees behind it caught fire.

What horrors, I wondered, had this house seen over the years?

We didn’t have flashlights on us, but we had our smartphones. I got the flashlight app ready. I didn’t want to use it until we were belowground. A light might be seen by nosy neighbors. They’d call the police, and let’s just say that wouldn’t end well.

Our approach was blocked by dozens of signs reading KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING. The yellow tape wrapped around the burned ruins worked like a reflector on a kid’s bike.

“Strange,” Ema whispered.

“What?”

“All the signs, the tape. It’s almost overkill.”

I had thought about that too. Were the police and fire department really that worried about keeping people out? The signs didn’t look officially issued, just something you’d buy at the hardware store. I wondered whether Lizzy Sobek had put them up. I couldn’t see that. Maybe it was one of the other people who worked for the Abeona Shelter. Maybe it was the guy with the shaved head whom I had recently learned was named Dylan Shaykes.

Didn’t matter. I didn’t care about the warnings. I was going in. There might be clues about Jared Lowell somewhere in the bowels of this property, but I was more thinking that there might be information about my father’s sworn enemy, the mysterious Luther.

Bat Lady-sorry, I still thought of her that way rather than Lizzy Sobek-had said that Luther had been rescued by Abeona and that his photograph had been in that hallway he burned down to the ground.

“Another thing,” Ema whispered.

“What?”

“Why did Luther set the house on fire?”

“Because I was in it.”

It was too dark to see her face, but I could feel her skeptical frown. “So why not, I don’t know, shoot or stab you? Why burn an entire house to the ground?”

I saw where she was going with this. “Because he wanted to destroy evidence.”

“Could be.”

“And some of the evidence-”

“Could be in those tunnels under the house,” Ema finished for me.

We reached what had been the front stoop before the fire. I remembered how decrepit the house had been, how the very foundations seemed to shake when I knocked on that door, how the paint job was so old that flakes fell off as though it had a bad case of dandruff.

Now the house was rubble. But somehow that didn’t seem to lessen the power. The fire had been put out days ago, but an acrid smell assaulted my senses. There was no smoke or smoldering going on, but it still seemed as though steam was coming up from the wreckage. I thought about what this house had held. I thought about the fact that a legendary hero from the Holocaust, long thought dead, had lived here in hiding for so many years. I thought about all the children who had been rescued, all the ones who had temporarily been hidden here or had healed here or had told their tales here.

The building might be gone, but those voices still whispered to us.

Ema took my hand as we stepped into the debris. We had been here before. We knew the way. The fireplace had been on the left. There had been an old photograph of Bat Lady with a group of hippies, probably taken in the sixties. I rescued that picture from the fire. It was in the drawer next to my bed.

Everything in the room was gone-the couch, the old record player where Bat Lady played her rock ’n’ roll vinyl albums, the chair, the armoire, all of it. They were soot and dust.

I flicked on the flashlight app, keeping the beam low. Last time I’d been here, the basement stairs had been blocked by debris. They weren’t now, but that was probably because I had made an opening.

I turned off the app. Okay, I knew where to go now.

I started toward it. Ema stayed with me.

“I’ll go down first and make sure it’s safe,” I said.

“Because you’re the big brave man?”

“Because I’ve been down there before, remember?”

“I do. You made me stay up here, remember?”

I sighed. “You want to go first?”

“And bruise your heroic ego? Not a chance.”

I shook my head. The moonlight was just enough to catch her teasing smile. I wanted to give her a gentle shake. Or maybe kiss her.

Man, I had to stop thinking like this.

The opening was a giant hole. I shined the light down it for a brief moment. The stairs did not look sturdy enough to hold my weight, but I didn’t have any choice. I knew the drop was not far anyway. I just had to be prepared.

When I reached the third step, I heard a cracking noise. I leapt right before the stair gave way and landed on the concrete floor.

“You okay?” Ema asked.

“Fine.”

I turned on my flashlight app. I was below the earth now. The neighbors would not be able to see the beam.

“I’m coming down,” Ema said.

“Wait.”

“What?”

