Torched (5 page)

At first I did nothing but cry, leaning over to wipe my nose on the knee of my jeans. What was going to happen to me? To my parents? I guessed it could be pretty bad. Finally I forced myself to choke back the tears. I hadn’t seen a camera or a tape recorder, and the room didn’t have one of those two-way mirrors, but I had seen enough TV to know that someone must be watching me.

After a while, I rested my head on my folded arms and tried to sleep. The best I could manage was a feeling like I was floating, not anchored to anything.

When the door finally opened about three hours later, I started. Quickly, I composed my face, hoping that the man walking into the room hadn’t noticed. I didn’t want to look vulnerable or weak. He wore a suit instead of a uniform, but his dirty-blond hair was so short he still looked like a cop or a soldier. He was older, but not as old as Matt, tall and muscular, with fine lines at the corners of his bright blue eyes. In his suit and with his short hair, he looked kind of like the TV father I sometimes daydreamed about.

“Hello, Ellie.” He gave me a nod.

I didn’t like that he already knew who I was.

“And who are you?” I said.

“I’m Special Agent John Richter. Federal Bureau of Investigation.” In one hand, he held a briefcase. With the other, he reached out and shook my hand, squeezing the bones.

Richter sat down in the other chair, set the briefcase on the floor and regarded me calmly. A minute passed. Then another. I looked anywhere else but at him—the floor, a corner where the walls met the ceiling, the toes of my shoes. Whenever I caught a glimpse of Richter’s face, he was still studying me. He seemed in no hurry.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s going to happen to my parents?”

Richter ignored my question. “What were you doing there, Ellie?”

“What do you mean, what was I doing there? I
live
there.” All my anger and fear came boiling up. “I was just doing my homework, like any other kid, and these cops came busting in.”

“Only you’re not like every other kid, are you, Ellie? The people you live with are drug dealers.”

Drug dealers? He can’t be serious.
“They’re
not
drug dealers. Maybe they smoke pot, but that’s all.”
And maybe they sell it to a few friends. But nothing more than that.

“And they’re not your parents, either, are they? Not your real parents.”

“Hey, it doesn’t matter who gives birth to you,” I said, stung. “They
are
my parents. And they’re good parents.”

Richter gave an exaggerated sigh. “It’s sad, really. We see this all the time. Kids who don’t know anything better, so they don’t want to leave their lousy homes. But you’re going to have to leave, I’m afraid. Unless you’re willing to help us.”

“What do you mean, leave?”

“With luck, you’ll get sent to a foster home. That is, if we can find room in one. At your age, frankly, that’s not going to be easy. Babies are one thing, but the number of families who are willing to take in a troubled teen is pretty small. Which means you’ll probably go to juvenile hall. You may end up down in Salem if there’s not room in Portland.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong!” I protested. My eyes stung, and I blinked furiously.
I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.

“It’s for your own good, Ellie. For your own protection.”

“Protection?” I had to force the words out. “From what?”

“This atmosphere those people are raising you in. You and their marijuana plants. It’s tantamount to abuse to bring up a child in that situation.”

This was all such BS. But Richter had the power. Desperate, I snatched at the phrase he had used earlier. “But you said that if I helped you . . . ?”

He looked at me for a long moment. Finally, he nodded, seemingly more to himself than to me. “Tell me about this group of people your parents have been meeting with. The ones who were at your house earlier today. Do you know who those people are, Ellie?”

I shrugged, suddenly glad that I
didn’t
know, not really. “They’re Mother Earth Defenders. But I don’t know their real names. I honestly don’t.” I wasn’t going to tell them that Coyote’s name was Ethan, or that he worked at the Multnomah Bike Shop.

Richter leaned toward me, his expression intent. “Tell me this, Ellie, what do you think of their cause?”

“Well, the Earth
is
getting hotter. You know, the glaciers are melting, and there’s dead spots in the ocean, and more people are getting skin cancer.”

“So how do Mother Earth Defenders stop that?”

