23 Minutes (11 page)

But she finds she isn't strong enough.

She lets the folder itself drop to the street, thinking the manila is too thick. But apparently there are still too many pages. She sticks
half under her arm, and still has no luck. Halves what she has left. Still no joy. Half again, and she's barely able to manage that.

This is my life
, Zoe thinks, for what the folder holds is the information the group home has gathered on her. All the various doctors' evaluations, the social workers' reports, the P-34 forms filled in by a succession of housemothers.

Except it's not her life. It's people's perceptions of who she is. And they're as wrong about her as she was about Daniel. Destroying this folder full of misinformation in increments of fewer than a dozen pages at a time is not nearly as satisfying as doing the whole thing at once. Or as punching Daniel.

Someone passing by gives a loud
Hmph!
full of scorn and self-satisfaction, and Zoe looks up to see the mother with two children. She isn't sure if it's the mother or the boy who has vocalized this disapproval, but it's the girl who whines, “Mommy, she's littering! She shouldn't be littering! Somebody's going to need to clean up after her!”

“Somebody will,” Mommy assures her, hustling both children away.

Coming from the other direction, Miss Aloha-Pants, who once helped Zoe pick up these papers, now aligns herself with the mother and kids, muttering to them while inclining her head to indicate Zoe, “Some people.”

Zoe sees that several of the sheets she'd shoved under her arm have slid loose and fallen.
Like there's nothing in the world worse than a litterbug
, Zoe thinks. Still, she stoops to gather them up. And as she does so, drops some of the ragged pieces from the little bit she
was
able to rip.

Her mind flashes back—not a playback, just a vivid memory such as a normal person might have—to being inside the bank with all those deposit and withdrawal slips. Daniel stooping down to help her gather them up. Daniel supplying her with the name that had evaded her recall: Blitzen.

What kind of bank robber
, Zoe asks herself,
knows the names of Santa's reindeer?

Yeah
, she retorts to herself,
you wouldn't be so eager to fit a different meaning to what you KNOW was going on if he didn't have those gorgeous blue eyes.

That's the trouble with the world vs. TV and movies, she reasons. Hollywood makes you think all bad guys
look
like bad guys. Swarthy. Ugly. Yellow-toothed and pockmarked. The kind of guys who kick kittens and spit when they talk.

Not the kind of guys who smile kindly and try to put you at your ease when you've been clumsy and are clearly out of your element. Who try to get overbearing bank guards not to hassle you.

That just goes to prove he has a disregard for authority
, Zoe tells herself.

But she knows this is the stupidest thing she's told herself all day.

There's a world of difference between angling to let the bank guard leave her alone so she can be out of the rain, and holding up the bank.

But that's what he was going to do, she reminds herself. He was going to rob the bank.

She tries to convince herself that Daniel is not the kind of bank robber who would start shooting indiscriminately.

But the truth is: She obviously knows nothing about him.

She can't help remembering the first shooting she ever witnessed, which—until today—she had assumed would be the only shooting she ever witnessed: how she sat, paralyzed by shock and fear, while the Family Counseling receptionist—
the receptionist!
—talked Mom into putting the gun down. While the receptionist called for an ambulance. While the receptionist administered the first aid that saved Dad's life. While the receptionist
made excuses for Zoe
, saying, “You're just a kid. You're just thirteen. Of course there was nothing you could do.” Letting Zoe off too easily because
she
didn't know about playback. Didn't know Zoe
could have
stopped it, could have made it go away—if only Zoe hadn't squandered her ten playbacks for that particular twenty-three-minute block of time by trying to get Mom and Dad to stop arguing during the ride and in the waiting room.

Proof, finally, of what her mother had always claimed: that Zoe was a waste of time and effort.

If Zoe does nothing this time, the outcome will be the same as when she watched from the card shop. She will not be there to distract Daniel, and somehow or other that results in a whole bunch of people dying.

She realizes where this train of thought is leading because she has skirted this issue already. That the original events were the best: where only Daniel dies—well, and the robber himself—and where she ends up spattered by their blood. Except now she knows Daniel deserves to die.

Sort of.

Well, not really.

She can't convince herself of that.

And no matter if he does deserve it: She can't bring herself to intentionally cause it to happen.

Not because of the eyes, the hair, the smile, the kindness.

But because she's the kind of person who can't make those village-vs.-the-child decisions.

Not deciding is deciding
, the sociology teacher had insisted.

Zoe revisits the question she asked herself before:
What kind of bank robber knows the names of Santa's reindeer?

The question she realizes she
should
be asking herself is:
What kind of bank robber lets himself get distracted by helping an awkward girl feel at ease?

Daniel has not acted like a bank robber.

But neither has he acted like a policeman. Even an off-duty policeman. Or an FBI agent, for that matter.

Or at least she doesn't think so, with her admittedly limited experience with law enforcement people.

He knew the bank robber
, she reminds herself.

Can she let him die? Him, and a whole bunch of others, just because she
thinks
a policeman would have identified himself to her while they were sitting there drinking cocoa and chatting at Dunkin' Donuts?

There wasn't that much time
, she tells herself.

First, he didn't know what she wanted.

Then, she sounded like a crazy person, talking about dead friends no longer being dead, and about knowing what was going to happen in the future.

Until what she was saying started to happen. Until he saw for
himself. And only then was he convinced. Or maybe he just wanted to believe because he couldn't stand watching those people in the bank get killed. Even after she warned him,
I've seen you die
, he gave her the word
armadillo.

Rather than saying, “I'm a policeman.”

Which might have seemed irrelevant at the time.

She mutters to herself, “Blitzen.”

The biker guy walking his Chihuahua glances her way with a sour expression and asks, “You talking to me?” in a tone that indicates she'd better not be.

