Chapter 14
June
At four in the morning June stopped pretending to sleep.
She had been lying on the cot in the corner of the clerk's office for three hours with her eyes shut and her knees drawn up and a gray blanket over her head. She had listened to the building. She was getting good at it. There was the tick of the radiator, which was every nine seconds. There was the long low sigh of air in the grille, which she had decided was the boiler. There was a mouse, somewhere in the wall, and a pipe that knocked twice and then stopped, like somebody saying no, no and thinking better of it.
And under all that, since midnight, there had been the voices.
She had spent an hour on the floor with her ear to the brass. She had heard a man shout, a high wild cracked shout, that went on and on and then stopped. She had heard a long silence. She had heard a girl crying, a long way down, and a man's deep voice say I know, I know. She had not heard her father. She had listened until her cheek was numb. She had thought: he's there. He's right under me. He's just not talking.
She sat up.
The red numbers on the desk said 01:31:07. They were not the numbers she had written in her notebook. She had written those the first night, 76 and then 75, and then 74. They had gone down, as numbers do. They had stopped going down evenly some time on Thursday, and then they had dropped in two big jumps. She had watched the second one happen. It had been about six o'clock on Friday night, and she had been sitting at the desk, with the sign she'd made in her lap.
DON'T PAY FOR ME.
He paid anyway.
She did not think about that. She'd decided, as she had decided about the dark, and the toilet, and the way the mouse sounded like a voice, that it was something to put in a small place and leave.
"Good morning, June," said the speaker.
"It's four."
"So it is."
"That's not morning."
"It depends where one stands." The voice was low and dry and very tired. It had been tired for a day, she thought. It had grown more tired as the clock went down, as a person does on a long drive. "I wondered if you would like a game."
"I'd rather talk."
"Talk about what?"
"About my dad."
There was a small silence. It was the kind of silence that she was beginning to recognize. It was not empty. It was full, and had a shape, like a closed door with someone leaning on it.
"I should be glad to," said White.
She did not play first. She had learned that. She sat down at the metal desk in her striped sweater, with her yellow notebook open in front of her and her braid over one shoulder, and put both hands flat on the green blotter. She did not look at the board. She looked at the little black eye of the camera, on its bracket, above the filing cabinets, and she said, in a clear, quiet, careful voice, "What did he do?"
"Your father?"
"Yes."
"Why do you think he did something?"
"Because you keep saying the foreman. And because they took me, but they didn't take Mrs. Ortiz, and they didn't take Mr. Pell, and they didn't take, I'm twelve. It's not about me. It's not even about my dad being, I know he isn't, he's not rich. Nobody wants his money." She drew a breath. "So it's about something he did. And I'd like to know what, because I think it's the thing I'm here for."
"You are a most unusual child."
"Everyone says that."
"They are right."
"What did he do?" said June.
The voice did not answer at once. She heard, faintly, in the speaker, the small rustle of someone shifting in a chair. When it came, it was lower than before. It was gentle.
"A long time ago," said White, "your father was asked to carry a piece of paper forty steps."
"That's all?"
"That is all."
"That's not a crime."
"No. It is not a crime. I should like you to hold onto that." There was a pause. "A woman wrote a note. She asked for something that would have been very small. It would have taken him a minute. It would have taken him, I think, about as long as it takes to walk from your door to the window. He had it in his hand. He put it in his pocket."
"Why?"
"He was frightened."
"Of what?"
"Of the end of something. He was frightened that if the paper was delivered, there would be a delay, and that in the delay, a person he loved would die without him."
She said nothing.
"It was a very good reason," said the voice. "It was the best I know. I have thought about it for nine years, and I have never found a better. He was a young man with a sick wife and a small child. He wanted to go home." A faint dry note. "I do not say he was wicked. I say that he made a small decision for a good reason, and that a man died."
"What man?"
"A man who was not there."
"Was he, is he the one in the, Black?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you play for him?"
"Yes."
