Chapter 17: Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Fred Fielder was bored. Things had been slow, uncharacteristically slow at the Agency lately. It was weird, but still a welcome break. At first, he'd thought maybe he could use the slowness to talk Billy into letting him take some time off, but then, Billy had handed him this assignment: watching a house of defectors who had lived in the States for years! Talk about Yawn Patrol!
He couldn't believe Billy would hand him this assignment, especially under Scarecrow's direction. Everyone knew that the two of them did not get along.
Paranoia, that's what it was, Fielder decided as he sat in the van with Lopez and Carter during their shift. Scarecrow couldn't stand it that not much was happening at the Agency lately, so he had to try to make his assignment to help this scientist and his family seem much more exciting than it really was.
That, and Fielder had the odd feeling that Scarecrow was kind of soft on the Petrescu kid. Scarecrow really had been acting weird lately, and maybe it wasn't just the slow days at work. Rumor had it that Mrs. King might be pregnant, and if she was, there wasn't any mystery about who was responsible. Billy said Mrs. King just had the flu, but the others who had the flu didn't faint.
It just seemed to confirm what everyone was already thinking about Scarecrow and his partner. Everyone knew that Scarecrow was a playboy type. He had been for years. He'd had affairs with co-workers before, and although Mrs. King hadn't seemed like the type that usually fawned over him, he'd had a few years to work on her. From what Fielder had heard, it was amazing that the guy hadn't gotten any of his other girlfriends pregnant, but maybe the odds had finally caught up with him. A man about to become a father unexpectedly might behave in all sorts of strange ways. Come to think of it, expectant mothers behaved strangely, too. In spite of what Mrs. King said about the two men trying to grab Antonia Petrescu that afternoon, Fielder had the feeling that it was all just paranoia.
Both of them were in the Petrescu house right now, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, talking to Anton Petrescu and his wife. He hoped that the Petrescus wouldn't swallow too much of their paranoia. Scarecrow and Mrs. King might not be working for the Agency much longer anyway.
Fielder chuckled a little at the idea of Scarecrow as a father. The best part would be if Scarecrow had to leave the Agency to take care of his new family responsibilities. Yep, a nice, quiet desk job somewhere deep in the bowels of the State Department. He'd go stark raving mad in less than two months, but that thought didn't trouble Fielder at all. He was more concerned with whether or not he might be able to wrangle Lee's job in the Q-Bureau when he left. It seemed like a pretty cushy position, and he'd been wanting his own office. Maybe Billy would even let him have a pretty assistant of his own . . .
"Hey, what's that?" Carter interrupted Fielder's daydream.
"What's what?"
"That!"
The sky was a solid gray, and it had started drizzling again. A small figure was huddled under a tree in the Petrescu front yard. With the hood of her pink jacket up, it was impossible to see her face, but she seemed to be looking around, waiting for something.
"Is that the girl, Antonia?" Fielder asked.
"I think so. She just came from around the side of the house."
"If what Mrs. King said about this afternoon was right, she shouldn't be out by herself," Lopez muttered. "What are they doing in there?"
"I don't know," Carter said, "but what do we do about the kid?"
The three men watched as the girl got up and darted out of the yard. She ran quickly across the street, toward the King house.
"What's she going over there for?" Carter asked.
"I don't know," Fielder said. "Mrs. King did have the girl over there the other day, playing with her boys. Maybe she's just going over there to hang out."
"Seems kind of secretive about it," Lopez said. "I think we should stop her."
Fielder, as the senior agent, was the one in charge. "I don't think it's bad for her to be at Mrs. King's house. We know who she is, and she works for us. She may have even sent her over there herself."
"Then, why wouldn't she take her over herself?" Carter said. "Why let her go alone if she's worried about her safety?"
Fielder had to admit that it was a good question.
"I'll check it out," Fielder said. "You two stay with the van and continue watching the house. I'll be back in a few minutes."
Tailing a little girl to her friends' house was pretty high on the list of the most ridiculous things Fielder had had to do since he joined the Agency, but Fielder was so bored that it sounded better than sitting in the van. At least, it would give him a chance to stretch his legs.
As Fielder shuffled along through the drizzle toward the King house, he figured that he'd probably find the Antonia sitting in front of the tv with Amanda's kids, watching whatever afterschool program was popular these days. Probably some kind of cartoon show or maybe that channel with the music videos, if Mrs. King had cable. Fielder didn't know much about kids, but he knew that tv was big with them. What else would they be doing on a rainy day when they couldn't play outside?
