Day 9.
Sean and Owen's Christmas Part 2 by yobshabob
An hour after lights out, Sean and Owen snuck out of their room and into a dusty broom closet. "What do you think?"
Owen folded his arms across his chest and frowned at Sean. "I'm not sure. There's something strange about how they all clam up about it, but I can't get a read on the situation. You?"
Sean fiddled with the cleaning supplies on the shelf before answering. "I think there are a few possibilities. One, the caretaker is doing it, and maybe selling the gifts on the side for a profit."
Owen snorted and shook his head. "Not likely. He's ridiculously devout. 'Thou shalt not steal' and all."
"Right, but if he saw it as some kind of righteous punishment for the kids or something like that, he might justify it in his own mind."
Owen nodded and made a mental note of Sean's analysis. "You said there were a few. What else do you see?" For all of Sean's devil-may-care attitude, he was fastidious, and incredibly observant. It would make him an amazing doctor one day.
"Two, it's one of the kids." Sean frowned. "I don't want to think it's any of them, but knowing the kinds of lives they've had, it's not beyond the realm of possibility."
Owen unfolded his arms and adjusted his glasses. "I don't think it's any of them, at least not directly. The police did investigate, but didn't find anything."
"True, but like Jack said, this house is full of the forgotten boys. How much effort do you think the police really put into the investigation? They have enough on their hands on a regular basis, and chances are, they don't believe the boys anyway." Agitation took hold of Sean, and he paced the small space, kicking up dust in his wake. "I really don't want it to be them."
Seeing his friend's discomfort, Owen cleared his throat. "Sean, even if it is one of the boys, it doesn't make the assumptions okay. This is why we're in the Academy, right? These boys may think they're forgotten, but they're not. We're here, because someone noticed and saw that they needed help."
Sean's pacing stopped and he smiled at his friend. "You're right. We're here, and we're going to figure this out."
Owen pulled out a slim cell phone and sent off a quick update to Mr. Chochran. Peeking over his shoulder at the message, Sean saw the date click over and grinned. "Happy birthday, bro."
Owen stared at the display and felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. He didn't like celebrating the day. Nodding, he closed the phone and hid it away before they snuck back to their beds. The memory of spending the day at the park with his mother flashed through his mind and the knot loosened just a little bit. "Thanks, Sean. Let's get back before we're caught."
***
Owen spent his first day as a teenager scrubbing bathrooms after stopping a fight between two of the younger boys. "No one is excused to use force in my home." The caretaker had been adamant that there were no rewards for heroic actions, and that because he physically separated the kids, Owen was a part of the fight. He put himself in it, regardless of his intentions. The fighters were on bathroom duty for the next two weeks, though, so he was getting off easy with just one day of the foul chore. As he scrubbed the downstairs bathroom in the entry hall, muffled voices rose up from the heater vent. He bent low to listen, scrubbing the floor as he strained to hear the raised voices.
"There's nothing you can do to stop me. If you get in my way, I'll make it public." Owen didn't recognize the speaker, so he flipped open his phone and recorded the conversation, hoping to identify him later. "Try keeping me out again, and I'll do more than just hurt them."
Ice spread through Owen's veins at the obvious threat.
"Leave the lads alone." The caretaker's voice was worn down, dejected even. "The key will be under the mat. I'll do as you say so long as you don't touch my boys."
They must have moved away from the vent for the rest of their conversation, because Owen couldn't hear anything more of their conversation. He immediately forwarded the recording to Mr. Chochran and began mulling over the repercussions of what he'd heard. The caretaker was definitely involved, but sounded more like an unwilling participant. He seemed to genuinely care for the boys, and they would need to handle the situation delicately if they didn't want him to end up smack in the middle of it.
He finished his chores quickly and then set Sean's Bible sideways on his shelf. It was the signal they'd arranged to designate a late-night rendezvous. With this new information, Owen knew they needed a plan, and if there was any one thing he was good at, it was strategy.
***
While Owen was cleaning toilets, Sean was making friends. "Dude, if you want to do it right, you've got to fold it here and here." He pointed out the creases on his origami frog to a massive boy named Stew, and showed him how to fold it again. As Stew and several other guys tried to fold jumping frogs, Sean slipped in questions about Christmas.
