The Bloodwater Mysteries: Doppelganger (9 page)

“What surprise?”

“If we told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

Brian groaned and trudged upstairs to change his clothes.

Once again, Gee Jang was dressed like an exclamation point, right down to the white socks. Brian wondered if there was a way to tell him he looked like a punctuation mark without offending him. Probably not.

“Today,” he said, “we talk about Korean family, and social customs of the street. At end of class we be a Korean lunch table.”

Brian thought of asking him exactly what a Korean lunch table was and why he would want to be one, but he knew he needed to work on his attitude.

Gee Jang went on about Korean familial relationships, and which side of the street to walk on in Seoul, and how to order
bulgogi
or
bibimbop
in a Korean restaurant. All of which Brian found supremely uninteresting, since he never planned to go to Korea. Why should he? His mother had dumped him on the steps at a police station. There was no way he could ever find her, not even if he wanted to. Not even if he put Roni Delicata on the case.

Brian looked around at the other students to see if they were as bored as he was. Most of them were taking notes. The blond girl, Molly, listened intently to every word from Gee Jang’s mouth. What was
her
deal?

They took a break after the first hour. One of the women
who worked at the center had laid out a spread of Korean snacks in the lunchroom. All the food was weird. He selected something called
ojinx-o teegim
because it looked almost normal—sort of like thick rectangular potato chips. Seeing Molly sitting alone at one of the tables, Brian walked over to her, trying unsuccessfully to remember how to say, “May I join you?” in Korean.

Resorting to English, he said, “Can I sit here?”

“Sure!” Molly smiled at him. She had a mischievous, troublemaking smile that appealed to him.

“What have you got there?” she asked.

“Ojinx-o teegim,”
said Brian, mangling the pronunciation.

“I got the
p’ajon,
” she said. “Onion pancake squares.”

Brian made a face.

“They’re good,” she said.

“I guess, if you like onion.” Brian watched her take a bite, then asked, “So what part of Korea are
you
from?”

Molly laughed. “I’m here for my brother,” she said. “My family just adopted a two-year-old boy from Seoul. I decided to learn everything I could about Korea so when he gets older I can teach him about where he came from. How about you?”

“I got dumped on the steps of the police station in Taegu City.”

“Really? I was a foundling, too! My parents adopted me from Romania.”

“Cool,” said Brian, although there wasn’t anything cool
about being dumped. He picked up one of his chips and started to put it in his mouth.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Molly said.

Brian lowered the chip and stared at her.

“I like you with the shorter hair,” she said.

“Um…I think maybe you think I’m somebody else,” he said.

She peered at him closely. “Really?”

“Seriously, where do you think you know me from?”

“The Korean Cultural Center? In St. Paul?”

Brian shook his head. “I’ve never been there.”

“Wow,” Molly said. “You look just like him. Except for the hair. And he had an earring.”

Brian felt his heart starting to race.

“What was his name?”

“Dak-Ho. What’s your name?”

“Brian.”

“What’s your Korean name?”

“Bok-Soo. What about this guy’s American name? The one who looks like me.”

“Billy.”

“Billy,” said Brian thoughtfully. He put the chip he had been holding into his mouth and bit down. Whatever it was, it was not a potato chip. It had the texture of a rubber band, and it tasted fishy. Brian didn’t want to spit it out in front of Molly, so he forced himself to chew and swallow. It wasn’t easy. Once he got it down, he looked at the other
chips on his plate, then at Molly, who had an impish grin on her face.

“What did I just eat?” he asked.

“
Ojinx-o teegim
means ‘fried squid finger food,’” Molly said. She laughed at Brian’s expression, then pushed her plate toward him. “Have some onion pancake,” she said. “It’ll wash away the taste.”

It took Roni two days to get Officer Garth Spall alone. Every time she saw him, he was with his partner, George Firth. George Firth, a veteran of the Bloodwater Police Department, knew Roni too well. If she asked him for a favor, he would, first, refuse to do it, and second, probably mention it to Nick. Garth Spall—younger, less experienced, and several dozen points lower in the IQ department—would be more cooperative.

