Hoot (17 page)

“So, young man, you've had some time to think.”

“ 'Bout what?” Dana blew a bubble and popped it.

“You know. Your situation.”

“I don't need to think,” the boy said. “That's how come I got a lawyer.”

Officer Delinko leaned forward. “Forget the lawyers, okay? I'll put in a good word with the judge if you'll just help me clear up some other cases. Are you the one who painted the windows of my patrol car?”

The boy snorted. “Why would I do a dumb-ass thing like that?”

“Come on, Dana, I can make things easier for you. Just tell me the truth.”

“I got a better idea,” the boy said. “Why don't you just kiss my big fat butt?”

Officer Delinko folded his arms. “See, that's exactly the sort of disrespect for authority that got you here in the first place.”

“No, man, I'll tell you what got me here. That little dork Roy Eberhardt is what got me here.”

“Not this again,” Officer Delinko said, rising. “Obviously we're wasting our time.”

Dana Matherson sneered. “Duh-uh.”

He pointed at the small shopping bag that the patrolman had placed on the table. “You finally bring me some smokes?”

“No, but I got you something else.” Officer Delinko reached into the bag. “A little buddy to keep you company,” he said, casually dropping it in the boy's lap.

Dana Matherson howled and bucked and tried to knock it away, toppling his chair in the panic. He leaped up from the floor and scrambled out the door, where the guard clamped a brawny hand on his arm and led him off.

Officer Delinko was left alone to ponder the object lying on the linoleum tile—toothy, scaly, and lifelike, except for the $3.95 price sticker glued to its snout.

It was a rubber alligator, which Officer Delinko had purchased at the tourist shop.

Dana Matherson's reaction to the harmless toy convinced the patrolman that he couldn't possibly be the Mother Paula's vandal. Anyone so freaked out by a puny fake wasn't capable of handling a real alligator, especially in the forbidding darkness of a Travelin' Johnny.

The true culprit was still out there somewhere, dreaming up a new scheme. Officer Delinko had two long, nervous nights ahead of him.

 

The Eberhardts owned a home computer, which Roy was allowed to use for homework assignments and for playing video snowboard games.

He was good at browsing the Internet, so with no difficulty he was able to Google up plenty of information about the burrowing owl. For instance, the type found in Florida went by the Latin name of
Athene cunicularia floridana
and had darker feathers than the Western variety. It was a shy little bird and, like other owls, was most active after dark. Nesting usually occurred between February and July, but fledglings had been observed in dens as late as October....

Systematically, Roy scrolled down the search items one by one until he finally hit the jackpot. He printed out two single-spaced pages, zippered them into his backpack, and hopped on his bicycle.

It was a quick ride to the Coconut Cove City Hall. Roy locked up his bike and followed the signs to the building-and-zoning department.

Behind the counter stood a pale freckle-faced man with pinched-looking shoulders. When the man failed to take notice of him, Roy boldly stepped forward and requested the file for Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House.

The clerk seemed amused. “Do you have a legal description?”

“Of what?”

“The property.”

“Sure. It's the corner of East Oriole and Woodbury.”

The clerk said, “That's not a legal description. It's barely even a proper address.”

“Sorry. It's all I've got.”

“Is this for a school project?” the clerk asked.

Why not? mused Roy. “Yes,” he said.

He didn't see the harm in a tiny fib if it helped save the owls.

The clerk told Roy to wait while he cross-checked the street location. He returned to the counter carrying a fat stack of files in his arms. “Now, which one of these did you want to see?” he asked with a slight smirk.

Roy stared in bewilderment. He had no idea where to begin.

“The one with all the construction permits?” he said.

The clerk pawed through the stack. Roy had a gloomy feeling that the forms and documents were written in such technical terms that he wouldn't be able to understand them, anyway. It would be like trying to read Portuguese.

“Hmm. That file's not here,” the clerk said, carefully tidying the tall pile.

“What do you mean?” Roy asked.

“The folder with all the permits and inspection notices—it's been checked out, I guess.”

“By who?”

“I'll have to talk to my supervisor,” the clerk said, “and she's already left for the day. The office closes at four-thirty, and it's already, let's see, four-twenty-seven.” For emphasis he tapped the face of his wristwatch.

“Okay, I'll be back tomorrow,” Roy said.

“Maybe you should choose another topic for your project.” The clerk's tone had an artificial politeness.

Roy smiled coolly. “No thanks, mister. I don't give up that easy.”

From City Hall he rode his bike to a bait shop and, using a stash of leftover lunch money, bought a box of live crickets. Fifteen minutes later he was sneaking through the junkyard.

Mullet Fingers wasn't holed up in the ice-cream truck, though his rumpled sleeping bag was still there. Roy waited inside for a while, but without A/C it was unbearably hot and sticky. Before long, he was back on his bike, heading for the corner of East Oriole and Woodbury.

