Endangered

by Lamar Giles

  It looks odd and old. I’ve never heard of it, unlike Star Wars, which everybody knows. Shrugging it off, I move to the center of the room, start the panorama in my camera app, and spin slowly in place to capture everything. I do this a couple of times to make sure I have backup shots. I’m completing the last one when Taylor calls to me.

  In the living room, he’s leaning behind the DVD shelf, tugging at something.

  “What did you find?” I ask.

  He emerges, sliding a frame as tall as his hip into the open, flips it so we can see the front.

  A poster, featuring a funny little man gripping some sort of magical staff. There’s a tiny bronze placard in the lower right corner of the frame reading:

  Willow

  Released ’88

  “There are a couple more back here.” He drags those out. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Red Tails. Each with a bronze placard. Released ’81 and ’12 respectively.

  Together, we prop them against the wall side by side, a movie poster lineup.

  He says, “I thought they were important because they were hidden.”

  “You weren’t wrong. These are important.”

  “Him liking movies?”

  “There’s a pattern here.” I bring up Dante on my phone. “Look.”

  I point to the burning framed American Graffiti poster in the photo.

  Taylor looks at me, then the posters, frowns and says, “I see where you’re going, but it’s a stretch, right? A lot of people hang posters.”

  True. Posters in Dante and posters in this apartment don’t mean the flaming room was in Coach Bottin’s house. I suspect there’s another connection, though. One that will be harder to write off.

  With the internet app on my phone, I enter the following string in Google: American Graffiti, Red Tails, Star Wars.

  Almost immediately, a picture of a chubby, salt-and-pepper-haired man in a flannel shirt appears, the top hit.

  I turn my phone to Taylor. “Recognize him?”

  “George Lucas. He, like, invented Star Wars.”

  Coach Bottin’s bumper sticker, My Other Car Is an X-wing, bounces lewdly in my thoughts.

  Another quick search on Willow and Raiders of the Lost Ark confirms that George Lucas is affiliated with all the films as a writer, director, or producer. In some cases, as all three.

  “Liking framed movie posters might be a coincidence,” I say, giddy, “but liking everything one guy does. No. This is Bottin’s house in Dante. My Admirer torched his place, and Bottin lied to the police about it. It has to be over Keachin. He wouldn’t have wanted to explain that.”

  “I’m glad arson makes you tingly, but I still don’t see what you have here, Lauren. We broke into a murder suspect’s crib for this? We could go to jail.”

  “Lower your voice. We’re not going to jail. If we can piece all this together the right way, then we can make everyone see, and they’ll believe me.” I want to say, Then I can fix this.

  That’s too far. What’s happened isn’t some broken vase that can be Krazy Glued back together with reason and evidence. Mainly because one huge piece is missing. Keachin.

  Taylor stomps across the room. “Believe you about who? You don’t have anyone in mind.”

  “But I’m closer! It’s not great, but things are starting to make a kinda-sense.”

  “Is ‘kinda-sense’ a word?”

  “I’m not the rookie here. I’ve been doing this for—”

  A knock at the door interrupts me.

  Taylor and I exchange frightened looks, deer smelling humans on the breeze. If we get caught here . . .

  I mouth the words, “Turn on the sink.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just do it,” I hiss, and move back toward Bottin’s bedroom.

  More knocks. Louder and harder. “Hello?” a woman’s voice calls. “Who’s in there?”

  Speeding up, I go to Coach’s closet and grab a couple of bath towels off the shelf.

  Then, I do what a dead girl probably did here not so long ago.

  I strip.

  CHAPTER 38

  THE WATER IS RUNNING AND TAYLOR is pacing when I return to the kitchen wrapped in a towel, a second towel dangling from my hand. The shock freezes him, but we don’t have time for frozen. I yank the spray nozzle next to the faucet, stretching the hose to the limit, motioning for him to take it.

  He grabs it. I flip my head forward so my hair dangles into the basin. “Spray me.”

  The knocker is really persistent now. “I’m about to call the police.”

