The Incident (Chase Barnes Series Book 1) (12 page)

              Finally, Klein turned back towards Esteban and the two locked eyes.  Klein resumed his casual gait in Esteban’s direction. He said, “So, Esteban.  What can you tell me about Jamal?”

TWENTY NINE

The Red Hot Chili Peppers came on my iPod when I got back in the car.  I felt like I needed to be done with Paterson for the day so I left and headed for home.  At the same time I felt like I needed to pound the pavement around the clock and search high and low for Esteban.  He was still out there somewhere and his time was ticking away on my watch.  Meanwhile, I had quite a few tidbits of information to go on up to this point but I couldn’t figure out the right way to go about it.   

I had the windows down and the volume tuned up a few extra notches.  There are just so few songs that sound so much better with the windows down.  I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm and sang the lyrics as if I had written them.  Just as “Around the World” was getting to the good part I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.  I fished it out and saw that it was Fitzgerald.

              I think I’m one of the few that still answer the phone with a ‘hello’ nowadays.  With smartphones providing us, not only with Caller ID, but the option to add a photo of the person who’s calling, formal greetings have gone by the wayside.  Soon, they are going to have holographic images appear directly in front of our faces and have the caller instantly begin talking rather than wait for the respondent to answer.  This time I was feeling frisky.

              “Fitzy, my man,” I said.

              “Barnes, how’s it going with the PI business?  Finding lots of lost kitties?” Fitzgerald retorted.

              “Things are good.  Yes, I’ve rescued six kittens from trees, a puppy stuck in a doggy door, and even a hamster from a bathtub drain.  I’m a regular superhero,” I joked.  I heard Fitzgerald laugh.

              “Seriously, you still working that missing kid case?”

              “Yeah, I was going to call you tonight to look into a few things for me.  The kid, Esteban, used to go to School 5 on Main before he was bumped into Lindsey’s class due to fighting and his impulsivity,” I said, emphasizing the coincidence.

              “No shit.  What are the odds of that?”

              “I know.  Anyway, I went there today and spoke to the principal, Barry Klein.  Something just didn’t fit with him.  See what you can dig up on him, if anything.  Also, look into a drug bust a few years back.  Javier Machado or might be Javier Cruz, the mother’s name.  He’s Esteban’s older brother.  Got busted on a drug run in ’12 I think it was.”  I came to a stoplight and peeked a look around for any cops having nothing better to do than bust a guy behind the wheel while on his cell phone.  To them I’d be just another pedestrian on the phone and not the stellar PI that I think I am.

              “Ok, well it looks like you’ve been a busy little bee,” Fitzgerald said.

              “I have and tomorrow I’ll be able to cross the street all by myself,” I said.  We laughed.  After a few moments I continued, “I also stopped by to talk to the mother and man, she’s a regular baby- making factory.  She was nice enough to me but smacked her little ones around like their heads were a tetherball.  I can see why Esteban is the way he is.  I’m eventually going to pay Klein another visit and drop by the Cruz slash Machado house again.  I want to look in Esteban’s room for anything that might help me more but, frankly, I’m a little scared to go back.”

              “All right, I’ll work Barry Klein and Javier Machado slash Cruz from my end and see what turns up, if anything, and get back to you.  Anything else you need, just let me know,” Fitzgerald said.  He added, “You gotta be careful with kids like Esteban, Chase.  We’ve come across a few cases like what this appears to be and ends up turning into a lot more shit than just a missing kid.  You remember that one kid from a couple years ago.  I think his name was Chauncey or Charlie Something.”

“Chandler Malone.  Yeah, I remember.  Kid was kidnapped by his father’s own mafia goons to try and get a leg up on the boss.  But I don’t think Esteban’s parents are anywhere near the mafia,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t think so either but I just remember the kid ended up acting out after the whole ordeal.  Ended up picking him up a few times for petty crimes over the following few months.  Just got pinched for armed robbery and you know what he claims now as a justification for his behaviors?”

I thought for a second and said, “Not getting ice cream after dinner?”

Fitzgerald ignored me and replied, “He blames his parents for exposing him to a life of crime.  A mafia kid.  Poor kid’s claim is a bunch of bullshit.  A cop out if you ask me.  Didn’t stop him from knocking over a few local places with two handguns he probably got from dear ol’ dad.” 

Blame.  It made me think about how that related to Esteban and some of the choices he’s made.  Was it because of what he might have been exposed to or was it because of his own choices that he’s made?  Maybe both. 

“Possibly,” was all I could say.

“I’ll look into what you gave me.”

I thanked him and ended the call.   I put the phone in the cup holder and turned the radio back up to catch the end of the song. 

THIRTY

I was still trying to figure out if there was a difference between thinking like a private investigator and thinking like a cop.  Up to this point, I didn’t think so.  This was all still new to me but I’ve always felt I had the instincts.  When I got home I checked the landline for messages or missed calls even though I already knew the answer.  Aside from our parents and telemarketers, no one ever called our house phone. 

              Back at home I was standing over the kitchen table, which was still splashed with Esteban’s paper work from school, I was looking for a new direction.  A calling or something to scream out at me and say, “Hey, Dipshit.  I’m right here.”  I didn’t see it because I convinced myself that my fined-toothed comb had scraped everything clean.  My mind drifted back to Barry Klein.  Here I was thinking that Glen Garvey, the Right Step’s principal, was a whack job.  I still did, to an extent, but now I was thinking Klein was a little more off his rocker, albeit a different type of rocker.  To me, Garvey was a little disheveled, loose, and disoriented.  On the flip side, Klein seemed a little too rigid, while appearing almost free spirited, and shady.  

