Patrick Lee - Deep Sky

Travis had seen all of that this morning, then spent the day wandering the city trying to think his way through the problem. As an adult he could’ve solved it any number of ways. Buy a cheap harmonica and a little wooden box and stand there on the sidewalk busking. Wouldn’t matter that he sucked at playing harmonica—it would help push attention away from him, in fact. People would consciously not look.

But even the busking would’ve been unnecessary. A grown man could just walk up and down Monument, from the dig site to either intersection, back and forth all night long. Hours and hours, the same circuit, four hundred feet east and four hundred feet west. If anyone noticed the repetition and found it strange, would they even consider asking him about it? Not likely. People tended to see strangeness as trouble, which in turn they tended to avoid.

But none of those options existed for a ten-year-old.

Shit.

He turned another page of the comic book. Let his eyes drift over the images and words without processing them.

A shadow fell across his lap.

“Excuse me.”

Travis looked up and saw a woman in her thirties, a five-year-old girl in tow. The girl stared at Travis with big eyes and tried to hide behind her mother’s leg.

“Do you need help?” the woman said.

Travis offered a quick smile and shook his head. “I’m good. Thanks.”

Another trick—when you weren’t moving with purpose—was to be direct and certain. Let no ambiguity into your words or your tone.

He turned his eyes back to the comic book and ignored the woman.

The shadow stayed put.

“You’ve been alone here the whole time I’ve been waiting for the bus,” the woman said. “If you need to call someone, I have change. And we can wait here with you if you like—”

“Really, I’m fine,” Travis said, looking up at her again. “My dad always meets me here at six-fifteen sharp. He says it’s a safe spot ’cause it’s busy. I’m just early, that’s all.”

The woman frowned. Looked like she wanted to wait anyway, if only to have a word with his father about this arrangement.

“Seriously,” Travis said, “don’t miss your bus. I’d feel terrible.”

Another frown. The woman started to say something else, but didn’t. The little girl tugged on her hand, gesturing with her whole body back toward Broadway.

The woman exhaled deeply. “I don’t like it,” she said, and then she was gone, back to the knot of people at the intersection.

Her bus came two minutes later, and when it’d left, Travis stood and stuffed the comic book into his pocket. He stood there thinking, getting the mental equivalent of a test pattern. It could be nine hours before Ward staggered out of the hospital, and Travis couldn’t imagine how to stand watch for even thirty minutes.

He wandered toward the construction zone. The crew was still at it. From beyond the waist-high barrier and far below came the shouting of men and the rattle of air-driven tools. There was a stereo blasting Bob Seger’s “Hollywood Nights.” The glow of halogen worklamps shone upward onto the inside face of the far barrier, just beginning to compete with the dying sunlight.

Absent a Dumpster, the closest Travis had come to a plan had been a vague thought of hiding within the site itself. Slip over the barrier and stand on the edge of the chasm, and hope to find some kind of material scraps with which to conceal himself. Three or four wooden planks might’ve done—stand against a foundation wall on the north side of the street and lean the wood around himself in a jumble. In darkness it would’ve been hard for anyone to see him among the boards, and maybe he could’ve arranged them to create viewing angles on all four exits.

But there were no scraps of wood or anything else, and with the workers still on the job it was a moot point.

Travis stopped fifty feet shy of the concrete blockade. “Hollywood Nights” finished and “Still the Same” kicked in.

Travis ran his hands through his hair. How much longer could he loiter out here before somebody waved down a cop?

That thought had hardly formed when another shadow slid into view, paralleling his own as it stretched away down the pavement. Footsteps scuffed to a stop behind him, and a man softly cleared his throat.

Travis turned, half expecting a cop already.

Instead it was a guy in a dress shirt and khakis, fortyish and visibly awkward.

“Hey there,” the man said. The voice was gentle. He might have been addressing a stray kitten. Behind him there was nothing but wide-open street all the way back to the intersection. This guy had come a long way to say hello.

When Travis didn’t answer, the man stepped closer. Ten feet away now. “You look a bit lost. I couldn’t help noticing. I live right back there.” He nodded absently behind him, toward the block immediately beyond Broadway.

Travis shook his head and looked down at the roadbed, suddenly unable to stand the guy’s nervous expression.

“Just waiting for my dad,” Travis said. “I’m fine.”

The man advanced again. “You don’t look like you’re waiting. I saw you on the bench, and now you’re standing around down here. How would your dad find you if you’re all over the place?”

The voice was still soft, but under the awkwardness there was an edge of excitement.

“You need a place to sleep tonight?”

Jesus Christ. So there were two problems he and Paige and Bethany hadn’t planned around. He pictured them laughing their asses off when he told them about this one.

Another step. The man was close enough to touch him now, and when he spoke again he was almost whispering. “Nothing has to happen. Nothing you don’t want. I promise.”

Travis was still looking down. He fixed his eyes in the deadest glare prison had taught him, and raised them.

The man stepped back as if shoved.

“You better get the fuck out of here,” Travis said.

The guy nodded quickly and didn’t say another word. A second later he was gone, walking away down Monument at just less than a jog. He’d gone thirty yards when a fragment of his pick-up spiel came back to Travis.

I couldn’t help noticing. I live right back there.

Travis looked past the intersection of Monument and Broadway. The next stretch of Monument, west of Johns Hopkins, had a parking garage filling most of the south side and a row of town houses on the north. No doubt most of them had been converted to multiple units.

Any one of which would offer a perfect viewing angle on all four of the hospital’s north exits.

“Mister!” Travis yelled.

He introduced himself as Garret and led Travis up to his place on the third floor, four units west of Broadway. Garret’s every move was nervous and excited. He had a high, quick laugh with which he interrupted himself in almost every sentence.

He opened the door to his apartment and ushered Travis directly into the living room. The air smelled like a mix of candlewax and macaroni. Travis hardly noticed. His full attention had gone at once to the bay window overlooking Monument. Through the 45-degree pane on the left, facing Johns Hopkins, he would have a better vantage point than he could’ve dreamed of.

There would be a delay issue, of course. He’d be fifteen seconds getting down to the sidewalk from this place, and another ten or more sprinting to the intersection. But that was fine. He’d have plenty of time to catch Ward if he emerged from one of the nearer two exits, and if he came out beyond the Grand Canyon, well, that was always going to be a pain in the ass. Even starting at a Dumpster right across from the hospital, Travis would’ve been forced to backtrack a couple hundred feet before heading north on Broadway to circle the block. Garret’s bay window was as good a starting point as he could’ve hoped for.