Res Judicata (13 page)

Or I could have just been watching too many bad movies lately.

Had Chuck seen the picture when it fell on the ground? Would it make any difference if he had?

Why was he talking to Biff? Why should I care? Maybe Chuck was telling him to get lost, to quit stalking us. Maybe he was trying to
help
us.

No, that much I knew. Chuck was not a helpful kind of guy.

I still had that stupid project to finish. That's what I should care about. I needed to get some rest. I needed to forget about this stuff.

I tried to force myself into a sleepy state of mind. I tried to replay that scene in my head where Shannondoah kissed me. I tried to think about Mary Mulderry-MacIsaac. I tried to imagine myself skateboarding at one of those professional parks they have down in the States, with Mary and Shannondoah both cheering me on from the sidelines.

All I could think about was Chuck.

Fine.

I turned on the light. I got out the file. Maybe if I spent, like, ten minutes answering some of the questions, I could just forget about it and go to sleep. Maybe there was something in that page I'd printed off the Internet that would straighten the whole mess out for me.

I opened the folder.

I looked at the papers. Everything was neatly handwritten.
Strategies: Malicious Prosecution Suit
.

I must have been really, really tired because it didn't freak me out or anything. I just thought, “Hmm. What's this?” I didn't get it. I flipped through some more papers, thinking, “I wonder where that photo I had went.” Then all of a sudden I felt my blood go funny. It was like I had really cold fizzy pop running through my veins. I could feel it working its way to my brain. I was getting goose bumps from the inside out.

I remembered Andy bending down and picking up the papers I'd dropped. I saw her hand the folder to Chuck.

The wrong folder. My folder. The one with his e-mails in it. The one with “his” picture in it.

I was dead.

I grabbed the other folder, threw a jacket over my pajamas and jumped out my bedroom window.

Ab intestato
(Latin)
A person who dies without a legal will.

I landed on the fire escape with this giant clang. I froze. Andy's light didn't come on. She must have figured it was somebody else's kid making his break for freedom.

I jumped the rest of the way down and landed on the pavement in a crouch position with my arms out. For a second there, I almost felt sort of cool. It was such an action hero kind of thing to do. I was half hoping somebody had seen me—until I looked down and noticed the leg of my jammies tucked into my sneaker. It kind of brought me back to reality.

I'm not James Bond or Vin Diesel or even Super Worm the Invincible Invertebrate (though that's probably closer). I'm Cyril F. MacIntyre, and I was in a whole, big, giant mess of trouble.

Given the state of my armpits, I presume I ran the whole way to Chuck's place, but I don't remember. It was like my body just slammed right into autopilot. It had to look after itself. All my brainpower needed to go into figuring out what to say to Chuck when I got there. How was I going to explain showing up at his place at eleven o'clock at night? What if he'd already looked in the folder? What was I going to say then?

“It's not my file. It's my lab partner's file. I picked it up by mistake.”

Or “Oh? You think that picture with the blacked-out teeth looks like you? Why, I never noticed!”

Or—this was my current favorite—”Why don't you just kill me now and put me out of my misery?”

The security door to Chuck's building was still propped open. That either made me really lucky or really unlucky, depending on how you looked at it. I decided not to look at it at all. I just slipped downstairs and knocked on Chuck's door. I was hoping that inspiration would hit me before Chuck did.

I waited. No answer.

I made myself knock again. I couldn't weasel out of this one. I had to get that file back. I went, “Chuck!” in this kind of loud whisper.

Still no answer.

I knocked harder. I whispered louder. “Chuck! It's me! Cyril!” I banged on the door a few more times.

I got an answer this time. The door to the next apartment flew open and this wrinkly old lady in a pink nightie started shaking a curling iron at me and going, “Hush up with your racket! Why aren't you in bed? I've got half a mind to call the police. Can't you tell the man's not in? What's the matter with you, boy? Decent people are trying to sleep.”

