Authors: Lia London
“I’d better get everybody home,” said Noah. He slapped my
back. “That was beast, what you did.” Getting behind the wheel, he pointed to me. “And I still think we should do that all-school Gel Ball thing. Just gotta find a big enough place.”
“
I’ll work on it,” I said.
Curry and Ri
kki climbed into the van.
Amity snuggled up to me. “Fly me home?”
“Sure,” I said.
Noah waved again, and the van door slid shut. When the hum of the engine faded down the street, I said, “Let me tell Mom I’m going with you.”
I took the steps two at a time, being careful to step over the upside-down board. Inside, I found Mom coming down the stairs. “They’re gone already?” she asked.
“Yeah, you know how we are—in and out. I’ll
run Amity home, okay?”
“Okay, but hurry home. I need help decorating for Halloween tomorrow.”
Back outside, Amity stood on the porch holding the burnt board. “Jack?”
“Who else
would do it?” I asked, taking it from her and setting it back down on the top stair. I put it in the correct way and used my heel to force the nails back into their holes. It would need to be replaced in the morning, but I wanted Sheldon to see it.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I
asked.
“You really
are
MarvelMan?” she said, taking my hand.
“I don’t think I can f
ly right now.”
She looked at me intently. “Lost your Jump?”
“I don’t know if it’s that, or if my magic is just really tired.”
“Either way, you’re my hero,” she said.
“Well, I don’t mind if we walk. It takes longer.”
It took me a few seconds to realize that the sound offending my ears wasn’t my alarm clock but my cell phone. I picked it up and stared at it.
6:22? Who calls that early?
I didn’t recognize the number, so I figured I’d answer and chew out the caller.
I flipped the phone open, but before I could clear the morning fog out of my throat to say something clever, I heard, “Elaine didn’t answer the phone. Are you guys okay over there?”
Blinking and yawning, I only managed, “I think you have a wrong number, sir.”
“Kincaid, it’s me, Jed. Are you
okay
?”
I stared unfocused at the floor and tried to make sense of the call.
“Detective Sheldon Jed? That Jed?”
“Yes. Are you okay?” He sounded urgent.
“Uh, yeah. I was better when I was sleeping, but—”
“Good. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Get everyone up. You need to be ready.” The line went dead. Still bewildered, I padded down the hall in my bare feet and knocked on Mom’s bedroom door.
It took me a minute of nudging to wake her.
“Oh come on, Kincaid. Just eat cereal. It’s in the pantry,” she groaned into the pillow.
“Mom, Jed called. He’s coming over.”
“Not ‘til tonight,” she said, rolling over sleepily. “He said he’d help take Kelsey trick-or-treating.”
“I think he’s coming now.”
As if to confirm it, the
doorbell rang. Mom flopped her face back into the pillow. “Are you
kidding
me? Go answer that, please?”
I didn’t trust my legs on the stairs in my
groggy state, so I flew down the steps and opened the door to find Sheldon in plain clothes, but packing a gun in a shoulder holster visible through an open zip-up jacket. He slipped inside the door and locked it behind us.
That woke me up
. “What the heck is going on?”
“Where’s Elaine?” he asked, heading towards the kitchen.
“Still in bed,” I said, a little defensively.
He hesitated only a second and then headed up the stairs. I followed after
him quickly and got to her door as she squealed. “Oh, Jed! I haven’t even put my face on yet!”
With a
beckoning gesture to me, he crouched beside the bed and talked to the back of her head. She was giggling and slapping at his hand. “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but things have been happening all night, and I wanted you to know.”
“It couldn’t wait?”
“I doubt Bagler’s crew will wait, so we need to be ready.”
Mom and I both snapped to attention, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Sheldon sighed and glanced at me. “I heard you had another little incident last night.”
“What?” asked
Mom.
I tried to brush it away so she wouldn’t worry, but
Sheldon jumped in. “Jack Bagler and his boys attacked Kincaid and his friends at the park, and it got pretty violent. Jack got away, but they managed to bring in four of his cronies, and they confessed to throwing Fire Balls and beating up some of the kids.”
“That’s great!” I said.
