Relic (11 page)

A thunderous boom directly overhead made me jump, and the rain became fat drops. We were getting drenched, and rain was pounding the side of the ice cream truck, soaking Archer and the stuff just inside the opening on the side.

“Tell the police,” Archer said, raising his voice above the downpour. “Don't get between the robbers and the guards, just tell the police. Remember, changing one little thing, like increasing patrols in an area, is usually enough.”

“Wait,” Colin said. “That's it? We still have questions. When does Dean get his gear?”

“Gear?”

“You know, like his grappling hooks, tiny cameras, and exploding pens. That sort of stuff.”

Archer laughed but ignored the question. “I'd invite you three into the truck, but inviting kids into an ice cream truck is a bit creepier than just leaving them to get soaked.” He lifted a board that would fill the hole in the side of the truck. “Don't worry, I'll see you again. Good luck with the police.” He slid the wood in place, and a second later, the truck roared to life and pulled away.

“He's a bit weird,” Lisa said.

“I like him,” Colin said. “He reminds me of James Bond.”

“Oh yeah, they both drive really hot cars,” Lisa said.

“Ha, ha.” Colin turned to me. “What do you think, Dean?”

I blinked twice and wiped rain off my face. “I think we're about to lie to the police.”

 

The police station smelled like potpourri, which I wasn't expecting. I thought it would smell like criminals, and in my mind, criminals smelled like a mixture of smoke, sweat, and booze. Maybe the station smelled like that when the potpourri ran out. Each step I took toward the information counter tightened the knot in my stomach.
This has to work
, I told myself.
It has to
.

The officer behind the desk had a pale, narrow face and brown hair thin enough to see his scalp. He raised his chin when we walked up and said tiredly, “If you kids are just trying to get out of the rain, this isn't the place.”

Our soaking clothes stuck to our bodies like colorful second skins. Lisa swiped a few wet strands of hair out of her eyes, and Colin just stood there, dripping. I glanced back at the muddy prints we'd tracked from the door and grimaced. We'd discussed how this was going to work while we walked to the police station: what we had to say, what we'd probably be asked, how we'd respond. I'd been concentrating on not messing it up to the point that I almost forgot how soaked we were. I wished we'd had more time to think things through. Another crack of thunder yanked me from my daze, and I turned back to the officer.

“We'd like to report a robbery.” I wanted to sound grown-up, but my voice came out several octaves deeper than I was going for and just made me sound like an idiot.

The officer didn't seem to notice. “You've been robbed?”

“No,” Lisa said. “We heard someone talking about robbing a place, and we'd like to report it.”

“I see.” The officer pushed his fingers through what little hair he had and tapped the keys on his computer. Then he snatched up the phone on his right, waited a moment, and said, “Detective Peters? I've got a couple kids up here who want to report a robbery. Uh-huh. Okay.” He replaced the phone and gestured to bench. “Take a seat.”

“But…couldn't we just tell you what we heard and leave it at that?” I asked. The plan was to keep it simple.

“That's not how it works,” the officer said. Colin and Lisa both opened their mouths to speak, but the officer just pointed to the benches again. “Have a seat.”

“This was supposed to be quick,” Colin muttered as we took our seats. “Just in and out.”

“We should've just called it in,” Lisa whispered.

I shook my head. “We already discussed this. Cops probably get a million prank calls a day, and this is too important. If they thought we were just kids playing a gag, then what?” I didn't give them a chance to answer. “Two people will die, that's what.” I shook my head again. “We have to make sure they believe us. I need to
know
they're going to do something. If we made an anonymous call, we wouldn't know if they took it seriously.”

Lisa bit her lip. “You're right.” She lowered her voice and leaned past Colin. “But we could get in a lot of trouble for this.”

Colin fidgeted with his cell phone, then stuffed it in his pocket and wiped his palms across his jeans. I couldn't tell if he was excited or scared, but I suspected he was a little of both. He was usually the confident one, but I think he knew as well as I did that this wasn't some innocent prank we were pulling off. It was serious. Deadly serious.

