“That’s right, and the boss has had a busy day. Why don’t you tell me, and I’ll decide if it’s important enough to tell her.”
“Oh, please,” Sophie said. “Can’t you see when one of these brats is scamming you?”
“I know where Luke went,” Frieda said. “I won’t tell you, but I’ll tell her.”
“She’s lying,” Sophie said.
Frieda never looked at her. She kept her eyes on Dr. Evans. “Not.”
Evans’s interior debate was short. Luke Ellis would soon have been gone for a full twenty-four hours, he could be anywhere and telling anything to anyone—a cop, or please God no, a reporter. It wasn’t Evans’s job to pass judgement on the girl’s claim, farfetched as it was. That was Mrs. Sigsby’s job. His job was not to make a mistake that ended him up shit creek without a paddle.
“You better be telling the truth, Frieda, or you’re going to be in a world of hurt. You know that, don’t you?”
She only looked at him.
18
Ten-twenty.
The Southway Express box, in which Luke slept behind the rototillers, lawn tractors, and boxed outboard motors, was now leaving New York State for Pennsylvania and entering an enhanced speed corridor along which it would travel for the next three hours. Its speed rose to 79 miles an hour, and woe to anyone stalled on a crossing or asleep on the tracks.
In Mrs. Sigsby’s office, Frieda Brown was standing in front of the desk. She was wearing pink footie pajamas nicer than any she had at home. Her hair was in daytime pigtails and her hands were clasped behind her back.
Stackhouse was in the small private quarters adjacent to the office, cat-napping on the couch. Mrs. Sigsby saw no reason to wake him. At least not yet. She examined the girl and saw nothing remarkable. She was as brown as her name: brown eyes, mouse-brown hair, skin tanned a summer café au lait. According to her file, her BDNF was likewise unremarkable, at least by Institute standards; useful but hardly amazing. Yet there was something in those brown eyes, something. It could have been the look of a bridge or whist player who has a hand filled with high trumps.
“Dr. Evans says you think you know where our missing child is,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me where this brainwave came from.”
“Avery,” Frieda said. “He came down to my room. He’s sleeping there.”
Mrs. Sigsby smiled. “I’m afraid you’re a little late, dear. Mr. Dixon has already told us everything he knows.”
“He lied to you.” Still with her hands clasped behind her back, and still maintaining a surface calm, but Mrs. Sigsby had dealt with many, many children, and knew this girl was scared to be here. She understood the risk. Yet the certainty in those brown eyes remained. It was fascinating.
Stackhouse came into the room, tucking in his shirt. “Who’s this?”
“Frieda Brown. A little girl who’s confabulating. I bet you don’t know what that means, dear.”
“Yes I do,” Frieda said. “It means lying, and I’m not.”
“Neither was Avery Dixon. I told Mr. Stackhouse, and now I tell you: I know when a child is lying.”
“Oh, he probably told the truth about most of it. That’s why you believed him. But he didn’t tell the truth about Prekile.”
A frown creased her brow. “What’s—”
“Presque Isle?” Stackhouse came to her and took her by the arm. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s what Avery said. But that was a lie.”
“How did you—” Mrs. Sigsby began, but Stackhouse held up a hand to stop her.
“If he lied about Presque Isle, what’s the truth?”
She gave him a cunning smile. “What do I get if I tell?”
“What you won’t get is electricity,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Within an inch of your life.”
“If you zap me, I’ll tell you something, but it might not be the truth. Like Avery didn’t tell you the truth when you zapped him.”
Mrs. Sigsby slammed a hand down on her desk. “Don’t try that with me, missy! If you’ve got something to say—”
Stackhouse held his hand up again. He knelt in front of Frieda. Tall as he was, they still weren’t eye to eye, but close. “What do you want, Frieda? To go home? I’m telling you straight out, that can’t happen.”
Frieda almost laughed. Want to go home? To her el dopo mother, with her succession of el dopo boyfriends? The last one had wanted her to show him her breasts, so he could see “how fast she was developing.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Okay then, what?”
“I want to stay here.”
“That’s a rather unusual request.”
“But I don’t want the needle sticks, and I don’t want any more tests, and I don’t want to go to Back Half. Ever. I want to stay here and grow up to be a caretaker like Gladys or Winona. Or a tech like Tony and Evan. Or I could even learn to cook and be a chef like Chef Doug.”
Stackhouse looked over the girl’s shoulder to see if Mrs. Sigsby was as amazed by this as he was. She appeared to be.
“Let’s say that… um… permanent residency could be arranged,” he said. “Let’s say it will be arranged, if your information is good and we catch him.”
“Catching him can’t be part of the deal, because it’s not fair. Catching him is your job. Just if my information is good. And it is.”
He looked over Frieda’s shoulder again at Mrs. Sigsby. Who nodded slightly.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal. Now spill it.”
She gave him a sly smile, and he thought about slapping it off her face. Only for a moment, but it was a serious thought. “And I want fifty tokens.”
“No.”
“Forty, then.”
“Twenty,” Mrs. Sigsby said from behind her. “And only if your information is good.”
Frieda considered it. “All right. Only how do I know if you’ll keep your promises?”
“You’ll have to trust us,” Mrs. Sigsby said.
Frieda sighed. “I guess so.”
Stackhouse: “No more dickering. If you have something to say, then say it.”
“He got off the river before Prekile. He got off at some red steps.” She hesitated, then gave up the rest. The important part. “There was a train station at the top of the steps. That’s where he went. The train station.”
19
After Frieda was sent back to her room with her tokens (and with a threat that all promises would be off if she spoke a single word about what had transpired in Mrs. Sigsby’s office to anyone), Stackhouse called down to the computer room. Andy Fellowes had come in from the village and spelled Felicia Richardson. Stackhouse told Fellowes what he wanted, and asked if he could get it without alerting anyone. Fellowes said he could, but would need a few minutes.
“Make it a very few,” Stackhouse said. He hung up and used his box phone to call Rafe Pullman and John Walsh, his two security men who were standing by.
“Shouldn’t you get one of our pet cops to go down there to the trainyard instead?” Mrs. Sigsby asked when he finished the call. Two members of the Dennison River Bend Police were stringers for the Institute, which amounted to twenty per cent of the entire force. “Wouldn’t that be quicker?”
“Quicker but maybe not safer. I don’t want knowledge of this shit-show to go any further than it already has unless and until it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“But if he got on a train, he could be anywhere!”
“We don’t know that he was even there. The girl could have been bullshitting.”
“I don’t think she was.”