The Unseen

by Hines

  “I’m gonna get a beer,” Donavan said. “You want one?”

  Lucas nodded and Donavan left, leaving him alone with his own questions for a few moments. Question #1: Did Donavan know something more? Was he the one who uncovered his hiding spot in the steam tunnel? Had he led someone else to that hiding spot? Was this whole Creep Club involved in some way?

  Okay, that was four questions.

  And he hated to add the fifth: Was Sarea also part of it?

  Donavan returned and handed him an uncapped microbrew.

  Lucas smelled the sharp tang of the hops wafting out of the bottle, masking the apartment’s odor of leftover food just a bit.

  Donavan tipped his bottle, keeping his gaze on Lucas as he drank.

  “Like I said, we need to talk to Snake. But I can get you in. Be your sponsor, since you seem to like the support group concept.”

  Lucas stared at the floor, took a drink of his own beer.

  Donavan leaned forward again, dropped his voice as if revealing a secret. “Tell you what. Before you make up your mind, let me show you something.”

  “Show me what?”

  “The drug.”

  LUCAS AND DONAVAN STOOD IN A GARAGE, NEAR THE INTERIOR WALL with exposed two-by-four studs. Only a thin layer of gypsum board was between them and the home on the other side.

  Lucas could feel the Dark Vibration cycling deep inside his body, reaching an entirely new harmonic. Something inside him, something dark, loved what he was about to do. It scared him.

  Donavan pointed to a small nail in the backside of the gypsum board, then expertly grabbed the nail and pulled it. It came free easily. Next he retrieved a small, flexible tube from his hip pack and snaked it into the tiny hole, motioning Lucas to come over and see what the pack held.

  A small monitor revealed a fish-eye view of the home’s interior, obviously from a kitchen wall since Lucas could see the sink curving into the bottom of the frame.

  Inside the house, a man and a woman were eating something—nachos, maybe—at a built-in counter on the far side of the kitchen. The man’s lips were moving, but Lucas heard nothing.

  Donavan’s hand reached out toward him, and Lucas stepped back in surprise until he saw what was in it: one of the earbuds Donavan was so fond of wearing. Lucas took the earbud and put it in his own ear, immediately surprised at the clarity of the sound.

  The man was in midsentence.

  “—know we have to do it. And we have to do it at Split Jacks.”

  The woman stayed silent, looked down at the plate in front of her.

  “Come on,” the man continued. “We’ve talked about this . . . I don’t know how many times.”

  Lucas noticed Donavan nodding his head in agreement, a smile on his face and a manic energy twinkling in his eyes. As if he were on a drug high.

  “Are you listening?” the man asked.

  The woman finally spoke. “It’s no good. I mean, he has people everywhere. You know that. And if we screw up something like this . . .”

  “His car.”

  “His car?”

  “Yeah. He has a few drinks at Split Jacks, gets in his car . . . you fill in the blanks.”

  The woman stood up and carried her plate toward the camera. Lucas and Donavan stood absolutely still, watching as she came to the sink. Her face was now filling the fish-eye lens as she rinsed her plate. Lucas saw she was under duress, debating, making a decision she wanted and didn’t want at the same time. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, kept her eyes closed.

  “You sure about this?” she asked weakly.

  His voice came from behind her. “I already told you: it’s perfect.”

  She opened her eyes, and Lucas saw a change come over her face.

  She was going to say yes, he could tell, even before she spoke.

  “Okay. I’m in.”

  She turned around, the back of her head now filling the frame of the camera.

  “Yeah, you’re all in, baby.”

  The woman receded from the camera, walking across the room and disappearing around a corner. She said something from down the hall, something Lucas couldn’t hear because she was too far away, prompting a laugh from the man, still sitting at the counter.

  “Oh, you can count on it,” he said, then stood and left the frame.

  Quickly Donavan pulled the tube out of the small hole and replaced the nail. He stuffed the tube camera back into his bag, paused, and looked Lucas in the eyes. Lucas could see that manic energy still there, dancing.

  The only problem was, he could also feel that same manic energy burning behind his own eyes.

  SEVEN

  BACK IN HIS ABODE, LUCAS UNSCREWED THE BOTTOM OF HIS ELECTRIC candle, slid out the batteries and replaced them with fresh ones, then turned it off and put it in his backpack. Outside the window on the back wall, streaks of pink and purple were painting the eastern sky.

  A new day in the District.

  One advantage to the steam tunnels and underground spaces: it stayed dark there all the time, which he found comforting. Rats weren’t the cleanest of neighbors, but in many ways they were better than humans.

  Lucas hadn’t slept since returning from the sojourn with Donavan six hours earlier. Instead, he had knelt before his makeshift shrine, picking up each of the assorted totems, holding them in his hands and caressing them before returning them to their proper places.

  It still pained him to think someone else had touched these things, found his inner sanctum and violated something so pure. An action that told him, I know where you are. I can invade your space.

  It was a notice, he was sure of it.

  The question was, a notice of what?

  Even so, he’d barely been able to control the Dark Vibration inside, now more ravenous than ever. A vibration that wanted more of what Donavan had shown him the night before.