“What’s great about it?” demanded Mom.
“
It could be greater,” said Sheldon grimly. “They told the officers at the precinct—behind closed doors—that Curry Sanders was the one who orchestrated the whole thing.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “He was part of
our
group. His girlfriend, Rikki, got badly hurt. He would never—”
“Rikki got hurt?” Mom looked mad that I hadn’t told her anything yet.
“The
official
report,” said Sheldon sourly, “is that he
allowed
her to get hurt, knowing that it would throw off suspicion and knowing that you would heal her.”
“But…” T
he room seemed to be spinning.
“
The official reports taken at the scene of the incident only indicate that the assorted witnesses saw Curry there talking to the other attackers. They did not say he was part of the game you guys were playing.”
“That’s…”
Crazy? Possible?
I didn’t want to think it could be true, but…
“The
un
official story,” said Sheldon, standing up, “probably corroborates what you thought happened. Jack was definitely implicated as a participant if not the instigator. Mrs. Bagler worked overtime all night clearing things up to keep his name out of the records.”
Mom rubbed her eyes. “That’s illegal. Doesn’t
anyone
at the precinct care that she’s totally corrupt?”
“They care,”
said Sheldon. “They also care about their jobs. The Bagler-Farrell Foundation has its fiscal fingers in a lot of pots, apparently.”
Mom stood up,
combing her fingers through her hair and heading out into the hall. “Let’s get some breakfast.” She stopped and looked back at Sheldon pointedly. “And you can tell me why this couldn’t wait until I’d taken a shower.”
Sheldon
’s tense stance softened. “You look fine, Elaine. I’ve seen worse lots of times.”
“Coming from a cop, that’s not as comforting as it could be,” she said wryly, tromping down the stairs.
A few minutes later, through a mouthful of Snappy Puffs, I asked, “Should I be heading down to the precinct with
my
testimony? I can totally clear Curry.” Even as I said it, I wondered if I could.
“
We need to be careful about how we do that,” said Sheldon. “I heard rumors of retaliation for anyone who testified against Jack Bagler. I’m afraid you might be a target because of what your testimony might mean.”
“I can’t let Curry
get in trouble. He was trying to protect me.”
“Let the other kids clear Curry
for now,” said Sheldon. “I’ll make sure their voices are heard.”
“When
? How?” asked Mom, pouring orange juice for each of us. “Kincaid needs to tell what he knows.”
“How about
he tells his story at the hospital where your friends are laid up? The doctors have requested more information about the injuries, and Mrs. Bagler may not have thought of the medical testimony route.”
“Good idea,” I said.
“They’re scheduled for release at nine this morning. How good can you look by then?” he asked, grinning at me.
“Good enough for
The Morning Edition
cameras?” I asked. When he shrugged and nodded, I added, “Wait, we need Amity.”
“Why?” asked Sheldon.
“She’s the one that told me about how Curry helped.”
Sheldon’s eyebrows shot up. “She was there?”
“Of course.”
He looked like an angry brick again.
“She didn’t even show up in the reports.”
Mom’s face fell. “How are we going to do this, Jed? How can we prove anything?”
“We need it on tape,” he said. “I’ll tip the media about us being at the hospital this morning.”
She shook her head and slammed the frying pan onto the stove. “No. There’s still editing. They might cut out vital information. Somebody might be bought. We need our own tape.”
Mom and I both looked at Sheldon intently. “We could film the hospital visit,” he said slowly. “But we’d need the kids’ consent before it was aired anywhere.”
“They aren’t going to allow big cameras in the hospital, Jed. You know that,” said Mom.
“I wasn’t thinking of a big camera,” he said. “More like a hidden one, so viewers know it’s candid.”
We arrived at the hospital with the morning rush, Kelsey clutching her stuffed unicorn and sniffling between yawns. Sheldon had concealed a small camera—from a cell phone, I think—in the front hoof of the doll, and Kelsey was not pleased about the marred stitching. Mom promised to make Froodles slippers to cover the hole, but for now, Kelsey just had to hold the unicorn, look cute, and point the camera at Hadley and Elizabeth while we did the visits. After coaching Amity and I on what kinds of information to get, he left us to our duty while he went outside to greet the news vans for an official announcement.
