Driver's Dead

by Peter Lerangis

  After a few blocks, Main Street widened. When it intersected with Merrick Road, Kirsten finally had her bearings. A left turn would take her home.

  Across Merrick, Main Street looked like an abandoned movie set, a center of town for some mythical village from the 1960s. Among the dilapidated storefronts were a few struggling shops among boarded-up buildings. On one of the lampposts a faded sign proclaimed Port Lincoln—Babe Ruth League Champs 1971.

  Below the sign, Gwen’s bike was chained to the post.

  Kirsten walked her bike across Merrick. She could see Gwen’s back through a shop window with the words, Something Old, Something New, printed across in cracking gold letters.

  Directly across the street, Kirsten saw an alleyway between two buildings. She ducked into it and kept still.

  After a few moments Gwen emerged, putting on her backpack. She looked up and down the street warily.

  Gingerly Kirsten backed farther into the alley, out of Gwen’s sight.

  She counted to fifty and edged forward. Gwen and her bike were gone.

  Kirsten stepped out of the alleyway and looked up and down the street. No Gwen.

  She looked at the shop again. In its window was a bizarre collection of things: a saxophone, an old manual typewriter, a pair of ice skates, several cameras, a bulky metal computer, and some jewelry on a felt-covered shelf. The dominant color was light brown, as if the display hadn’t been dusted since the Babe Ruth championship.

  Under the store’s logo, smaller letters spelled out, Loans Made.

  Kirsten had seen plenty of pawnshops in the Big Apple. A person could get an instant loan by giving the shop a valuable item. If the person didn’t return after a certain time, the shop could sell the item to the public.

  Gwen was putting on her pack as she left. Which meant she had removed it inside.

  Had she bought something or left it?

  Only one way to find out.

  Kirsten chained her bike to the street lamp and walked to the door. Above the door’s brass handle was a handwritten sign that said, Please Buzz.

  In the handle was a rolled-up sheet of yellow paper.

  Kirsten pulled the sheet out and opened it. A note had been scribbled inside:

  Chapter 17

  THE WITCH! THE SNEAKY, lying, evil, murdering witch!

  Gwen was trying to frame her.

  The dent in Dad’s car looked as if it could have been made by a person. Would the police fall for it?

  They might.

  But not if they had something else to fall for.

  Kirsten folded up the note and stuffed it in her pocket. Gwen meant business, but so did she.

  Gwen had gone into this pawnshop for a reason. Why did she need cash? Or did she need to get rid of something?

  Kirsten pushed the buzzer. When she heard a buzz back, she pushed on the metal door. It gave way with a loud click.

  Her footsteps creaked on the shop’s wooden floor. In a dark corner, an old man with a feather duster glanced up briefly, grunted hello, then turned back to his work.

  To his left was a human skeleton hanging under a sign that read, BEEN WAITING HERE LONG?

  Gee, this place is a barrel of laughs.

  A narrow pathway led her between old tables crammed with knickknacks. The air, what was left of it, had a sweet, pungent smell of mildew and aging wood. The front section of the shop had electronic equipment, appliances, and antiques. Racks of old books, records, and cassettes rested against walls covered with ornately framed mirrors and paintings. A ceiling fan whirred noisily above, encrusted with dust and grime.

  “Quite a scrape you got,” said a voice to her right.

  Kirsten turned to see a pudgy, middle-aged mart behind the counter. He had a patient, slightly fake smile. On top of his pasty face was a thick crop of waxy black hair. Kirsten wondered how much money he had given a customer for that. Probably not a whole lot.

  He was leaning back in a chair, reading a dog-eared copy of a horror novel. On the glass counter in front of him was an old-fashioned cash register and a small pile of new-looking clothing and jewelry.

  “Yeah, I fell off my bike.” Kirsten fingered Gwen’s pile. “Hm, this stuff looks nice.”

  The man’s smile widened. “It was just brought in. By a young lady probably about your size. I haven’t priced any of it yet, but if you’re interested in an item, we can work something out.”

