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The Death Box(66)

By:J. A. Kerley


Pool. Was that what my caller meant?

I checked my watch, saw 9.56, and elevatored down to the wide promenade. The pavement was damp from rain but the sky was breaking through in the west, a bright blue shout through tattered cumulus. Gulls darted above the trees as pedestrians moved below. I crossed to the fountain – swimming pool? – and surveyed the surroundings: Business types bustling to work, joggers, a man pushing a food cart, a long-haired kid sitting a bench and tuning a guitar, a busload of school kids wrangled by a trio of teachers, probably visiting the center as part of a class in government.

I sprinted to the far side of the fountain to scope things from that angle. No one seemed interested in me. I continued to circle the pool, hands in my pockets, studying everyone within sight. More office workers. A trio of teens playing hacky-sack. A group of tourists, German by their voices, cameras strung around necks craning toward the skyline.

I heard footsteps and turned to see a woman passing behind me, face hidden beneath a pulled-low white scarf and large sunglasses, age indeterminate, but youthful in her profile. The blue dress needed a session at the ironing board and she seemed to have a slight limp.

“Miss?” I called. “Excuse me, miss?”

She turned. “Si?”

I jammed my hands in my pockets and smiled benignly. “I’m Carson Ryder. Does that mean anything to you?”

A pause. The shades seemed riveted on me.

“No hablo inglés, señor.”

“Sorry,” I said. She continued away.

Leala moved quickly from the plaza, needing time to weigh information. The man was a gringo, bad. But he was not a hulking, stoop-shouldered monster, probably good. He was actually nice looking, slender, with dark hair and eyes. Still, there was something that seemed threatening about the man, but it did not seem directed at her. Perhaps it was his eyes, scanning all directions at once. Or maybe it was how he walked, almost carelessly but with surprising speed. She had seen him exit the building, but had looked away when distracted by a vendor. When she looked back, he was on the far side of the pool.

Cats did that sort of thing, and cats could not be trusted.

But when he’d spoken, there was no threat in his voice, only curiosity. That was good. Could such an hombre with such a concerned voice be bad in his heart? Or were he and the woman named Victoree wolves in disguise?

What was true, what was a lie?

Questions without answers. Leala passed a large building, her eyes catching the sign, seeing the word Library. That meant the building was a biblioteca, a place where the books lived. There was a biblioteca in the village six kilometers distant and Leala’s mother made sure Leala got there once a month for books.

Books held the answers.

She turned and darted inside, shaking back her hair and straightening her spine, acting like she belonged with the people entering the long building. She was halfway across the wide floor when her eyes saw a flash of uniform against a far wall: a guardia! He was looking right at her. Leala felt her knees loosen and her breath turn to ice. Keep moving, her mind said. Do not look his way. You are just one of many seekers of knowledge. She saw a huge counter with several workers behind it. One was a young man, not much older than her, shuffling books into a pile. She took a deep breath and stood before him.

“Help you?” he asked.

Leala had her story ready, created in the twenty steps it took to cross the floor. “I-I am an estudiante visiting from Honduras. May I see into the books? It is proper for me?”

A smile. “Certainly. What are you looking for?”

Leala handed him the poster from the laundromat. If Victoree Johnson was a trap to catch illegals, there would be nothing about her in the library. Would anyone be so tricky as to put a trap in books?

“I seek the informacíon to this project. The who is it that they are.” Leala added a phrase from her class, one used by Americans a good deal. “And so forth and so on.”

The man paused to digest Leala’s words. “You’re doing research, then?”

“Si,” she nodded. That was the word. “I am to do the research.”

The young man read the poster, nodded as he handed the poster back. “Aha. The director, Ms Johnson, gave two talks here. Quite unsettling, as you might expect.”

Leala felt her eyes widen. Was she receiving a confirmation without having to figure out which book might tell her? The library was huge, big enough to hold her entire village, every house, every plot of land, every pig and every chicken.

“The director, then … she es verdad?” Leala said. “One that is real?”

“Pardon, miss?”

Leala knew her English was falling apart. Was the guardia listening? Could he tell she was a criminal?