  “Hang on! I’m just getting out of the shower!” I shout, praying she’s not already dialing 911. “Taylor,” I whisper-scream.

  He triggers the nozzle and a cold stream douses me. Mussing my hair enough to spread the moisture, I whip the second towel around my dripping locks like a turban. “Hide.”

  Taylor ducks behind the counter while I move to the door.

  Deep breath, I open it a crack. “Yes?”

  An elderly brown-skinned lady with eyes so big they seem insectile, like they should be on stalks, examines me. There’s a cordless in her hand, as ready as a gunslinger’s weapon. “Who are you?”

  “I’m your new neighbor,” I say. “Moved in yesterday.”

  “I didn’t see any moving trucks yesterday.”

  Think, Panda. “My furniture hasn’t arrived yet. All I’ve got is an air mattress and some luggage. That’s why it took me so long to answer. Got in the shower and realized I didn’t unpack my towels. Stupid.”

  The old lady’s lips pinch, making the lower half of her face look like a sad prune. “It’s just you who moved in?”

  Did she hear Taylor talking before? Is she trying to trip me up? I play it neutral. “I have a boyfriend.”

  More prune puckering. She sighs, becomes more relaxed before my eyes, but with a strange air of sadness. “You’re such a pretty girl. I think you can do much better.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do, but if I hear any fighting I will call the police on him. Do you understand?”

  My eyes, the bruises. She thinks . . . “Oh, ma’am. No. My boyfriend didn’t do this.”

  She backs off. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I don’t know if the landlord mentioned your apartment belonged to that nasty teacher who’s been in the news.”

  “I don’t watch much news. I need to go. My hair.”

  She seems put off, but moves away, mumbling, “That’s what’s wrong with your generation now.”

  “Good day, ma’am.” I close the door, then lean against it because there’s very little strength in my legs.

  Taylor rises, awed, though I misinterpret what’s got his interest piqued.

  “Are you naked under there?” he asks.

  My cheeks blaze. “I’ve got on underwear, jerk.”

  I rush back to Bottin’s room where I left my clothes. “We’re leaving. Take some pictures of those posters first.”

  He gets to work with the point-and-shoot. “Then what?”

  “We show my darling Admirer exactly what we’ve found.”

  We’re parked at the supermarket where I first met Quinn Beck so we can piggyback the Wi-Fi from the bookstore next door. I upload all the pictures Taylor took to my MacBook, then sync them to my phone so I have everything we shot in hand.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” he asks.

  “No, but he likes to taunt me. It’s how he keeps me off balance. Let’s see if it works both ways.”

  I send snapshots of the Lucas collection with this text: Any reason you didn’t burn these?

  He responds quickly.

  SecretAdm1r3r: I notice ur boy toy’s not in school today. Was hoping 2 catch him @ the crosswalk, GTA-style.

  I show Taylor the message. He gets grim.

  “What’s ‘GTA-style’?” I ask.

  “Grand Theft Auto, I think.” His voice is a little growly, he’s flexing his fingers into a fist. “You can run people over for
points, or fun.”

  I’d forgotten about those horrible games. “You like things like that?”

  “As of today, no.”

  What’s it like to have your life threatened? Not in some after-school-playground-fight sort of way, but, like, a scary person knows your name. I pat his knee, compounding the weirdness that carried over from last night. After two quick taps, I pull away slowly. “I think we’re getting under his skin.”

  Taylor nods, doesn’t seem to grasp the silver lining.

  Me: There r benefits 2 being suspended, u know. I have all day 2 track u down

  Admirer: I’d be worried if I wasn’t smarter/quicker/better than u

  Me: Can u stay that way?

  I silence the phone. He’ll keep texting, wanting to keep the jabs going. Let him squirm.

  “What now?” Taylor asks.

  “We can’t sit here all day.”

  “We could go back to my place.”

  Now the car seems uncomfortably warm, unusual for fall. “Um.”

  “I don’t mean like”—his voice deepens, faux-smooth—“come back to my bachelor pad. I’m saying we can get a better look at those photos. Or watch TV and have a sandwich. Whatever.”