June looked at the board. It was not set up. The pieces lay in a heap in the lid of the box, black and white together. She picked up a white pawn and turned it in her fingers. It was very smooth.
"Was my mom the, was it her he wanted to go home to?"
"Yes."
"I don't remember her much."
"I know."
"I remember a yellow raincoat. And she smelled of oranges." She put the pawn down. "Dad says she was funny. He says she'd have liked me."
"I am sure she would."
"Did you know her?"
"No," said White. "I did not."
It was the first thing he had said that she thought was a lie.
She did not move. She noted it, as one notes a loose board, and went on. She said, "So I'm here because of the paper."
"You are here," said White, "because you are the reason."
"What?"
"He told her. The woman. He told her that his wife was dying, and that he had a three-year-old daughter named June. It was what he said, when he tried, I think, not to be cruel. It was his excuse. It was the thing he held up in front of himself." The voice was very quiet. "I wished to see what it was worth."
June sat still.
It came to her in pieces. The room, and the clock, and the sign she had made with a ruler, and her father's face on the little screen, that had gone, as it did when he was hurt, so quiet. She saw the whole of the board at once. It was not like seeing a position. It was more like the moment when you look at the back of a clock and see all the wheels.
I'm a piece.
I'm a piece he's using to make Dad say a thing.
"That's not fair," she said.
"No."
"I didn't ask to be a reason."
"No one does."
"And you can't, you can't punish somebody for a thing they did, by, by me." She heard her own voice rise, and brought it down. "That's, I know what that is. That's what you're mad about. Someone made your, someone paid for what another person did. A man who wasn't there. Somebody got hurt for a, for somebody else's move."
There was a sound, in the speaker, like a long, slow, indrawn breath.
"And that's what you're doing," she said. "To me."
"June."
"It's the same thing. It's exactly the, you're doing it. You're making me be Mr. Black." Her eyes were wet, and she was furious. "You hate that. You hate it so much that you made a whole, you built a whole building. And then you do it. You do it to me. Because it's the, because it's easier."
The speaker did not answer.
She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, shaking. She was not going to cry. She was twelve and a half, and she'd won a trophy, and she was not going to cry in front of a black eye on a bracket. She waited. After a long time, a very long time, she heard, in the speaker, a thing she'd never heard it do. It cleared its throat.
"That," said White, "is a very good point."
"I know it is."
"I should like to think about it."
"Think about it harder," said June.
They found the way to the end of the night by talking.
It was Daniel's idea, if it could be called an idea. He sat on a cot in the lounge at half past four, in the yellow light, with a cup of cold tea and a bandage round his ribs, and decided that if he had to go through whatever was coming, he would rather do it with everyone awake. So he woke them. Tom, who had not slept. Helen, who had, and sat up in her blanket looking, for the first time since Wednesday, almost like herself. Frank, who lay with his face to the wall. And Ivy, who sat by herself on the end of the sofa with her arms round her knees and did not look at any of them.
He told them where they were.
He told them about the stair, and the beam, and the hallway. He told them all of what he knew. He had thought it would take an hour, and it took twenty minutes. There was not as much of it as he'd thought. When he had finished, there was a silence, and then Helen Marsh said, in a dry small voice, "It's not much, is it? When you put it like that."
"No."
"Nine years. You'd think there'd be more."
"I think that's the point," said Ivy, very quietly.
They looked at her.
"It's what he said. When he came." She did not raise her head. "I asked him, I said, what are we going to do to them? And he said, nothing. We are going to take a very small thing and put it in a large room. He said it was the only way. He said if you put a mistake in a small room, it looks like what it is. But in a large room it looks like what it did."
"That's a nice way of putting it," said Frank, thickly.
"He had a nice way of putting a lot of things."
"Ivy," said Daniel. "Where is she?"
She did not pretend not to understand.
"She's in the building," said Ivy. "I know that much. She's, I took her up. It was a Monday night. I carried her bag. She was asleep in the car, and she woke on the stairs, and she walked." She took a ragged breath. "It's on the second floor. At the north end. The clerk's office. It's the room with the, there's a door with a window. It's got a keypad. I don't know the code."
