G
“A pawnshop and a pool store?” Alex asks.
I feel sick to my stomach. Because I know exactly what you can buy at a pawnshop and a pool supply store if you’re a bioterrorist. “Pawnshops sell guns and bullets,” I say to Alex. “And pool supply stores sell chemicals.”
He nods. “Should have seen that coming.”
Mike Cooper is our first solid lead. Whoever he is, my dad was interested in him, which means he could be important.
But it’s more than that. My dad organized his emails with preset filters so important ones came in already labeled. This new email is labeled MULDER. And I’m betting if I follow this one back to the folder, I’ll find more emails about the case.
Alex rolls his eyes. He’s never been an X-Files fan. “What do the other ones say?”
I scroll down to last Friday, which G from Homeland Security referenced, and I find a thread of emails between the two of them, beginning with the first one my dad sent to G. The subject is PERSON OF INTEREST.
I open up the first email and skim it quickly. My dad cuts to the chase right away. He’s attaching a picture of a guy who’s a person of interest in a case. He can’t identify the guy in any of his databases; could Homeland Security do Facial Recognition and let him know if they find anything?
I click on the attachment.
“Is that him?” Alex asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know yet, but look at this,” I say, clicking to the next email, while we wait for the picture to download. My dad didn’t just send this email to G and Homeland Security. He literally sent hundreds of emails out to various counterintelligence agents and other agency contacts in different cities. Every email says the same thing—it all revolves around this one guy.
Alex leans in when the picture finishes loading. It’s grainy and black and white, and it looks like it might be a still shot from a security camera outside of a gas station. It looks like there’s a black Honda Accord and a gas pump in the background. But I wouldn’t be able to tell which gas station unless I was standing wherever this camera is, taking in everything at the same angle—and maybe not even then.
The guy himself is more distinguishable. He’s male, white, and probably between five feet nine and six feet two. He looks like he’s in his mid- to late thirties, still fit with broad shoulders, brown hair that’s cropped close to his head, and no facial hair. He has the look of someone who’s former or current military. Unfortunately, I can’t tell if he has any tattoos or piercings from the picture.
“Great, so he looks pretty average. Shouldn’t be hard to find him,” Alex says. “What’s Lickenbrock say?”
Agent G. Lickenbrock from Homeland Security had replied less than an hour after my dad’s original email.
James Tenner,
Haven’t talked to you since that stint out in L.A.
and you can’t even ask how I’ve been. I’d say
I’m surprised....
The guy in your picture: alias Mike Cooper,
real identity unknown. The case file’s attached,
call me if you want details.
G
“The case file is from 2010 regarding the deaths of two people, identities unconfirmed, as well as a missing person, suspected dead, where Mike Cooper, age thirty-six, was their main suspect. Until he went off the grid before they could gather enough evidence to take him into custody. When I open the picture on Cooper’s driver’s license, I’m staring at the same guy as the one in my dad’s grainy gas station picture. There’s no mistaking it.
Now we have a more identifiable picture.
“Do you have the backup drive?” Alex hands it to me before I’ve even finished the sentence, and I plug it in and start downloading all these emails and the files on this guy. “Are there color printers here?”
“Probably, but J—”
“We need to print a nice copy of this picture and go over to the pool supply store and the pawnshop. We might be able to get someone who remembers talking to Mike Cooper,” I say. “And we should keep an eye on the gas stations between those two stores. With all three of them in a similar area, it’s likely that he’s living or staying somewhere nearby.”
“Janelle.”
I glance up at Alex and stifle a groan. He’s wearing his serious face, and whatever he’s about to say, it’s going to be delivered in the form of a lecture.
“We should go to Struz with this,” he says.
I shake my head. I’m not ready to go to Struz with anything.
“I’m serious,” Alex continues. “You found a lot more than I thought we would today, and I’m not saying you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re good at this, but…”
“But what, Alex?”
“We’re in over our heads, you have to know that. We don’t even really know what the UIED is.”
I do know that. We don’t even know what we’re looking for. I might be ignoring it, but I do know. It’s more than just the fact that I don’t have credentials or access to an FBI database. It would be easier, sure. I could walk into Mira Mesa Pool, throw my ID on the counter, and demand to see exactly what alias Mike Cooper bought. But would that really solve anything?
We might be looking at the end of the world—the end of existence—and I’m running around playing teen detective.
“So I give all this to Struz, and then what?”
“I don’t know,” Alex says. “Maybe he’d investigate it?”
“Thanks for that—I mean, then what for us?” I ask, pulling my hair back into a ponytail. “Think about it, Alex, do you really just want to sit around and watch the clock count down? I can’t do that.”
Because that’s the truth. If something big is coming, I can’t just sit and wait for it. I need to be doing something active to stop it.
Alex nods. “Okay, but if we’re going to do this, you have to at least make sure that Struz and the FBI have found these leads too.”
“I’m sure they have someone going through my dad’s emails,” I say, because it’s true, though a part of me just dreads any phone call to Struz that’s going to clue him in to what we’re doing. I know he’ll be mad that I’m “playing FBI,” that he’ll want me to let him take care of it, and that he’ll pretend he doesn’t understand why I can’t.