The gate was padlocked; there was no sign of the grumpy bald foreman. Roy walked along the outside of the fence, scouting for Beatrice's stepbrother or any clever surprises he might have left for the pancake-house people.

Roy wouldn't have noticed anything unusual had he not spooked one of the owls, which flared from its burrow and landed in the cab of the bulldozer. That's when Roy saw that the seat was missing. He immediately checked the other earthmoving machines and found the same thing.

So
that's
what the kid was up to the other night, Roy thought gleefully. That's why he told me to bring a wrench.

Roy walked back to the gate and opened the container of crickets and held it up to the fence. One at a time, the insects hopped out of the box, jumped through the chain-link holes, and landed on the ground. Roy was hopeful that the owls would find them once they came out of their dens for supper.

He probably should have left when he heard the first honk, but he didn't. He knelt there patiently and waited until every last little cricket had vacated the box.

By then the honking had swollen to a steady blare, and the blue pickup truck was screeching to a stop. Roy dropped the box and jumped on his bike, but it was too late. The truck had blocked his escape.

The beet-faced bald guy vaulted from the cab and hoisted the bicycle by its seat, Roy pedaling furiously in suspension. His feet were a blur, but he wasn't going anywhere.

“What's your name! What're you doing here!” the foreman hollered. “This is private property, don't you know that? You wanna go to jail, junior?”

Roy stopped pedaling and caught his breath.

“I know what you're up to!” the bald man snarled. “I know your sneaky game.”

Roy said, “Please, mister, let me go. I was only feeding the owls.”

The crimson drained from the foreman's cheeks.

“What owls?” he said, not so loudly. “There ain't no owls around here.”

“Oh, yes, there are,” Roy said. “I've seen them.”

The bald guy looked extremely nervous and agitated. He put his face so close that Roy could smell cooked onions on his breath.

“Lissen to me, boy. You didn't see no damn owls, okay? What you saw was a ... was a wild chicken!”

Roy stifled a laugh. “I'm so sure.”

“That's right. See, we got these dwarf chickens—”

“Mister, what I saw was an owl and you know it,” Roy said, “and
I
know why you're so scared.”

The foreman let go of Roy's bicycle.

“I ain't scared,” he said stonily, “and you didn't see no owls. Now get outta here and don't come back 'less you wanna go to jail, like the last kid I caught trespassin'.”

Roy carefully guided his bicycle around the pickup truck, then took off at full speed.

“They was chickens!” the bald guy bellowed after him.

“Owls!” Roy proclaimed triumphantly.

Up, up, up the steep mountainside he went—that's what he was imagining, anyway. That's what gave him the strength to push so hard.

In reality Roy was rolling along East Oriole Avenue, which was as flat as a Mother Paula's pancake. He was very worried that the construction foreman would change his mind and chase after him. Any second, Roy expected to hear honking behind him, curses in the wind; the pickup truck trailing so closely that he would feel the heat off its big V-8 engine.

So Roy didn't look back and he didn't slow down. He pedaled as fast as he could, his arms taut and his legs burning.

He wouldn't stop until he reached the crest of his imaginary Montana mountain and coasted downhill into the coolness of the valley.

EIGHTEEN

“Same scrawny brat I seen around here last week,” Curly complained to Officer Delinko, “only this time I caught the little bugger!”

Officer Delinko offered to report the incident, but Curly assured him that it wasn't necessary.

“He won't come back, I guarantee you. Not after he got a faceful of me.”

It was nearly midnight at the construction site. The two men stood next to the patrolman's car, chatting casually. Both of them privately believed that the real Mother Paula's vandal was still on the loose, but they would not share their suspicions with each other.

Officer Delinko didn't tell Curly that the Matherson boy was too scared of alligators to be the vandal, because Officer Delinko didn't want the foreman to get all agitated again.

And Curly didn't tell Officer Delinko about the bulldozer seats being stolen while the Matherson kid was in custody, because Curly didn't want Officer Delinko to put the information in a police report that some nosy newspaper reporter might find.

Despite their secrets, both men were pleased not to be spending the night alone on the property. It was good to have a backup nearby.

“Hey, I meant to ask,” Officer Delinko said, “what happened to those attack dogs you had watching the place?”

“You mean the psycho-mutts? Probably hightailed it all the way back to Berlin,” said Curly. “Listen, I'm fixin' to turn in. Holler if you need anything.”

“You bet,” Officer Delinko said.

“And no naps tonight, right?”

“Don't worry.”

Officer Delinko was glad it was dark, so that theforeman couldn't see him blush. He'd never forget the sickening sight of his precious Crown Victoria, its windows painted as black as tar. Officer Delinko still dreamed of catching the offender and bringing him to justice.