"The second floor."
"Yes."
"How do you get there?"
"There's a stair. At the end of the corridor, behind the jury room, there's, you go along the black-and-white hall. It's forty tiles. The door at the end goes to the courtroom. There's a staircase inside it. It goes up." She raised her eyes. "It's shut. It's been shut since I got here."
"Then it's a door."
"It's a lot more than that."
"I'll open it."
"You can't. You can only get to it if, there's something he wants."
"What?" said Daniel. "Tell me what he wants."
"I think you know," said Ivy.
"Daniel."
It was Helen. She had gotten to her feet. She stood in the middle of the lounge, with the gray blanket falling off her narrow shoulders and her hand on the back of a chair. She was swaying a little, and white, and her eyes had a clear, fever-bright, dreadful steadiness. "He's going to talk to you. I'd bet my pension. I think he's going to ask you to come and sit down somewhere."
"I don't want to."
"You'll go."
"I don't have a choice."
"No," said Helen. "That's what it's called."
"Mr. Wells," said the speaker. "I wonder if you would be so good."
It came on the stroke of five. It came softly, from the ceiling of the lounge, and it was not addressed to the room. Daniel looked up. He had the odd, cold, dream-like certainty that it had been waiting for him to be ready.
"The jury room is empty," said White. "I should like to speak to you there. I should like it to be you alone. Not because there is anything that cannot be heard. It is a matter of, I think the word is tact."
He stood.
Nobody tried to stop him. He went along the short corridor with his hand on the wall, and into the jury room, and the door slid to behind him. The strip was dim. The little screen glowed. He sat in the head chair.
"Thank you," said White.
"I'm here."
"I do appreciate it." The voice was quiet, courteous, and exhausted. "I should like to say a few things. I do not propose to say them all. There is a good deal that is not yours to know. But there is something that I have come to think you are entitled to, and it concerns your daughter."
"Tell me."
"I have known where you lived for four years."
He did not move.
"I found the address in the spring, after a, after a death. A rather quiet one. I had a great deal of free time. I found that I could look at a name on a document, and then look at a house, and then look at the person. It was not hard." A faint dry sound. "I went by the street, once, in the autumn. I did not stop. There was a small yellow house, with a light on the porch."
"The light."
"I found it a very odd thing. The light was on in the middle of the afternoon." The voice paused. "I asked a neighbor. She told me. She said that you left it on every night, and that it had a name, and that the little girl called it a lighthouse."
The woman with the dog, thought Daniel. Mrs. Kaplan.
"I took that name to a very patient girl," said White. "I asked her to remember it. I told her that it would one day be the key to a door."
"You used it on a child."
"I did."
"You, she, it was the only word we had. It was the one word. It was ours." His voice shook. "I said, if it isn't me, they've got to say it. I told her that. She wrote it in her pencil case. She believed me."
"I know. It was a very good word."
"You could have taken anything else."
"No," said White, softly. "I could not. That was the point."
Daniel said nothing.
"I should like you to understand something about how this was built," said the voice. "I had the keys to this building long before you ever, I was in it for thirty years. I know where the pipes run. I know which boards give. I did not make a trap. I only took an old place and arranged it. It took me four years. I was very careful. I did the forms myself." A pause. "I sent you a jury summons every spring."
"What?"
"For nine years. I had a friend in the commission. A very kind woman, in the records room. I said that I wished to know if a certain man would ever come back. She put your name on the list. It was a gesture. You declined, every time, in a very polite letter. You always had a reason." The voice was level. "Illness. Travel. Child care. I kept the letters."
"Why?"
"I wanted to see if you would ever walk back in on your own."
The envelope on the counter. A long white one, with a window. Jury Commission. Juror Summons. He had slid it under the gas bill. He had turned it face down, with the flat of his hand.
