Harlan Coben - Shelter

“I did all kinds of searches on those numbers-the ones on the bottom of the tombstone and on that license plate,” Ema said. “The A30432. But I came up with nothing.”

I sat very still. If she had ended up with nothing, there wouldn’t be tears in her eyes.

“So I read more about Lizzy Sobek,” Ema said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a piece of paper. “I found one of those Q and A sites on her life.” She unfolded the paper and slid it across the table.

I took it from her. Ema looked off. I turned my attention to the paper:

Question 8: What was Lizzy Sobek’s concentration camp tattoo ID number?

It remains unknown. Most people mistakenly believe that every person in a Nazi concentration camp was tattooed, but in truth, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex (including Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Monowitz) was the only location in which prisoners were systematically tattooed during the Holocaust. On September 12, 1942, Lizzy, along with her father, Samuel, her mother, Esther, and her brother, Emmanuel, boarded a transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The transport arrived in Auschwitz on September 13, 1942, with 1,121 Jews on board. Men and women were separated. The women selected from this transport, including Lizzy and Esther, were marked with tattoos between the numbers A-30380 and A-30615. Records indicating their exact numbers have not been preserved, so to this day, the number Lizzy Sobek bore on her forearm remains a mystery.

I looked up at Ema and now I had tears in my eyes too. “Have we solved this particular mystery?”

“We may have.”

“Which leads to another.”

Ema nodded. “How would Bat Lady know the exact same number?”

“And why would she have a tombstone for her in her backyard?”

“Unless…”

Ema stopped. We both knew what she was thinking, but I don’t think either of us was ready to say it out loud. Maybe we had solved a mystery deeper than a tattoo number. Maybe, after all these years, we had solved the mystery of what really happened to Lizzy Sobek.

THE NEXT MORNING,I called my mother at the Coddington Institute. The operator said, “Please hold.”

There were two rings and then the phone was picked up. “Mickey?”

It wasn’t my mother. It was the rehab’s director, Christine Shippee. “I want to talk to my mother.”

“And I want to take a shower with Brad Pitt,” she said. “Sorry, I told you, no contact.”

“You can’t just cut her off from me.”

“Uh, yeah, Mickey, I can. Speaking of which, we need to talk. Do you know what an enabler is?”

Again with that question. “I didn’t give her the drugs.”

“No, but you’re being a candy ass about this. You need to be tougher on her.”

“You don’t know what she’s been through.”

“Sure I do,” she said as though stifling a yawn. “Her husband died. Her only son is growing up. She has no prospects. She is scared and lonely and depressed. What, you think your mother’s the only one in here with a sob story?”

“Your sympathy,” I said, “is overwhelming. No wonder the patients love you.”

“I was one of them, Mickey. A manipulative addict. I know how it works. Come by next week and we’ll talk more. In the meantime, get to school.”

She hung up.

At school, most of the morning was taken up with an assembly program. I don’t really remember much of what was being said. Two local politicians tried to “relate” to us, which made for serious condescension and boredom. I spent the time glancing around the room and locking eyes with Rachel.

When lunchtime came, I sat at what was fast becoming our usual table with Ema. Spoon was nowhere to be found. Ema and I tried, for once, to talk about the new movie releases or what music we liked or what TV shows were our favorites-but we kept steering back to the Holocaust and a heroic girl named Lizzy Sobek.

At one point I looked across the room and spotted Troy and Buck. Not surprisingly they smirked at me. Troy had a cocky I-know-something-you-don’t-know look on his face and then he started flapping his arms like wings and making an eek-eek noise.

“A bat,” Ema finally said.

“As in Bat Lady.”

“Man, he’s clever.”

I guessed that his father had told him about my arrest near Bat Lady’s house and this was his subtle way of communicating this to us. I responded by pantomiming a yawn. Troy glared when I did that, and then he used his finger to cut across his neck, the international dumbwad sign for, yup, “You’re a dead man.”

Not worth it. I turned away.

“Do you know where Spoon is?” I asked Ema.

I had caught her mid-chew, so she gestured behind her. Spoon was hurrying over to the table-sprinting really-with an open laptop in his arms. Ms. Owens blocked his path and said, “Walk, don’t run.”

Spoon nodded and apologized. When he reached us, he was wide-eyed and out of breath. “Shocking,” Spoon said.

“What?”

Spoon put the laptop on the table. “Oh boy, you are so going to want to see this.”

“What is it?” I asked.

He frowned. “Didn’t you ask me to check the surveillance video of Ashley’s locker?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’ve been going through it since last night. You are not going to believe what I found.”

The bell rang. Everyone started for the door, except for the three of us. Spoon sat down in front of the laptop. I pushed my chair over so I was on his immediate right. Ema did likewise so she was on his left.

“Okay,” he started, “so I was doing what you asked-checking the video, right? I started with that hooligan breaking into the locker, and then I traveled back from there until I found the last time that Ashley’s locker was open.”

He stopped, pushed up his glasses.

“And?” I said.

“Watch.”

Spoon was about to hit the computer key when Ms. Owens cleared her throat in dramatic fashion.

“The bell rang,” she said in a clipped voice.

“We’ll be just a minute,” I said.

Ms. Owens didn’t like that response. “We don’t operate on your time, Mr. Bolitar. The bell has sounded. That means you leave the room. You aren’t special.”

Was she kidding me?

I tried an old standard: “It’s schoolwork.”

“I don’t care if it is a cure for cancer,” Ms. Owens said-and on that, I believed her. She slammed the laptop closed, making Spoon gasp out loud. “You had all lunch period to discuss this matter. Move along now or you’ll all be in detention.”

“You assaulted my laptop,” Spoon said.

“Excuse me?”

“You assaulted my battery or whatever they call it.”

“Are you challenging my authority, young man?”

Spoon opened his mouth to say more, so I kicked him just hard enough to get him to close it again. I stood, pulling Spoon along with me. The three of us left the cafeteria. In the corridor we quickly discussed what classes we had next. I had English. Spoon had study hall. Ema had “PE, which I’m going to cut anyway.”

Spoon rushed us over to a janitor’s closet on the lower level. We huddled around the laptop again. Spoon hit the start key and said, “Watch.”

And there it was.

Ashley’s locker. Spoon had it cued up right where it needed to be-right as the locker was being unlocked. We all watched in silence while the locker was cleaned out, all the possessions dumped into a backpack.

My jaw dropped open.

“I knew it!” Ema said. “I warned you, didn’t I?”

It wasn’t Ashley clearing out the locker. It wasn’t Antoine or Buddy Ray or his big bouncer Derrick. The person who opened up the locker with the combination and cleaned it out was none other than Rachel Caldwell.