We went first to Elizabeth because that’s what Kelsey wanted, and we needed her to cooperate. Elizabeth sat on the edge of her bed, already dressed for release
, and her mom, Mrs. Delmore, was brushing her hair by the window. A nurse rolled past us with the last of her IVs. “Are you family?” she asked.
“Friends,” I said.
“Amity’s my cousin,” said Elizabeth loudly.
The nurse eyed me and Mom suspiciously. “It’s supposed to be family only
until the investigation is over,” she said firmly.
Elizabeth’s mom glanced at us and nodded to the nurse.
“We’ll just be a minute,” said Amity, grabbing Froodles from Kelsey’s hand.
“Hey!” complained Kelsey.
“It’s okay, dear,” said Mom, ushering us back out of the room. “She’s going to show your unicorn to Elizabeth to cheer her up. She’ll be right back.”
Kelsey ran the risk of having a meltdown. Hungry, tired and now deprived of her precious
Froodles, she started to pull the
I-can-be-heavier-than-an-elephant-thing
. As annoying as that usually is, it proved a great distraction for the nurses in the hall, and everyone left Amity and Elizabeth alone with Mrs. Delmore. I snuck up to the door to pull it shut as Amity spoke with distinct clarity: “So you can’t leave here until the cops come? What happened to you?”
“I’m
going to find Detec—Jed, okay?” I said, patting Mom’s back. She nodded and continued to soothe Kelsey, offering to buy her a muffin from the cafeteria downstairs.
“Can I ride the levitator?”
“Elevator, honey, and I’ll even let you push the buttons.”
They disappeared down the hall, and I took off towards the stairs. It only took me a couple of seconds to see where
The Morning Edition
van had set up in the parking lot. Sheldon signaled to me, and I jogged over.
“This is Kincaid Riley,” he said, beaming at the reporter. “But you already know him.” He turned to me. “How are the patients doing?” he asked.
“I couldn’t get in. Police have to interview them first.”
“Oh!” said Sheldon with I thought was overplayed surprise. “They haven’t testified yet?”
“Guess not.”
“Have you?” asked the reporter.
I hadn’t expected that, but I figured this was my big moment to nail Jack and save Curry. Drawing a deep breath, I said, “No. I had left the park before the police came.”
“You fled the scene of the incident?” she asked, with an edge to her voice. She pushed the microphone close to me, and I worried that I’d already blown it. I decided to go for one little
lie. “Actually, I took off after Jack Bagler. I didn’t want him to get away.”
Zing!
I had her full attention.
“Jack Bagler? Any relation to Mrs. Bagler, the school district
Superintendent?”
“That’s the one.”
“And what was his involvement in the attack?” she asked, all flowery now. So I told her, and I left nothing out, only fudging on the bit about trying to find him and failing. I also referenced past harassing we’d received at his hand.
“And wasn’t there something involving him at your own home
with a large party?”
Before I could answer that, Sheldon jumped in. “I think there was a more recent one than that,” he said. “Didn’t he burn a threat into your porch step
last night?”
That caught me off guard. “You saw that?” I think he realized that he may have revealed a close relationship between him and our family, but I hoped the reporter wouldn’t pick up on it. I forged ahead. “Yeah, that showed up last night after the
attack at the park. I don’t know for sure that it was Jack, but he was the only other person that wasn’t still at the park, and I don’t know who else would have it in for me.”
At that moment, the camera
man almost yelped, and he swung around to face the front entrance just as the glass doors hissed shut behind none other than Mrs. Bagler herself. The reporter was beside herself with glee. “Will you excuse us please? We’ll contact you directly if we have any further questions.”
As she and the cameraman bustled after Mrs. Bagler, Sheldon
said, “This’ll either be spectacular or catastrophic,” he said. “Hurry, let’s get up the back way.” We went back up the stairwell, flying more quickly than the elevator could have taken us, and arrived on Elizabeth’s floor just as Amity traded places with a cop. Sheldon dodged behind a potted tree until the door closed again.