The beam of the flashlight danced around the room. In one corner, there was a washer and dryer that looked like something from the Eisenhower administration. Some old clothes were piled on the left. I opened two of the cardboard boxes. There was nothing but junk in them. No files, no clues, all a mess of dust and soot.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “There’s nothing here.”

“Are you sure?”

I checked the floor again. That was where I’d found the photograph last time we were here. But there was nothing now. Finally I raised the beam toward where I knew the answer would be.

The reinforced steel door.

I had seen it last time I was here. While everything else in this house had been decaying, this door was stronger than ever. I put my hand against it. The soot fell away and I could still see a shine. I tried the knob.

Locked.

I had expected that. I tried to push my shoulder against it. It didn’t budge a bit.

I needed to get to the other side of that door.

But there was no way I was going to make it this way. That didn’t mean I was defeated. I just had to go another route.

“Mickey?”

“I’m coming back up.”

I tested the bottom steps. They were sturdy enough. I climbed a few. Ema lowered her hand to offer me help. I didn’t need it, but if I refused it, she would make another crack about me being sexist or whatever. So I took it, which may have been an even more sexist move.

“So what now?” she asked when I was back aboveground.

“The garage,” I said. “When Dylan Shaykes brought me here, he had me go through a tunnel that started in the garage out back and made its way to the house. I saw other corridors and doors. One, I bet, leads to whatever is behind that steel door.”

The garage was in the woods, about fifty yards away. It seemed so odd, but then again everything about this property did. The woods came right up to the very house, as though they had sneaked in one night and taken over the backyard. That had made no sense to me. Now, of course, I understood it better. There was a road in the woods. You could drive up to the garage back there without fear of being seen. You could even use the tunnel in the garage and enter the house without anyone ever noticing.

There was a lot of secrecy surrounding the Abeona Shelter.

The garage doors were locked, but this time the doors weren’t reinforced with anything. I checked the bolt and saw it was right by the knob. Good. I lifted my leg and smashed my heel into the spot directly above the knob.

The door gave way.

“So we’re breaking and entering,” Ema said.

“Probably.”

She shrugged and headed in first. I aimed the flashlight at the ground and said, “Stop.”

“What?”

I gestured toward the floor. There were fresh footprints in the dirt.

I put my foot next to one of the prints. I wear a size thirteen. This shoe was only slightly smaller, which meant that the prints probably belonged to an adult male.

Using my flashlight, I followed the footprints right up to the…

The trapdoor that led to the tunnel. They stopped there.

Never one to miss the obvious, I said, “Someone’s been here recently.”

“Or is still here now,” Ema added.

Silence.

Then I said, “Let me-”

“If you say ‘go down alone,’ I will punch you.”

I looked up at her. “Then neither of us goes down.”

“Huh?”

“Spoon is paralyzed. He got shot. I’m not taking any more chances.”

Ema shook her head. “We have to do this, Mickey. You know that.”

“We don’t have to do anything. Suppose Luther is down there.”

“Then we have him cornered.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Ema moved closer to me. “What else can we do, Mickey? Go home?”

I wanted her to go home. But I knew that she wouldn’t.

“We’ll be careful,” she said. “Okay?”

What choice did I have? “Okay.”

The trapdoor had a latch. I bent down and pulled the handle. We both looked down into the tunnel.

Darkness. Nothing but a black hole.

“Terrific,” I said.

Ema had already turned on her flashlight app. There was a ladder leading down. She said, “Me first,” and put her foot on the first rung.

“Let me go.”

“I don’t trust you. You’ll look up my skirt.”

“Uh, you’re wearing jeans.”

“Oops.” She smothered a nervous laugh and started down the ladder. I followed. When we reached the bottom, Ema aimed the beam in front of her. The flashlight wasn’t all that strong, but it just confirmed what I already knew: We were in a tunnel. At the end of it, if we made the proper turns, would be that steel-reinforced door.

The question was, what else would we find?

She was about to start forward when I put my hand on her arm. She turned toward me. I put a finger to my lips to signal for her to stay silent. She did so. I listened hard.

Nothing.