“But you know your dad better than anyone else.”
He has a point. “Fine. I’ll call, but you find the color printer for this picture.”
“Yes, drill sergeant,” Alex says, grabbing the backup drive.
I pick up my cell phone and dial Struz.
And hope we’ve found everything useful on this laptop and in my dad’s email, because as soon as Struz realizes I have it, those passwords will get wiped.
09:00:52:06
I doubt the guy in the pool supply store believed my story about my boss sending me to buy chemicals and forgetting which ones I was supposed to get, but he told me anyway.
Mike Cooper bought several gallons of two different kinds of chlorine.
I buy the smallest size of each one, since he at least played along with my lie. I probably know a few people who have a pool, and I can donate it to them.
As he rings me up, he says, “Make sure you don’t mix them. These are two different kinds of chlorine, and they explode when mixed. You could end up blind, or worse.”
09:00:31:54
I have less luck at the pawnshop.
That is to say: none.
Not only is the guy unwilling to buy my bullshit story, he threatens to call the cops unless we leave. I don’t actually think he’ll do it, but I’m not willing to call his bluff either.
“Friendly guy,” Alex says when we get in the car. “Maybe we’ll have better luck on our gas station scavenger hunt.”
“That implies we’re looking for something at the gas station. We’re just looking for the right gas station.”
Alex shrugs, and we pull out of the parking lot onto University Avenue. “Hey, think that guy from the p
awnshop could be in on it?”
“I doubt it,” I say with a yawn. I haven’t slept through the night since I came home and found Struz on the doorstep. “He seemed more like he was just an irritable guy tired of taking shit than a terrorist.”
Alex laughs for a few seconds before his face sobers. “But really, J, how do we know what a terrorist looks like?”
The obvious answer: We don’t.
08:19:27:33
For some reason I decide to bargain with Struz when he shows up at the house this time. Probably because trying to keep him out of the house didn’t work, and now I don’t have any other options.
“Where’s the laptop, J?” he asks.
“What will you give me for it?”
“I’m serious, the director has been riding my ass about how you managed to hack in,” he says. “I could arrest you.”
I hold out my arms as if I’m ready to be led away. Struz wouldn’t arrest me.
“I can go through this whole house and turn it upside down, is that what you want?”
“Now, see, that’s the right question,” I say, dropping my hands at my sides. “Because what I want is to know details about my dad’s death, and if you can give them to me, I might be able to find my dad’s laptop.”
“This isn’t up for debate—”
“Janelle, who is it?” my mother says, and both Struz and I jump at the sound of her voice. She’s always in the back of my mind, but sometimes I forget that she’s not always at one extreme or the other.
“Elaine, it’s me. It’s Ryan,” he says.
My mother comes into view, wearing a tank top and a pair of my father’s pajama pants. If it’s possible, it looks like she’s lost weight since my dad died.
“Hi, Ryan, are you going to stay for dinner?” she asks, but she doesn’t wait for his answer. Instead she turns to me and says, “I was thinking burgers on the grill, and maybe corn on the cob would be nice. Do we have that?”
“Yeah, I think we still have some from the last time I ran to Wiedners. If not, I can always get more.”
She nods and heads into the kitchen.
We both wait for a second before Struz folds his arms across his chest. “Where were we?”
“You’re welcome to turn the house upside down,” I say. “I can assure you, there’s no laptop here.”
“I can search Alex’s house too. You—”
“Can you? Without a warrant? Have you met Annabeth Trechter?”
From the other room my mom yells, “You don’t have to stand in the doorway, Ryan. Even though James isn’t here, you’re always welcome in our house.”
Struz breaks into a smile and swipes a hand back and forth, ruffling his hair. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you, J-baby?” Then he looks me directly in the eye. I have a split second to be afraid of what he’s going to say, and then he says it. “You’re just like him.”
My whole face tingles, and I clench my jaw to keep it from quivering, but I can’t stop my eyes from watering.
Because actually I haven’t thought of everything. Even if I am just like him. The laptop is in the Jeep, which is currently unlocked in my driveway, but I don’t tell Struz that. “I just want to know the details.”
Sighing, Struz nods to the kitchen, because keeping an eye on my mom is a good idea. I follow him. My mother is rooting through the fridge, and I assume she’ll tell me if she doesn’t have everything she wants.
Struz drops into a kitchen chair and gestures for me to do the same.
I do.
He deliberately takes his time emptying his pockets and laying his car keys, cell phone, and pack of Marlboros on the table. I’m tempted to give him hell about the fact that he’s smoking again, since it took him three tries to quit a couple of years ago, but I figure he deserves a break.
Struz keeps his voice low, but I’m not worried about my mom hearing. She might be lucid right now, but she’s not exactly interested in what we’re doing. “He’d been investigating a couple of leads on his own—you know how he is. He told me he was heading out to Park Village to check something out around lunchtime.”
