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It was a cheap tactic. Theo meant the words—as usual, Auggie had shown his intelligence and resourcefulness, and he’d made an important connection. But he also knew the effect the words would have on Auggie.
Or at least, the effect, they usually had.
“Don’t do that,” Auggie said, the words cold and clipped. “Don’t do that again until I tell you it’s ok.”
A stage door opened, and music flooded the hall. Someone was playing a lute and singing, “Hey nonny nonny.” Someone else shouted good-naturedly, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Auggie—”
“Did you hear me?”
The stage door shut hard, and the sound of metal on metal thundered down the hallway.
“Yes,” Theo said.
Auggie turned and started down the hallway again.
The door to the trap room was at the far end of the hall, and it was clearly marked, just as it had been in Shaniyah’s video. When Theo tried the handle, it was locked, but it was an interior lock, barely a step above a thumb lock. He got out his insurance card, because that one would be easy to replace if it got damaged, and forced it between the door and the jamb. Then he brought up, quick and hard, at the same time that he yanked on the handle. The door popped open.
Muscle memory, he thought, and suddenly he wanted to laugh. Or maybe cry. It was hard to tell. The bad old days.
The air that wafted up had a faint, foul note that sent pins and needles through Theo. He nudged the door, opening it a few more inches, and more of the fetor seeped up to them. He remembered hearing—it felt like ages ago—that Emery and John-Henry had once found a body under a stage.
“I think you should call the police,” he said.
Auggie shouldered past him and started down the stairs. Theo counted to five and went after him.
The flight of stairs was longer than Theo expected, doubling back on itself once, and the stink grew stronger the farther they went. Emergency lights provided enough illumination to pick out each step, but details were lost in the shadows. Auggie, for example. In that low illumination, from lights mounted high on the walls, he looked smaller than he actually was. Compressed. Like something had pushed and pushed and pushed until he was, somehow, less. Something, maybe a sound, made Auggie turn his head, and the sudden familiarity of his profile went through Theo—a puncturing relief that he didn’t have words for.
When they reached the trap room itself, Auggie felt around for the lights, and then they came on: banks of fluorescents flooding the space with light. It was a large, high-ceilinged room, and overhead, the occasional sound of a footstep echoed through the stage floor. The trap room itself was surprisingly full of what appeared to be theater miscellanea: stacks of plastic totes, one of them filled with brightly colored wigs; a pallet with what appeared to be the pieces of a chandelier (Phantom of the Opera, Theo thought); a mocked-up player piano that was nothing but cardboard and a few one-by-fours.
The stench was strong enough that Auggie pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose, and Theo followed suit. They moved deeper into the maze of boxes and shelves. The fluorescents’ hum registered barely at the edge of hearing, like something Theo felt in his teeth more than actually heard. Overhead the footsteps stopped. The silence began to build.
They maneuvered around a piece of set (what appeared to be the exterior ofThe Addams Familymansion, if Theo didn’t miss his guess), and Auggie stopped. In the wall ahead of them was a service elevator, where a large plastic tilt truck waited on casters. The tilt truck was the kind of thing a lot of custodial departments had, a multipurpose conveyance for whatever you could throw inside it. A leg was hooked over the side: bare brown skin, white Nike sneakers.
“I’ll check,” Theo said.
But Auggie started forward again, and the only thing Theo could do was follow.
Shaniyah had been his student. She’d been to their house. He would have said he’d recognize her anywhere. But what was left in the tilt truck wasn’t Shaniyah, not anymore. He didn’t recognize the clothes—the knit cutout shirt that seemed too mature for a girl who had giggled while playing with Lana, the polka-dot skirt that hung askew on her now. The bloat of decomposition had started, distending her features, but in other ways, she looked shrunken—her eyes collapsed into half-open sockets, her cheeks hollow. Someone had duct-taped her mouth shut. Flies buzzed and settled on the foam leaking around the tape.
Auggie gagged once, and then he turned toward the way they’d come.
Theo started to follow, and then something caught his eye—a hint of orange at Shaniyah’s finger. He forced himself to lean over the tilt truck. It was a bit of fuzz, the kind of thing you might pick up if you had long nails and caught them on a sweater the wrong way. Or, Theo thought, if you were struggling with someone who was trying to kill you.
He went after Auggie. As he started up the stairs, he left the lights on for Shaniyah.
15
Auggie lost track of the hours he spent being interviewed: first at the theater, explaining what had happened to a red-faced uniformed officer he didn’t recognize; then to Detective Palomo, who arrived in jeans and a Cubs t-shirt, her long, dark hair tucked under a newsboy cap; and then at the station, to Palomo again, and then to John-Henry. He had arrived hours later, the expression on his face grim. He hadn’t said it, not then, but Auggie knew he’d been out at the Cottonmouth Club, some ninety minutes of driving back roads and state highways.
He asked the questions Palomo had asked, and Auggie and Theo gave the same answers. For now.
“Detective Palomo tells me that Dalton Weber appears to have been assaulted,” John-Henry said. “She says you told her you don’t know anything about that.”
Theo’s gaze was fixed on the table.
Auggie said, “No.”