  Kirsten sifted through the pile—a gorgeous linen shirt, a hideous orange bathing suit, a cheap purse, and a few T-shirts and trinkets.

  A small gold ring fell out of a folded skirt. It was set with a diamond-shaped pale purple stone. Kirsten held it up to the light.

  The inscription GM & RM was engraved inside the band.

  Gwen Mitchell and Rob Maxson. This must be stuff Rob gave her.

  Stuff Gwen wanted to forget? Evidence?

  Her eye fixed on one item among the jewelry.

  A locket.

  She’d seen that before. Gwen’s nervous fingers had been fiddling with it for weeks.

  As Kirsten picked the locket off the counter, she glanced at a stack of business cards in a Lucite holder. She read the top one:

  SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

  Your castaway is another person’s treasure.

  Loans made * Antiques bought and sold *

  Jewelry * Electronics * Clothing

  62 Main Street

  Port Lincoln, New York 11500

  Erik and Olaf Maartens

  Olaf.

  Why did that name ring a bell?

  “Are you Olaf?” she asked the man behind the counter.

  “Nope. My father is.” He nodded toward the old man.

  Oblivious, the old man shuffled around the shop, carrying on a spirited little conversation with no one in particular.

  “The car belonged to this little old guy—you know, Olaf, who walks around town talking to himself?”

  Maria’s words came back to her.

  “Wasn’t your dad the guy whose car was stolen?” Kirsten asked softly.

  The son—Erik—chuckled. “Hey, Pop,” he called to the old man, “this girl wants to know if you were the one whose car was stolen.”

  Kirsten was mortified. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s okay. He loves to talk about it,” Erik said with a wink. “Turned him into an overnight celebrity at age eighty-seven.”

  Olaf was peering at Kirsten through one eye. The other seemed to be not functioning, half hidden under a droopy lid. As he hobbled over to the counter, Kirsten noticed a faint, stale smell of Old Spice.

  “Fifteen years old, that car was,” he announced. “I had no theft insurance. Didn’t make sense on a wreck like that. Thieves know that. Most of ’em have the decency to take newer cars.” He shook his head crankily. “Was a Toyota. Guess the boy liked his country’s own products… .”

  “But Toyotas are from Japan,” Kirsten said.

  Olaf glared at her, as if she weren’t supposed to speak. “Okay, maybe the kid was born in the States, but you know what I mean.”

  “Well, he was Vietnamese,” Kirsten pressed.

  Olaf waved a bony hand dismissively. “Yeah. Well, Vietnamese, Japanese, who the hell can tell the difference? ’Specially at night. Anyway, he was wearing a leather jacket, black one, just like them kamikaze pilots in Double-ya Double-ya Two. They were Japanese. Also, the kid chose April 18, same day Doolittle bombed Tokyo—same day Yamamoto was killed, too. Now ain’t that a pretty little coincidence—”

  “It was nighttime, Mr. Maartens?” Kirsten interrupted.

  “You bet. I was watching the Mets. Gooden was pitching—”

  “And you saw him through a window?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you still got a good look at his face?”

  “They found the little rat in my car, didn’t they?”

  Olaf scrunched up his one good eye at Kirsten—if “good” could be used to describe the glazed, yellowish thing. “I know, yo
u’re one of them liberals. Let ’em all in this country, that’s what you think. Well, see what happened? They think they can get something for nothing! We should force ’em back to their own country—”

  “Pop!” Erik said sharply.

  The old man sneered, revealing a few worn, yellow teeth separated by gaps you could stick a cigar through. He turned away and went back to his work, muttering further political commentary.

  “Sorry,” Erik said. “He’s not … firing all thrusters. Now, if you want to buy something, Miss—”

  “No, thanks,” Kirsten replied. “Maybe some other time.”

  She hightailed it outside and unlocked her bike.

  As she pedaled home, the houses of Merrick Road sped by in a blur.

  He said he saw Nguyen steal his car. An old codger with half an eye, looking through a window at nighttime. Its impressive he was even able to make out a leather jacket!

  But the town believed him.

