Stackhouse came into the room, tucking in his shirt. “Who’s this?”

“Frieda Brown. A little girl who’s confabulating. I bet you don’t know what that means, dear.”

“Yes I do,” Frieda said. “It means lying, and I’m not.”

“Neither was Avery Dixon. I told Mr. Stackhouse, and now I tell you: I know when a child is lying.”

“Oh, he probably told the truth about most of it. That’s why you believed him. But he didn’t tell the truth about Prekile.”

A frown creased her brow. “What’s—”

“Presque Isle?” Stackhouse came to her and took her by the arm. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s what Avery said. But that was a lie.”

“How did you—” Mrs. Sigsby began, but Stackhouse held up a hand to stop her.

“If he lied about Presque Isle, what’s the truth?”

She gave him a cunning smile. “What do I get if I tell?”

“What you won’t get is electricity,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Within an inch of your life.”

“If you zap me, I’ll tell you something, but it might not be the truth. Like Avery didn’t tell you the truth when you zapped him.”

Mrs. Sigsby slammed a hand down on her desk. “Don’t try that with me, missy! If you’ve got something to say—”

Stackhouse held his hand up again. He knelt in front of Frieda. Tall as he was, they still weren’t eye to eye, but close. “What do you want, Frieda? To go home? I’m telling you straight out, that can’t happen.”

Frieda almost laughed. Want to go home? To her el dopo mother, with her succession of el dopo boyfriends? The last one had wanted her to show him her breasts, so he could see “how fast she was developing.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Okay then, what?”

“I want to stay here.”

“That’s a rather unusual request.”

“But I don’t want the needle sticks, and I don’t want any more tests, and I don’t want to go to Back Half. Ever. I want to stay here and grow up to be a caretaker like Gladys or Winona. Or a tech like Tony and Evan. Or I could even learn to cook and be a chef like Chef Doug.”

Stackhouse looked over the girl’s shoulder to see if Mrs. Sigsby was as amazed by this as he was. She appeared to be.

“Let’s say that . . . um . . . permanent residency could be arranged,” he said. “Let’s say it will be arranged, if your information is good and we catch him.”

“Catching him can’t be part of the deal, because it’s not fair. Catching him is your job. Just if my information is good. And it is.”

He looked over Frieda’s shoulder again at Mrs. Sigsby. Who nodded slightly.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal. Now spill it.”

She gave him a sly smile, and he thought about slapping it off her face. Only for a moment, but it was a serious thought. “And I want fifty tokens.”

“No.”

“Forty, then.”

“Twenty,” Mrs. Sigsby said from behind her. “And only if your information is good.”

Frieda considered it. “All right. Only how do I know if you’ll keep your promises?”

“You’ll have to trust us,” Mrs. Sigsby said.

Frieda sighed. “I guess so.”

Stackhouse: “No more dickering. If you have something to say, then say it.”

“He got off the river before Prekile. He got off at some red steps.” She hesitated, then gave up the rest. The important part. “There was a train station at the top of the steps. That’s where he went. The train station.”

19

After Frieda was sent back to her room with her tokens (and with a threat that all promises would be off if she spoke a single word about what had transpired in Mrs. Sigsby’s office to anyone), Stackhouse called down to the computer room. Andy Fellowes had come in from the village and spelled Felicia Richardson. Stackhouse told Fellowes what he wanted, and asked if he could get it without alerting anyone. Fellowes said he could, but would need a few minutes.

“Make it a very few,” Stackhouse said. He hung up and used his box phone to call Rafe Pullman and John Walsh, his two security men who were standing by.

“Shouldn’t you get one of our pet cops to go down there to the trainyard instead?” Mrs. Sigsby asked when he finished the call. Two members of the Dennison River Bend Police were stringers for the Institute, which amounted to twenty per cent of the entire force. “Wouldn’t that be quicker?”

“Quicker but maybe not safer. I don’t want knowledge of this shit-show to go any further than it already has unless and until it becomes absolutely necessary.”