  “What about pizza?” I’ve suddenly got a taste for it.

  “Pizza’s cool. Half peppers and mushrooms.” He remembers my preferred toppings.

  “Half sausage and those nasty olives you like.”

  His order. My order. And never the two shall meet.

  He plays with a pair of my discarded pizza crusts, forming a T on his plate and grinning like he just finished the Mona Lisa. Boys.

  Without his siblings going Cirque du Soleil on the furniture, the apartment feels vast, and at the same time cramped. Me and him take up a lot of space.

  I work around the discomfort by clicking through the photos of Bottin’s apartment. The pictures of the coach’s passwords are for Taylor. He gets to work on his own rebuilt laptop made from mismatched parts. He notices me noticing the oddity.

  “I call it ‘the Bride,’ as in Frankenstein,” he says. “I put this baby together from old throwaways the school was recycling.”

  “Does lightning need to strike for it to work?”

  “Funny. She doesn’t look like much, but she’s powerful.”

  When the Bride boots up, the spinning hard drive sounds as loud as a helicopter rotor. My faith in her is not high.

  Within minutes, Taylor and the Bride prove me wrong. He says, “The first two accounts were clearly labeled. One is Netflix—I didn’t bother to look at his queue. The other is a Patriot Trust bank account log-in. Dude only has twenty-four dollars and seventy-two cents in checking and savings combined, but his credit card debt is crazy. A lot of big purchases in the last six months.”

  “Like what?” I circle behind him and lean in close to see what the Bride has to offer. Taylor wears cologne now. He didn’t used to.

  “There’s a bunch of different charges, but if you sort it so the highest ones are on top, you get . . .”

  A list of high-end clothing stores. Some of the very same stores I photographed Keachin frequenting in the days before I busted her. I thought she was using her daddy’s money. Actually, her sugar daddy’s.

  “There are also a few hotel charges. And this.” He points to a single charge that’s over a thousand dollars. A tuition payment for AGG Technical Institute.

  The same tech school I used to gain access to the roof of the Patriot Trust Building.

  Coach Bottin had one of their T-shirts in his closet. Of all the assumptions I can make from the charges on his credit card—purchases from a dead girl’s favorite stores, random hotel stays—tech school tuition should be the least creepy.

  So why is my skin crawling?

  “What about the other accounts on that paper?” I ask.

  “One’s labeled ‘PHS’—that’s the Portside High faculty portal. I’ll take a look at it now. The last one is labeled ‘VDMV.’ What exactly are we looking for here, Lauren?”

  I wish I knew. “Maybe nothing. That bank info might be the best we get, but you’re—uh, the tech guy. If something looks strange, you’re going to know, right?”

  He grins, and doesn’t seem to notice that I almost called him “my tech guy.”

  “Keep doing your thing,” I say, returning to the photos on my MacBook. “I’ll do mine.”

  My thing doesn’t go so well. What am I looking for?

  The quick shots, and the panoramas, and the close-ups tell me nothing new. Sleaze and George Lucas.

  Also a stunning level of narcissism. There’s a cropping of framed photos on the wall in Coach’s living room. Selfies showing Coach Bottin on hiking trails, and in a park, and staring at the ocean from a balcony, and posing on his bed with his silk sheets wrapped around him like a centerfold. There are at least a dozen shots showing his appreciation of himself.

  Beyond that, nothing.

  In the early afternoon, Taylor says, “You’re going to want to see this.”

  I go to the Bride.

  “That ‘VDMV’ log-in, it’s for a site the coach has marked as a favorite in his personal faculty portal. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.”

  He shows me the site with the state seal, and logs in with Coach’s credentials. “Coach teaches—taught—Driver’s Ed. This is how he reported exam scores to the state. It’s how they determine if we get to drive.”

  “Okay.”

  “Those scores are linked to our driving records,” he says, and clicks through a few screens until he gets to a SEARCH field, “which are also linked to the pictures we took for our learning permits. Those pictures eventually end up on our driver’s licenses.”