I thought about what they’d been discussing at our house. “Protests, petitioning, tree-sits, stuff like that, I guess.”

He looked disappointed. “They aren’t all peaceful tree-sitters, Ellie. These people are terrorists. Domestic, homegrown terrorists.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I wasn’t that naïve. “They’re not flying airplanes into buildings full of people.”

Richter slapped his palm on the table, making me jump. “Just because they’re Americans doesn’t mean they aren’t terrorists. Some of the worst terrorists are homegrown. Have you heard of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing? Some of the Mother Earth Defenders are violent fire bombers who destroy anything they don’t approve of. So far, they’ve been lucky, but we know it’s only a matter of time until someone is killed. That’s where the FBI comes in. And that’s where we need your help.”

“Help? What do you mean by help?”

“We need someone who can get inside Mother Earth Defenders.”

“No way!” I didn’t even need to think. “You’ll have to find someone else to do it.”

Richter’s gaze locked with mine. “We need someone who already has an inside track. Somebody who can find out what they’re planning so we can stop it before anyone gets hurt.”

“No. No way. I’m not going to be a narc.” The thought sickened me. Then I put two and two together. “My parents already turned you down, didn’t they?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “We never asked them. MED trusts your parents—but they would never ask them to take part in an action. They’re dupes who offer MED a place to meet, maybe a little funding, as well as free, shall we say, refreshments. But they’re far too old to be asked to be part of the group. That’s why we need someone younger. Someone who can get on the inside and help us gather real evidence.”

“No. I can’t do it.” My eyes felt wet again. “I’d rather go into foster care.”

“Let me show you something, Ellie.” Richter reached down. As he set his briefcase on his lap and took out a manila envelope, I dashed the tears from my eyes before he could see them. He slid a photo across the table to me.

My eyes traced the lines and shadows of a monochromatic print. I was staring at the charred outlines of a building.

“This was going to be an apartment complex in Southern Oregon for low-income people,” Richter said. “That is, until MED set it on fire. Half the valley had to be evacuated when the fire spread to a nearby housing development. And do you know why they set the fire?”

Richter waited until I finally shrugged at his rhetorical question.

“Because they felt it was an environmentally sensitive area. So they burned down the building—and the fire spread to the site they supposedly wanted to protect! That’s how MED operates. They burn forest ranger stations because they don’t like the Forest Service approving any logging at all, even if it prevents wildfires. They destroy agricultural stations and science labs. In Cannon Beach, they torched a helicopter that sprayed herbicides to fight non-native weeds. Here in Portland, they pipe-bombed a research lab working to make more nutritious rice. But worst of all, we now believe there is a faction of MED that’s planning to target people.”

With every word he spoke, I kept thinking of Coyote, checking the accusations against the person I knew. “That is so unbelievable. They wouldn’t hurt anyone. You should have heard them today. They were talking about freeing
minks
. If they care that much about a mink, they would never hurt a person.”

“You don’t think so? What if I told you that animals are the only ones they really care about?” He took out another photograph. With a shock, I recognized the yard of my own house. It showed the people who had stayed for dinner the night I had made pasta.

Richter tapped his finger over the picture of Hawk. “This guy here—his real name is Darryl Denigan, by the way—we have e-mails where he says the only way to get people to listen is when their blood is spilled.”

I didn’t let the expression on my face change, but I remembered how Hawk and Cedar had seemed to disagree when Hawk said that dangerous times called for dangerous measures. “Those e-mails are evidence, then.” I crossed my arms. “Use them.”

“They’re too smart to leave a trail that can be traced back to them. The e-mails are encrypted and anonymous. What we have wouldn’t stand up in court.”

“I still can’t do it.” Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t want to go into foster care or to juvie, but I couldn’t do what he was asking me. Who knew if Richter was even telling the truth?

Richter took back both photographs. “So are you saying you don’t care what happens to your parents?”

My parents?
“What do you mean?”