That was a good sign. Everything echoed down here. If Luther or someone else was moving, we would have heard them. Of course, that didn’t mean that they weren’t down here. The echo worked both ways. They would have heard us descending the ladder. Luther or whoever could be waiting somewhere, ducking low, ready to pounce.

“We move slowly,” I whispered.

Ema nodded.

We started down the tunnel. I wondered how something like this had been built. No way it passed Kasselton code. Did Lizzy Sobek hire construction workers? I doubted it. Did volunteers work on it? Did those “chosen” by the Abeona Shelter build this tunnel?

Maybe. Maybe my father helped build it.

But I somehow doubted it. It seemed older than that. How long did it take to construct? And really, who cared anyway?

We reached a door.

I remembered passing this door the last time I was here. Dylan Shaykes, who had brought me, told me to keep going. I tried to flash back and remember now. Did he seem afraid? No. He had just wanted me to keep going because I had been brought here to see Bat Lady.

I reached for the knob.

But there wasn’t one.

Huh? I looked again. I could see what looked to be a keyhole. Nothing else. The door was smooth. It was also reinforced steel. I pushed against it. No yield at all.

What was Abeona trying to hide?

We were about to continue along the corridor when Ema said, “Mickey, look.”

I turned to Ema. At first I didn’t see it, but then I followed the flashlight beam down toward the ground. There was a small lever, like something you’d pull for a fire alarm.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“I think we pull it.”

Ema reached for it before I could. Her hand took hold and pulled. At first, it didn’t give at all. Then she pulled harder. The lever gave way with a sucking pop sound.

The wall next to us started to slide.

We stepped back and watched it move. It was bizarre. The front part of the wall came forward and moved to the right. It slid in front of the steel-reinforced door, covering it.

Ema said, “What the…?”

The door was gone now. Completely camouflaged.

We stood there for a moment and stared, half expecting something else to happen. It didn’t. The door was gone. I wondered whether there were more doors in this tunnel.

Or more levers.

“Pull it again,” I said.

She did. The wall grunted before moving back to where it had been before. The door was once again visible. I pushed on the door one more time, hoping that maybe the lever unlocked it or something, but it didn’t give.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Neither do I. Should we keep moving?”

I nodded. There wasn’t much more for us to do here.

There was a fork up ahead in the tunnel. We stopped at it. I tried to remember when I was here last which way I went. I didn’t remember the fork but I was pretty distracted. Dylan Shaykes-at that time I only thought of him as Shaved Head-was leading me toward the house.

What way had we gone-left or right?

Right, I thought. I don’t have a great sense of direction, but right also seemed the way to the house. Plus, the bigger prong in the fork-the one you would more naturally take-was the one on the right.

I had already gone in that direction, though, hadn’t I?

I was about to shine the flashlight to the left when I heard a noise. I froze.

Ema whispered, “What?”

“Did you hear that?”

“I don’t think so.”

We stayed still. I heard it again. I couldn’t tell what it was, though. My imagination? Maybe. But whatever it was, it seemed very far away. Have you ever had that? Have you ever heard a sound so soft, so far away, so muffled that you aren’t even sure that you are hearing anything at all? Like maybe your ears are ringing and you’re just imagining the whole thing.

That was what this was like.

“Do you hear it?” I asked her.

And again, because we are so much in tune, Ema replied, “Maybe. Something really faint…”

We didn’t know what to do.

“It could just be an old pipe,” Ema said. “Or house noises. You know. You can barely hear it at all.”

“I know.”

“So what should we do?”

“Probably not stay much longer.”

I shone the flashlight to my left. When we both saw what was there, Ema said, “Bingo.”

Maybe, I thought.

The first thing we saw was an old television set. I don’t know how old exactly. I mean, it wasn’t ancient-not like that noisy refrigerator that broke on the Bat Lady-but it was a thick console set with a screen that couldn’t be more than eight inches. A machine that looked like a giant old-fashioned tape recorder was attached to it.

“It’s for VCR tapes, I think,” Ema said. “We still have something like it in the theater room.”

I stepped into the room. On the shelf above, there were dozens of tapes, lined up like books. I started to pull them down from the shelf.

“I don’t think they’re for a VCR,” I said.