  So what were his options? He wanted, desperately, to find out more about this Creep Club; it filled a gnawing hole deep inside that nothing else had.

  But he knew this wasn’t the time to start making new contacts with the outside world. Someone had tracked him, and what he really needed to do was go deep underground. Make no contact with anyone for a few months, let his trail go cold. He’d stashed away a few thousand dollars from his odd jobs over the past years; after all, he rarely needed money to do what he wanted. His rent was free, and most of his meals he took from the lunchroom refrigerators of the office spaces he frequented. And his entertainment budget . . . well, watching people was always free.

  The plan meant, unfortunately, no contact with Sarea. Especially because she could be part of it.

  Logically, it also meant no part of Creep Club. His mind knew this. But inside, already, he could tell that wasn’t going to happen. He was going to find out more about Creep Club, taste more of what he’d so long forbidden himself. Because he had to.

  He might as well accept it now.

  And if he knew that’s what was going to happen, he’d best make some contingency plans.

  A drug, Donavan had said.

  Yes, that was true. And already, his body was jonesing for more.

  LATER THAT DAY, INEXPLICABLY, LUCAS FOUND HIMSELF AT THE SAME house Donavan had shown him the night before. The place where the couple had been debating . . . well, he had to admit it: murder. They were planning to murder someone; that much was obvious. Now he had to figure out who.

  The house was in the large swath known as Silver Spring, a few miles from Donavan’s apartment. A nice suburban home—but not too nice. Instead of the exhaust and concrete you smelled in the city, you could detect tree blossoms. The smells of the city were still there, of course, not far below the surface. But nature at least competed.

  As he always did when checking out a new place, Lucas started by walking the perimeter. First by taking in the street in front of the house, paying attention to the hedges and chain-metal fence that framed the yard. Then by walking the alley, pausing to dig through the garbage cans lined
up there, in case anyone was watching. He could pass for a homeless person, he knew, and digging through garbage cans would complete that illusion.

  He’d played the part of a vagrant many times before, even panhandled on the street. He was amazed at the amount of money he made panhandling—far more than he could make washing dishes or doing short-term construction cleanup—but he didn’t keep it up very long. Panhandling was preying on others in a way that made him uncomfortable. Sneaking into their offices and watching everything they did all day—well, yes, that was okay. Panhandling was out. He knew it was a twisted sense of ethics, but there it was.

  Of course, planning to break into someone’s home was even worse, but he forced himself not to think of that right now.

  The wire fence and hedge continued along either side of the house, but only the fence lined the back of the property. This was the way Donavan had brought him in last night: they opened the back gate, then moved quickly across the lawn to the patio, where a back door led to the garage. Amazingly, the door was unlocked.

  Lucas wondered how many people left the back doors to their garages open.

  He spent an hour watching the house from vantage points around the neighborhood and saw no activity. That was good. No dog at the house, or at the house on its east side. The house on the west side had a dog in the backyard, but he hadn’t heard a peep out of it the whole time. When he walked by in the alley, the dog had simply lain on the grass, watching him from the yard and occasionally wagging its tail.

  He considered his options. He didn’t have the names of the couple who lived here, so he couldn’t do a phone call. He could probably do a reverse-lookup on the Internet, using the address to get a phone number. But he’d have to find a nearby Internet café or public library to do that, and he didn’t want to get sidetracked just now.

  Maybe he could just walk to the front door and ring the doorbell.

  Maybe. But he was looking pretty ragged right now—he’d already wandered the neighborhood as a homeless vagrant, and it was unlikely anyone would open the door for him. He really needed to head to a Salvation Army for a couple new sets of clothing.

  In the end, he decided just to do the back door of the garage again, see if any cars were inside. If the garage were empty, he felt there was a good chance the home would be empty.

  Without pausing, he walked across the street, opened the front gate, went directly to the hedge at the fence line, and followed it to the backyard. He paused, listening for a few moments, then went across the backyard to the patio and the back garage door. A small water fountain trickled on the patio. Nice. One more bit of nature out here in the ’burbs.

  Once again, the garage door was unlocked. The garage was empty; last night one car had been there, even though there were two stalls. And even though he hadn’t seen the front of the home last night, he’d noticed no cars parked directly in front of the house this morning.

  Inside the garage, he crept to the door that led into the house. Would they keep this door locked?

  The knob twisted easily in his hand. No.

  With the door open a crack, he listened for sounds inside the house. No TV, no footsteps. Just the steady thrum of the refrigerator’s compressor nearby.

  He slipped through the door and shut it softly behind him. Now he was standing in a small mudroom, with a coat closet to his right and a few pairs of shoes on a mat directly in front of him. No children’s shoes, he noted.

  Lucas walked out of the mudroom into the kitchen area, just past a short, five-foot wall. He remembered the kitchen layout with perfect clarity from the night before: the sink would be back to his right from this doorway, adjoining the garage. The refrigerator and some cupboards were on the other side of the short wall he’d just walked past. Opposite, the oven, stove, and under-counter cabinets, as well as some hanging cabinets. To the left, at the far end of the kitchen from the garage, the counter ended in an L-shape, forming the area where the couple had been eating the night before. Beyond that lay the rest of the house.

