Ty said, “I did break in. At least, I popped a window up.”
Walter turned in his seat. “Why didn’t you say something? Was there any alarm?”
“If there was,” said Ty, “I didn’t hear it. If there was, cops already came and went.”
“You think we should go?” Walter said over his shoulder. “Ty?”
Ty said, “Me? I seen it already. Doing my job. You two make up your minds.” He lay down theatrically, retired.
“Yeah,” East decided. “Circle back.” He had been hugging his knees, and now that he let them go, his whole body hurt. Beaten up from inside. Heading back to the house did not make him happy. But Ty was right. You did your job.
—
Wilson Lake. Reflectors on every post, every driveway, eyeing them. The driveway of 445 Lake Shore empty but for the cold black truck.
Walter idled the van at the lake parking lot while once again they loaded up and got ready. They slipped on the thin, dark gloves. Once again they walked the back track off the road.
The grass had gone quiet, and the branches slapped back when Walter caught one in the dark. Ty led them through the field of pines to where they saw the yellow back porch light. A single moth clapped at it, ineffectual.
“There’s the phone box,” said Ty. A gray box below the kitchen windows.
“So?”
“If you got an alarm, it comes out in that.”
“Some alarms work cellular,” said Walter.
“Ain’t no signal up here,” Ty said.
“How do you know that?” Walter said. “How do you know that?”
Ty had Walter spooked now.
The phone box was cobwebbed. Ty pried the lid up and pinched free the plug.
“If we’re going in looking, what you want to find?”
Walter said, “Anything. Directions? Ticket receipt? A note? We’ll just look. But we ain’t going in there to break and fuck things up.”
“Of course,” said Ty.
“Take your shoes off,” said Walter.
The window Ty had popped was on the middle of the back side, over the sink. There was a security lock on the frame, but it left enough room for Ty to squirm his head and shoulders in.
“Maybe they’ll have a flashlight,” Walter said. “You’d think we’d have a flashlight.”
Ty kicked his shoes off. “Lift me up.”
Walter clucked his tongue at East, and East started. Together they made stirrups of their hands. Ty climbed them and got an arm inside and went moving things—a bottle of soap off the sill, two glasses away down the counter. Then he began wriggling in. It was tight. He yelped at something. East passed Walter Ty’s foot and went to help, felt at Ty, at the metal framing of the window. He found what was catching: his brother’s ear. He touched it, little stub of cartilage, strangely warm, and for a flash he thought of their mother’s face.
“Damn, that hurts,” Ty groaned from inside. East pressed the ear, flattened it, helped pass it without abrasion through the hard, slotlike opening. And let Ty’s head go. In. Ty’s head was in.
East threaded his other arm around and began keying Ty’s shoulders into the slot, feeding his body in, inch by inch, rib by rib. His waist and legs wriggled in midair.
“Fuck. Ouch. All right,” Ty said from inside.
“You want us to stay back here?” East said.
“Yeah, let me look. Then I’ll let you in.”
“All right.” East and Walter braced Ty’s thighs as he wormed in in midair. His body seesawed, and his hips disappeared over the sill. Then the pair of headlights swung into the driveway.
13.
There would be a few more seconds where the car would be running, seconds where they might not be heard. East had Ty’s legs in his hands. Ty was still pulling, wriggling in.
“We got to pull you out,” East whispered fiercely through the window, past his brother’s body.
“What? No!”
“They’re here.”
“I just got in,” Ty cursed.
The pair of lights swung away as the car picked its way up the driveway. Then they stabbed again across the open A of the house. The lights bounced off the countertops, the faucet. Then the car stopped—it was something new, little high-intensity bulbs—and the lights were doused.
“Now,” said East, and he caught Ty’s hand and hauled him back, up over the countertop and out the window. Ty’s head bounced on the sill: “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he complained.
“Shh.”
“The screen. The screen,” said Walter.
“Forget the screen,” East said. He slid the window down and scooped Ty up with him. They scuttled into the pines together. This little square of a yard, the house lights would fill entirely.
“Where my shoes at?” Ty whispered furiously.
“Shh,” East replied.
The doors of the little car popped open. Two people got out: a full-grown man on the driver’s side. Someone else on the other.
“What we got, a girlfriend?” said Walter.
Ty watched intently.