Burning Blue (13 page)

I called her. “How’d you get my number?”

“Are you serious?”
Angela said.

“Amazing. I truly believed you were a newb in comp sci.”

“I didn’t believe you for a second with that corny, ‘Duh, how do you send a text message?’”

“What’s up?”

“Not over the phone.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Home, but we can’t meet here. My father’s an idiot. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“Where’s home?”

“Classon and Route 22.”

“Okay, I’m like a mile away—”

“I know where you live. Meet me at the McDonald’s on 22. You know what this is about, right?”

“Nicole, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Click.

On the way there, I ran a search on her address. It checked out: Michael Sammick, 1714 Classon Boulevard, not a great area.

She was waiting for me at the order counter. “You have any money?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She said to the woman behind the counter, “Two vanilla shakes, two fries.” She turned to me. “What are you getting?”

We grabbed a booth in the back. Angela drew her phone and clicked up an email from Arachnomorph:
I know you’re looking for me. It’s over on my end, unless you start me up again. If you keep stirring the nest, I’ll bite you too.

“Untraceable?” I said.

“Would I be here if it was traceable?” She was slamming the fries and shake. For somebody who couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds, she could put it down.

“Why are you doing this?” I said. “Trying to help Nicole. What’s in it for you?”

“Hello, moron, the reward money? That and she was nice to me.”

“Nice doesn’t mean you risk your life for her.”

“She was
very
nice, okay? Last year, while you were gone. Things sucked and I’d had a few too many drinks.” She saw I wasn’t too surprised. “In
school,
Spaceman. I went to the bathroom to throw up. I’d been suspended once already for cutting too many classes. One more suspension, and I was done for the semester. I purged and was feeling better, or at least well enough to fake my way through the rest of the day. I’m walking out of the bathroom, feeling like I just might get away with it when I run into Nicole in the hall. She pushes me back inside the bathroom. At first I’m like, are you seriously looking for me to dig your eyes out of your head with my thumbnails? But then she pointed to my pants. I had missed the bowl and splattered vomit all over my jeans. Lucky me, I happened to be wearing white that day. Nicole gave me hers.”

“Her pants? And she wore yours?”

“Dude, I’m like size zero. You think Nicole Castro would fit into my jeans? She told me to wait in the stall, and then she went to the music room and came back with band pants and we made the switch.”

“
Band
pants? Those goofy things that go up to your chest?”

“Baggy as eighties disco, exactly. She wore those and gave me her jeans.”

“Why didn’t she just stay in her jeans and give you the, like—”

“Band pants? I wondered the same thing. She said she didn’t want me to risk drawing attention to myself.”

“So then
she’s
walking around like the goof, and everybody’s looking at her?”

“Everybody was looking at her anyway, and
she
wasn’t drunk. Look,” she said between long pulls on her milkshake, “I don’t know why people do these things, screwing themselves for other people, but they do. It’s annoyingly inexplicable. They’re just freaks, what can I tell you? Are you gonna eat those fries?”

I pushed them her way. My stomach was weak. I was suddenly panicked. If Angela had traced the leaking of the Arachnomorph emails back to me, then Detective Barrone and the NJPD cyber crime team easily could have too. “How’d you know I leaked the emails?”

“I didn’t, till now. Not for sure, anyway. I mean, I suspected it, of course. Jay, c’mon, the way you were looking at Nicole in Schmidt’s office? In love with her even after the burn, huh? I don’t know if that’s super-sweet or super-weird.”

“I’m not in love with—”

“Right, okay, whatever, here’s my proposal: We team up and split the reward.”

“I’m not doing this for the money.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, more for me. Look,
whatever
your reasoning, you know by now this is too big a job for one person. Even if the Recluse is somebody from school, if you include staff, that’s almost thirty-eight hundred suspects to check out. Then you throw in people outside of school who could be jealous of her, and you’re dealing with like half the population of New Jersey. What are you riding for taps?”

“Conficker88.”

“Please tell me you’re not serious.”

“What?”

“Freeware punched holes in that thing ages ago.”

“You’re kidding.”

“
You’re
kidding. Riding 88 and expecting to stay anonymous? Maybe teaming up with you is a bad idea.”

“When was it blown?”

“At least yesterday. Maybe even the day before.”

Somebody who could talk my language. Very cool. “What’s your horse?”

“The Sleeze321 worm.”

“Charming.”

“At least she can keep a secret.”

“Infect me.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” She zipped it to my phone with a patch that I opened first to prevent the worm from vaporizing my hard drive. We compared notes. We had the exact same suspect list. I told her I had ruled out Sabbatini, Schmidt and Mr. Sager.

“Let’s get back to Bendix,” she said. “What’s your take on him?”

“Long shot.”

“Right,” she said. “No motivation. You’re sure he asked her to lie about something?”

