Public Enemies Page 6

  Aiden’s brow furrowed. “So you don’t believe the police report?”

  Mrs. DeSouza shrugged wanly. “My believing or not believing isn’t going to bring back the dead. My guess is that another driver lost control on that bridge, and Mother went through the railing trying to avoid him. One eyewitness mentioned a bald man racing away from the scene. But the police were never able to track him down.”

  Aiden froze.

  A bald man … Hairless Joe?

  What would a professional killer want with a sixty-one-year-old grandmother?

  The pieces clicked into place. The “accident” had been no accident at all! Edith Wilkinson had been murdered, forced off the bridge by Hairless Joe.

  But why?

  The answer had to be HORUS. She must have stumbled upon what her employers were really involved in.

  Now Aiden and Meg were the ones who were treading perilously close to the real truth.

  That’s why Hairless Joe is after us — he’s a HORUS assassin!

  “Mrs. DeSouza, did your mother ever talk about the people she worked with? Did she have any friends at HORUS?”

  Mrs. DeSouza shook her head. “What could Mother have had in common with people like that? Terrorists — their sponsors, anyway. The scandal stretched all the way to those awful Falconers!”

  Painfully, Aiden closed his ears and mind to the slur against his parents. This woman mustn’t know how much her words stung him. “There had to be somebody,” he persisted. “Someone she had lunch with or car-pooled with. Someone who gave her a lift when her car was in the shop?”

  “Now that you mention it, there was one person,” Mrs. DeSouza offered. “They weren’t friends, exactly. But I know she felt sorry for this strange little man who swept up and did odd jobs around the office. Mother said he was a bit slow, but it must have been much more than that. He couldn’t really speak. He seemed to be saying things without making any sense. And yet he and Mother always seemed to understand each other.” She sighed. “My mother was a very kind person.”

  “Do you remember his name?” Aiden asked eagerly.

  “All I know is that everyone called him Oznot. But I can’t tell you if it’s a first name, a last name, or a nickname. He couldn’t have been part of the conspiracy. His mind wouldn’t have been capable of it.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. DeSouza.” Aiden was already backing out the door.

  “Thank you,” she said with a quiet smile. “It’s nice to know my mother isn’t completely forgotten.”

  * * *

  “Whoa, check out this tight ride!”

  Meg was in the parking lot, hidden between a cargo van and an SUV, when the voice made her jump. Three tough-looking teenage boys were admiring the Harley, which was parked a couple of rows away. She crouched low, peering over the hood of the van as they twisted the throttle, squeezed the hand brake, and messed with the choke.

  “This Eddie Staunton’s bike?”

  “Eddie Staunton rides a moped, genius. This is a top-of-the-line Harley.”

  Meg hung back, watching them poke and prod the machine. But when one of the teens climbed onto the saddle and began jumping on the kick start, she burst out of her cover. “Stop that!”

  The three regarded her as if she were a mildly annoying insect.

  “What’s it to you?” asked the boy on the Harley.

  “Get off my property,” Meg demanded.

  He hooted with derision. “Your property?”

  Meg thought fast. She obviously couldn’t be the owner of the motorcycle. But whose could she say it was? Her brother’s? Too close to the truth. Her boyfriend’s? They’d never believe it.

  “It’s my dad’s.”

  “Your dad’s in high school?” sneered one of the others. “What, did he flunk twenty years straight?”

  Aiden stormed onto the scene. “What’s going on?”

  The three teens burst out laughing, jeering, “Hi, Dad!” and “You’ve got a lovely daughter, sir!”

  All at once, the boy on the bike exclaimed, “Wait! I know you! You’re those kids — the fugitives!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aiden said stiffly.

  “The Falconers!” He scrambled off the Harley and stared at Aiden in awed respect. “The whole world’s looking for you, man! You’re famous!”

  “What are you talking about?” scoffed one of the other teens. “It’s not them. What would they be doing in this stupid place?”

