Crazy Dangerous (29 page)
I forced myself to look away from the walls and to pass the flashlight beam over the rest of the room. I saw a small window on one wall. It was dirty, but you could see through it. I imagined that’s where Jennifer had posted herself as she’d spied on her brother and Nathan and Justin gathered here in the night.
There wasn’t much else. The top of a round table sat in the center of the dirt floor—just the top; the legs had been sawed off. There were several half-burned candles on the table. And there were some cushions positioned around the edge of it—I guess so people would have a place to sit. Then, against the back wall, there were two storage boxes, their lids held shut with padlocks.
I knew what I had to do.
I propped the flashlight on one of the cushions so the beam would point at the padlock while I worked. I was really nervous now, thinking about what would happen if I got caught in here—especially if Mark came back and found me. The image of Harry Mac dead in that crate was still very fresh in my mind. I could feel the devil on the wall watching me from the shed shadows. I could almost hear him chuckling at my fear.
Anyway, the point is, I was basically freaked. My hands were shaking really badly. I had to wipe the sweat off them twice before I could get a good solid grip on the Buster. But I finally got the padlock open. Then I lifted the lid. Grabbed the flashlight. Shone it inside the box.
Empty.
Which wasn’t as reassuring as you might think, because I couldn’t help wondering if maybe the stuff that had been in the storage box was now in the duffel bags Mark had been carrying.
“They had bags. They opened the bags. The guns were in them.”
I re-padlocked the one storage box and then moved over to the other. Hard to work the Buster with the sweat pouring down my forehead into my eyes, but I did it. I opened the lid and grabbed the flashlight and looked in and thought:
Empty, just like the other one
.
But then I thought:
Wait a minute. No, it’s not
.
Lying in one corner of the box was a small notebook. It was one of those old-style ones with a binding and hard cover that’s sort of marbleized black and white. The cover worked like camouflage so that at first I didn’t notice the book lying there. Only as I was getting ready to shut the lid again—only as I was turning away—did the flashlight’s beam touch on the cover and give the notebook’s presence away.
The minute I saw it, I felt my breath go short. I knew there’d be important stuff inside. I reached down and took the notebook out of the box. I set it on the dirt floor. I dragged my sleeves across my face to wipe the sweat off. Then, holding the flashlight on the notebook with one hand, I flipped it open with the other.
The notebook’s pages were covered with writing and scribbles and doodles and drawings—sort of like the ones on the wall, except with more words in between the pictures. I turned the pages, squinting at the horrible images, reading the words as quickly as I could. It was all crazy, violent, nasty stuff—a lot of it too awful to quote. But my eyes picked out some sentences and phrases:
The little people have to learn to fear
.
Worship me, worship me, worship me
.
I kept turning the pages, kept reading.
The conspiracies against us will be paid for with death
.
We are champions. We were cheated
.
Death is my power, and through death my power will increase
.
The words rose and twisted and curled around the pages like wisps of smoke. Filling the spaces in between the words were the drawings of snakes and skulls and demons and so on. And that was just the stuff I can tell you about. I wondered if Jennifer had been able to see any of this as she spied from the window. I wondered if these images had gotten into her head and become part of her hallucinations.
I continued to turn the pages—and then I stopped.
I had come to a page where there were no words at all. Just a very carefully drawn picture. It was a picture of a coffin. There was a man inside it. He was tied up and gagged. I knew it was supposed to be Harry Mac.
So they had planned the whole thing right here. And Jennifer had watched through the window. And even though she couldn’t bear the thought that her brother was evil, the idea had worked its way into her schizophrenic hallucinations.
Then she had described the hallucinations to me, and I had run to the scene she described. I must’ve gotten there just at the wrong time. Mark and Nathan and Justin must have hidden while I came into the barn, while I discovered Harry Mac tied up in the box. Then I guess they had the bright idea that they could not only kill Harry Mac, they could frame me for the crime. And they would have gotten away with it too, if my dad wasn’t smarter than they were, and smarter than Detective Sims.
I swallowed down something sour in my mouth and started turning the notebook pages faster.
More words. More images.
We have to do something really spectacular to make them acknowledge our superiority
.
The die is cast
.
We are the real champions!
Death is my power
.
There’s no turning back
.
Now there were pictures of guns. Not hunting rifles or pistols. Machine guns like they use in wars. And hand grenades. And not just pictures. Lists of them: AK-47, M-6, Glock 9mm . . .
When we are done with this town, there will be nothing left but death and fear
.
Finally, I came to the last page of the notebook. What I saw there was more horrible than anything. More horrible than pictures of skulls and demons and whatever filth had somehow polluted the mind of Mark Sales.
Because here there was a series of diagrams. Notes. A plan. It took me a couple of seconds before I figured out what it all meant, but then it became clear.
Mark and his friends had created a death trap.
The diagrams showed Sawnee Stadium. I caught my breath when I recognized it. The Empire and Cole meet—the big track meet—was today, this morning. After the whole crazy night with Jennifer at the mental hospital, and the police coming in the morning, I had forgotten all about it. But I sure enough remembered now. I remembered Justin saying how Empire and Cole needed to be taught a lesson. I remembered the team’s bitterness at feeling they’d been cheated out of the championship. I remembered Mark saying,
“Come the big meet, we have to show them all who we are
.