“What else could he have been doing?”

“We better check him out, then. I’ll run strings on him.”

“I already did,” I said.

“And?”

“Nothing.”

She popped a fistful of fries. “Look, that thing that happened back at that house party freshman year: Obviously I was bombed.”

“I’m surprised you remember it.”

“Caitlin told me what you did for me.” She frowned. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“You can relax, though. I’m not into you that way. You’re a little too clean for my taste, no offense.”

“Absolutely none taken.”

“Good.”

“Hey, this is crazy, but do you think she could have done it to herself?”

“Why would Nicole Castro burn herself?”

“Right.” I sipped my shake, studying Angela as she looked at her phone and Nicole’s Facebook page. I was getting into business with a girl who drank in school, but did I have any choice? Angela was right: I needed a hand. She was going to hack at this thing anyway, until she got her reward money. She would be happy to do the one thing I couldn’t: hack Nicole. I didn’t want to violate whatever was going on between us, friendship or certainly the beginnings of it. Also, I was afraid of what I might find in her files. If nothing was there, Angela wouldn’t bother to tell me about them. She didn’t strike me as the type to waste time on gossip. If she did find something scary, she would tell me. I was okay with that. My ears were open to any information that would help Nicole, or help her help herself, if she did in fact burn herself. Whether Angela was an alcoholic or not, I had to work with her. That didn’t mean I had to trust her, yet.

A little after one in the morning the phone rang. My father. I was sure he’d talked with Detective Barrone. He said,
“You couldn’t call me to check in?”

“You couldn’t call
me
?”

“You sound weird. I don’t know, afraid or something.”

“You’re leaving me alone since I’m thirteen. I’m just mainlining a little heroin.”

“Jay? I’m sorry, okay?”

Now I knew he was drinking. I’d been about to ask him what went down between Mr. Castro and him all those years ago, but no way I was going to get anything substantive out of him when he was smashed.

“Jay?”

“I heard you. Look, just go to bed.”

“I didn’t mean it, Jay.”

“I know. I gotta go.”

“Okay. Okay. Jay?”

“Yes,
Dad
?” Rolling my eyes.

“I’ll see you Saturday. Maybe we’ll go to the driving range.”

“Or we could just smash our hands with sledgehammers and guzzle Drano.”

“Why do you have to . . . Look, just stay out of trouble.” Click.

“Right,” I said to the dial tone. “’Night.” I tapped into his phone account and scanned his Calls Made list. He still hadn’t returned Detective Barrone’s call.

Around two a.m., Angela sent me a link that had helped her worm her way through the NJPD firewall. She’d planted an evercookie when somebody somewhere in the NJPD clicked a link that promised three more inches. The girl was
good.
More than that, sharing information like this, she was beginning to win my trust. She’d only gotten to the gate, though. It was up to me kick it down. I used the code that listed Detective Barrone’s call to my father to wiggle into the Division of Detectives mainframe. I probably had two minutes before the I.T. guys would notice the breach.

Folder: RECLUSE

Folder: DAVID BENDIX

Folder: VIDEO INT. 09 Sept.

I ripped it and got out of there. I played the video through the TV to get a better look at the faces, the eyes. They had Dave in a conference room. An older dude in a tailored suit sat with him. Dave was pale. Barrone was off-screen, pacing. Dave tracked her with glossy eyes.

Barrone: “Again, David, where were you?”

Bendix: “Ma’am, I
told
you.”

Barrone: “And I told
you,
she said you weren’t in the cutout.”

Bendix: “I
was
.”

Barrone: “I don’t buy it. Here’s my thing: It would be odd that you were just hanging out in the hall when the second bell had rung and you were late for class.”

Bendix: “It was English. Mrs. Nally never cares if you’re late. Seriously, ask her. We were doing the metaphysical poets. Would you be in a rush to get yourself some pastoral elegy of John Donne?”

Barrone: “You mean Edmund Spenser.”

Bendix: “Him too.”

Barrone: “This is what happens when you cut class. Why hang in the cutout, with nothing to do? Why not the cafeteria?”

Bendix: “Why not the
cafeteria
?”

Barrone: “I asked you first.”

Bendix (exasperated): “I don’t know what to say.”

Barrone: “I know you don’t. Okay, if you were at the water fountain, who threw the acid?”

Dave: “I told you, it happened out of my line of sight, just past the corner where the hallway splits.”

Barrone: “No, David. No. I checked the acid marks on the floor. I stood where Nicole was standing when she was hit, and I could see the water fountain fine.”

Bendix: “My head was down. I was drinking from the water fountain. I, was,
there.
She, Nicole couldn’t see me. Maybe the glare in the windows—”

Barrone: “Nuh-uh. Nope. No glare that day.
Rainy
that day. Torrential. Besides, the sun never falls on that side of the building. Where were you, Dave?”