  And they didn’t believe the Trangs.

  Kirsten felt a surge of anger. Had anyone really looked into this? Nguyen Trang died without knowing his parents. His aunt and uncle moved away without finding the truth. And no one cared!

  What if someone else stole that car? What if someone was in the Toyota with Nguyen that night?

  When Kirsten got back home, Nat was playing basketball in the backyard. “You made me miss!” was his greeting as she pulled into the driveway.

  “Just stuff it, Nat.”

  “I’m not tall enough! Get it?”

  Kirsten ran inside to the sound of Nat’s barf-inducing laughter.

  She cleaned up her scrapes and cuts in the bathroom and bandaged them securely. Then she called her dad at South Oaks Community Hospital.

  “Hi, honey, what’s up?” he asked.

  “Dad, when people come into the Emergency Room, they all have to sign in, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you get a copy of one of the sign-in sheets—like from April 18?”

  “I can try. Why?”

  “A … demographics project, to demonstrate statistical randomness in community institutions.”

  Where did that come from? Kirsten beamed with pride.

  “Sounds serious,” her dad said with a chuckle. “I’ll get it for you.”

  “Thanks, Dad!”

  Kirsten breathed a huge sigh as she hung up. If another kid was with Nguyen, he couldn’t have escaped an accident like that without some serious injury—unless he got out and pushed the car over the cliff, which didn’t seem too likely.

  And South Oaks Community was the only hospital around for miles.

  Tip-tip-tip-tip … “Yes!”

  Tip-tip-tip-tip … “Yes!”

  Tip-tip-tip-tip … Bonk. “Foul!”

  Nat’s sound effects were beginning to drive Kirsten crazy.

  She decided to go upstairs and write in her journal. She hadn’t done that since all the weird stuff started happening.

  Maybe if she got it all down, she’d be able to figure things out.

  She booted her computer and called up her journal. The last date she’d worked on it was September 22, and now it was already mid-October.

  She went to the end, then scrolled up to read her last page.

  She stared at the orange, glowing screen, her mouth slowly opening in horror:

  Kirsten, beware!

  I know where you live. I know where you sleep. You may think you are safe, but that is part of the plan.

  When you least expect it, you will say good-bye to the world. And you will be unprepared.

  Kirsten Wilkes, you can ignore the blood on the floor. But you cannot escape the blood to come.

  Your own.

  Chapter 18

  KIRSTEN’S FINGERS FELT LIKE icicles. Her eyes were magnetized to the screen. The letters seemed to fade and swirl.

  She shook her head. She blinked. She prayed she had misread the words. They were a hallucination. Her fall from the bike had given her a concussion, and she was seeing things.

  You cannot escape the blood to come… .

  Kirsten quickly scrolled down. The message continued:

  And after the blood, Kirsten, comes worse.

  Much worse.

  Look tonight for the Seeping Mucus below your windows. To be followed by the Cascade of Puke from the shower head. Then the Cake of Fused Boogers in your soap dish. Of course, if you’re quick, you can feed that to the squiggling little rodent beckoning you from the toilet bowl… . NYAH HAHAHAHA HA!!!!!!!

  P.S. You are the worst driver who ever lived!

  Kirsten heard a squeak outside her door. It became a giggle, then a full-fledged laugh.

  “Nat, you rotten, stinking, little slime bucket!” Kirsten screamed, springing from her chair. She flew across the room and threw open the door in time to see her brother jumping the last four steps to the first floor.

  She bounded down the stairs and chased him into the street.

  Nat sprinted away, howling with laughter. In seconds he had gained most of a block on her.

  “I HATE you!” Kirsten shrieked after him.

  Cursing under her breath, she stomped back to the house.

  She was livid. Nat had gone into her room, turned on her computer, snooped around in her files, found her personal diary, and sabotaged it.

  Probably read the whole thing, too!

  She went straight to her room and deleted everything he’d written. She stewed for a few minutes, but forced herself to put aside her rage. It was time to write.