After Curly retired to the air-conditioned comfort of the trailer, the patrolman began walking the property, following the line of his flashlight beam from one survey stake to the next. He intended to do this all night long, if necessary, to make sure the stakes weren't tampered with. He had packed five brimming thermos bottles of coffee in his car, so there would be absolutely no chance of running out.

Guarding a vacant lot wasn't the most glamorous police work, Officer Delinko knew, but this was an extremely important assignment. The chief, the captain, the sergeant—they all were relying on him to keep the pancake-house property free of mischief. Officer Delinko understood that if he did the job well, his career at the Coconut Cove Public Safety Department would once again be on the fast track. He could easily see a gold detective's badge in his future.

Trudging through the shadows, Officer Delinko pictured himself in a tailored suit instead of a starchy uniform. He would be driving a different Crown Victoria—the charcoal gray unmarked model reserved for detectives—and wearing a shoulder holster instead of a hip belt. He was daydreaming about getting an ankle holster, too, and a lightweight pistol to go with it, when he abruptly performed an involuntary somersault across the sandy scrub.

Oh, not again, the patrolman thought.

He groped around until he located his flashlight, but at first it didn't work. He shook it a few times and finally the bulb flickered on faintly.

Sure enough, he'd stepped in another owl burrow.

Officer Delinko got to his feet and smoothed the creases of his trousers. “Good thing Curly's not awake to see this,” he mumbled.

“Heh,” came a small raspy voice in reply.

Officer Delinko slapped his right hand on the butt of his gun. With his left hand he aimed the flashlight toward the unseen intruder.

“Freeze!” the patrolman commanded.

“Heh. Heh. Heh.”

Back and forth went the yellow beam of light, revealing nothing. The runty, asthmatic-sounding voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

Officer Delinko carefully took two steps forward and aimed the flashlight down the hole in which he'd tripped. An inquisitive pair of bright amber eyes peeked up from the blackness.

“Heh!”

The patrolman took his hand off his gun and cautiously dropped to a crouch. “Why, hello there,” he said.

“Heh! Heh! Heh!”

It was a baby owl, no more than five or six inches tall. Officer Delinko had never seen anything so delicately perfect.

“Heh!” said the owl.

“Heh!” said the policeman, though his voice was too deep to do a proper imitation. “I bet you're waiting for Momma and Poppa to bring supper home, aren't you?”

The amber eyes blinked. The yellow beak opened and closed expectantly. The little round head rotated back and forth.

Officer Delinko laughed aloud. He was fascinated by the miniature bird. Dimming the flashlight, he said, “Don't worry, sport, I'm not going to hurt you.”

From overhead came a frenzied flutter, followed by a harsh
kssh! kssh! ksshhh!
The patrolman glanced up and saw, framed against the starlit sky, two winged silhouettes—the baby owl's parents, anxiously circling their frightened fledgling.

Officer Delinko slowly began backing away from the burrow, hoping that the grown-up birds would realize it was safe to land. In the blue-gray sky he could see their dusky shapes wheeling lower and lower, and he quickened his retreat.

Even after the two owls alighted, even after he watched them disappear like feathered ghosts into the ground, Officer Delinko continued moving away, backing up step by step until...

He bumped into something so big and so cold and so hard that it almost knocked the breath out of him. He spun around and switched on the flashlight.

It was a bulldozer.

Officer Delinko had clonked directly into one of Curly's earthmoving machines. He glared up at the steel hulk, rubbing his bruised shoulder. He didn't notice that the seat was gone, and even if he had, he wouldn't have given it a worry.

The policeman was grimly preoccupied with another concern. His gaze shifted from the massive bulldozer to the bird burrow, then back again.

Until that moment, Officer David Delinko had been so busy worrying about solving the Mother Paula's case and saving his own career that he hadn't thought much about anything else.

Now he understood what was going to happen to the little owls if he did his job properly, and it weighted him with an aching and unshakeable sorrow.

 

Roy's father had worked late, so Roy hadn't had a chance to tell him what he'd learned about the owls on the Internet, and that one of the pancake-house files had been removed from the building department. It seemed very suspicious, and Roy wanted to hear his father's theory about what might have happened.

But Roy went speechless the moment he sat down at breakfast. There, smiling kindly at him from the back page of his father's newspaper, was Mother Paula herself!

It was a half-page advertisement under a banner of bold, patriotic-style lettering:

Roy dropped his spoon, launching a soggy wad of Froot Loops across the kitchen.

“What's wrong, honey?” his mother asked.

Roy felt sick to his stomach. “Nothing, Mom.”

Then Mrs. Eberhardt spotted the advertisement, too. “I'm sorry, Roy. It's hard to think about those poor helpless birds, I know.”

Mr. Eberhardt flipped the newspaper over to see what his wife and son were staring at. He frowned and said, “Guess they're moving along pretty quickly with that project.”