At first, Fielder thought that he'd ring the bell and make up some excuse to get Amanda's mother to let him into the house for a few minutes. He'd never met Mrs. West, but she'd become something of an Agency joke after everyone had tired of making housewife jokes about Mrs. King. A couple of years ago, she'd actually fallen in love with a Russian defector who had lived in her neighborhood temporarily. Before that, she'd accidentally hit a carful of assassins while having a driving lesson. Fielder had even heard rumors that she'd almost been assassinated because she'd accidentally bought a book of encrypted information at a used book shop but that she'd been too clueless to even notice. He could believe it. If it was true that the woman hadn't realized during the last few years that her daughter had joined the Agency and had daily dealings in the world of espionage, she was probably a clueless pushover. He could probably tell her anything, and she'd believe it.
But then, Fielder had another thought. With Scarecrow and Mrs. King being so paranoid about everything these days, maybe Mrs. West was paranoid, too. He didn't want to spend the afternoon trying to concoct some ridiculous story to convince a grandmother to let him into her house just to find out if the neighbor girl was visiting. He could just go and have a look through the windows and see for himself. It would take less time, and Mrs. West was so clueless that she'd never notice him anyway. She was probably busy with her knitting or crossword puzzles, and the kiddies would have their eyes glued to the tv screen. Piece of cake!
The first window he looked in, at the front of the house, didn't help. There was no one in the front room.
"They must be at the back of the house," Fielder thought, circling around the side.
As he did so, he passed by the detached garage. There were odd sounds coming from inside. When he heard the sounds of clanking chains, he figured that someone must be working on Mrs. King's car. Then, there came a high, unearthly wail and the sound of a man's maniacal laughter. Was that a girl's scream he heard?
Fielder tried the side door to the garage and found it unlocked. He looked inside, checking to see if anyone was standing near the door. He couldn't see anyone. He couldn't see anything. All around him was blackness. What was going on?
The strange sounds continued. There was a loud creaking, followed by the hooting of an owl. An owl in daytime? It was dark because of the rain, but the sun hadn't set quite yet. A woman wept, and then there was the sound of an electric zap.
Cautiously, Fielder entered the garage, stepping slowly into the blackness. He reached out a hand to touch it, and realized that he was surrounded by black curtains. Carefully, he parted them to reveal . . . more blackness and more curtains. A wolf howled and there was an eerie cackling, like . . . like a witch at Halloween? Underneath those sounds, Fielder heard the voices of children. He couldn't see them, but they were somewhere nearby, talking in hushed tones.
He grinned in the darkness. He thought that he understood. Amanda must have let her kids take over the garage so they could watch a movie with their friends or something. It was close to Halloween. It must be some kind of monster movie.
Satisfied that he knew where the Petrescu girl was, even if he couldn't actually see her, Fred turned and fumbled around at the curtains, trying to find the place where he'd come in. That was went he tripped.
There was a cord, coming from a place he couldn't see, stretched out along the base of the curtains. He caught his foot on it, and something that felt like a pile of empty cardboard boxes fell on him.
"Did you hear that?" a boy's voice asked.
"Hear what?" a girl asked.
Okay, so Antonia Petrescu was here. Fielder knew that he better beat it out of there before they spotted him. He shook the cord off his feet and groped his way to the garage door. Behind him, there was the sound of more chains clanking, the groans of some kind of hideous monster, and the sound of children's damp sneakers squeaking slightly on the smooth concrete floor of the garage. The last sound was the one that worried him. Just as he reached the door, it opened.
"Jamie, dinner is going to be late. I brought you a-Aaah!" An older woman screamed right in Fielder's face.
In a panic, he pushed past her and ran for the van.
"It's those men again!" Dotty West cried. "Help! Police!"
Something hard hit him in the back as he raced down the driveway. Hot liquid splashed on him and soaked through his jacket. Instead of making him stop, it made him run harder. Fielder practically catapulted himself into the back of the van.
"Drive!" he shouted, pulling off his jacket.
"What happened?" asked Carter.
"She spotted me, and she wants to call the police. Just drive!"
"What about our stakeout?"
"It's over if the police catch us! Now, drive!"
Lopez slid into the driver's seat and started the van.
"What about the Petrescus?" Carter asked. "Where's the girl?"
"She's okay, and Scarecrow can take care of things until we can send the next shift. We'll have to get a different vehicle for next time. What the heck did that woman throw at me?"
"Mrs. King's mother threw something at you?"
Fred Fielder's jacket smelled like chocolate. For some reason, there was also a marshmallow stuck to the back.
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Mr. and Mrs. Petrescu were very angry with their daughter when they found her standing on the King driveway with a distraught Mrs. West and a confused Jamie.