”
The diagrams detailed the whole plan. The road leading in through the trees. The parking lot outside. There were even scribbled figures meant to represent the crowds that showed up there for sporting events. There were labels under each drawing—“people”; “car”; “concession”—and there were arrows to show which way traffic moved, which way the people moved. It was all very detailed.
As my eyes went from diagram to diagram, I began to understand they were in a time sequence, one thing happening after another. In the first diagram there was just the stadium with lines of cars coming down the road. In the second diagram the cars were mostly parked and people were moving into the stadium itself, lining up and crowding around the main entrance the way they did.
The third diagram showed an explosion.
The explosion was represented by a violent scratchy splotch of ink near the front of the stadium. Underneath the splotch was the neatly written label: “Explosion: 9:15AM.”
The next diagram showed the result: dead people all around. But more than that, there were also the people who weren’t dead. According to the diagram, they would panic and run away from the explosion back into the woods. The arrows showed the directions they would go, the paths they would take.
And that’s where Mark and Justin and Nathan planned to wait for them with their guns. The idea, I guess, was that the explosion would make people panic and run away from the stadium down the easiest path to reach: the walkways by the road and through the trees. And Mark and Justin and Nathan would be waiting for them there—waiting perched and hidden in the trees. And they would open fire, killing the people who survived the explosion.
Staring at the diagrams, I began to feel sick to my stomach. But there was no time for that. I looked at my watch. The explosion was supposed to take place at 9:15. It was already 8:50. The disaster was just twenty-five minutes away.
I had to call the police. There was no time for anything else. No time to get to the stadium on foot. Somehow I had to call the police and convince them that this was all happening, that it was all real . . . before the bomb went off. Before the shooting started.
I closed the notebook and stood. My stomach turned over, and for a second I really thought I would throw up. My vision went dark and I was afraid I would faint. I was never going to be able to do this. How could I?
I steadied myself. I took a deep breath. I remembered the statuette of the archangel Michael on my father’s bookshelf.
Do right. Fear nothing
.
Well, it was a plan, anyway.
I stuffed my flashlight and Buster back into the pockets of my jacket. I didn’t bother to lock up the storage box. It didn’t matter if anyone knew I was here. Nothing mattered but alerting the police.
I stepped to the door. Pushed it open. Stepped out of the shed.
Detective Sims and two patrolmen were striding toward me across the lawn.
I almost bolted. It was my first reaction to seeing the police coming toward me—marching toward me as if they were coming to arrest me for breaking into St. Agnes. Detective Sims was dressed in an overcoat, but it was unbuttoned so you could see the suit and tie beneath. You could also see his round, snowman-like shape. You could also see that little smile of his, as if he found this whole situation very amusing, in a not-very-pleasant kind of way. As for the two patrolmen—one striding along on each side of him—they didn’t look amused at all.
“Why, if it isn’t Master Sam Hopkins,” said Detective Sims in a sarcastic drawl, “aka the magic friend.”
I think I actually blushed. But I guess I knew Jennifer would blabber about all that eventually.
“Funny thing,” Sims went on. “We were at your house this morning, Magic.” The three policemen—Sims and the two patrolmen—had now reached me. They were standing over me—towering over me—where I stood in front of the shed.
“Listen . . . ,” I said.
But Sims didn’t listen. “We figured there was a good chance you were home at that hour,” he went on. “Especially because we know you had a kind of late night last night, didn’t you?”
“Look, I’ll tell you all about that, but . . .”
“And here’s something odd. Your mom figured you were home too,” said Sims. “But when we looked in your room—what do you know? You weren’t there at all. There was nothing to be seen but an open window—almost as if someone had climbed out and shimmied down the waterspout in order to avoid talking to the police.”
“Okay, okay, but you have to listen. You have to look at this, read this,” I said, holding the notebook out to him.
“Luckily this is a small town,” said Sims, ignoring the notebook completely. “One of our dispatchers was having her morning coffee when she looked out her kitchen window and, son of a gun, what should she behold?”
“Read the notebook. I’m telling you, this is an emergency,” I said. I was practically jumping up and down with the urgency of it.
“She beholds young Sam Hopkins,” Sims went on, “running through her backyard, heading toward Arthur Street.”
“Please listen.”
“Also luckily, as a trained detective,” Sims went on sarcastically, “I was able to guess you’d be heading for Jennifer’s house. After all, you’re her magic friend.”
“Mark Sales and his friends, Nathan and Justin—they’re going to kill people. Lots of people. In, like”—I looked at my watch—“twenty minutes.”
That—finally—stopped Detective Sims. He stared at me. The quirk at the corner of his mouth got even quirkier as his smile got wider. “What are you talking about?”
“Mark and Nathan and Justin . . .”
“Mark Sales,” he said drily.
“Yes. He’s got guns. Lots of guns. And a bomb.”
“
The
Mark Sales? The track star?”