              The computer was in the basement bedroom.  I sat in front of the screen, thinking like I knew my way around the computer.  There was a ground- level window next to the desk and I could see the sun had no intents on settling in the west any time soon, despite the fact that it was well into the six o’ clock hour.  My fingers rested on the keyboard, deciding what to search first.  Since Klein was in the front of my brain I Googled his name.  I added ‘Paterson, NJ’ to his name after his name alone came up with way too many hits.  The first hit directed me to School 5’s link from the Paterson School District website.  Klein’s smug face was plastered front and center on the link.  His photo showed him donning a similar suit to the one he was wearing earlier in the day, perched behind his desk with his hands folded in front of him.  Klein’s smile even screamed politician. 

              Before I dove even further into Klein’s website I pulled up my iTunes library and clicked on a classic Bruce Springsteen song.  I tuned up the volume a bit and let the opening guitar riff pulsate my ears.  Then, I clicked on the icon to force my library to shuffle.

              There was a blurb written by Klein himself underneath the photo.  It rambled on about how Klein’s vision and determination was to create a positive learning environment and a place for students to grow and mature physically, mentally, and culturally.  Their goal was to prepare students and develop them to their full potential to meet expectations in the present and their future secondary experiences.  Simple terms: Prepare them for high school.  Cliché.  Cliché.  Cliché.  Teach them important life skills.  Cliché.  Cliché.  Cliché.

I hoped to find a biographical link into Klein’s past but knew it was unlikely.  I spent the next few minutes surfing the rest of the website, not sure of the purpose or the outcome.  The home page for School 5 was much more animated than the appearance of the school itself.  The top of the page listed, “What’s New?,” their own philosophy, information on their own anti- bullying policy, and links to school forms for parents.  I clicked on the “What’s New?” link and saw various links to student clubs offered, such as gardening and an environmental club.  I found those ironic that a school in such a cement world would desire to have such a green thumb. 

              I spent a while reading through the Anti- Bullying Policy, which was created by Governor Chris Christie in 2011.  Known better as the Anti- Bullying Bill of Rights, it was created as the toughest in the nation to protect students from all forms of harassment, intimidation, and bullying.  Its intention was to strengthen procedures for preventing, reporting, investigating, and responding to incidents of HIB:  harassment, intimidation, and bullying.  Based on the amount of bullying Esteban had done alone, I thought, I can’t imagine what Klein had to deal with on a daily basis.  Frankly, I was seriously beginning to ask myself how much Klein actually cared.  

THIRTY ONE

Knowing Lindsey was on her way home I gave her a call.  She had gone out to a late lunch after school with a couple of co- workers.

              “Hey,” she said as a greeting.  “How’s it going?”

              “It’s going.  Just at a dead end.  I went over to School 5 and spoke to their principal.  I talked to Fitzy and gave him a few things to look into after paying Esteban’s house a visit.”  She was surprised at all I had done in one day.

              “What was Esteban’s house like?  That must’ve been interesting,” she said.

              I filled her in on my interesting experience at the Machado/Cruz household.  “Did you know how many kids she has?” I asked.

              “I can only imagine.  I know of Esteban, his older brother in jail, and the younger twins.  Don’t tell me there’s more,” she said.

              “She rambled off the names and I couldn’t even keep up.  Let’s just say she’s got enough to play a two- hand touch game against the Jets.”

              I had asked her if she knew anything about Barry Klein but she had never met him before.  I asked her what else she could tell me about Garvey.  Lindsey didn’t tell me anything that I already didn’t know.  I ended the call, figuring she’d be home soon.

Over the years she filled me in on Garvey’s background.  How he’d taught middle school social studies in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and had two adolescent boys.  Garvey’s wife divorced him three years ago after she found intimate texts and saved voicemails from another woman on his cell phone.  He now lived in a two- bedroom apartment in Montclair with a golden retriever named Biscuit.  Lindsey was convinced Garvey had more photos of the dog in his office than of his kids.  People have strange priorities.      Lindsey told me a laundry list of stories about Garvey as a principal.  Like most bosses in any profession, Lindsey agreed with just as many decisions he made as she disagreed with but thought highly of the man.  He was well- respected by the rest of the staff, mostly made up of women.  Despite his personal marital choices. 

              I heard Lindsey open and shut the front door above me.  The thumps of her feet led me to believe that she was heading to the basement stairs to join me.  She gave me a kiss and leaned a hand on my shoulder as soon as she entered the room.  We chatted about her outing with her co-workers but I had a different question for her.  “How is Garvey with the kids?”

              She didn’t respond right away.  She sat on the futon behind me and kicked off her shoes.  “Well, he preaches consistency with the teachers and enforces the rules as much as the next principal but he’s not very consistent at all.  He seems to favor the boys in the school more than the girls, which annoys the hell out of all the female staff.  I’ve noticed lately that he makes a lot of false promises. Says he’ll do something with the kids or buy something for the school or say he’s going to punish a kid for breaking a rule but never does it.  That’s what really gets me about him.  And despite his personal appearance, Garvey runs a pretty tight ship.  Surprisingly organized.”