Minders

CHAPTER 8

Sadie was relieved to see that whoever had put up the danger sign also had the foresight to attach a big padlock to the door. So unless Ford had a key or super-strength to wrench the door from the building—

Ford walked up to the door and pressed his palm gently against the side with the hinges. There was a click, like a latch being released, and it swung open from there. Camouflage, Sadie registered. The lock and the knob were fake, to fool casual visitors.

I’m impressed, Ford Winter.

Inside he had set up a little workshop with a desk, a chair, an old-fashioned beat box, and an odd assortment of objects she imagined he’d gathered from different construction sites. An easel with a map of Detroit, embellished with drawings and annotations that looked like the ones in Ford’s head, stood on one side, but Sadie only caught a glance at it before he stepped to the wall and pushed a button. There was a grinding noise, and the entire space began to move down.

Maybe the DANGER sign wasn’t a fake.

The “office” cleared the ceiling and stopped, leaving them suspended about sixty feet in the air over the floor of the abandoned factory.

His office was actually the top of the freight elevator, Sadie realized. Wide metal grids formed the four walls, but the view was still unobstructed and, Sadie had to admit, pretty cool. He hit PLAY on the beat box and sat down at the desk.

Sadie braced for some AltCor Trance or Heavy Trip, but it was Louis Armstrong, the jazz trumpeter, and she again found herself thinking, I’m impressed.

The music seemed to fill Ford in a way nothing else had, not just covering up his thoughts and emotions but weaving into them, so that they all harmonized, like his whole mind was, for once, working together. He pulled a multicolored round medallion about the size of his palm toward him, and Sadie saw that it was a small stained-glass window of a dog. His mind vibrated with pleasure when he looked at it, and a rainbow of dots came together into Lulu waking up and seeing it installed in her dollhouse, her dolls Bless and Noshe rendered speechless. There were a few pieces missing, and following the quick succession of images and drawings that were now tripping along Ford’s mind in every direction, Sadie realized that he planned to use the curved bumpy exterior of the crystal saltshaker for the dog’s belly.

Sadie felt confused and like she owed him an apology. Was this really the same guy who hung his clothes on the floor and worked to make people mad at him?

He pulled a brush from one carefully organized drawer and opened the other and froze. There was a manila envelope in it that Sadie could tell he’d never seen before.

His mind flipped back and forth like a just-caught fish, his thoughts saying Bucky is the only one who knows about this place while his memory repeated the image of the wild-eyed boy getting on a bus out of town.

Sadie wanted to shake him. You’re right, the best thing to do is sit here debating with yourself. Do not, under any circumstances, open the envelope and see if the answer is inside.

Finally he tipped its contents onto the desk. It was the Serenity Services file on the death of James Winter. He sat and stared at it for a moment, and Sadie sensed his excitement, but also fear. What is he afraid of seeing? she wondered.

Hands shaking, he flipped it open.

FILE# 8874-9

VICTIM: JAMES WINTER

STATUS OF VICTIM: DEAD

STATUS OF CASE: CLOSED

SUMMARY:

The body of James Winter was found on February 17 at 6:23 A.M. in Playground K just off Happy Alley by two men (occupation unknown, address unknown) who relieved him of his coat, shoes, overalls, and watch but left his underwear.

The victim was shot twice in the head with a small-caliber gun, not found at the scene.

ACTION:

Due to crime’s location in City Center drug corridor, the report from the coroner that “the victim had a very high level of the recreational drug R22 in his system,” and a ballistics match to a gun used in at least two similar crimes, the incident has been classified as Drug Based Altercation.

Family claims no knowledge of drug use by deceased, but statements from close friends are more ambiguous.

Lincoln Liu: “James and I had a falling-out and had not been spending time together, but I did see him at a nightclub in January at a table well stocked with drugs.”

Wilson Moore: “I was with him earlier in the day and he seemed just great. Normal. Probably went to Happy because his girl kept him supplied and she was out of town. But that’s just speculativeness.”

The girlfriend remains unidentified but wanted for questioning.

UPDATE, MARCH 1

CrimeMatch 2300X data analysis predicts 95.2% probability that victim JAMES WINTER was killed by Offender 00834, identity outstanding.

CASE CLOSED

So James had been a habitual drug user and was shot and killed in a drug deal gone bad. Sadie couldn’t see anything for Ford to object to, except maybe that the killer had been identified by his profile but not yet named or arrested.

But that wasn’t what bothered Ford. He turned to the coroner’s report and waded through all of its technical jargon to the conclusion, which stated that James had been a regular drug user for some months before he died.

“Liar,” Ford shouted aloud, startling them both.

He balled his hand into a fist and with three strokes smashed the window he’d been making for Lulu to pieces, bam bam bam. Grabbing his hammer, he went to work on the rest of the workshop, smashing the jars where he’d separated tiny pieces of lumber by size, crushing a box of marbles. His eyes weren’t focused; he swung at random, holding on for the sound of the crack and the feel of something giving way under his strength.

Stop, Ford, Sadie cried. You’re destroying things you love. You’re only hurting yourself.

Smash smash smash. A pitcher. A jar of seashells. The crystal saltshaker.

He had his hammer up, ready to destroy the old beat box, when the storm of his anger ended. It dried up all at once, replaced by a cooler, more temperate mood. Dropping the hammer, he sank into the desk chair and put his head in his hands.

Hurting yourself, Sadie repeated and realized that was the point. He was mad at himself. But why?

He texted Cali on his way home, not the apology Sadie recommended but with “ALL FORGIVEN,” which was better than his first draft, “WHATEVER.”

For dinner that night he made something called Spaghetti-n-Meatballz that came in a can and made Sadie glad her taste buds weren’t yet in sync with his. And after Lulu went to bed he pulled out a dusty box filled with maps of Detroit.

There were at least twenty, each labeled with a sticker in handwriting that ranged from that of a ten- or eleven-year-old to that of an adult, but all of it, Sadie thought, Ford’s. He flipped past the maps with intriguing names like TREASURE HUNT 3: UNDER DOG and TREASURE HUNT 5: MOTOR SKILLS until he found one labeled BUCKY.

The writing on that label wasn’t quite adult, so Sadie guessed it was from when Ford was about fifteen. He shook it, and a card fell out with “Bucky’s Rules” handwritten across the top, and below it:

1. Camouflage. Best is Open Secret Variety

2. Secret exit

3. Explosives

4. Safety rope

5. Back-up plans make you weak

I’m not sure I can endorse all of those, Sadie thought.

Ford replaced the card in the box with the other maps and returned it to its high shelf in the closet but put the BUCKY map in the bag he took to work. If Bucky had left the file, Sadie heard him decide, then Bucky must know something and must be nearby. He’d revisit their old hideouts and find him.

On Tuesday after work Ford went to an old boat that he entered from a secret tunnel beneath a picnic bench, and a fort made out of a decaying camper entirely engulfed by bushes. On Wednesday he rode to a completely deserted tree-lined residential block in the middle of the city, where he stopped at an abandoned house with a secret room through the fireplace. There was no sign of Bucky.

By Thursday he was a tinderbox ready to explode. He was on his way home from work when his phone buzzed with a text. It said, “I HEAR YOU’VE BEEN ASKING ABOUT ME. I’LL BE AT THE CANDY FACTORY TONIGHT AFTER 10:30. YOUR NAME IS WITH THE VIP HOST. PLUM.”

Boom! thought Sadie.