"What do you mean, sneaking out of the house without telling us?" Doina demanded.
"You were talking," Antonia said sullenly. "I just wanted to come and help Jamie with the sound effects for the haunted house."
"We were copying sounds from the sound effects tapes I got at the library," Jamie explained. "We wanted to pick out the best ones and arrange them-"
"You should know better than to go off by yourself," Anton said, interrupting Jamie, "especially after what happened this afternoon."
"It was awful!" Dotty said. "Did you see that man, Lee? He was there, hiding in the garage! I think we should call the police immediately!"
Lee had seen it. They had just come out of the house, looking for Antonia, when Fred Fielder had come running down the street like the devil was after him. Then, security team in the van just took off. Lee was going to have a word with Billy about this.
"He could have hurt the children!" Dotty cried. "The poor things are terrified."
Oddly, Jamie and Antonia weren't terrified. Mr. and Mrs. Petrescu looked scared, and Amanda looked worried, although probably not for the same reason. Antonia looked . . . suspicious? The girl's dark eyes were narrowed, and her gaze traveled to each of the adults in turn.
Lee glanced at Jamie and was surprised to see him looking back at him, his gaze calm, steady, and oddly blank. What had Jamie seen? Had he gotten a good look at the man who ran away, good enough to know that it wasn't one of the men who had tried to grab Antonia at the school?
"Are you okay, Jamie?" Lee asked gently.
"I'm fine," Jamie said. His voice was expressionless, and Lee had the strange feeling that Jamie was studying him, trying to gauge his reaction.
"I think we should get the kids inside," Lee said. "I'll take care of calling the police."
While Dotty gave everyone hot chocolate and invited the Petrescus to stay for dinner and Philip tried to pry the details of what happened out of his grandmother and Antonia, lamenting that he'd missed all the excitement, Lee went upstairs to Amanda's room to "call the police" in private. In fact, he called the Agency.
"I don't know what happened, but Fielder not only spooked Amanda's mother and the kids, he abandoned his post!" Lee complained after updating Billy on the situation. "I want someone down here right now, Billy! The Petrescu house is unguarded, and Antonia somehow disabled the security alarm on her window with wires and bubble gum!"
"Wires and bubble gum?" Billy asked.
Lee sighed. "I can't explain it, Billy. Just send someone, okay? And, can you send someone to child-proof the security system better so Antonia can't mess with it again?"
"If she figured out how to hot-wire the thing with wires and bubble gum, I don't think child-proofing it is the right term," Billy said.
"I know. I hope her parents can knock some sense into the kid's head," Lee grumbled. "She's not a little kid, and if she's determined to sneak out, she's smart enough to manage it, one way or another. The best we can do is try to make her understand that she's putting herself in danger if she does."
"I know," Billy said. "Between what Francine found out and what Anton told you, it's enough for us to take this Adrian in. She called in Chen to help her investigate the hotel, and they found something interesting on the fifth floor. Stefan and Vasile aren't there, but there are signs that they've been there. Hopefully, Adrian can tell us where they're hiding out."
"You know, it might not be a bad idea to get Anton in on the questioning," Lee said. "Adrian is, or at least was, his friend. He may be able to get him to talk or having him there may put more pressure on Adrian. But I don't want to leave Doina and Antonia without protection. They're here at Amanda's now, but they'll have to go home sometime, and Amanda has her family to consider."
"Help will be there soon. Why did Antonia sneak out in the first place?" Billy asked. "Did she say?"
"She said she went to go help Jamie work on the haunted house," Lee said, "but I think it's more than just that. I noticed she took the wires she used from Jamie's stash, so I think this was more than just a whim she had this afternoon. I think she's been planning this for awhile."
"You think that she was planning to run away or something?"
"No," Lee said slowly. "Not quite. I think that she was going to come back She didn't take anything with her. It sounds weird, but I think she wanted to see what would happen if she did it."
"Just testing the security?"
"Maybe, but I think she was really testing her parents."
"Some teenage rebellion thing?"
"Kind of, but it may be more complicated than that. I think I'll let Amanda delve into this one. She has better instincts for this kind of thing."
"How are Amanda's kids? You said that Antonia was with Jamie when Fred spooked them. Is he okay?"
"I don't know," Lee said. "He's acting a little weird. I think he might have seen something that his grandmother didn't see, but I don't know what. I'm going to try to talk to him later, when we can get some time alone."
"Let me know how that goes. I'll have the new security team alert you when they arrive."
"Tell one of them to come to Amanda's house and pretend to be a plainclothes policeman," Lee said. "Her family is expecting one to come. He'll have to hear them all talk about what's been happening around here, but that's not bad. Then, he can escort the Petrescus home."