“But if he got on a train, he could be anywhere!”

“We don’t know that he was even there. The girl could have been bullshitting.”

“I don’t think she was.”

“You didn’t think Dixon was.”

It was true—and embarrassing—but she stayed on message. The situation was far too serious to do anything else. “Point taken, Trevor. But if he’d stayed in a town that small, he’d have been spotted hours ago!”

“Maybe not. He’s one smart kid. He might have gone to ground somewhere.”

“But a train is the most likely, and you know it.”

The phone rang again. They both went for it. Stackhouse won.

“Yes, Andy. You did? Good, give it to me.” He grabbed a notepad and jotted on it rapidly. She leaned over his shoulder to read.

4297 at 10 AM.

16 at 2:30 PM.

77 at 5 PM.

He circled 4297 at 10 AM, asked for its destination, then jotted Port, Ports, Stur. “What time was that train due into Sturbridge?”

He jotted 4–5 PM on the pad. Mrs. Sigsby looked at it with dismay. She knew what Trevor was thinking: the boy would have wanted to get as far away as possible before leaving the train—assuming he had been on it. That would be Sturbridge, and even if the train had pulled in late, it would have arrived at least five hours ago.

“Thanks, Andy,” Stackhouse said. “Sturbridge is in Western Mass, right?”

He listened, nodding.

“Okay, so it’s on the turnpike, but it’s still got to be a pretty small port of call. Maybe it’s a switching point. Can you find out if that train, or any part of it, goes on from there? Maybe with a different engine, or something?”

He listened.

“No, just a hunch. If he stowed away on that train, Sturbridge might not be far enough for him to feel comfortable. He might want to keep running. It’s what I’d do in his place. Check it out and get back to me ASAP.”

He hung up. “Andy got the info off the station website,” he said. “No problem. Isn’t that amazing? Everything’s on the Internet these days.”

“Not us,” she said.

“Not yet,” he countered.

“What now?”

“We wait for Rafe and John.”

They did so. The witching hour came and went. At just past twelve-thirty, the phone on her desk rang. Mrs. Sigsby beat him to it this time, barked her name, then listened, nodding along.

“All right. All understood. Now go on up to the train station . . . depot . . . yard . . . whatever they call it . . . and see if anyone is still . . . oh. All right. Thank you.”

She hung up and turned to Stackhouse.

“That was your security force.” This was delivered with some sarcasm, since Stackhouse’s security force tonight consisted of just two men in their fifties and neither in wonderful physical shape. “The Brown girl had it right. They found the stairs, they found shoe prints, they even found a couple of bloody fingermarks, about halfway up the stairs. Rafe theorizes that Ellis either stopped there to rest, or maybe to re-tie his shoes. They’re using flashlights, but John says they could probably find more signs once it’s daylight.” She paused. “And they checked the station. No one there, not even a night watchman.”

Although the room was air conditioned to a pleasant seventy-two degrees, Stackhouse armed sweat from his forehead. “This is bad, Julia, but we still might be able to contain it without using that.” He pointed to the bottom drawer of her desk, where the Zero Phone was waiting. “Of course if he went to the cops in Sturbridge, our situation becomes a lot shakier. And he’s had five hours to do it.”

“Even if he did get off there he might not’ve,” she said.

“Why wouldn’t he? He doesn’t know he’s on the hook for killing his parents. How could he, when he doesn’t know they’re dead?”

“Even if he doesn’t know, he suspects. He’s very bright, Trevor, it won’t do for you to forget that. If I were him, you know the first thing I’d do if I did get off a train in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, at . . .” She looked at the pad. “. . . at four or five in the afternoon? I’d beat feet to the library and get on the Internet. Get current with events back home.”

This time they both looked at the locked drawer.

Stackhouse said, “Okay, we need to take this wider. I don’t like it, but there’s really no choice. Let’s find out who we’ve got in the vicinity of Sturbridge. See if he’s shown up there.”