She finally caught Garth alone in his squad car in the alley behind Bratten’s Café and Bakery, working his way through a bag of donuts. He was a tall, athletic young man with overdeveloped muscles and a weakness for raised glazed donuts. Roni walked up to the passenger window and looked in at him. He was staring dreamily off into the distance while shoving a donut into his maw. She rapped on the glass.

Garth jumped so hard he hit his head on the roof of the car. His hand went immediately to his belt, fumbling with the strap on his holster.

“Garth! It’s just me! Roni!” she shouted through the glass, preparing to dive for cover. Garth Spall had never
shot anyone, but he was notoriously quick to wave his gun around—which was why police chief Grant Hoff rarely let him go out on his own.

Garth recognized Roni and relaxed. Roni opened the door and climbed into the squad car. “Hi! How’s it going?”

He looked at her suspiciously.

Roni pulled out her notebook. “I’m writing an article about Bloodwater’s finest. I was wondering if I could interview you. You know—straight from the mouths of the men on the front line? Since you’re the youngest and most physically powerful member of the department, I thought I’d start with you.”

Garth stared at her. He may have been thinking, but she didn’t wait to find out.

“After all, you’re the department’s future. The police force is aging. Another ten years and you’ll have Grant Hoff’s job.” She gave him her most sincere fake smile and pointed at his face. “You have icing on your chin.”

Garth wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Chief Hoff says don’t talk to reporters.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t talking about
me,
” Roni said. “I mean, it’s just the high school newspaper.”

“I don’t know…”

“Hey!” Roni turned her attention to the computer mounted on the center console between them. “I bet you can find out all kinds of cool stuff on here. Am I on it?”

“You?”

“Yeah. Am I on your master criminal database?”

“I don’t know. Have you committed any crimes recently?”

“Nothing serious,” Roni said. “I bet if you know somebody’s name and address and license number, you can find out all kinds of stuff.” She reached toward the keyboard. Garth slapped her hand away.

“Ouch! Police brutality!”

Garth looked alarmed.

Roni laughed. “Just kidding. So, when you pull somebody over for speeding or something, do you look them up on the computer?”

“If I don’t know them.”

“How do you do it?”

“I just enter in their license number. It tells me if the car is stolen, and who it belongs to, and stuff like that. It’s easy.”

“Show me.”

“First I have to pull somebody over.”

“Can’t you just make up a number? You know, so I get it right in my article.”

“I don’t know…”

“Let’s pretend. This little green car goes screaming past you, a hundred miles an hour. You hit the siren and go after them—”

“Hot pursuit. We call it hot pursuit.”

“Hot pursuit. Got it.” Roni wrote it down in her notebook. “So you’re catching up to them—”

“I’m calling it in on the radio, just in case it’s, you know, like a bank robbery.”

“Right.” The last bank robbery in Bloodwater had taken
place before Roni was born. “Anyway, you pull them over, and—”

“I type in their license number.”

As his hand moved toward the keyboard, Roni rattled off the license number of the Asian woman’s car. Garth typed it in and waited. A few seconds later, he said, “Green Hyundai Sonata. Registered to Kyung-Soon Kim. St. Paul address.” He turned the screen so Roni could see.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s amazing.” She wrote down the name and address in her notebook.

“No criminal record,” Garth said.

Roni smiled. “I wonder why she was in such a hurry.”

“I didn’t even know those Hyundais could go that fast,” Garth Spall said.

an old friend

Brian’s dad was waiting at the curb when class let out. Brian said good-bye in Korean to Molly, then ran down the steps to the car.

“How was your class today, son?” asked Mr. Bain.

“It was
choun
. That means ‘good’ in Korean—I think. How was your Mensa meeting?”

Mr. Bain laughed. “Like always—a room full of extremely intelligent, socially inept adults attempting to interact with one another. It’s rather like being in a room full of extraterrestrials.” He put the car in gear and pulled onto the street.

“What do you talk about?” Brian asked.

“Today we talked about intelligence in annelids.”

Brian knew what annelids were—his dad had written several books about them. “You talked about
worms
?”

“Yes. It was my turn to deliver the weekly presentation.” He frowned. “It was not as well received as I had hoped.”