When Lee hung up the phone to go downstairs and join the others for dinner, he heard a noise at Amanda's bedroom door. He opened it swiftly and caught a glimpse of Jamie heading downstairs. Lee had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd been spying on him.
All through dinner, Jamie and Antonia were quiet. Dotty and Philip didn't notice because they were busy talking. Dotty thought that Amanda ought to help establish a neighborhood watch program
"If we get everyone involved," she said, "that should stop things like this from happening in the future. The neighborhoods with high crime rates are the ones where the neighbors don't do anything to report what's happening. We all have to be vigilant!"
Philip was talking about what he'd do if he came across one of those mysterious men. "He'd be sorry for messing with me!"
"Don't you go trying to fight anyone," Amanda warned him sternly. "One boy against two grown men isn't a fair fight."
"Aw, mom, I wouldn't hurt them that badly."
"Philip, I mean it! This is no joking matter. Men like that can be very dangerous. If you see them, call for help, don't try to take them on by yourself."
Jamie was silent. He just kept looking from his mother to Lee and back again. Just watching. So was Antonia, although she was really watching her parents.
When dinner was over, Lee started to help Amanda clear the table. He whispered a quick word in her ear about Antonia, and Amanda agreed to talk to her. Lee called everyone else over to watch tv until the "plainclothes police" arrived, and Amanda asked Antonia to give her a hand.
Antonia gave her a look that said that she knew why Amanda was really keeping her from watching tv with the others.
"I suppose you know that you shouldn't have sneaked out today," Amanda started.
Antonia nodded.
"Your parents were very worried. We were all worried."
She nodded again.
"Why did you do it?"
"I wanted to see Jamie and help with the haunted house."
"The real reason, Antonia."
Amanda had expected Antonia to look away and try to clam up, but she didn't.
"You tell me," Antonia said.
"What does that mean?" Amanda asked.
"You tell me because my parents won't."
"Tell you what?"
"Anything!"
Amanda was really puzzled. "You know what your father does for a living, and you know that he can't talk about it."
"And he can't talk about what happened to me this afternoon either, can he? Is that a government secret, too? My mother won't talk about it either, and she's not government."
Amanda couldn't help but feel sorry for the girl. Her parents had tried to shield her from so many things for much of her life. She didn't even have any brothers or sisters to talk to when the adults just wanted to talk among themselves. All she had was her parents, and she must have felt truly excluded when they kept things from her. But, she was growing up, and it would be impossible to shield her from everything forever.
"That kind of thing happens to you a lot, doesn't it? Some things are difficult, even painful to explain," Amanda said. "Sometimes, people want to explain things but don't really know how."
"You could say that," Antonia said. "Mom just said that what happened today really scared her and that she wants me to be extremely careful but not to talk about it to anyone. She didn't even want me to talk about it to Philip and Jamie anymore, and they were there! I asked her what she was going to do about it, and she just said that she'd talk to my father. Then, you came and she sent me upstairs to my room so she could talk to you without me."
"So, you ran off to get back at your mother for not talking to you? You wanted to make her worry?"
"I wanted to talk to somebody. I went to talk to Jamie."
"But, you planned it out ahead of time," Amanda said. "It took you longer than this afternoon to figure out how to beat the security system."
Now, Antonia did look embarrassed. "I thought that I might have to do something like that sometime. Whenever mom gets worried, she doesn't let me go anywhere or do anything. She and dad just talk to each other, and I have to stay in my room and play. I'm getting a little old to stay in my room and play."
She was, Amanda had to admit, and playing by herself in her room wasn't going to help her feel better. Still, the mother in Amanda had to say, "I know all this secrecy is hard on you, but your parents don't keep things from you to hurt you. They're really just trying to keep you from worrying."
Antonia looked her straight in the eye. "Is that why you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Keep things from Philip and Jamie."
Amanda felt cold all over. "Why do you say that?"
"Because Jamie doesn't know that you work for the government," Antonia said. "When I was talking to him this afternoon, he didn't seem to know what I was talking about."
"Oh, no," Amanda thought.
Meanwhile, in the drizzling darkness outside, two figures in dark raincoats studied the house from across the street. They'd left their car down the block. Tonight wasn't the night to act, but they wanted to get a look at the situation. They'd seen the small figure in the pink jacket run across the road to her friends' house. They'd seen the Agency men drive away. When everyone had gone inside, they'd had a look in the garage, where the children had been playing. They'd learned a lot, far more than the Agency man had. They now had a plan.