Zoe ignores him. She puts her arms around herself and says, “Playback.”

CHAPTER 10

T
IME RESETS TO
1:16.

Zoe doesn't take the ten seconds to tuck her folder under her shirt or the five extra steps to dump it into the trash. She just clutches the pack of papers, but doesn't worry if she loses bits and pieces of it—the story of her former life—as she runs as fast as she can to Independence Street. To the Fitzhugh House. She slams the front door so hard that a man—possibly the M. Van Der Meer of “M. Van Der Meer, Designer”—opens his first-floor door to peek out at her.

She scowls, not even exactly in his direction, and he retreats back into his room.

A moment later, she hears Daniel's voice as he takes leave of the second-floor office.

Zoe has remained by the foot of the stairs, safe from Daniel's touch. Safe from the blueness of his eyes.

He's about to start down the stairs when she calls up to him, “Are you a policeman?”

Daniel ponders her, or the question, a moment before answering, “No …”

Zoe considers turning and leaving.

Instead, she says, “But you're carrying a gun.”

Daniel glances around the foyer. Perhaps he doesn't like her
broadcasting this information. Perhaps he's being alert for ambush, which either a policeman or a bank robber might be. Even more slowly than he gave his previous answer, he says, “Yes …”

Every nerve ending is telling Zoe to get out of there.

She's getting pretty good at ignoring her instincts.

But she does have her arms wrapped around herself, ready. She can say
playback
faster than he can get downstairs. Faster, she hopes, than he can draw the gun, if that becomes his intent. Though it's hard to think of him doing that. She asks, “Are you planning on robbing the bank?”

Like ANYONE would answer yes
, Zoe chides herself.

His expression says he's surprised by her question, incredulous that she would ask, and that he's wondering who the hell she is.

Instead of sharing any of that, he tells her, “No, to the bank question. Let me show you something. Don't be alarmed.” He's started down the stairs again, while simultaneously reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket.

And as soon as he's said not to be alarmed, Zoe is more alarmed than ever.

“Don't come any closer,” she warns, stepping backward, toward the door.

Daniel stops partway down. He's holding a card, which he tosses in her direction.

Of course, Zoe is totally distracted by trying to catch it—and yet still manages to miss. But fortunately Daniel doesn't take advantage, and stays where he is even while she goes to pick it up off the floor.

The card is laminated, and there's a picture of Daniel. For a
moment Zoe thinks he's showing her his driver's license. Then the words sink in:

              
Daniel Lentini

              
Private Investigator

“OK?” he asks. “May I come down? You're not afraid of me?”

She looks up at him and doesn't know what to say.

Private investigator.
It was not a possibility that had even crossed her mind.

I almost let him die
, Zoe thinks.
I assumed the worst, and I was prepared to let him die.

He takes her silence as permission to move.

She's aware of him walking down the stairs slowly, evidently to avoid spooking her—either that, or for dramatic effect—and she has yet to make up her mind if this is a good thing or bad.

She still hasn't decided, even when he's standing directly in front of her.

He's not exactly annoyed, but neither is he amused. He says, “And now it's my turn: Who are you? What's going on?”

ANYBODY can have a card printed
, she tells herself. She also tells herself that if she hadn't changed her mind, he would have died, and it would have been on her soul.

She says, “I—I saw the gun, and I …” The identification card has started vibrating.

Oh.

No, it hasn't: It's Zoe's hand that is shaking. “I thought … I thought …”

Somehow or other that image has come back into her head: Daniel, his eyes wide and blue and frightened and defiant, saying “Take the shot,” and the guard taking the shot. The guns going off, near simultaneously. The feeling of Daniel's blood hitting her skin.

He recognized the robber; the robber recognized him. And Daniel didn't say out loud what he knew, so that the robber wouldn't be provoked into killing anybody else.

He died then to protect them, and now she almost let him get killed yet again.

Her knees are about to buckle, and she puts her hand out to grab the banister. Either she misses entirely, or Daniel intercepts her, but in any case he takes her by the arm, telling her, “Sit.”

She sits, on the bottom step.

And suddenly Zoe is shaking so hard she can't stop.

Ditto for Zoe crying.

She almost let him die.

She is less than worthless.

The door of 1C, the Designer, cracks open, and Zoe screams, “Go away!”

The door snaps shut.

Daniel sits down next to her and instinctively goes to put a comforting arm around her. Then clearly thinks better of that idea. Being in the system, Zoe has heard social workers talk about the conundrum. Adult guys who have
any
possibility of
ever
even
potentially
working with children—priests, teachers, caseworkers, police—Zoe knows they've all had it drummed into their heads: Under no circumstances are they to touch a minor unless it's to actually pick them up off the floor if they've fallen, or out of the
pool if they're drowning, or away from a building that's burning.

And, even then—witnesses preferred.

But Zoe can't stop crying, and Daniel reconsiders again. He puts both arms around her and holds her, self-consciously but gently.

She buries her face in his chest and sobs. He'll never be able to get all the tears and snot and drool out of his jacket, she tells herself.

He doesn't say a word—which is good. He knows he doesn't know what the situation is, so how can he assure her that everything is going to be all right? He just rocks her, very, very gently, and holds her.

Ridiculous as such a feeling is, Zoe has never felt safer in her life. And that
is
ridiculous. Daniel is right up there with President-for-only-thirty-two-days William Henry Harrison as a lightning rod for disaster. Who, with any sense at all, holds onto a lightning rod?

Eventually Zoe gains enough control to be mortified, to wish there were a restroom nearby that she could duck into so she could stick her face under some cold water. Like for maybe a day or two. Of course, to a certain extent, she could do this, but initiating a playback at this point seems a bit irrelevant, unless you count saving yourself from humiliation as relevant.