[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Therain is still coming down, moisture squelching in mysneakers.The Finemans townhouse is impossible tomistake: It is the largest house on the block, and the onlyone that is encircled by a high stone wall.An iron gate,hung with brown nests of ivy, gives a partial view of the frontpath and a tiny brown yard, churned mostly to mud.I walkthe street once, checking the house for signs of activity, butall the windows are dark, and if there are guards watchingJulian, they must be inside.I get a surge of pleasure fromthe graffiti someone has scrawled on the Finemans stonewall: murderer.Raven was right: Every day, the resistanceis growing.One more turn around the block, and this time I mscanning the whole street, keeping my eyes up, looking forwitnesses, nosy neighbors, problems, escape routes.Eventhough I m soaked through, I m grateful for the rain.It willmake things easier.At least it keeps people off the streets.I step up to the Finemans iron gate, trying to ignorethe anxiety buzzing through me.There s an electronickeypad, just like Julian said: a tiny LCD screen requeststhat I type in a PIN.For a moment, despite the rain and thedesperate scrabbling of my heart in my chest, I can t helpbut stand there, amazed by the elegance of it: a world ofbeautiful, buzzing things, humming electricity, and remotecontrols, while half the country flounders in dark andcloseness, heat and cold, sucking up shreds of power likedogs picking gristle from a bone.For the first time it occurs to me that this, really, mighthave been the point of the walls and borders, the procedureand the lies: a fist squeezing tighter and tighter.It is abeautiful world for the people who get to play the fist.I let hatred tighten inside of me.This, too, will help.Julian said that his family kept clues embedded in oraround the gate reminders of the code.It doesn t take me long to figure out the first threenumbers.At the top of the gate, someone has tacked asmall metal plate engraved with a quotation from The Bookof Shhh: HAPPY ARE THEY WHO HAVE A PLACE; WISE ARE THEY WHOFOLLOW THE PATH; BLESSED ARE THEY WHO OBEY THE WORD.It s a famous proverb one that comes, incidentally,from the Book of Magdalena, a passage of the Book I knowwell.Magdalena is my namesake.I used to scour thosepages, looking for traces of my mother, for her reasons andher message to me.Book 9, Proverb 17.I type 917 into the keypad: If I mright, I have only one number to go.I m about to try finaldigits at random, when something within the yard flutters,catches my eye.Four white paper lanterns, stamped withthe DFA logo, have been strung up above the porch.Theyare flapping in the wind, and one has been stripped almostloose of the string; it dangles awkwardly, like a semi-severed head, tapping a rhythm against the front door.Except for the DFA logo, the lanterns look like decorationsyou might find at a child s birthday party.They lookstrangely incongruous above the massive stone porch,swaying high above the bleak yard.A sign.Has to be.9174.The gate clicks as the locks retract, and I m in.I slip into the front yard quickly, closing the gate behindme, taking in as much as I can.Five floors, including asunken basement level; curtains all drawn, everything dark.Idon t even bother with the front door.It will be locked, and ifthere are guards anywhere, they are no doubt waiting in thehall.Instead I slip around the side of the house and find theconcrete stairs that lead to a warped wooden door: thebasement entrance.A small window set in the brick shouldallow me to see inside, but a set of heavy wooden windowslats obscures the view completely.I will have to go in blind,and pray that there are no guards at this entrance.This door is also locked, but the doorknob is old andloose, and should be relatively easy to pick.I drop to myknees and take out my knife.Tack showed me how to picklocks once with the narrow tip of a razor, not knowing thatHana and I had perfected the skill years ago.Her parentsused to keep all the cookies and sweets locked in a pantry.I wedge the knife tip in the narrow space between the doorand its frame.It takes just a few moments of twisting andjiggling before I feel the lock release.I tuck the knife into thepocket of my wind breaker I ll need it close now take abreath, and push through the door and into the house.It is very dark.The first thing I notice is the smell: alaundry smell, of lemon-scented towels and dryer sheets.The second thing I notice is the quiet.I lean against thedoor, letting my eyes adjust to the dark.Shapes begin toassert themselves: a washer and dryer in the corner, aroom crisscrossed with laundry lines.I wonder whether it was here that Julian s brother waskept; whether he died here, alone, curled on the cementfloor, under dripping sheets with the smell of moistureclotting his nostrils.I push the image quickly from my mind.Anger is useful only to a certain point.After that, it becomesrage, and rage will make you careless.I exhale a little bit.There is no one with me down here I can feel it.I move through the laundry room, ducking underseveral pairs of men s briefs, which are clipped to a line.The thought flashes through my mind that one of them mightbe Julian s.Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.Beyond the laundry room is a small pantry stacked withhousehold cleaning supplies, and beyond that, a set ofnarrow wooden stairs that leads to the first floor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]