Sleight Read online

  In the shadows I could just barely make out the features on Mr. Goodturn’s face. It was subtle but he looked more present somehow. Less waxy and slack. While I looked down on him, fighting back a tear, his eyelids opened slowly, like a garage door rolling up. They were unfocused and staring straight up at the ceiling, but once the lids had risen completely his eyes slowly slid toward me. My arms broke out in gooseflesh.

  Reaching out a hand I placed it on his arm. His skin was chilled from the ice bags that were nestled around him and it felt like touching a corpse.

  No more ice.

  I almost fell down. One of my knacks was the ability to carry on a conversation on a private mental frequency, but in my experience, other than one particular instance, all contact of this kind had to be initiated by me. During the years I had known Mr. Goodturn he and I had never communicated in this way.

  Mr.G?

  Yes.

  Are you going to be okay?

  Need something.

  Anything! What?

  Breno.

  Just like that the conversation shut off and his eyes slowly closed, like the sun dipping below the horizon.

  Mr. Goodturn? Can you hear me? What about Breno? What is it? How can I help you?

  There was no response and I looked over my shoulder at Kenwoode. He gave no indication that he had been aware of the silent conversation. He gazed at me expressionlessly.

  “Has he said anything? Did you talk to him?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’ve only noticed that his eyes have opened, which I take as a good sign. He hasn’t moved and he hasn’t made a sound.”

  Not really an answer I thought. Not for the first time I wondered what the connection was between Mr. G and Kenwoode. Friends? Colleagues? It was also an unanswered question as to whether Kenwoode was a member of the loosely connected community of Naturals that possessed knacks. The only related comment he had made had been about how Mr. Goodturn’s slowing knack might have saved him. I hadn’t offered any information on my own knacks. Other than Mr. Goodturn’s request to contact him I didn’t really know much about Kenwoode and it was clear that he was comfortable not sharing much about himself.

  I looked at Mr. Goodturn again. “A good sign. What happens next? Does he need something different?” I paused. “Do you think the ice is still necessary? He seems so cold. His skin is almost blue.”

  Sniffing, Mr. Kenwoode came closer to the bed and poked at one of the bags of ice with a finger. “I would expect not. Any motor movement, even if it is only his eyes, probably indicates that his physical body is not at risk of decay.”

  Decay? It was a little disrespectful, but that was part of Mr. Kenwoode’s questionable charm.

  “Yeah? Well, do you want me to get rid of it? What do we do next? Is there something else we should be doing?”

  Tugging at the bottom edge of his vest, he rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat. “Yes, I think that there are several things I can put you about.”

  THREE: PLAYING WITH MATCHES

  AN HOUR LATER I had finished up in Mr. Goodturn’s room. I’d glanced at his face a dozen times but his eyes had remained closed and he hadn’t responded to my attempts to speak with him on my private frequency. Kenwoode had headed back to his favorite spot, and was engrossed in paperwork that covered a large desk in Mr. G’s library, essentially dismissing me.

  I headed back downstairs to the pawnshop.

  It was late morning and the light from outside was trying to get through all of the stuff in the shop’s windows, giving the interior of the pawnshop an eerie half-lit glow. Even though the shop had never been a busy environment, Mr. Goodturn’s presence had always given the place its own kind of energy. Heart, I guess. His small, yet exciting progress upstairs left me nervous and hopeful, but his reference to Breno was bouncing around in my head.

  What did he need from Breno, or what did Breno need from me? The big simpleminded superintendent had been scarce since we’d both escaped a near death experience. That had been at the hands of Sonja, the other lavender-eyed female in my life. He and I had ended up in the hospital. I’d used my knacks to sneak away, while Breno had been forced to remain there for days until Kenwoode had helped me get him discharged. Breno had been unusually quiet when we had taken him home, and when I had explained what had happened to Mr. Goodturn he had taken it hard. He’d cried all the way to the apartment building.

  Last year I’d uncovered the history and connection between Breno and Mr. Goodturn. Breno, as an angry teen, had possessed a knack for creating fire. That knack had drawn him into Mr. G’s circle somehow, sort of put him on the Knack Network Radar. Breno’s knack, his emotional instability and the abusive home he’d been raised in had resulted in a dramatic event that had ended with his parents being burned alive. Breno had become Mr. Goodturn’s responsibility, and not coincidentally, Breno’s fire-making ability and most of his intelligence had been wiped out as well.

  That had been a difficult time in my relationship with Mr. Goodturn. He’d justified what he’d done to Breno as necessary to protect Breno and others from Breno. I had seen it as him playing God. Mr. G’s reason for erasing Breno’s knack was understandable. And his regret over having unintentionally damaged Breno’s intellect had seemed genuine. But I’d had a hard time reconciling the whole thing. Eventually my belief in Mr. Goodturn’s noble motivation, and the fact that I thought of him as a father figure, had made it possible for me to see it as an accident born out of good intentions.

  Heck, I’ve made my share of mistakes while I was trying to do something good too.