I went, “Sorry, sorry” and backed out down the hall. I didn't want any trouble. She was small, but she was armed.

I went outside, and for a second this happy little feeling just sort of wrapped itself around me. I thought, Oh, well. I did my best! I went to his apartment. I knocked. I called. He wasn't there. Nothing I can do about it now.

I started walking home. My mind was trying really hard to do this “Tra-la, tra-la” thing, but my body was still shaking.

Chicken.

Fine. So what? I'm a chicken. I didn't care. At least I was a living, breathing chicken, not the deep-fried nugget I'd be once Chuck—or, for that matter, Andy—found out what I'd been up to.

I walked past the driveway and realized that the windows at ground level belonged to the basement apartments. It wouldn't be hard to figure out which one was Chuck's.

Yeah, so? And then what?

I didn't know.

No point in stopping.

But I was right there. I mean, I may as well at least
look
.

On the other hand, I may as well just keep going.

I kept going.

I stopped. I sighed. I let my head bounce off my chest a couple of times. Then I turned around and walked back to the building.

This was stupid.

Just do it.

I figured Chuck's apartment must be the second one in from the street. I got down on my knees and looked in the window. The lights weren't on and the curtains were pulled shut, but they were a little too narrow. There was a gap between them about as wide as a piece of licorice.

Anyone else would have said, “Okay, fine, I guess I'm not going to be able to see anything. Time to go home and write out my last will and testament,” but I didn't.

I stuck my nose right up close to the glass and sort of maneuvered my head around so it didn't get in the way of the streetlight.

I saw something on a table, or at least the corner of something. I was pretty sure it was the file. I had to get a better look.

It was so dark. Was it the file or just an old box?

I hunched on my heels and pushed my face up hard against the window. That turned out to be a mistake.

The window popped open, and I fell headfirst into the apartment.

Break and Enter
A burglary; to break into and enter another's
premises with the intent to commit a crime.

I did a midair somersault and splatted onto the floor with this giant
Oof
!

The old lady next door banged on the wall and started screaming about decent people sleeping again. I lay on the crunchy gray carpet like some stunned snow angel and stared at the ceiling until the room stopped spinning.

It would have been so easy at that point to just throw in the towel, draw a chalk outline around myself and wait until the homicide detectives arrived to pick up the victim, but I made myself get up anyway.

The lump on the back of my head was about the size of Chuck's nose, but not, I hope, quite as hairy. I realized I was going to have to cut a hole in my helmet if I wanted to go skateboarding any time soon.

Skateboarding. Ha! If Chuck caught me here, I'd be lucky if I ever walked again.

Oh, right. That reminded me. Smarten up. Get out of here.

I jumped on the couch and pushed the window closed. No way was I going to be able to climb out that way. It was
too high up. This wasn't a basement apartment. It was more like a dungeon apartment. I'd have to leave by the door.

What I thought was a file on the table turned out to be just another pizza box. I sort of shuffled things around for a while, but it was clear I wasn't going to be able to find the file in the dark. I turned on a light.

It looked like Chuck picked up his furniture at the same place we did—i.e., the curb on garbage day. He had a couch that sagged in the middle, a three-legged footstool that he used as a coffee table, a busted La-Z-Boy held together with a big zigzag of duct tape, and a card table with an almost matching chair.

Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for our neighborhood, but Chuck had a much more interesting art collection than the rest of us. He still had the photo of Ernest Sanderson tacked up on the wall. He also had a picture of that Reith guy from the lab, and an 8 × 10 glossy of Shannondoah in her bikini and Miss Gingivitis
USA
sash.

I got that bugs-crawling-up-your-back feeling.

I didn't like Chuck having Shannondoah's picture on the wall. Lots of guys probably had one, but I knew better than to think Chuck was just another fan. Why was he so interested in her? Revenge?

I was almost afraid to turn around and see what else I'd find. A picture of me? A dead body? Chuck with a big toothless grin—and a bigger gun?