"I wanted to give you a chance," said White. "Every spring. You might have said yes. If you had come, and sat, and said, I did a thing in that room, and I would like to put it right, I would have thanked you, and I would have let you go. I would not have taken a hair of anybody's head." He drew a long breath. "You never did."
"I didn't think."
"No. That is the heart of it. None of you ever did."
The room was very quiet. On the little screen a child sat at a desk with her head on her fist. He could not look. He kept his eyes on the oak, on the ring of old coffee, and the white king, and his own hands.
"Tell me what you want," said Daniel. "Tell me, and I'll do it. Anything."
"You said that before."
"I mean it."
"On Wednesday you said anything. You said it to a cup of water. Since then you have sold eight hours of your daughter's life, and sent a man into a cage, and lied to everyone who has been kind to you." The voice was not harsh. It was almost sad. "I should like you to see what anything costs. It is a word people use when they do not yet know the price."
"I know the price."
"Do you?"
"I've paid it."
"You have paid a part." A very small pause. "There is a second part. It is not what you think. I did not wish to say it until the hour was right. I think the hour is nearly here."
"What hour?"
"It is twenty minutes past five," said White.
The screen on the table flickered.
It showed the room.
It was the same room, the same desk, the green lamp. But the picture had changed. It was darker. A thin gray haze hung in the air under the ceiling, and the lamp had a halo round it. The child at the desk had stood up. She was staring at the door, with her braid in her mouth, and her whole body had gone stiff, like an animal in a field. Under the door a thin ribbon of something pale was curling in along the floor.
It was smoke.
He was on his feet. He did not remember getting up. He had both hands flat on the table, and the white king had fallen over, and he heard himself make a sound that was not a word.
On the screen, June coughed.
She did it quietly, into her sleeve. Then she did it again. She backed away from the door, a step, two steps, and put her hand to the wall beside it, where there was a small brass box. She pressed something. It did not seem to do anything. She turned, and ran, in her sock feet, across the room to the desk, and snatched up the yellow notebook, and tore out a page.
FIRE, she wrote.
She held it up to the lens. Her face was white. Her eyes were enormous. The lamp behind her was a smear.
"Stop it," said Daniel.
"I cannot."
"Stop it! Turn it off. Whatever it is, you, she's twelve, she's twelve!"
"It is a small one," said White, calmly. "It is in the archive, next to her room. It was lit at five-fifteen. I would like you to know that the door of the clerk's office is sound. The smoke will come under it slowly. By my estimate you have thirty-five minutes."
"Thirty-five."
"Possibly forty."
"Where's the, how do I, tell me how to stop it."
"There is a valve."
He stood still.
"It is a fire valve. It controls the old sprinkler main for the whole of the second floor. It has not been used in thirty years. It is in the basement, in the records vault. It is turned by a wheel." The voice slowed. "I do not wish to be obscure, Mr. Wells. I will tell you exactly what it is. The vault door is a bank door, nineteen thirty-one, with a time lock. When the wheel is turned, a bolt inside is released, and the door swings to. It cannot be opened from within. The lock will not release for six hours."
"Six."
"The vault is airtight. It was made to survive a fire." A pause. "There is air in it for one person for rather less than four hours."
Daniel could not breathe.
"That is the game," said White. "I regret that I cannot make it prettier. It is called the Two Keys, because there are two of them, and they are not metal." The voice was very gentle. "One is the person who turns the wheel. The other is the person who decides."
On the screen, the little girl was down on her knees by the door, trying to stuff her sweater into the gap beneath it. She was coughing now, continually, in short hard barks. The smoke was spreading. It lay along the floor like milk. She had stopped looking at the camera. She did not look at it again.
"I will leave you to it," said White. "For the record, it is five twenty-two."
The speaker clicked.
He stood in the jury room, in the dim yellow strip, with his hands on the table and the bar of the white king under his palm, and for the first time in nine years, in a single clean and perfect moment, he knew exactly what it was to be the foreman.
It was to be the one who is asked.