Uncle Myron had old VCR tapes of his high school games in the house. These tapes looked slightly different. They were a little smaller, less rectangular. I hoped to find something on the labels, but the only thing written on them were numbers.

“Mickey?”

It was Ema. Her tone made my blood go cold. I turned slowly toward her. Ema’s eyes were wide. Her hand was resting on top of the television.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“The television,” she said.

“What about it?”

I saw her swallow. “It’s warm,” she said. “Someone was just using it.”

We both froze again, in this dark, dank space, and listened.

Another noise. This one was real. No mistaking it.

Ema looked down at the attached tape machine. She pressed a button and a tape ejected from the machine. She jammed it into her purse and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

I didn’t argue. We hurried back into the tunnel, this time heading toward the garage. We had gone about ten yards when I heard the noise behind me. I stopped and turned to look back.

Luther was there.

He stood at the far end of the tunnel, glaring at us. For a moment, none of us moved. Even down here, even in this faint light, I could still see the sandy hair and green eyes. I flashed back to the first time I had seen them-the day of the car accident. I was lying injured, woozy, not sure what had happened. I looked to the side and saw my father lying very still. A paramedic looked back at me and shook his head.

That paramedic was down at the end of the tunnel.

Luther’s hands formed two fists. He looked enraged. When he took a step toward us, Ema grabbed my arm and yelled, “Run!”

I didn’t move.

He took another step.

Ema said, “Mickey?”

“Go,” I said to her.

“What?”

“Go!” I shouted.

I wasn’t leaving. I wasn’t letting him escape again. This Luther, this man I didn’t know, was my father’s sworn enemy. That made him mine.

My father’s grave might not have held any answers. But I bet this guy did.

I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight again.

Luther and I faced each other like two gunslingers in an old Western movie. I wasn’t sure what move to make. I had spent most of my life overseas, in a variety of countries, and my father had insisted that I learn the various martial arts. I was big. I was strong. I knew how to fight.

But most martial arts work by using your opponent’s aggression. I had never learned, for example, how to sprint toward an opponent in a tunnel and take him down. I knew better how to counter an attack like that, how to roll with my adversary and incapacitate him.

So I waited another second for him to come toward me.

He waited too.

I wondered whether he knew how to fight. It didn’t matter. He was not getting out of here. He was not getting near Ema. It was just the two of us.

No reason to wait any longer.

I started to calculate the distance and figure an angle of attack-go low, take out the legs-when I heard a voice behind us.

“What the-?”

Someone was coming down via the trapdoor in the garage. I thought maybe I recognized the voice.

“Kasselton police! Everybody freeze!”

It was Chief Taylor, Troy’s father. He hurried down the ladder. I glanced for a second, no more. I kept my eyes on Luther’s. He kept his eyes on me. But I turned away just for a second.

“For the love of…” Chief Taylor’s mouth dropped open as he looked around in disbelief at the tunnel. “What is this place?”

Another officer was coming down the ladder behind him. I quickly turned back to Luther.

Luther started to run the other way.

“No!” I shouted.

“Freeze!” It was Chief Taylor again. The beam of his flashlight was on me. “Mickey Bolitar! Freeze right now!”

I didn’t listen. I sprinted toward the end of the tunnel. When I veered right, I saw the door-the steel-reinforced one in the basement, maybe?-slam closed.

Luther had run through it.

I ran toward it. I put my hand on the knob.

“Okay, Mickey,” Chief Taylor said, standing side by side with another officer, “that’s far enough.”

They were there. I had my hand on the knob and tried to calculate how long it would take to open the door and run through it. Too long. Taylor and the other officer would be on me.

That was when we all heard the scream.

The two police officers turned toward it.

“Help! Oh, help!”

Suddenly I got it. The scream and call for help had come from Ema, but I could tell, from the exaggerated tone, she wasn’t in real danger.

Genius that she was, Ema was intentionally diverting their attention from me!

I didn’t wait. I pulled open the door and ran through it. I was back in the basement. It was darker now. I heard a crunching noise above me. I used my flashlight app and shone it upward.

I saw Luther’s leg on the top step.