We're saving lives
, I reminded myself.
Pull it together
.

I'd barely finished my thought when the door to the left of the information counter swung open and a short, slender woman with dark hair and a gun on her hip stepped out. She had dark pants and a blue dress shirt that reminded me of what my mom sometimes wore to work—minus the gun, of course. We stared at her for several long seconds until she glanced at us and then turned to the officer at the information counter, who gave an uninterested flick of his head in our general direction. We stood up as she approached.

The detective had a face as smooth as polished steel, and she looked at least as tough. She narrowed her dark eyes and tilted her head as she drew near and studied us the way my mom studied abstract paintings. She wore the look of a skeptic, the kind of look you'd expect from someone who has been lied to for most of her life. My high school principal had that same look.

“I'm Detective Peters,” she said, reaching out her hand.

“I'm Lisa Green,” Lisa said, shaking the detective's hand.

“I'm C—Colin,” Colin said, shivering. “Colin Blane.”

When she turned to me, I froze and stared at her outstretched hand. I was reminded yet again that if I touched her hand, I'd be inexorably linked to her. Police officers were pretty high on my list of people not to touch. They got shot at every day, plus they were always going into dangerous places and fighting dangerous people. The only profession higher on my list of people to avoid was soldiers. Visions of officers or soldiers getting killed would probably be a special kind of horror, and what can you do to stop someone going to war? Not much, that was for sure. I wasn't about to link myself to this lady.

I brought my hand to my mouth and coughed. “I'm Dean.” I held up my palms. “I'd shake your hand, but I think I'm coming down with something.” I felt a twinge of guilt for not touching her hand. I wondered if maybe I was being selfish. What Archer would think if he knew I was trying not to touch people. Would he care? Would he think I was a coward?

The officer shrugged, then eyed us carefully. “So, you three know something about a robbery?”

“That's right,” I said. I took a second to consider the lie, or half lie, that we'd created on the way over. “We were—”

Detective Peters held up her hand. “C'mon back.”

“Back?” Colin asked.

“That's right,” she said, pulling open the door and standing to the side. “Through here. I'll take your statement.”

 

Detective Peters led us down a narrow hallway and through another door that opened into a large room humming with activity. A few dozen desks filled the area, and police officers moved between them like marching ants. The detective herded us to an empty workstation, pulled two empty chairs from neighboring desks, and told us to sit. She typed some stuff into her computer, then turned back to us and stared, unblinking, for what seemed like several minutes.

“Tell me about this robbery,” she said finally.

Lisa spoke first and kept to the script we'd worked out. “We heard two guys talking outside the museum. They said they were going to break into the place tonight.”

The officer remained stone-faced. “There were two of them?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, doing my best to sound confident.

“And all three of you heard them?”

“Yes, ma'am,” the three of us said together.

“And they said they'd be breaking into the museum?”

We nodded.

She turned to Colin. “What did they look like?”

“Oh, we didn't see them,” Lisa said, answering for him. “They were behind some bushes.”

“But we heard them,” I added quickly. “Clear as a bell. There was no mistaking what they said. Plus, they sounded dangerous.”

“They
sounded
dangerous?”

I swallowed. That part wasn't part of the plan, and I could see the muscles in Lisa's face clench. She was worried, no doubt, that I'd gone off script. I hadn't intended to say that, but the detective didn't seem as interested as I'd imagined. The last thing I wanted was for Detective Peters to think we were lying or had heard wrong. She eyed me with obvious suspicion.

“They sounded dangerous to me. You know, hushed tones, all serious.”

“
Hushed
tones?” she asked. “But you said, just a second ago, that they were speaking clear as a bell.”

Lisa's whole body stiffened, and Colin shifted uncomfortably on his chair. I felt beads of sweat form on my forehead. It was time for me to shut up or I was going to ruin everything. “I'm not sure what I mean,” I said. “We did hear them clearly and maybe it was just the way they spoke that sounded dangerous.”