  Aiden got on the bike, and Meg took her place behind him. “You’ve got us mixed up with two other people,” she insisted.

  “No way!” The first boy stepped out in front of them. “I saw your pictures on CNN! You burned down a prison farm and stole cars. You stole this bike! All those cops, and you beat ’em! Can I shake your hands?”

  In answer, Aiden started up the Harley and rolled the throttle, brushing the teen back and accelerating out of the parking lot.

  * * *

  Noon found the motorcycle parked outside a small Internet café in a downtown neighborhood far from Liberty High School.

  Aiden and Meg hunched over a computer monitor. The Internet access and the dollar-store baseball caps pulled down to hide their all-too-recognizable faces had left them nearly broke. Of the money they had taken from the bucket of overdue fines, a grand total of fifteen cents remained.

  The Google search had not gone well. “There’s no Oznot in Denver,” he grumbled. “There’s no Oznot anywhere.”

  “Maybe you spelled it wrong,” Meg suggested.

  “I spelled it with a Z, an S, even an AU. Nothing. It’s not a real name.”

  “Must be his nickname,” she concluded.

  “That won’t help us find him, Meg.”

  A woman sat down at a nearby table, lost in the depths of a tabloid newspaper. Aiden was so distracted and discouraged that he read the banner headline several times before its meaning registered.

  MOUTH TO COPS: “LEAVE FALCONER KIDS ALONE!” SHOCK JOCK TALKS OF LITTLE ELSE SINCE MARGARET FALCONER’S DRAMATIC CALL

  Aiden tapped Meg on the shoulder and directed her attention to the headline.

  Meg gawked. “Leave us alone?” she whispered. “That’s not how it was at all! He hates our guts! He wants us in jail!”

  Aiden took her arm and led her out of the café. “This is serious, Meg. We were always kind of well known because of Mom and Dad, but we’re getting way too famous.” He looked nervously from face to face in the passing parade of pedestrians. Which of these people would be the one to point or shout or dial 9-1-1 on a cell phone? He steered her into an alley. “I mean, how are we supposed to find Frank Lindenauer if we can’t even go out in public without being recognized?”

  “Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks,” Meg offered. “Okay, the Mouth has a thing for our family, but he’s too much of a windbag to obsess on any one subject for long.”

  Aiden set his jaw. “We can’t be sure of that. We have to listen for ourselves and hear what that guy is saying about us.”

  That meant finding a store that sold radios, or at least had one tuned to the Mouth of America show. As a safety precaution, they walked half a block away from each other, the brims of their hats pulled down low.

  McMichael’s Small Appliances was a small showroom that specialized in vacuum cleaners, but there was a display of radios tucked away in a corner alcove. Aiden and Meg entered separately and met up there.

  Aiden fiddled with the tuner on a display model until he heard the despised voice. Just the sound of it triggered terrible memories. During their parents’ trial, the Mouth of America had urged his listeners to write to the judge, calling for John and Louise Falconer to die in the electric chair. More than two hundred thousand had actually done it. The shock jock’s fans were more like his army, ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.

  “Look, I talk to a lot of people,” the Mouth was ranting. “I know a snow job when I hear one. Meg Falconer is telling the truth — I’d bet my life on
it!”

  “But you yourself said she and her brother are criminals,” the caller pointed out.

  “Yeah, and who made them criminals? We did! You take two kids and turn them into hunted animals — of course they’ll do whatever it takes to stay free! As for the parents — maybe they’re innocent. Meg says she and her brother have found new evidence. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time the government railroaded somebody just to close a case. That’s how I see it! You got a problem with that?”

  Aiden and Meg exchanged bewildered glances. How had the Mouth suddenly become their ally? What had prompted this astonishing change of heart?

  “You’re turning into one of those bleeding hearts you hate so much,” the caller accused.

