Two Schools Out - Forever

27

"Least favorite place," I whispered to Fang. "Sewer tunnels of New York? Or abandoned home of squatting crackheads?"

Fang thought about it, moving silently across the room, staying out of the squares of moonlight coming through the gaping windows.

"I'd have to go with sewer tunnels of New York," he whispered back.

We started on the second floor and moved down, opening doors, looking up fireplaces, tapping walls for hidden compartments.

Two hours later, I rubbed my forehead with a filthy hand. "We got nothing. This stinks."

"Yeah." Fang breathed out. "Well, get this last closet and we'll split."

I nodded and opened the hallway coat closet. It was empty, its walls nothing but broken plaster, showing the bare laths within.

I was about to close the door when a thin strip of white caught my eye. I shone the penlight on it, frowning, then reached down to pick at it. Something was wedged in back of a lath.

"What?" Fang asked quietly.

"Nothing, I'm sure," I whispered back. "But I'll just get it..."

I pried it out with my fingernails, and it turned out to be a square of paper, about four inches across. I turned it over, and my breath caught.

It was a photograph.

Fang leaned over my shoulder while I focused the light on the photo. It was a picture of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The baby was plump, blond, blue-eyed... the spitting image of the baby Gasman-cowlick and everything.