“If you don’t cooperate with us, Ellie, it’s not just a matter of you being put in foster care. Your parents—excuse me, Matt and Laurel—have drug arrests stretching back into the seventies. That makes them career offenders. Career offenders with a grow operation in the basement. And this isn’t the seventies anymore, in case they haven’t noticed. The law takes drugs a lot more seriously. A lot more. At a minimum, they can be charged with maintaining a dwelling for the purpose of manufacturing marijuana, possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of selling or delivering, felony possession of a schedule II controlled substance, manufacturing marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Not to mention child endangerment.”

He paused, but I didn’t say anything. The list was overwhelming. Under the table, I clenched my fists so hard I could feel my fingernails cut into my palms. How could my parents have been so stupid?

Richter stood up. “If you help us, we’ll make you a deal. We’ll drop the charges against your parents for lack of evidence. Otherwise, they will be looking at a long stretch of jail time.”

“So if I spy on MED for you, my parents won’t have to go to jail? And I won’t have to go to a foster home?”

He nodded. “If you help us, we’ll help you.”

I told myself there was no way that the MEDics could be what Richter said. I thought of Coyote, of how much it had hurt him when his grandfather had shot the deer.
If he got that upset over a deer, he would never do anything to a person. No matter what Richter says, I know Coyote, at least, can’t be involved in anything violent.

So even if I did what Richter asked, probably nothing would come of it. They wouldn’t find anything, and my parents wouldn’t get in trouble. Still, I tried to think of another way out, tried to find a place to look other than in Richter’s eyes.

But finally I had to speak.

“We won’t tell Matt,” Laurel murmured into my hair as she held me close.

Richter had let Laurel in only after I had signed a long form that I had been too exhausted to read. The one detail that caught my attention was that my mother had already signed it. It seemed like a betrayal, but the thought flew from my mind when she pushed passed Richter and hugged me.

It was only after Richter left that I finally allowed my tears to fall. I hadn’t let Laurel hug me like this in years, but now I felt like a child again.

When I finally calmed down, I put my lips next to her ear. “They want me to spy for them.”

Her reply was no louder than a sigh. “We’ll figure out something.”

She let go of me and opened the door. I wondered if it had ever been locked. How could I have been so cowed by Richter’s threats? In math class, I could solve any problem—why couldn’t I have figured out something that would have gotten Richter off my back and saved my parents?

Laurel’s plan not to tell Matt was tested right from the beginning. He was waiting for us in the lobby, and as soon as we were on the sidewalk outside the police station, he unleashed a whole bunch of questions. Was I all right? Why were we being released? Had we gotten a lawyer? Had we paid bail?

Laurel held up one hand. “Calm down, Matt,” she said in a weary voice. “Nothing bad happened. They were in the middle of questioning me when another cop barged in, and they ended up having this big, angry discussion. It turns out there was a mistake in the warrant.”

“What?” Matt looked dazed.

“It wouldn’t have held up in court. And I started telling them about how we have a friend who’s a lawyer—you know, that guy Mike Callinan at Legal Aid—and about how he could sue their asses, and suddenly they decided the best thing was to let us go. Act like it never happened.”

Laurel went on, constructing her lie in midair, adding more details about how the police had apologized, until her story seemed more real than what had happened. The more Laurel talked, the less Matt seemed to listen. It was like he just checked out.

Because the cops had taken us away, we had to call a taxi to get home. Crammed next to him in the backseat, I looked at Matt whenever I thought he wouldn’t notice. In his shadowed eyes, I saw how exhausted he was. Exhausted and old and scared. And that scared me more than Richter had.

When we got home, there was no marijuana growing in our basement anymore. The only clue the plants had ever been there was the metal tracks on the ceiling where the grow lights had run. The house had been thoroughly searched, but the only stuff missing had to do with my parents’ pot.

That didn’t mean everything wasn’t a mess. Closets and cupboards had been flung wide open. Everyone’s dresser drawers gaped, even mine. Grossed out by the idea of some pervy cop rifling through my underwear, I dumped the entire contents of the drawer in my laundry basket and carried it to the washing machine.