  He stepped into the kitchen. No lights on. Good sign. He relaxed, knowing no one was home, and ventured through the kitchen to the living area just beyond.

  A small black cat came out of one of the bedrooms and rubbed against his legs, purring. He reached down to pet it a few times, then went down the hallway where it had come from.

  Several framed photos hung on the painted wall here. A wedding photo, several old black-and-white photos of ancestors and relatives, and a photo he was particularly drawn to: a couple, the woman smiling at the camera—almost laughing—and the man staring at the same spot with a hard intensity. The woman in the photo was the woman he had seen last night. He knew her face well, because she had stood so close to Donavan’s surveillance camera.

  But the man in this photo, wearing a suit and standing behind the woman, was not the man he’d seen. This man was black-haired, lantern-jawed, tall.

  The man in the home last night had blondish hair, seemed stockier, shorter.

  His eyes moved to the wedding photo. It was definitely the woman and the dark-haired man, not the guy from last night.

  So the two people in the house the night before weren’t a couple.

  At least, they weren’t a married couple.

  Interesting.

  Lucas felt the Dark Vibration starting in his gut. But it wasn’t overwhelming at all, or painful, or consuming. It was warm, comfortable. Pleasant.

  The cat wandered past him, pawed open a door down the hallway, and slipped through. Lucas followed and saw the cat curled up under a desk. It was a home office. A computer and telephone sat on the desk against the wall. Next to the desk, a black file cabinet and a bookcase. More file cases on the opposite wall.

  Above the computer, framed on the wall, was a news article from the business section of the local paper. PARTNERS FORM NEW ATM VENTURE. The accompanying photo showed three people: the married couple and the blond-haired man Lucas had seen last night. The caption below the photo said: “L to R: Viktor Abkin, Anita Abkin, and Ted Hagen want to see more ATMs in restaurants, convenience stores, and other businesses.”

  Lucas scanned the story; their company, ATM2GO, licensed ATM machines to other businesses, giving them a split of the usage fees. According to the date on the paper, the article was just over three years old.

  Lucas memorized the article, then began replaying bits and pieces of the previous night’s overheard conversation.

  Now he had to make a decision. Someone had invaded his space, and the most likely suspects were the Creep Club; Donavan could have been a diversion while other members of the club found his space. The easy way to solve that was to keep moving, drop everything, leave everything behind; he’d done it so many times before.

  The only complication was, he knew someone was planning a murder, and that, in no small part, was also tied to the Creep Club. He couldn’t just walk away and leave this guy to be murdered by his wife and partner. He had to help. And by helping, he could infiltrate the club, get more information, find out how they operated, so he could stay better hidden in the future.

  The cat came from its hiding spot beneath the desk and began entwining itself around his feet again.

  “Kitty,” Lucas said, still looking at the article, “you’ve been very helpful.”

  HE WAS WAITING ON THE COUCH WHEN DONAVAN RETURNED HOME FROM work that evening.

  Donavan only paused for a moment this time before taking out the earbuds and heading for the refrigerator.

  “I’d offer to make you a key,” Donavan said, “but I guess you don’t need one.”

  Lucas grinned. “Nah, I’d just lose it.”

  Donavan rummaged around in the refrigerator, pulled out some cold cuts, stuffed one in his face. “Want a beer while I’m here?”

  “Sure.”

  Donavan took his place in the chair, pitched a bottle to Lucas, crammed another piece of ham into his mouth. He chewed a few times. “So, am I gonna find you on my couch every night
from now on? Roommate from hell?”

  Lucas ignored the question. “When’s the next Creep Club meeting?” He already knew the answer—he’d logged in to the site from Donavan’s computer—but there was no need for Donavan to know this.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Day after tomorrow? That might be too late.”

  “Well, a member can call a special meeting any time. I could do one for tomorrow, post it on the Web site. Probably can’t get to the blackboard, though.”

  Lucas had no idea what the blackboard was, but filed it away for future research. “Yeah,” he said. “Call a special meeting.”

  They had to, after all; there was no telling when Ted and Anita were going to kill Viktor. They had to get to Viktor and warn him before something happened.

  A knowing light spread across Donavan’s face. “You interested? Like I said, I think I can get you in.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “I’m interested.”

  “Cool, too cool.”

  “I wanna help.”

  Donavan considered. “Well, I guess I owe you for the steam tunnel. And, I don’t know, it could be like . . . a collaboration or something.”

  “It’s not really about owing anything . . . it’s the right thing to do.”

  Donavan shrugged his shoulders.

  How could he be so noncommittal?

  “Aren’t you worried something could happen? Sooner than you expect?”

  Donavan shook his head. “Look, I know you’re worried we’re going to miss something. I got it covered. Really.”

  Lucas didn’t like the way that sounded: I know you’re worried we’re going to miss something. But he let it slide. “How?” he asked instead.

  “I got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  “Like?”

  “Hang on.” Donavan left the room, and Lucas heard him digging through some things in his closet. A few moments later he returned and held up . . . nothing.