I ran and leapt toward it. I grabbed the ankle and hung on for all I was worth. I was actually suspended in the air, my grip on his ankle loosening, when I felt his other foot stomp on my arm. I didn’t care. I hung on.

“Let go of me!” Luther shouted.

“Where’s my father?”

“He’s dead!”

I didn’t believe him. And I had a plan.

If I could just swing my legs to the stairs, I would have enough leverage to pull Luther down to the concrete basement floor.

“Let go of me!”

“No!”

I pulled and arched my back, aiming my legs for the stairs. Behind me I heard the door open.

“Freeze!”

It was Chief Taylor again.

“He’s getting away!” I shouted.

But Chief Taylor and the other officer wouldn’t listen. They tackled me instead. I tried to hold on, tried with everything I had to keep my grip, but I could feel my fingers slip away under their combined weight.

“He killed my father!”

I crashed to the ground. Above me, I saw Luther smile and slip away.

“Stay put,” Taylor yelled.

“He killed my father! Stop him!”

“What are you talking about?”

But it was pointless. We were belowground. Luther was already off and running. Chief Taylor stood. The other officer flipped me onto my stomach and snapped the cuffs on me.

Ema came through the door. “Leave him alone! He didn’t do anything!”

“You’re both under arrest,” Taylor said.

“For what?”

“A neighbor saw you break into the garage. That’s a crime. You’ve wiggled out of plenty of trouble, Mickey, but not this time.”

“Listen to me,” I said, “you have to find that man.”

“I don’t have to find anyone,” Chief Taylor said. “I told you to stop. You didn’t. You ran away from a police officer. You resisted arrest. I’m sorry, Mickey. You’ve gotten too many breaks.”

Ema tried. “But if you’d just listen to us-”

Chief Taylor spun toward her. “Do you want me to cuff you too, missy?”

“What?”

“Turn around.”

“You’re kidding-”

“Turn around!”

Ema did so. I watched in disbelief as Chief Taylor cuffed her too.

“I don’t want to hear another word out of either of you.”

They led us back down the corridor through the tunnel. Again I saw Taylor looking around as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “What is this place?” he asked me.

I said nothing.

“I asked you a question, Mickey.”

“I don’t know.”

“So why did you break into the garage?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I saw his face redden. “That’s it. I’ve had enough of you. I’m taking you down to the city prison in Newark. You’re going to spend some time in that system. Adult population. I told you once about the guy with the really long fingernails, remember? You’re about to be his cellmate. Jackson?”

He turned to the other officer.

“Let’s lock them in the squad car and check out this tunnel.”

It was hard to get us up the ladder because our hands were cuffed behind our backs. Jackson suggested taking them off us. Taylor refused. When we reached the front yard, he said, “You wait with them here. I’m going back into-”

“What’s going on here?”

We all stopped at the sound of the scratchy old voice. There, standing on the sidewalk as though she had just materialized, was Bat Lady. Jackson choked back a scream. Bat Lady was back in her full crazy-person persona-the long white-to-yellow gown, ratty slippers, her white hair flowing down to her waist.

“Ma’am,” Taylor said, risking a step in her direction, “these two broke into your own garage.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Uh, yes, ma’am, we spotted-”

“Don’t ‘yes, ma’am’ me,” she snapped. “They have permission to be here. I asked them to check my tunnel for me.”

“You did?”

“Of course.”

“Well, about that tunnel-”

“Why are they handcuffed?”

“Well, see, we got a report that they broke in-”

“And I just told you that they did no such thing, didn’t I?”

She waited for an answer.

“Uh, yes, ma’am.”

“So uncuff those children immediately.”

Taylor gestured at Jackson. Jackson took out a key.

“Ma’am, could you tell what those tunnels are for?”

“No.”

“Pardon?”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“A warrant? No. Like I said, we got a report-”

“Has this become a police state? I’ve lived in police states before. They are horrible places.”

“No, ma’am, this isn’t a police state.”

“Then you have no right to be on my property, do you?”

“We were responding to a call.”

“Which was made in error obviously. So now you know that. Do you know what I want you to do now?”

“Um…” I was enjoying watching Chief Taylor squirm. “Leave?”

“Exactly. Don’t make me ask again. Shoo.”