Roy stood up in a dull fog. “I better go. Don't wanna miss the bus.”

“Oh, there's plenty of time. Sit down and finish your breakfast,” his mother said.

Roy shook his head numbly. He grabbed his backpack off the chair. “Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.”

“Roy, wait. You want to talk?”

“Not really, Dad.”

His father folded the newspaper and handed it to him. “Don't you have current events today?”

“Oh yeah,” said Roy. “I forgot.”

Every Tuesday, Mr. Ryan's history students were supposed to bring a topic for a current events discussion. On those days Roy's father always gave him the newspaper so that he could read it on the bus and pick out a timely article.

“How about if I take you to school today?” his mother offered.

Roy could tell she felt sorry for him because of the news about the pancake house. She thought the owls were doomed, but Roy wasn't ready to give up hope.

“That's okay.” He stuffed the newspaper into his backpack. “Mom, can I borrow your camera?”

“Well ...”

“For a class,” Roy added, wincing inwardly at the lie. “I'll be real careful, I promise.”

“All right. I don't see why not.”

Roy carefully packed the digital camera among his books, gave his mother a hug, waved to his father, and streaked out the door. He jogged past his regular bus stop and kept going, all the way to the one on West Oriole, Beatrice Leep's street. None of the other Trace Middle kids had arrived yet, so Roy ran to Beatrice's house and waited on the front sidewalk.

He tried to cook up a good excuse for being there, in case Lonna or Leon noticed him. It was Beatrice who finally came out the front door, and Roy ran up so fast that he nearly knocked her down.

“What happened to you yesterday? Where's your brother? Did you see the paper this morning? Did you—”

She slapped a hand over his mouth.

“Easy, cowgirl,” she said. “Let's go wait for the bus. We'll talk on the way.”

As Roy suspected, Beatrice had not broken a tooth falling down the steps. She'd broken it while biting a ring off one of her stepmother's toes.

The ring was made from a small topaz charm that Beatrice's mother had left behind when she moved away. Lonna had pilfered the stone from Leon Leep's sock drawer and had gotten it made into a snazzy toe ring for herself.

Beatrice had taken exception to the theft.

“If my old man wanted Lonna to have it, he woulda given it to her,” she growled.

“So you gnawed it off her toe? How?” Roy was astounded.

“Wasn't easy.”

Beatrice made a chimpanzee face and pointed at a sharp stump where one of her incisor teeth used to be. “Broke the tip off. They're gonna make me a fake one so it looks like brand-new,” she explained. “Good thing my old man has dental insurance.”

“She was awake when you did this?”

“Yeah,” said Beatrice, “but she probably wishes she wasn't. Anyway, tell me what was in the paper this morning that got you all freaked out.”

She groaned when Roy showed her the advertisement for the Mother Paula's groundbreaking extravaganza. “Just what the world needs—another pancake joint.”

“Where's your brother?” Roy asked. “You think he's heard about this?”

Beatrice said she hadn't seen Mullet Fingers since Sunday. “That's when the you-know-what hit the fan. He was hiding in the garage, waitin' for me to get him some clean shirts, when my dad walked out for another case of Mountain Dew. The two of 'em were just standing around talkin', perfectly friendly, when Lonna shows up and pitches a major hissy.”

“What happened then?” Roy said.

“He ran off like a scalded dog. Meantime, Lonna and my old man get into this humongous fight—”

“The one you told me about.”

“Right,” said Beatrice. “Dad wants my brother to come back and live with us again, but Lonna says no way, José, he's a bad seed. What the heck does that mean, Tex? ‘Bad seed.' Anyway, they're still not speakin' to each other, Lonna and my dad. The whole house feels like it's about to explode.”

To Roy, Beatrice's situation sounded like a living nightmare. “Need a place to hide out?” he asked.

“That's okay. Dad says he feels better when I'm around.” Beatrice laughed. “Lonna told him I'm ‘dangerous and crazy.' She might be half right.”

When they got to the bus stop, Beatrice hooked up with one of her soccer teammates and they started talking about the previous night's game, which Beatrice had won with a penalty kick. Roy held back and didn't say much, though he felt the curious stares from other kids. He was, after all, the boy who had defied Dana Matherson and survived.

He was surprised when Beatrice Leep ditched her teammates and sat next to him on the bus.

“Lemme see that newspaper again,” she whispered.

As she studied the Mother Paula's advertisement, she said, “We've got two choices, Tex. We either tell him, or we don't.”

“I say we do more than just tell him.”

“Join him, you mean. Like you said the other night.”

“It's them against him. All alone, he doesn't have a chance,” Roy said.

“For sure. But we could all three of us end up in juvie hall.”

“Not if we're cool about it.”

Beatrice eyed him curiously. “You got a plan, Eberhardt?”

Roy took his mother's camera out of the backpack and showed it to Beatrice.