“The bad guys saw the cops and started shooting,” the Oracle said, his voice dull.
“First, the owner of the deli—his name was Han-Woo Park,” the Oracle went on. “Then one of the patrolmen. Officer LeonardEsposito. His partner made it out of the store and called for backup, and it turned into a hostage situation. SWAT had togo in, eventually. The kids who were robbing the store weren’t interested in negotiating. They’d already made their mindsup to go out as street legends, have songs written about them.”
“How can you know that? Did you know them?”
“I bought transcripts of the negotiator’s conversations with them.”
“Is that legal?”
The Oracle shrugged.
“Anyway,” he continued, “the cops went in after a few hours, and it all went to shit. Twelve people. The thieves—they werejust kids, only sixteen. Robert Washington and Adewale Deluta. Customers—Andy Singer, Maria Lucia Sanchez, Barry Anderson,Chantal L’Green, Amanda Sumner, Jim Roundsman, and Peter Roundsman. He was eight. And another officer, Jerry Shaugnessy.”
Leigh thought this over.
“You weren’t there,” she said, finally. “Were you?”
“I was standing outside the Lucky Corner with the rest of the crowd, behind the police cordon, waiting.”
“Then how . . . ?”
“Why do you think those cops went into that store in the first place, Leigh? I told them to. One of the first predictionsI dreamed was about the Lucky Corner. Back then, I didn’t understand the rules. I was trying to figure out whether the predictionshad to happen, or if they could be changed.”
“Can they?” Leigh broke in.
“No,” the Oracle said, one short word, like a vault door closing.
They were both silent for a moment.
“I wanted to stop it,” he went on. “I thought, you know, why would I have been given these predictions if I couldn’t do somethingabout them? It just . . . made sense. I called 911 and said I’d overheard the two thieves planning to rob the deli. That’swhy the cops went in the store, and that’s how the whole thing started.”
“You can’t hold yourself responsible,” Leigh said.
“You sure? If I hadn’t called the cops, those kids would just have taken their money and left. Because of my action, whatI did, trying to be a goddamn superhero, all those people are dead.”
Leigh hadn’t typed anything for a few minutes. She watched the Oracle. He was emotional, upset. He wasn’t lying—and honestly,about causing the death of twelve people—why would he?
The Oracle stood up and walked over to the window. He stared out in silence. She was getting such a sense of weight from him,of a burden he could never set down. It radiated out from behind the sunglasses and the stupid wig, a haze of sad dignity.
He turned away from the window, returning to his seat.
“Look. I didn’t just ask you here to tell you about myself,” the Oracle said. “I wasn’t originally planning to talk aboutthis, but there’s something else—something I think the world needs to know. Get ready to take this down. It’s important toget the details right.”
Leigh put her hands on the keyboard. She leaned forward on the couch, watching the Oracle’s face, feeling the gigantic changeher life was about to undergo looming over her like a tsunami.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
The door to the room burst open with a gigantic crash, the locks shattering as the screws pulled out of the doorframe. A largecircular dent could be seen in the center of the outside of the door as it smashed open and bounced off the inner wall ofthe room. A man dressed in black coveralls, holding a metal tube with handles attached to either side of it, stepped backfrom the destroyed door.
The Oracle bounded up from his chair. His knees jolted the coffee table, and the pitcher of water spilled, along with theice bucket and the pot of coffee. Liquid soaked the tray and dripped over the sides of the table.
Leigh inadvertently slapped the laptop closed, clutching it to her chest like some sort of wholly inadequate combination ofshield and prized possession.
Someone appeared in the doorway—an older woman, something like a sharp suburban grandmother.
“Will Dando?” she asked, eyes cast in the Oracle’s direction.
“Yes?” he said, and then he cringed with his whole body, as if realizing that he had just made some sort of a gigantic, unfixablemistake.
Will Dando? Leigh thought, trying to process.
“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said.
The woman lifted her hand. She held a little black object, a bit larger than a deck of cards. Her hand clenched, and two dartsshot out into the Oracle’s chest, attached to the object by long, curling wires.
The Oracle—Will Dando—fell to the ground, his limbs convulsing. Leigh leapt to her feet, looking desperately to either sidefor somewhere to run.
A moment of sharp, invasive pain in her stomach, dwarfed a moment later by agony in an entirely different category, judderingthrough her muscles.
She fell to the floor and landed facedown in the thick carpet, narrowly missing cracking her head open on the coffee table.She felt water dripping down from the table onto the center of her back. Her vision dimmed.
“Bring them both,” she heard the woman say.
Chapter 31
Will opened his eyes. He was lying on his back on something soft. Fading in above him was a rapidly moving hallway; dark-green-on-gray-stripedwallpaper and a beige ceiling rushing past on either side, illuminated by brass light fixtures on the walls.
He tried to sit up and found that he couldn’t. He could lift his head, although something was pressing down on his forehead,keeping it from moving more than an inch or so. He peered down his body, seeing straps across his chest, his waist, and overhis wrists and ankles.
Men in light blue, short-sleeved shirts hovered above him. He decided to ask them about the straps, but found something inhis mouth. A little exploration by a very dry tongue suggested that it was a thick piece of cloth.
Pain. It felt like every muscle in his body had been occupied with holding up something very heavy for six or seven hourswithout a break. The pain was localized somewhat around two small spots on his chest. An