  Not interested in opening the shop and needing some time to myself I left through the front door and knacked the lock behind me, knowing that Kenwoode would probably spend the rest of the day upstairs.

  I headed over to my apartment building to check in on Breno. When I got to his door on the first floor I didn’t get a response to my loud knocking. Being able to get past pretty much any lock or closed door made my next decision easy. Maybe easier than it should have been. Reaching out with my knack, I manipulated the tumblers in the lock and heard them click into place.

  I let myself in.

  Okay, so that is technically breaking and entering but I had no intention of stealing anything or trying to hurt Breno. I was just worried about him. It was obvious almost immediately that he hadn’t been home for a while. There was an unpleasant smell I couldn’t place and there were a lot of discarded fast food wrappers all over the living area.

  When I got to the kitchen I was able to define at least part of the odor. Unwashed dishes filled the sink. As I got closer I saw a bowl to the right of the sink filled with black debris. When I grabbed it and saw what was in it I dropped the bowl back onto the counter and cursed under my breath.

  The bowl was filled with ashes. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my stomach churned. In any other home the bowl and its contents would be odd but in Breno’s apartment it was scary. Breno’s fire-making knack had been wiped out when he was a kid, but there had been more to it than that. To insure that Breno didn’t reactivate his knack or accidentally retrigger it, Mr. Goodturn had placed a strong aversion to fire in his mind, especially fire of any kind indoors. I’d seen this mental block at work. It reduced Breno to a hot mess.

  I stumbled through the apartment and navigated around random clothing strewn on the floor, comic books (Sponge Bob, Archie) and more food wrappers. That was also a warning sign. Even though Breno was slow-witted he was OCD about being tidy and cleaning up. So what did all of this tell me? He hadn’t been home recently. How long had he been away? Hard to say, but thinking about it I couldn’t remember seeing him around for a couple of weeks. Which didn’t mean he hadn’t been around; we often didn’t cross paths for days. The lack of cleaning and the general messiness might be nothing more than left over stress from last month’s kidnapping and his hospital stay.

  The ashes in the bowl worried me though. Could someone else have been in the apa
rtment? Not likely. The door had been locked and despite the mess it didn’t look like there’d been forced entry or a struggle. So, he’d either burned whatever was in the bowl or seen it happen. Neither scenario meant anything good.

  As I walked back through the living room the weird smell that I’d thought was the spoiled food in the sink and the bowl of ashes, actually got stronger. When I got near the couch I saw scorch marks on the cushions. What the hell had been going on in here?

  I was struggling to figure out where he might have gone, and then I looked down at the discarded food packaging. Just like the tumblers in the lock at his door, things clicked into place. My hands started to shake. I knew where to look for Breno.

  FOUR: ACCIDENTS DO HAPPEN

  BUS ROUTES IN Seattle are great. You can get almost anywhere pretty fast and there isn’t much need to change buses unless you’re covering a lot of geography. I love the downtown area and there’s so much to look at and experience that it never gets old for me. On days when the weather is decent it’s even more fun, but I had a hard time relaxing and enjoying myself as the bus trundled along its route.

  The day couldn’t have started out any screwier and it had gone from upsetting to disturbing in a hurry. Justine. Mr. Goodturn. Breno. The only stabilizing factor had been Mr. Kenwoode and he’d been very little comfort.

  When I’d been looking down at the singed couch something had been gnawing at the back of my mind. Some connection, and then it had hit me all at once. When I’d managed to prevent Rusty Witkowski and Coby Munger from blowing up the school and shooting up the gym I had quickly been engulfed in a sea of media speculation: who I was, people trying to locate me, interview me and get close to me. It had been intense and nonstop, until a massive fire on the waterfront had burned down most of a pier and a bunch of shops. That became the headline in the media and my brief rise to fame had faded quickly.

  At the time I’d been so wrapped up in my grief over losing Mr. Goodturn and Maddy’s moving away that I hadn’t given it much thought. I had just been thankful that all of the unwanted attention had gone away. Now, with ashes and burned furniture in Breno’s apartment, and the food wrappers, I felt I had just connected several dots.

  The bus pulled into a stop across the street from Pier 57 and I got off. The fire had been at Pier 56, so I decided to head there first. What I was hoping to find was hard to say, but most of the food wrappers in Breno’s apartment had been from the waterfront.

  The whole area still smelled like a campfire, even though the fire had taken place many weeks ago. The closer I got to Pier 56 the stronger the smell got until it was overwhelming. The normal smells of wet wood, mold and rotting seaweed were hardly noticeable. Gulls swirled overhead, looking for scraps to fight over. The heavy cement supports for the freeway viaduct overhead cut off part of my view of the pier until I crossed the street. Bright orange barricade fencing had been erected all around the burned-out pier and work crews were repairing the sidewalk and street while dump trucks labored to carry away debris and burned timbers.

  One of my knacks is the ability to camouflage myself so that to a casual observer I am hard to see because I blend in with my surroundings. It isn’t true invisibility and if I move quickly it’s less effective. This handy knack had helped me get in and out of several difficult situations, using it now to get around the construction barriers was like second nature.