"I heard some jackoff stole all the presents last year?"
"Yeah. Busted a few heads too." Stew's tongue stuck out the side of his mouth as he concentrated on the last fold. "Don't have any idea how they did it though. I mean, Jack is one of those straight shooters, ya know?" Sean nodded and Stew continued as the last fold slid perfectly into place. "He never gets into any trouble, but he looked like he'd been in a gang fight after the dillweed was done with him. It's not right." A look of triumph spread across his face and he held up his frog for his friends to see.
Sean clapped him on his shoulder and grinned. "Awesome job! I love the way you got the candy bar's logo centered on the back."
Stew's cheeks flushed and he shrugged. "Accident, I swear."
"But cool, nonetheless." Sean bit his tongue the moment the phrase left his mouth, realizing a street kid wouldn't talk like that, but no one seemed to notice or care.
***
Back in the dusty closet, Owen replayed the recording for Sean to hear.
"Whoa. That's messed up." Sean rested his head back against a stack of toilet paper and stared at the ceiling. "How do we make this right?"
Owen had been asking himself the same question all day. "We set a trap."
Sean's double take almost brought a smile to Owen's lips...almost.
"We need to make it so the thief is actually caught in the act. Without knowing who the other voice belongs to, or what their strengths are, we're only left with a few options." Owen dusted off a footstool before taking a seat and motioned for Sean to do the same. "We know he needs a key, so that's one place we could foil him. Assuming there's something he needs from those gifts, he'll find a different way to get in if the key isn't waiting for him."
Nodding, Sean took a seat on an upturned five gallon bucket. "Okay, so we lock him out, basically. Then what? How do we make sure he's caught?"
Owen pulled something out of his pocket with a severe expression and Sean sat forward to see. "When no one was looking, I opened one of the gifts." He handed the stuffed dog to Sean. "This was inside."
Eyebrows raised, Sean stared at the plush animal. "And?"
Owen flipped the toy in Sean's hands and pulled at the seam, which easily gave way. "And it's not the presents they're after, it's what's inside of them."
Sean's blood boiled at what he saw inside the stuffed dog. He may have just been a kid, but it didn't take someone with his IQ to understand what was happening. "They're smuggling drugs in toys for orphans?" His hands shook violently when he saw the white powder. His mother had left him behind a dumpster when he was born, and he always suspected it was because of drugs. How else could someone leave a baby with the trash? It was so much worse than what he'd suspected. He'd hoped it was just someone pranking the boys.
Owen leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Yes, and because of that, I don't think we can mess around with trying to do this ourselves. I have a plan." And he did. And half a dozen backup contingencies. "Taking the key is just the first step."
Though it was well past midnight, Owen and Sean stayed in the closet for hours honing the plan and plotting out each move they would have to make in the next two days.
***
It was almost midnight on Christmas eve, and they were ready. The key had been located and taken. Sean and Owen had spent the last two days slowly divesting the toys of their concealed drugs and replacing them with tracking devices. The Frederik team would be following those to wherever the drugs were meant to go, and both the Anderson and Jimacani teams were within a block of them, ready to confront whatever came through that door. Mr. Jimacani worked for the police department, and was there to formally arrest whoever was threatening the caretaker.
Sean and Owen sat in wait, concealed by the couch in the living room, and the tension was palpable. "Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." Sean continued to recite the poem under his breath, and Owen had to elbow him in the ribs to get him to shut up.
In that moment, the front doorknob jiggled, and a muffled curse made its way through the thick oak as the thieves found the key missing. Two heartbeats later, the small window beside the door shattered, and two thugs came in wearing ski masks and holding 9mm handguns.
"I don't know what he's playing at, but I'm going to kill the old man for this." The speaker was the second voice from their recording, and Owen flexed his fists several times to keep from jumping out and beating on the criminals on the other side of the couch. In some kind of twisted, reverse Santa, they loaded all of the boxes into a large cloth sack and slung it over the taller of the two's shoulders. The one with the toys left straight away, while the other, the speaker, turned down the hall toward the caretaker's quarters. Coupled with his threat and the fact that he was walking through the house armed, Owen signaled Mr. Jimacani and held Sean back from jumping out and trying to be a hero. "Wait!" He signed the word several times to make sure Sean saw and understood and after a moment, he nodded sitting back on his heels.
