Freddie made a complete circuit of the house. It wasn't completely surrounded by trees, but there were enough large old maples spaced here and there to give comfortable summer shade. Also, at the moment, they made handy posts for the trip wires.
A big maple on the right side had branches going right up above the roof. Its lowest thick branch was a little more than seven feet from the ground, extending outward away from the house and trip wire. On his second jump, Freddie grabbed that branch and managed to pull himself aboard.
For a naked man, shimmying up a tree is even trickier than riding a bicycle.
Freddie didn't know it, of course, but the route he was taking now had been Geoff Wheedabyx's favorite path in and out of his house when he was between the ages of ten and twelve, sometimes traveling that way because his parents didn't want him out so late at night, sometimes going by tree merely because it was fun.
The thick branch Freddie inched out on, when he had ascended high enough, bowed and swayed with his weight; fortunately, nobody was looking up. It led him to the porch roof, which his bare feet touched so gently that even Peg didn't hear it down below, but kept on looking out at the street, wondering when something would happen.
The upstairs windows were open (good) but screened (bad). Freddie hadn't brought any tools with him. The screens were the old-fashioned wooden-frame sort, with small slitted metal bars at the top corners. These hung on metal tongues attached to the window frame. In the winter, no doubt, the chief came up here and took down these screens to put up old-fashioned storm windows on the same hardware.
First unhooking the screens, of course. Yes, each screen was hooked closed on the inside. The wooden screen frame was flush with the wooden window frame: nothing to get a grip on. And bare hands do not punch through well-made screens like this, not without harming the hands and alerting the already alert people just below.
This is very irritating, Freddie thought. Through one of the open windows, he could hear Barney and the others talking together downstairs. So near, and yet so far.
He walked over to the right corner of the porch roof, and from there, on tiptoe, he could just see the steep slope of the main roof. No trapdoor on this side; no, and there wouldn't be one on the other side, either, or it would be locked. There was a chimney over there, which he would not crawl down.
In trying to see the roof, he'd held on to the drainpipe that went down this corner of the house. Now he considered the drainpipe, shook it experimentally, and it was quite solid. New, or not very old. The chief was also a construction guy, so maybe he put his crew to work on his own house sometimes, when business got slow.
Freddie looked over the edge. The porch railing looked very far away, straight down. If he fell, of course, he'd just land on grass down there — no thumbtacks; they were all farther out — but he wouldn't land quietly, and then they'd know he was here.
Still, what choice did he have? He was on the house, and he had to get in the house. There was no silent way to get through those screens. There was no point going back down the tree. Time to do a little more Tom Sawyer.
Which meant, first, extending his right foot down so he could press his toes against the metal collar that held the drainpipe just below the porch ceiling. That metal collar was unexpectedly sharp and painful to his flesh, but there still wasn't any choice, so he gripped the drainpipe, shifted his weight to his extremely pained toes, lowered his right hand to a new grip, bent the right knee, pawed with his dangling left foot for the porch rail, lowered his left hand to a new grip, bent the knee a lot more, pawed a lot more, stubbed his toe on the rail, touched his toe to the rail, bent the knee more than he thought he could, shifted his weight to his left foot, pushed away from the drainpipe while still holding on to it, removed his extremely pained right foot from the sharp metal collar, went on holding to the drainpipe, turned on the railing, and saw Peg in profile, seated in that chair, arms on the chair arms, legs tied to the chair legs.
Freddie climbed down to the porch floor, braced himself against the wall of the house, and felt the bottom of the toes on his right foot. He was amazed to find that he wasn't cut or bleeding. He massaged the toes until they felt a little better, and then he moved.
He was sorry he couldn't whisper a word of encouragement to Peg on the way by, but he didn't want to risk her giving some sort of startled response that would alert the guys inside. So he just eased on by behind her, then went through the open doorway, and here was the cop, hunkered over next to the wall, gripping a blanket in both hands like the child-eating ogre in a fairy tale.
With the cop was the guy who had been with him that day in Bay Ridge, the guy Peg later had told him was a lawyer, though he didn't look or act much like a lawyer at the moment. He had a nice old antique quilt bunched in his fists and hanging down his front, and he looked like the evil brother in a fourth-rate touring company of Arsenic and Old Lace. And also present, also holding blankets at the ready, either to douse a fire or capture an invisible man, were two plug-uglies in suits and white shirts and neckties. They looked like pit bulls that had been made to wear fancy collars.
As Freddie walked in to study this diorama, the lawyer said, "How long?"
The cop looked at his wrist. "Fifteen minutes. We'll give him the twenty he asked for."
Thanks, Freddie thought.
The lawyer said, "What if he doesn't show?"
"Then it's Plan B."
"Barney, I don't—"
Sounding almost sorry about it, but not really sorry, the cop said, "Mr. Leethe, we got no choice. If we say we're gonna take her finger, and then we don't take the finger, we lose all credibility. Freddie wouldn't have any reason ever to believe us again. And I want Freddie to believe, to really know and believe, that when I tell him something is going to happen, that's what's gonna happen."
Uh-huh. Freddie left them to their plans and stratagems, and went exploring, and the first thing he found was the chief, handcuffed to his own chair in his own office, with a third plug-ugly in suit and tie in another chair nearby, watching over him. The chief looked bitter, and the plug-ugly looked bored.
Freddie explored on. He found nobody else on the ground floor, and didn't expect there'd be anybody upstairs, so didn't look. He was going through the kitchen when he heard voices, arguing together, and in a minute realized there were some people in the basement and the basement door was locked.
Okay. Those are good guys, apparently, the chief's friends. For the moment, we'll leave them out of play.
Freddie went back to the chief's office, and nothing had happened, nobody had moved. He went over to the wall behind the plug-ugly, where all the hats were hung, and under the hats he found a lot of the chief's equipment. There was a very nice fire ax, but that seemed extreme. Oh, here was a nightstick.
Freddie picked up the nightstick, and the chief jumped a mile. Or he would have jumped a mile, if it hadn't been for the cuffs holding him to the chair.
The plug-ugly frowned at him. "What's with you?"
"Mosquito," the chief said. "Could you wave a magazine around my head or something?"
"Don't worry," the plug-ugly said. "You won't itch for long. Just sit there and—"
The chief winced.
Freddie held the plug-ugly so he wouldn't crash to the floor, adjusted him in the chair, then went over behind the desk and whispered in the chief's ear, "Key. Whisper."
The chief was quite wide-eyed. "Hook," he whispered, and pointed with his nose and chin at a small board of hooks, most containing keys, on the opposite wall.