  She let her fingers fly over the keyboard. She wrote about everything, sometimes not even stopping to put in periods. The date with Rob. Rob’s death. Gwen’s behavior. The mysterious flyer. The blood. The kitchen door. The doubts she was starting to have about Nguyen Trang’s death.

  She wrote a lot about Nguyen. Funny how much she was beginning to care about a guy she’d never met. Never would meet.

  But somehow she felt connected to him. Maybe it was the bedroom (it had to have been his; she was sure of it). Maybe it was the unfairness of it all, the assumption that he stole the car and caused his own death.

  Kirsten didn’t believe it for a minute.

  What did happen on the night of April 18?

  Nguyen didn’t know many people. But he did know Gwen. He had to know Rob, too—or of him. After all, Rob had been going out with Gwen while Nguyen was pining over her.

  What else?

  Gwen wanted Rob. Nguyen wanted Gwen (and so did Virgil). Gwen went out with Nguyen, with the cockeyed idea that Rob would get jealous. It was like a soap opera.

  And it ended in a death, maybe a murder. But who would have a motive to kill a harmless guy like Nguyen?

  Rob? No way. He had dumped Gwen. What did he care who she went out with?

  Virgil? Maybe, since Nguyen was going out with the girl he had the hots for. But Virgil was the last person in the world who would murder anyone.

  Okay, Kirsten thought. So I’m Nguyen. What am I thinking about the night I’m about to die? What am I worried about?

  Kirsten recalled something Maria had told her: “The Trangs kept saying they would find Nguyen’s diary, and that would give all the clues to what really happened.”

  She opened a new file, and at the top of the first page she typed:

  THE DIARY OF NGUYEN TRANG

  Off the top of her head, she began composing:

  I give Gwen so many presents. She is so beautiful. Does she really like me? I wish she did, but she still likes Rob. Maybe I should talk to Rob in shop tomorrow. Maybe he needs to have a real breakup, instead of just ignoring her… .

  This was ridiculous. How could she put words in the mouth of someone she didn’t know? Who did she think she was, Nancy Drew?

  She closed the file without saving it. She was about to shut down the computer when she thought about Nat.

  No way was she going to let him see what she’d written in her journal.

  She took her software
manual off the shelf and found a chapter entitled, “Passwords: Protect Your Sensitive Data.”

  But her eyes crossed when she began reading. It was too complicated, and she hated figuring out computer gobbledegook. She’d get Maria to help her someday.

  For now, she copied her journal file to a floppy disk, then erased the copy that was on her hard disk. If Nat tried to snoop around, he’d find nothing.

  Slipping the floppy in its paper sleeve, she looked around the room for a place to hide it.

  The bookshelves would be the first place Nat would check. The closet was out. Too messy. The disk might get thrown around, bent up. And wedging it between her clothes in her drawers was also a little risky for something so fragile.

  Kirsten walked around, idly spinning the disk in her hand.

  She noticed the wood paneling was laid on the wall in large sheets. Wherever the sheets met was a seam, floor to ceiling. Along the seam, small nails attached the paneling to the support underneath.

  Just above the floor, near her door, one of the seams had warped. A nail or two seemed to be missing, and the sheet of paneling on the left had bowed outward a bit, making a gap.

  Kirsten stuck her fingers in the gap and pulled. The wooden sheet had some give, and she could see the wall underneath.

  Nat would never think to look there.

  Smiling, Kirsten pulled the paneling as far as she could and carefully set the disk inside.

  But a disk was already there.

  Wrapped in a small plastic bag.

  Kirsten pulled it out, sending wisps of dust to the carpet.

  She wiped off the dust that obscured the disk label and read the words N. TRANG underneath.

  Chapter 19

  KIRSTEN PULLED THE DISK out of the plastic bag. She ran to her computer, inserted it, and typed out the DOS command DIR A:, to get a list of files.

  The hard drive popped onto the screen: DATA ERROR READING DRIVE A:.

  Terrific. Data error. What on earth did that mean?

  She dashed into her parents’ room and tapped out Maria’s number on the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Maria! What’s a data error?”

  “Uh, excuse me? Come again?”