“I know all this.” I add, “And I know he took one in the arm and two in the chest.”
Struz doesn’t seem surprised. “We haven’t found the exact crime scene—his body was dumped in the canyons. He was either set up and walked into a trap or he misjudged whoever killed him.”
I want to deny it and say my dad wouldn’t have done either of those things. Instead I ask, “Why?”
“There’s nothing to suggest he ever drew his gun,” Struz says, his voice shaking slightly on the last word.
I let that digest for a minute, because that doesn’t seem like my dad at all. True, he wasn’t the kind of guy who rushed into situations guns blazing, but he was smart and he’d been doing this job for years.
Maybe he thought he was meeting a friend? It’s possible, though I don’t know where alias Mike Cooper fits into that.
I stand up and try to clear my head. “Have there been any more bodies?”
Struz rubs his temples. “Not since two days ago, when we found one in Ocean Beach, in a phone booth that I swear is straight out of the seventies.”
“The phone booth?”
He shakes his head and reaches for the cigarettes, but I lean forward and bat them out of the way. “Not in this house.”
Struz smiles—that’s what my dad used to say whenever he tried to smoke here. “J, I shit you not, I don’t drive around much in OB, but on every canvass, people swore up and down they’d never seen that phone booth.”
“So where did it come from?”
He gives an exaggerated shrug, which looks a little cartoonish since he’s so tall, and I want to press him more, but he’s jittery and obviously on edge, and I get the sense he’s worried that we’re running out of time.
“I’ll procure you the laptop, as I seem to remember now where it is,” I say.
Struz nods and stands up, thinking he’s won, but as soon as he turns his back, I grab the cigarettes and his cell phone and take them with me. While I retrieve the laptop—and not the files—I scroll through his contacts and find Barclay’s number, then repeat it to myself over and over again while I break each one of Struz’s cigarettes in half and put them back in the pack.
Number memorized and cigarettes broken, I head back into the house. I lay all three on the table, and Struz turns to see me do it. And groans as he notices the cigarettes aren’t in the same place as before.
“Please tell me you left me at least one,” he says.
“Will you stay here for a few hours and watch this while I run out?” I gesture toward the meal my mother seems to be planning.
He nods. “Yeah, sure, I can do that.”
I grab my keys and head for the door. Because I have to put those files somewhere else before Struz realizes exactly what I have.
And maybe because I want an excuse to see him, I’m thinking I can ask Ben to hide them for me.
08:18:56:47
I drive aimlessly through Rancho Peñasquitos for about ten minutes before heading to Ben’s. I’ll talk to him about everything that happened when we were freshmen—if there’s anything even left to talk about. And then I’ll confront him about what he hasn’t been telling me about the accident. Coming off the whole “you didn’t tell me the truth before” conversation, I think he’ll confess whatever he’s got going on.
At least, I’m hoping he will.
And it might be nothing. Maybe Elijah is growing weed in his basement or something. I wouldn’t exactly put it past him.
Then I’ll figure out where I can keep the files. If I sort things out with Ben, keeping them at his house makes a lot of sense. Struz doesn’t even know who he is.
But I don’t have Ben’s phone number, and it takes Alex those ten minutes to get me an address up on Black Mountain Road, north of school and no phone number. I’ll just show up unannounced—apparently, I’m like that.
 
; When I do, I knock on the door, wearing the backpack on both shoulders, hoping it will pass to unobservant parents as a school bag. But a little girl who’s about eight answers the door. She’s fair-skinned with bright red hair, and she looks so little like Ben that for a minute I wonder if I have the wrong house.
“Hey, is your brother or your parents here?” I ask in my best dealing-with-little-children voice, which isn’t that good at all.
“I don’t have a brother and my parents are dead,” she says.
My pulse throbs more forcefully throughout my body, and the word “dead” seems to echo between us.
Then I see a woman in her forties, who looks a lot like she could be a mother, coming toward us out of the kitchen.
“Cassie,” she scolds. “How many times have I told you to be respectful?”
“You’re not my mother,” Cassie says, her voice pitched close to a yell, before she turns and runs up the stairs.
The woman—Mrs. Michaels?—looks at me. “I’m sorry about that. Cassie’s new to foster care, and she hasn’t quite adjusted. How can I help you?”
“I was wondering if Ben was here? I have a couple homework questions I was hoping he could help me with,” I manage to spit out, though I want to ask her if Ben is in foster care too. I feel stupid and hurt that I didn’t know that. Not even a week ago, I told myself I wanted to know him better. I’m embarrassed at how self-absorbed I must be to not know something this basic yet important about his life. And I can’t help wishing he’d told me.
“Oh sure,” she says, opening the door wider and pointing me in the right direction. “He and his friends are downstairs.”
08:18:52:11
Most houses in California don’t have basements—or at least most of the ones that I’ve been in—so I find them unnaturally creepy.
I suppress a shudder as I shut the door behind me and begin the descent into a cooler, damper, and darker room than the rest of the house. But I make it only two steps when I recognize Ben’s voice over the alternative music.