“Not good. That’s one of Bagler’s boys,” he muttered.
“Psst! Amity!” I whispered as loudly as I dared.
She turned and saw us, eyes bright with triumph. With a little wave of Froodles, she
gestured for us to follow her, and we ran after her towards the elevator.
“C’mon. Hadley’s down one level,” she said, punching the button.
“Did you get a good recording?” asked Sheldon.
“Golden,” she said beaming. “This’ll make up
for any cover-up going on downtown,” she beamed.
The elevator bell dinged, the doors slid open, and Mrs. Bagler stepped out with her head down, bumping into Amity and send
ing her sprawling to the floor. Froodles slid across the floor and landed at Sheldon’s foot. In the flicker of an eyelash, he picked up the doll and Flash Jumped somewhere. It took me a beat to follow suit, and I wasn’t sure if I’d been seen. I had to Flash Jump two more times—hard to do around all the nurses and carts—before I found Sheldon down one flight outside one of the patient rooms. He signaled to me with the stuffed unicorn.
“Your turn, Kincaid,” he said, handing me the doll. “See what you can find out from Hadley, and I’ll go back and check on Amity.”
“Knowing her, she helped Mrs. Bagler up and introduced herself as Emma Louise Hillbilly or something,” I said. “Amity can take care of herself.”
“They’ve never met face-to-face?”
“Nope, but Amity’s seen her on TV. I’m sure she’ll handle it fine.”
“I hope so. I’ll be back!” He turned and walked quickly towards the stairwell, and I slipped into the patient room.
A dividing curtain was drawn around the bed, so I called, “Hadley? You decent in there?”
I heard a grunt and a shuffle of cloth. “Kincaid, is that you?”
Peeking around the curtain, I saw Hadley from behind. He was pulling a shirt over his head. When he turned around, I actually gasped. One of his eyes had a patch over it. “Whoah, are you going as a pirate tonight?”
Hadley gave me a look of dry humor mixed with pain. “I wish. I took a few t
oo many sparks to the eye, and—”
“C
ouldn’t they heal it?”
He shrugged and licked his
lips, a gesture I knew meant he was holding back.
“I’ll try,” I said, reaching forward. That’s when I remembered Froodles and the hidden camera. “But first—can I record you talking about what happened before the police get here?”
“What?”
“Mrs. Bagler’s in the building, and she’s going to try to control the spin on anything you say. Make the cops fudge the reports. They’ve already been—”
“I…I dunno. I think I’ll give my statement to the police.”
“But Hadley—”
“No, Kincaid. I don’t want any more trouble. I’m…” He looked at me with his one good eye, and I saw the fear.
Dropping Froodles on the bed, I hugged him tight. “
It’s okay, Hadley. I get it.” I pulled back and slid the eye patch up. “Let me try…” With the heel of my hand gently resting over the eye socket, I closed my own eyes and concentrated—or I tried to—but instead, I thought about all the great times Hadley and I had growing up. I thought about how much he had helped me with my desegregation cause when it was probably just because he was loyal to me and Elizabeth. I thought about how he’d helped us escape the library. I thought about him scoping girls’ legs and falling off chairs. I thought about his laugh and his generosity, and how he’d thrown juice on Amity’s burning hair. I thought about how much I didn’t want him to be attacked by Punkers ever again. And then I thought about how much I wanted his eye to be healed. I realized that I had tears streaming down my face, and he did, too. We looked at each other for a long time, and then I let go. He blinked twice and then covered his good eye. With surprise, he exhaled a soft laugh. “Kincaid! You did it! It’s blurry, but I can see with it!”
Footsteps sounded in the hall, and I heard a male voice ask a nurse if this was Hadley’s room.
“Is that your dad?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “No, he’s coming in half an hour. I—”
“I’ve got to hide.”
“In the bathroom,” he pointed.
I grabbed Kelsey’s doll and Flash Jumped into the adjoining private lavatory and had almost closed the door when an idea hit me. “Hadley, just…tell them the whole truth. If they edit stuff out of the report, that’s okay, but I need to know.”
He nodded solemnly, and I closed the door leaving only a small crack—
big enough for Froodle’s foot.