The plastic flexed under the pressure, but the seam did not yield.
“Is it stuck?” Martha asked, tilting her head slightly as she looked up from the foot of the bed.
“It is not a standard plastic latch,” I said, rubbing my left wrist against my trousers. “There is a small, five-sided security screw recessed near the hinge.”
I wedged the tip of the butter knife into the narrow gap anyway, putting the weight of my shoulder behind the blade until the wood of the dining chair groaned under my feet.
With a sharp, dry crack, the white outer ring of the casing split down the middle.
A small piece of molded plastic tumbled past my shoulder, bounced off the quilt, and rolled onto the floorboards.
I pried the split halves apart, exposing the green fiberglass backing of a circular circuit board.
“What do you see?” Martha asked.
“That is not a battery terminal, Martha, that is a polished glass lens,” I said.
The tiny glass bead sat right in the center of the board, positioned behind a drilled opening in the plastic grate, no larger than the head of a match.