  “At least I have a heart,” the Mouth snapped back. “Meg — if you’re out there — I’m on your side. Call again. There must be some way I can help you and your brother. I’m a powerful guy — I’ve got millions of listeners all over the country. People care about what I say. If there’s anything I can do for you — anything — you just have to ask!”

  Aiden switched off the radio, and the Falconers regarded each other in amazement.

  “Well,” mused Aiden, “I don’t know what you said on that guy’s show yesterday, but it must have been the right thing.”

  “Do you think it’s a trap?” Meg asked suspiciously. “You know, like the FBI has a trace on his line?”

  “He sounds sincere. Then again, he also sounded sincere when he was trying to get Mom and Dad executed.”

  She was blown away. “Should I call?”

  “Absolutely not. What good could it do? It’s not like the Mouth can issue a presidential pardon. He’s a talk show host — an opinionated jerk who gets paid for being an opinionated jerk on the radio. It would just make us even more notorious, which would make it that much harder for us to help Mom and Dad.”

  Meg regarded him in despair. The odds had always been stacked against them. But now there was a new element — a ticking clock.

  We’ve got to find Frank Lindenauer before we’re so famous that it’s impossible to stay free.

  * * *

  Agent Harris’s first stop was Denver Executive Center North, eleventh floor.

  “Juvenile delinquents, that’s who it was!” exclaimed the elderly eyewitness who worked as receptionist for the chiropractor in suite 1117. “I heard a commotion, and when I looked out, there they were — two young roughnecks, manhandling the elevator repairman!”

  The FBI man held up a copy of the cell-phone photo. “Were these the kids?”

  “That’s them!” the woman exclaimed in surprise. “The smaller one couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven.” She squinted at the picture. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  Harris didn’t answer. He knew that Margaret Falconer had cut her long hair short soon after the escape from Sunnydale Farm. From a distance, she was often mistaken for a boy.

  “Any idea where I can find the repair-man?” asked Harris. “Does he work for the building?”

  The woman shook her head. “He wasn’t one of their usual men. In fact, I haven’t seen him before or since. I suspect he was fired. His safety record is almost criminal. He left the elevator doors wide open to the shaft! That has to be a code violation.”

  Harris frowned. “Describe him.”

  The receptionist peered up at the six-foot-seven agent. “You’d probably call him short, but I remember him as quite tall. And big — stocky. I was surprised kids would tangle with him. He was wearing coveralls. And, oh, yes — he had a large head, shaved completely bald.”

  Ice-cold understanding came to Emmanuel Harris. It was him — the mysterious assassin the Falconers called Hairless Joe.

  He thought of the elevator shaft — a deadly fall to the basement far below. This was no fight. It was another homicide attempt — the latest of several since the killer had begun his pursuit of the Falconers in Vermont.

  That was why Harris had never released to the press that Aiden and Margaret were in Denver. He’d been afraid to risk providing the mysterious killer with a clue that might enable him to finish his gruesome task.

  Yet Hairless Joe had found them anyway. He must have known of the HORUS connection. What could that mean?

  Whatever the answer to that question, it was not as urgent as the search for the Falconers themselves. Police custody was the only safe place for them now. Just yesterday they had narrowly escaped a horrible death in the basement of this building.

  Next time they might not be so lucky.

  * * *

  Meg bent over the wastebasket of coins, stuffing fistfuls of change into her burgeoning pockets. They had returned to the Hillsdale branch because they had nowhere else to go — no place to sleep, no money for food, and worst of all, no lead to follow.

  Living on stolen overdue fines, she reflected glumly. Surely we’ve hit rock bottom. She cast an irritated look at her brother, who was building neat stacks of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Maximizing buying power,” he explained reasonably. “Quarters are worth the most, but dimes take up less pocket space …” His voice trailed off.

  Typical Aiden. Even in a spot like this, he had to be an efficiency expert.

  They shared another dinner of vending-machine junk food. Mom probably would have had a heart attack.