Just then, the front door crashed open and Mr. Jimacani and a stocky guy from the Anderson team came blasting in, weapons of their own trained on the intruder. "Freeze!"
The man with the gun whirled on them, but before he could register what was happening, Mr. Jimacani fired, sending 50,000 volts of electricity arcing through the masked man and making him drop to the floor without having time to get off a shot. The short guy had him in cuffs in moments and hollered, "Clear."
At this point, there had been enough of a commotion to rouse the caretaker and several of the boys. As they all poured down the hallway toward them, Mr. Jimacani waved Sean and Owen away, and the boys blended in with the gathering crowd just as the caretaker pushed his way to the front. "What is going on here?"
His demands were echoed by several of the boys and Mr. Jimacani holstered his weapon before offering his hand to the caretaker. "I'm Officer Jimacani, and I witnessed this man and one other breaking into your house." He waved a hand to the broken glass by the front door. "My partner and I came in to investigate, and found this man walking around with a gun. His accomplice escaped before we could get him, and I'm afraid he ran off with a large bag of something."
Leo groaned, and Jack shook his head. Owen kept his gaze trained on the caretaker, waiting to see this unfold.
When the man from the Anderson team removed the ski mask, the caretaker's energy seemed to flee him. He collapsed into the nearest chair and hung his head in his hands. "I know that kid." The officers waited, and he looked up at them. "He was one of the first boys here at the home. Back when my wife still lived. He found out she'd taken funds from the home, and threatened to expose her if I didn't cooperate." The defeat on his face was a stark contrast to the drill-sergeant from earlier. "After she died, I went along with it, because we have kids. I paid it all back, every cent, but I couldn't let them think of her that way. Our grandbabies can't know that she wasn't a saint." His voice choked away and surprisingly, it was Leo who stepped forward to comfort the old man.
The man from the Anderson team also stepped up beside the caretaker and put a hand on his shoulder. "If there's no money missing, you don't need to worry. The state doesn't prosecute dead people." The group of boys had grown and they all surrounded the caretaker. "It looks like you do a lot of good her, sir. We can't fix this overnight, but I think I can at least make Christmas here just a little better." He flipped open his phone and typed out a message.
While Mr. Jimacani took statements and did all of the official police work, Sean and Owen swept up the broken glass, and Jack secured a piece of plywood over the hole in the window. Barely ten minutes later, the doorbell rang and when the caretaker opened it, Academy members were lined up down the block, each holding a hastily wrapped gift. The man from the Anderson team grinned at the caretaker's slack jaw. "It's not much, but I let my friends know what happened, and well...it's Christmas."
One by one, the Academy members came forward and handed their gift to one of the boys. By the time Mr. Buble came through the door at the end of the line, each kid, Sean and Owen included, had at least four presents. With a nod from the caretaker, the boys tore into the packages and exclamations of surprise and excitement were probably heard down the street.
The Academy didn't skimp, and they always came through in a pinch. Owen suspected that many of the toys were originally meant for other children, but the generosity of his family of choice was never-ending. There were remote control cars, iPods, action figures, and a bike. Sweaters and socks piled up beside each boy as well, and the weight that had lifted from the caretaker's shoulders let him sit taller as he observed the impromptu Christmas celebration happening around him. Dr. Roberts had brought an XBox 360 with a box full of games and was setting it up in the living room while an Academy bird showed Jack how to strum a few chords on his new guitar. Stew and one of the older kids were showing several younger ones how to ride a bike, and the general mood around them was radiant joy.
Sean motioned for Owen to join him in the upstairs supply closet. "Owen, I'm sorry I dragged you out here on this Christmas assignment." He pulled out a carefully folded box and handed it to his best friend.
Inside was an intricately folded chess set made from pages ripped out of Sean's 'homework'.
Owen smiled at Sean. "No, I owe you an apology. We succeeded here because of who we are and how we operate. If you hadn't convinced me, they wouldn't be having Christmas downstairs, and those drugs would be going heaven-knows-where." He clapped Sean on the shoulder and steered him toward the door. "Let's go downstairs and show them just how good our teamwork is in Halo. Merry Christmas, Sean."
"Merry Christmas, Owen."
~Happy Holidays everyone~