“Speaking of worms, I had squid for lunch,” Brian said.

“Squid are not worms. Squid are mollusks, as are octopuses and oysters.”

“Oh. Hey, Dad, is it possible that I have a twin?”

“Twin? Oh. I see. You are wondering about your doppelganger, the boy who was abducted.”

“This girl from class says that she knows a kid who looks exactly like me.”

“I suppose it’s
possible
that you have a twin, but I think it’s highly unlikely. As you know, you were a foundling. You were not more than a week or two old, and you were alone. I can’t imagine why, if a woman had given birth to a set of twins, she would abandon one child and not the other.”

“Do you trust the records they gave you?”

“The Korean adoption services are very precise and rigorous about such things, son. They would have no reason to deceive us.”

“But if I
did
have a twin…”

“It would be quite a coincidence—especially if you were adopted separately—for you to both end up in the same part of America, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.…Hey, you know that Korean coin I have?”

“The ten won piece. Yes.”

“Where did I get it?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Bain. “You’ve had it as long as I can remember. I assume you got it from the Samuelses.”

“Is it valuable?” Brian asked.

His father smiled. “In Seoul you might be able to buy a
small piece of candy with it.” He turned off the highway onto a bumpy dirt road.

“Where are we going?”

“To see some old friends, Jack and Theresa Hanke. You’ve never met them.”

“Is this the surprise?”

“I suppose it is.” They followed the road for about a mile, cornfields on either side, then turned into a driveway that led to a small farm. Chickens scattered as they pulled up to the freshly painted white farmhouse. A gray-haired man wearing brown coveralls waved from the open doorway of the barn. Three orange cats, their tails held high, came trotting toward them.

Brian and his dad got out of the car. The rich, organic aroma of the farm swept over them. It was strong, but it smelled good. The banging of a screen door caught his attention. A woman stepped out from the house, accompanied by a small, pale-brown terrier. The dog ran straight up to Brian, sniffed his leg, then backed up a few steps and began barking and wagging his tail vigorously.

The man, Jack Hanke, let loose a laugh that sounded like someone banging on a steel barrel. “I think he remembers you, boy!”

The dog would not stop barking.

“Sniffer?”
Brian said.

The dog was wagging his tail so hard his whole rear end was shaking. Jack Hanke laughed some more, and his wife,
Theresa, joined in. Brian looked at his father. Were those tears in his eyes? Must be his allergies acting up.

“What should I do?” Brian said.

Jack Hanke said, “Hold out your arms.”

Brian held out his arms. Sniffer sprang through the air into his embrace.

If Brian didn’t want to unravel the mystery of his own life, that was fine with Roni. She would do it herself. She would find out who Kyung-Soon Kim was, and why she was interested in Brian, and she would find out what the orange-haired lady wanted, and…and what? She slumped in her chair and stared at her computer. It just wasn’t as much fun to solve a mystery without her sidekick.

Roni reread the articles she’d downloaded from the
Star Tribune
. There wasn’t a lot of information. Then she noticed a quote from Vera Doblemun’s mother:

“She wasn’t the type of person to just run off like that. I can’t believe she wouldn’t at least have called us to let us know she was all right.”

It did seem odd that Vera Doblemun wouldn’t have called her parents. Had she contacted them since the article was written? Roni read the article again, then typed the names of Vera Doblemun’s parents—Alexander and Marianne Kay—into her computer. A few seconds later she was looking at an address in Hastings, Minnesota.

Hastings was only fifteen miles away, but without Hillary,
it might as well have been on Pluto—unless she could talk her mom into letting her use the car.

“How are you feeling, son?” Mr. Bain asked.

Brian, scrunched down in the passenger seat of his dad’s car, did not know how he was feeling.

“Brian?”

“I’m okay, I guess,” Brian said.

“He’s an old dog,” said Mr. Bain. “It wouldn’t be fair to him to take him off the farm. He’s just as attached to Jack and Theresa as he was to you.”

“I know. I didn’t expect him to come with us. I just…It was weird is all. Seeing him again. I mean, for most of my life I thought Sniffer was just a dream.”