“ Look here.” He pointed to a trapdoor in the closet ceiling. “With any luck this connects to the other rooms.”
“ Is that good?”
“ Maybe, go bang on that door. I want to know if we have neighbors.”
J.P. went over and knocked on the adjoining door.
“ Again, louder this time.”
J.P. knocked louder.
“ Okay, we’re going to assume the room next door is vacant. We’re also going to assume there’s a trapdoor inside that closet, like this one. Do you think if I boosted you up, you could crawl through to the next room?”
“ Yeah, I crawled under the house, didn’t I?”
“ Good boy.” Rick had to admire his pluck. His father had been killed only two days ago. Tonight he barely missed getting killed himself and he was still holding it together. Most men would be a basket case in similar circumstances.
“ Ready?”
“ Ready,” J.P. responded.
Rick opened the trap, revealing a black hole in the ceiling above.
“ It’s dark up there,” J.P. said.
“ You gonna be okay?”
“ Yeah,” J.P. said.
Rick scooped the boy up and lifted him into the dark. “Can you see anything?”
“ Kinda.” J.P. peered into the darkness, there was just enough light coming through the open trapdoor from below to show him the way. “It’s scary up here.”
“ Are you going to be okay?”
“ I can do it.”
J.P. squinted his eyes to try and see through the dark. He smelled dust and he felt it as his hands clutched onto the ceiling beams. He was going to have to stay on the beams as he worked his way to the room next door, because he’d learned, when the contractors had added a room on their house in Toronto, back when his parent were still together and his dad was still alive, that the drywall might not hold his weight.
He balanced himself with his knees on adjacent beams and inched his way into the dark, toward the next room. He heard noises up ahead and stopped to listen. A rustling sound. He wanted to scurry backwards, but then he heard the chirping of baby birds and he sighed. There must be a hole in the roof, he thought, allowing the birds a way in to make their nests.
He scooted a little closer to his goal. His right hand slid through a sticky spider web. He felt the creature scamper across his hand and he resisted the urge to scream.
“ There’s spiders up here,” he whispered back to Rick and he started creeping along the beams once again. “I found it.” He pulled the trapdoor up through the ceiling.
“ Good boy,” Rick whispered through the dark attic. “Can you jump down?”
“ Sure,” J.P. whispered back. A few seconds later J.P. opened the connecting door with a smile on his face a block wide.
“ Good work, J.P. You did good.”
“ What are we gonna do now?”
“ We’re going to move next door,” Rick said.
“ Why?”
“ Just a precaution. If someone comes looking for us, we won’t be here.”
“ You think the Ragged Man’s gonna come?”
“ No. I’m just being careful.”
“ I think the man who killed my dad is him.”
“ You mean the Ragged Man?”
“ Yeah, him.”
“ It’s just a story, J.P. Now come on.”
Before entering the adjoining room, Rick went into the bath, took the clean towels off the rack and splashed water on them, before throwing them on the floor. Then he pulled down the bed covers on both beds and rumpled them to make it look as if they had been slept in.
“ This way it’ll look like we’ve been and gone.”
Then the two of them, J.P. carrying the birdcage, entered their new room and Rick closed both doors.
“ Okay, J.P., we have to leave the lights out, no TV, no talking.”
“ I understand. We’re hiding, right?”
“ Right.”
They found their respective beds in the dark. They didn’t undress. They lay on top of the covers, each lost in his own thoughts, staring at the dark ceiling.
J.P. thought about the big man and his steel gray stare. Then he thought about the Ghost Dog and he started to shiver. His shivering increased when he heard the rapping on the door of the room they had just vacated. He looked at Rick and saw that he held his index finger to his lips, telling him to be silent. He didn’t need to be told, he knew who was next door.
“ Police. Open up,” they heard. Then they heard a key being inserted and a door opening. J.P. got up and moved over to Rick’s bed and sat next to him.
“ It’s okay,” Rick whispered. “They don’t know we’re here. They’ll go away in a few minutes.” It wasn’t necessary to listen at the door, the paper thin walls offered no barrier against sound.
“ I don’t understand, they’re not here.” J.P. recognized the motel clerk’s voice.
“ Did they have any luggage?” a fast-talking voice asked.
“ The boy had a bird in a wire cage.”
“ That’s them,” a deep voice said.
“ They only checked in two hours ago, it doesn’t make any sense, them leaving like this,” Deep Voice said.
“ The bathroom’s been used, the beds have been used, and the key is on the bureau. It looks like they just wanted a place to shower and rest awhile,” Fast-Talker said.
“ I didn’t see them leave,” the clerk said.
“ Were you on the front desk the whole time since they checked in?” Fast-Talker said.
“ Most of the time. I went across to the mini market for cigarettes about half an hour ago.”
“ Then if they left while you were across the street, you would have missed them?” Fast-Talker said.
“ I guess so.”
“ Thanks for your help.”
“ Do you think they’ll be back?” the clerk asked.
“ No,” Fast-Talker said, “I don’t, and you can go.” J.P. heard the clerk leave the room.
“ Okay, Mr. Storm, we tried,” Fast-Talker said. “It looks like they flew the coup. Now, you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“ I told them when I called the station.”
“ Humor me.”
“ I’m a private investigator working for the RIAA. I was staking out the Page house, hoping Gordon would show. When he did, I decided to wait till morning and see if he would lead me to a warehouse full of bootlegs. I wanted to bust him real dirty.”
“ Did you know he was wanted for murder?” Fast-Talker said.
“ No, I didn’t,” Storm said.
“ What happened next?”
“ He came running out of there like a striped-ass ape, dragging the kid, and came straight here. It looked like they were here for the night, so I went back to the house to see if I could get the Page lady to tell me anything.”
“ Did you think she would?”