  He searches his own name, and a picture appears. The same one the Admirer sent me.

  “Holy crap,” I say.

  Taylor repeats the steps and shows me Ocie’s picture, then Keachin’s. “All three of these photos have been searched for recently. Mine and Mei’s were retrieved after Coach Bottin was arrested. Your Admirer has access to this account, too.”

  “Kinda figured.”

  “Why go through all this?”

  Is there a more frustrating question? Arson, murder, elaborate games with pictures, threats, and cars. “It’s all such . . .”

  “Such what?”

  I’m thinking. About what I was going to say. Because I’m not the first person to say it.

  She was trying to get away from Bottin’s crazy shit.

  “Such crazy shit,” I say, “she wanted to get away from it. Marcos told me in the hall.”

  “I thought you said he didn’t fit, no tech skills.”

  “No. He’s not my Admirer. He knows stuff. More than we do. I was too”—distracted—“close to see it. I’ve been focused on everything after Keachin died, and it’s not enough. If Marcos really was Keachin’s friend, then she probably told him her side of all this. Stuff that happened before she died. That’s where we get our answers.”

  Taylor shakes his head. “Okay, you’re better at this part of it than I am. Where do we find him?”

  I check the time on my phone. School ended an hour ago. “Monte FISHto.”

  “Oh, gross. The fried stink of that place gets in your clothes.”

  “When a twenty-four-piece buffalo popcorn shrimp meal costs five ninety-nine, there are bound to be consequences. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 39

  THE COUNT OF MONTE FISHTO MASCOT—A giant red cartoon catfish in a waistcoat with a sword and sheath on its hip—leers at us in a way that makes the ocean seem scarier and less appetizing than I’m sure the company intended. We park beneath the grinning sea creature and head inside.

  “Fair warning,” I say, “he’s probably not going to be happy to see me.”

  “Care to elaborate?” Taylor opens the door and lets out a blast of fish batter aroma that flips my stomach. He winces and brings his shirt collar to his nose like a makeshift gas mask.

  I will myself in
side and try not to look too closely at big banners advertising Chunky Clam Stew—Here for a Limited Time!

  “Last time we talked, we weren’t on the friendliest terms,” I say.

  “Well, me and Marcos are cool. Maybe I can smooth things over.”

  We approach the counter where an adult in the standard FISHto red button-down shirt and flimsy three-cornered hat greets us. “Welcome to Monte FISHtos! What are you casting your hook for?”

  I say, “Is Marcos Dahmer working to—”

  “Daniels,” Marcos says, stomping from the back, smeared flour on his faded apron, “would you like to try a Depth Charge meal? To go?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “We already talked. If you weren’t a girl, I would’ve given you a busted lip to go with those black eyes. Be glad I’m kind of sexist.”

  “Marcos!” the woman behind the counter says.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Emma. But this is the girl I told you about.”

  Ms. Emma’s distress fades. “Oh, well then.”

  Is it possible to get used to people instantly despising me? If so, I wish I could get there already.

  Taylor says, “Marcos, look—”

  “Save it. I thought you had better taste in friends, bro.”

  “—just listen to her. There’s some twisted stuff happening and she’s trying to stop it.”

  “Listen? I thought Gray was all about the pictures. Walk, guys. We’re done.”

  He turns toward the kitchen, blowing us off.

  I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I never intended for Marcos—or anyone—to hate me. If he’s going to aim that emotion my way, I might as well earn it.

  “Talk to us, or I’m going to tell everyone the truth about you and me.”

  Marcos spins back to us, and Taylor gives me a crooked look.

  “There is no ‘you and me,’ Daniels. What are you trying to pull?”

  “The stuff Gray’s done, it would be hard to pull off without a partner. If folks don’t think that already, it would be really easy to plant the thought.”

  Marcos comes from behind the counter, gets in my face. “You’re crazy!”

  “Hey!” Taylor says, shoving him back.

  I get between them, trying to calm the situation down before Ms. Emma calls the cops.