I swallowed. I closed my eyes. I turned around. I made myself open them.

And there it was, smack-dab in front of me. The file was on the card table.

Right next to a brand-new laptop.

Did that ever piss me off! My mother was doing Chuck's work for free, the power company was threatening to turn off our electricity, I still hadn't got my stupid long board and he's got a brand-new laptop? Something was wrong with this picture.

I should have just switched the files and beat it out of there, but suddenly this wasn't about survival anymore.

I was mad now. I'd had enough of Chuck. The guy was a fraud, an impostor! I wanted to take him down.

What did “a poor uneducated boy from backwoods Nova Scotia” need a laptop for? I turned it on to find out.

While I was waiting for it to boot up, I scoped the apartment. My first thought was Chuck must
live
on Railroader's Pizza. (Another thing I hated him for.) I love them—especially their Hawaiian-Greek combo with the double cheese crust—but even I couldn't have hoovered back that many. There were boxes everywhere.

The thing that got me, though, was that most of the boxes looked brand-new. Clean. No grease stains. No rubberized cheese strings. It's like they were straight from the factory.

What was Chuck—a collector or something? Did he think pizza boxes were going to be worth a load of money some day? Why would anyone stockpile unused pizza boxes?

The computer screen lit up. More reasons to be pissed off. Chuck had all the bells and whistles on the dashboard: Photoshop, LimeWire, a video editing program, you name it. I noticed that there was a
CD
in the laptop too. I clicked on it.

Surprise. Surprise.

It was my video project.

Well, well, well. Chuck was right after all. There had been a robbery. I'd no doubt find
The Catcher in the Rye
in the apartment and, if he wasn't wearing them himself, Andy's toe rings too.

I was getting madder and madder by the second. Nothing burns me more than having to do my homework twice. This guy owed me big-time. I was going to make him pay.

I opened some of the files on his desktop. News stories about Dr. Ernest Sanderson's visit to Halifax. Some stuff Chuck obviously downloaded off the Internet about industrial cleaning and the history of rural Nova Scotia. Articles on the trial.

Nothing too scary there.

I went on Safari and clicked
History
. (The guy even had high-speed service. Arrgh. Kill. Kill.) I wanted to see what type of sites he'd been looking at.

www.patentlyfalse.org. Okay. That answered one question. I clearly had the right Duncan Charles.

Where else had he been surfing?

www.puttingthedieindiet.com
.

www.thiswonthurtabit.com
.

www.toxintalk.com

Cute
URLs,
but that wasn't all they had in common. Seems like Chuck had a keen interest in poison. Made me feel squeamish just thinking about it.

I clicked off. All that big talk about taking Chuck down? I suddenly forgot it. I just wanted to get out of there. I was clearly in way over my head. The guy could keep the computer. Just don't kill me.

The laptop was taking forever to shut down. I tapped my fingers on the card table and looked around. There were notes and papers all over the place, but one, pinned to the wall, kind of jumped out at me.

Douglas “Biff“ Fougere
it said in Chuck's handwriting. Underneath was Biff's phone number, his home address and—it took me a couple of seconds to figure this out—his work schedule.

Any other time, finding something like that would have completely freaked me out, but not this time.

I had other things on my mind now.

For one, the sound of a key in the door.

All Points Bulletin (APB)
A broadcast issued from one law enforcement
agency to another. It typically contains information
about dangerous or missing persons.

There's always that scene in action movies where an out-of-control helicopter piloted by evil international drug dealers crashes into a Winnebago full of
TNT.
The hero's usually about two feet away when the whole thing blows up, but it doesn't faze him. He's cool. He just

1. turns his head,

2. assesses how fast the fireball is coming at him,

3. takes five powerful steps, then

4. dives to safety on the underside of a passing car.

Piece of cake.

That's more or less what happened here. Only difference was that after I heard the key in the lock, I

1. turned my head,