  It has to be better than the food where she is now —

  No. Meg had promised herself not to think about their parents in prison. It was just too awful. Mom and Dad locked away. Aiden and Meg outlaws, renegades. Their quest to save the family stalled …

  All because there’s no such name as —

  And suddenly, there it was, gazing down at her from the wall — the clue that had stopped them in their tracks, the five letters that were tormenting them — Oznot.

  The Hillsdale branch was decorated with photographic prints of old Denver. Behind the circulation desk, not five feet away, was a sepia-tone picture of a city street, with antique automobiles clogging the roadway. A billboard proclaimed BUY WAR BONDS. World War II, probably — the cars appeared to be from the nineteen forties. On one corner was a restaurant, its name spelled out in lights: OZNOT’S DELICATESSEN.

  “Aiden — look!”

  He frowned at the framed photo. “Why didn’t that come up on any of our searches?”

  Meg shrugged. “The place might have closed decades ago.”

  “Like a family business. The parents retire, and the kids don’t want to run it anymore. But that still doesn’t explain why there are no Oznots in the phone book.”

  “Maybe they changed their name,” Meg suggested. “I would have.”

  “Or maybe the Oznot at HORUS was the last of the family. Mrs. DeSouza said he had some kind of mental handicap. They probably had to shut down the restaurant because he wouldn’t have been able to keep it going. And if he can’t communicate, what would he need with a phone?”

  Meg nodded. “It makes sense. But that still doesn’t help us find the guy.”

  Aiden leaned over the counter, scrutinizing the sharp black-and-white image. “Check it out — you can read the street signs. That’s definitely an eight. Eighth and — could it be Myers? It starts with M-Y.”

  They consulted the wall map in the reference section. Sure enough, Eighth Avenue intersected Myerson Place just east of downtown.

  Meg was confused. “So we know where the restaurant used to be. So what?”

  “We can talk to the locals, maybe find some old-timer who remembers the place and the family who ran it.” Aiden took a deep breath. “It isn’t much, but it’s all we’ve got to go on right now.”

  Meg nodded uneasily. This sliver of a lead, this mixture of clue, hunch, and wild guess, was the only thing keeping their quest alive.

  Aiden slept directly below a window, letting the unfiltered morning light serve as a wake-up call.

  Another ticking clock, he thought as he hid in the bathroom, wai
ting for the staff to open up the Hillsdale branch. All around him, time seemed to be running out. How much longer could they live in the library before somebody noticed the kids who were always there first thing in the morning and right before the library closed?

  And the Harley — that was another time-limited offer. Sooner or later, the out-of-state license plate would attract attention.

  For the moment, though, his fears proved to be unfounded. He and Meg left the library without incident, and the motorcycle was exactly where they’d left it, surrounded by parked cars, not undercover police officers.

  He felt almost human again as he merged the Harley onto I-25 South. For a fugitive, two nights in a row of real sleep was a rare luxury.

  After twenty minutes, they exited the highway into a canyon of skyscrapers and stadiums, past the state capitol into a neighborhood of lower, flatter structures.

  “Keep an eye out for Myerson Place!” he called over his shoulder to Meg.

  The command was unnecessary. For there, coming up on the right, was the building that had once housed the old delicatessen. It was a one-hour photo developing shop now, yet it was unmistakable — the same display window, the same ornate front door. They could even see where the lights had once spelled out Oznot’s, shadowed in flowing script across the stucco facade.

  They parked the Harley in a back alley and walked out to the street. “Wait here,” Aiden advised. “I’ll see if the photo guy remembers the delicatessen.”

  The photo store was a one-man operation with a darkroom at the back and a developing machine along the side. It was spitting out snapshots of Disney World as Aiden approached the counter.

  The clerk looked up from an envelope he was preparing. “What can I do for you, son?”

  “I’m not sure,” Aiden said. “Didn’t this used to be a restaurant called Oznot’s?”

  “Yeah.” The man smiled. “When you were about three. What’s the big interest?”

  “My dad always talked about the corned beef in this place.”