  The construction crew was so focused on their work that I had no trouble getting past them and into the main building of the pier. The exterior walls of the shopping area were heavily damaged and most of the roof had collapsed. Stepping carefully through the debris and past weakened spots in the floor I made my way through the large pedestrian hallway that had led to the end of the pier with shops flanking both sides.

  Most of the businesses were completely burned out. When I got to the end of the retail hallway I arrived at what had been a landing designed for viewing the water. To the north it was so damaged that it looked unsafe. On my left to the south there was a metal staircase that led to the lower shops of the pier. It looked relatively intact. Cautiously walking down the stairs, I winced as strange groans and metallic ringing followed my descent. I gripped the handrail and white-knuckled it all the way to the lower landing.

  The fire hadn’t reached this part of the pier and although the smell of smoke was pervasive, the lower level showed almost no damage from the fire. There was however, lots of water damage from firefighters using hoses while trying to contain the blaze up above. There had been fewer occupied businesses on this level, with leasing signs plastered on the windows of vacant shops. Several had their windows soaped over.

  So far my mission had netted me zip. As I slowly limped by the abandoned shops I noticed that the door to one of them had several fast food boxes strewn around it. When I got closer I recognized several from the same place as the ones I’d seen in Breno’s apartment. I nudged the trash with my shoe and saw a receipt underneath a bag. As I reached down to pick it up I steadied myself by placing my hand against the shop’s door, and almost ended up on my ass because the door swung open.

  Catching myself by grabbing the door frame, I got my balance and peeked into the shop. More food wrappers and bags cluttered the area around the door. I reached down again and snagged the receipt. It was dated three days earlier, so whoever was camping out on the lower level had been here recently. I considered that it might be the construction workers but there wasn’t anything else that indicated that they had spent much time downstairs. Besides, it seemed unlikely that they would leave trash around that they’d just have to clean up later.

  Pulling the door shut I stared at the food packaging at my feet. Most of the stuff had come from a fish and chips place a couple of blocks away. It seemed like a good idea to follow my slim lead as far as I could since I was already on the waterfront.

  It took me less than a half hour to get to Ivar’s Fish N Chips and order lunch. I’d polished off my battered halibut and most of my fries when I heard raised voices at the counter. Looking like he had been working in a coal mine, clothes in tatters, Breno was standing at the counter with a dirty hand clutching a wad of greasy bills. His tall and lanky frame looked a little heavier than the last time I’d seen him. A beard and long hair now covered most of his face. I was shocked at how much his appearance had changed in such a short time.

  “I told you that you can’t come here anymore,” squeaked a tiny blond behind the counter. “The other customers say you...say you...you smell.” She stood about two feet back from the counter as though she was afraid Breno’s stink was contagious.

  “I’m jus’ hungry. I’ll eat somewheres else. I jus’ want food,” he mumbled.

  Shaking her head the girl refused to speak and wouldn’t approach the counter. I jumped up and limped over to the counter and stood next to Breno. His head swung slowly in my direction and he looked at me with a glassy-eyed stare. He gave no sign that he recognized me. Using my oldest knack, the ability to sense what someone was feeling, I reached out and was surprised by what I found. Breno had always had a simple and pure quality about him. No strong feelings and so little going on in his head that whatever he was focused on at the moment colored all of his thoughts. At the moment I was sensing confusion, and frustration. The confusion wasn’t necessarily new for Breno, but the frustration was something I had never picked up from him in the past. The only time I had ever sensed anything other than basic contentment from him was when I had asked him some questions that had opened doors to his past that would have been better left closed.

  “Hey, look. I’ll buy his food and make sure he doesn’t come back. Here,” I said as I passed her a ten dollar bill. “Just get him a cod and chips and keep the change for a tip. Okay?”

  Glaring at Breno, she looked down at the money and then at me. “You shouldn’t feed them. They count on intimidating people so that they don’t have to pay. It’s like a scam,” she said.

  I could feel the blood rush to my face,
but kept my anger in check. “Look, he’s family. We’ve...I’ve been looking for him. You won’t see him again. Please, let me just get him something to eat and we’ll go,” I said.

  She grabbed the ten and rang up my order and stuffed the bill in the register. “Okay, but you and...him, you’ll need to wait on the sidewalk...downwind.” She wrinkled her nose and pointed at a spot about thirty feet away.

  I turned and started walking to where she’d pointed and then looked back at Breno, who hadn’t moved.

  “Breno? Hey, come over here with me. It’s Benny. Remember?” I pleaded.

  His body leaned in my direction and his blank stare passed over me. “ ’Member.” he said.

  I stepped closer to him but didn’t try to touch him for fear he’d freak, and he actually did smell super bad. “It’s me, Benny. We’re friends. I’ve been worried about you.”

  His big heavy-jawed head swung in my direction again and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

  “Friends.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Friends. You helped me move in. You brought me a birthday cupcake last year, and we’ve done magic in the parks together. Are you okay?”