She turned to Colin. “Tell me how you knew there were two of them?”

“Um, well, we heard two voices,” Colin said.

“But you didn't see them at all?” Her expression remained the same, but I could hear in her tone she wasn't buying it.

“The bushes were really thick,” Lisa offered.

The officer drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Look, you three seem like good kids. I know you might think it's funny to play a prank.” Her eyes met mine. “Maybe get some revenge on a museum for kicking you out?”

“W—What?” I asked.

She raised her brows. “Did you think I wouldn't recognize you from the paper, Mr. Curse? You've been in it a few times, you know. Plus, I'm not about to forget a story about the boy who took down a monk.”

“We're not lying,” Colin said, raising his hand like he was swearing on a stack of Bibles.

“Okay, Colin,” she said, nodding. “You heard two men talking about robbing a museum. Two men, only a few feet away, just beyond some bushes, and you expect me to believe that you didn't even peek to see who they were?”

“N—No,” Colin stammered. “I mean, um, yes.” He cleared his throat and tugged at the collar of his wet shirt.

“Which is it?” Her voice hardened.

This was not how this was supposed to go. We'd talked through all the possible questions the police might ask us, but her not believing us so quickly caught us off guard. Of course it looked like I was just getting revenge on the museum. I should have realized that. I could've kicked myself for being so stupid.

Colin turned to me then glanced around the room, frantic for someone, anyone, to rescue him.

“I've been a detective a long time, Colin,” Peters continued. “I know witnesses. I also have five older brothers and three kids of my own. Sons.” She said the word
sons
like she was saying the name of a great battle. “You remind me of one of my brothers, and he wasn't the kind of kid who would hear two men planning a heist and not peek. You still expect me to believe that you just walked away without a glance?”

She was right. Colin would have hopped the fence to try to shake their hands. Real live robbers. He would have treated them like movie stars. He probably would've asked them for autographs.

Lisa and I opened our mouths to speak, but the detective pointed at us and spoke without taking her eyes off Colin. “You two don't speak. Not a word. I'm talking to Mr. Blane for a moment.” Her gaze narrowed on Colin. “Well?”

In my head, I begged Colin not to mess it up. Just say you didn't look. Just say you couldn't wait to get away from there, find the police to report it.

“I…I, um, might have peeked,” Colin said. I slapped my forehead. The detective glanced at me with an expression that screamed “Gotcha!”

“No, you didn't,” Lisa interjected.

I groaned. We hadn't talked about what the people could have looked like because we had agreed we weren't going to give descriptions. Colin tugged at his collar and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked more nervous than I'd ever seen him.

“Ms. Green, I won't ask you to be quiet again.” She turned back to Colin. “What did they look like?”

Colin's gaze darted around the room again, flitting from one place to another, never fully settling on any one thing. Then he turned back, and in a rush of words that seemed to fall from his mouth, said, “One of them had brown hair, a mustache, and a green windbreaker.”

“And the other one?” Peters raised one brow.

The next description came just as fast, like he didn't like the taste of the words and wanted them out of his mouth immediately. “The other one was black, about six feet tall, with really short hair and a goatee. He was wearing dress pants and a white button-up shirt.”

I sighed. Not bad, Colin. A button-up shirt wasn't very burglar-like, but that's not a bad thing. Colin wasn't usually such a quick thinker. Actually, he wasn't much of a thinker at all. I hoped our interrogator would buy the descriptions.

Peters glanced over her shoulder, then back to Colin and then to me and Lisa. “Do you guys agree? Is that what they looked like?”

What could we do? If we said no, then we would make Colin a liar, but if we said yes, maybe they'd go out and round up everyone who matched that description. But as long as they believed us, they'd have to go to the museum. They'd have to increase patrols, and besides, Colin's description seemed pretty believable to me.