Bendix: “You keep asking me the same question, Detective.”

Barrone: “And I’ll keep asking until I get the right answer. Look at me. What are you hiding? I said look at me. Breathe. Listen. I don’t have you pegged as the thrower. I don’t. But you’re lying to me. I can tell. I’m doing this a good while now. You know what? I’m going to do you a favor. I’m gonna tip you off to the two things a liar does when he’s stringing one. Here they are, for the next time a cop taps you for questioning.”

Bendix: “The
next
time?”

Barrone: “How do you
really
feel about Nicole?”

Bendix: “How do I feel about Nicole?”

Barrone: “See, right there. That’s the first tell. I ask a question, you repeat it. You need time to think, and you try to fill the silence by repeating the question. Here’s the second tell: A liar looks right. What’s your name?”

Bendix: “Da-David Bend—”

Barrone: “You’re looking me in the eye. You’re telling me the truth. If I replay this video for you, you’ll see that every time you tell the truth, you’re either looking at me or to the left. When you lie, your eyes tick right. I ask where you live, you tell me Haasbruck Estates: eyes left. DOB, parents’ names for the record, kid brother’s grade in school: eyes left. But when I ask you about Nicole? Eyes right, every time.”

Dave folded his arms on the tabletop and dropped his head into them. “I’m telling you the truth. I swear.”

Barrone: “I get that a lot. Where, David? Where were you when Nicole was hit?”

Bendix’s lawyer: “That’s more than enough, Detective.”

Dave Bendix wiped his eyes and looked directly into Jessica Barrone’s. “Nicole either didn’t see me, or for some unimaginable reason she’s lying to you, Detective. I don’t know why. I really don’t. I was there. I was in the cutout, at the water fountain.”

Barrone squinted as she studied Bendix. She shook her head and muttered, “Shit.”

I watched the interview again, and then again.

Dave Bendix came into Schmidt’s office that day to beg Nicole Castro to testify that she saw him in the cutout. But she wouldn’t, because she hadn’t. So then where was Dave when Nicole was hit?

Coach used to make us do sidestep drills to keep us light on our feet, light enough to tail somebody in silence. When Nicole turned to blow Dave a kiss, he could have sidestepped around her. When she spun back for B-wing, he could have been there with the squirt bottle. This was if Dave was lying. What if he was telling the truth? I replayed the end of the interview. He seemed absolutely sincere.

Maybe Nicole really didn’t see him. The alternative was horrifying, especially after spending time with her that afternoon, seeing how awesome she was with the kids in the hospital: Nicole was lying.

I dug through my closet for my own Volta-Shock bottle. I was going to fill it with water to see if I could accurately squirt just one part of my face. Then I remembered I’d put it with my wrestling crap into the Goodwill bag my father was getting together.

I was checking out the Volta-Shock site to see if I could order the exact same bottle online when my email popped a notification that I had a new message. The sender line was
N CSATRO
with a Brandywine Hollows High School domain, and the subject line was
SOMEBODY HAS A CRUSH ON ME
. I realized too late something was very wrong, clicking as I reread the sender line. No way the real Nicole would misspell her own name. There wasn’t any attachment, but just clicking the email was enough. A video overtook my screen, piercing strobe lights. My Nokia buzzed, caller ID “Angela Sammick.” My brain couldn’t coordinate my hands to pick up the phone. I just stared at it as it buzzed away, the strobe flashes popping at me from my computer screen. Angela tried a text, too late:
DID YOU GET CRUSH EMAIL? DO NOT OPEN!
Lightning flashed inside my bedroom. Everything went fish-eye.

I woke an hour later in the hallway, on the floor. My sweatpants were wet. I lay there for a long time, gasping, and then I sat up. I stayed like that for a while longer, trying to figure out who hated me enough to send me that seizure trigger. I was almost hoping it was one of the Kerns brothers or some other bully from school, knowing it wasn’t. Eventually I was able to stagger to my laptop and the phone. I called Angela. She picked up with,
“Tell me you got my messages.”

“Yup.”

“Glad I caught you in time.”

“You didn’t, but thanks for having my back.”

“Sorry, Jay. Was it bad?”

“Nah. Did you get a backtrack on the source?”

“He scrubbed the machine ID when he ran the email through the school server, but I got the address, for what it’s worth.”
She emailed it to me. I stared at it:

swdidpibwdipvbigoigiwubpi@brandywine_hollows_hs.edu.

“What’s it mean?”

“Randomly tickle the keyboard, and you’ll get the same sort of mess. Not that we needed any more proof of this, but this dude’s a
dick.
He’s just having a ball with himself. What’d you turn up last night?”

I gave her everything I had and instructions on what to do with it, then I headed for the shower, lay down in the tub and let the water burn me.