by Paul Griffin
The night before I could have sworn I knew Bobbie Lyles from somewhere. Now the resemblance was absolutely clear. She was either Angela’s much older sister or her young mother. The address Angela had given me, the one on the other side of Valedale, really was her father’s crib, but she lived here. She had me in her sights from day one, Nicole’s first Schmidt session. Angela had come into Schmidt’s that day as a walk-in. She knew Nicole was coming into school, and she wanted to see the damage she’d caused up close. She caught the way I was falling for Nicole, even that first day, and decided she had to team up with me to keep an eye on me.
My face burned. My hands ached from balling them so tightly. I felt stupid, of course. Profoundly so. But even more than that I felt guilt. In sharing information with Angela, I not only hadn’t helped Nicole; I’d put her directly in harm’s way.
I studied the dark walls covered with darker sketches. I had befriended the acid thrower, had actually begun to feel sorry for her. I was so stunned I couldn’t remember the sequence of events that had led me to this point. What was I doing in this sociopath’s bedroom, in her mind, rummaging through her dreams, her nightmares?
Her desk. The power adapter was there but no laptop. A portrait had fallen off the desk into a basket of dirty laundry. It was half photo, half sketch. It was Nicole. The photo was ripped from her Facebook. I recognized it, a close-up of Nicole at the family lake house. She’s combing her hair in front of a mirror. Angela completely blocked out the left side of Nicole’s face with glossy red pen. She’d noted it in the corner with what appeared to be a matrix of some sort:
GB
AM
I was trying to figure out what it meant, when hinges squeaked. The front screen door. I slipped into the basement stairwell. Somebody behind me said, “Very, very bad, Jay.” Girl’s voice.
I ran, but she kicked my foot from behind. She smashed my head face-first into musty green mini-golf carpet. I felt her knee in my back and something smooth, cold and heavy behind my ear. Metal, the nose of a pistol. She hissed, “You should have stuck with virtual breaking and entering.” Her gum. The flavor, strawberry. No, cherry.
FORTY-FOUR
“How about a piece of that cherry gum, then?” I said to Detective Barrone. I’d asked her to take off the handcuffs. My shoulders ached from keeping my hands behind my back. The precinct interrogation room looked more like file storage, browning manila folders everywhere, lots of unsolved cases. “What about my three phone calls?”
“What three phone calls?” She peeled me a piece of gum.
“That’s how they do it on The Shield.”
“You get the calls after you’ve been arrested.”
“If I’m not under arrest, why am I wearing bracelets?”
“Because for your own protection I needed to take you in for questioning.”
“What exactly are you protecting me from?”
She put the gum into my mouth. “You, Jay.”
“I demand my rights.”
“These are your rights: You’re mine for twenty-four hours before I have to arrest or release you. We had that house under surveillance with remote cameras from the buildings across the street. We have you on video. Burglary is a felony. It can get you locked up for fifteen years.”
She had to be bluffing. This was my first offense. I was more worried about the hacking. I’d tapped government agencies. Search warrant in hand, the cops were sure to be on their way to my apartment, my laptops.
“Jay, I want to help you. And I will. But you have to help me.” She clicked open the handcuffs.
I felt a bit better now that I could see my hands. “I want to help you too, Detective. I do. But can you at least call my dad? I don’t want him to freak out when he comes home and I’m not there. He’ll take your call this time, I promise. He has an emergency cell number.”
She pulled her phone. “What’s the number?”
I gave it to her. She dialed and cracked me a can of Pepsi as she waited for my father or his voicemail to pick up. Neither would happen. The phone would ring indefinitely. She’d just dialed my kill code, the one that told my computers to fry themselves and all traces of my hacking. “What made you go to that house?” she said.
Barrone’s partner leaned in. “Jess?”
Barrone went out into the hall. I wondered if Nicole knew I’d been arrested or if she’d tried to call me. They’d taken my phone. After a minute, Barrone was back. “Your friend Angela tried to run when she saw the police parked out in front of the high school. They caught her on a bus bound for Newark.” Barrone kicked the door shut and eyed me. “Last chance: Tell me how you figured out Angela Sammick threw acid at Nicole Castro, or I’ll slap you with obstruction of justice on top of the burglary. I’ll petition the DA to go full out on you in court, no concurrent sentencing. You could do twenty-five to life.”
“Didn’t I just help you catch the perp?”
“Are you serious? I had that house staked out for weeks, and then you go busting in there? You could have tipped her off that we were onto her. She makes it to that airport? Forget it. Gone.”
“One question-”
“No. No questions from you now. Now you give answers.”
“If you had Angela pegged as a suspect for weeks, why did you wait so long to arrest her?”
Barrone glared at me. “You have fifteen seconds to make up your mind: Tell me every single thing that took you to Angela Sammick’s house this morning, or you will cook. And Jay? That pretty hair of yours? They’re gonna love you in jail.” She checked her wristwatch.
I eyed the wall clock. It had maybe twenty years’ worth of dust on the rim, but the second hand ticked out just fine: 5 seconds to go, 4, 3. . I would tell her everything, almost. No way I was bringing Cherry into this. “The black Civic. I had to run down the tag number-”
“Jay, do not say a word.” My father rolled into the room and dropped his giant hands on my shoulders, shielding me or getting ready to strangle me.
“I’m disappointed you never found the time to return my calls, Steve,” Barrone said. “That the only way we could talk is under these ridiculous circumstances.”
“I’m not talking to you now, either. Is he under arrest?”
“Not yet.”
“Then arrest him.”
FORTY-FIVE
The holding cell was cold, and I had to share it with this kid who kept crying and another who was picking on the crier. I told the idiot to chill or I’d hammer him, and he chilled. My experience is that people often confuse tall with tough.
The next morning, Thursday, my court-appointed lawyer pled not guilty for me. My father was there to post bail. He’d had to hock one of his paintings. We were driving a while when I said, “Dad? Marathon. Those two trips-”
He grabbed my jacket collar, his eyes wet, face red. He spit as he yelled. “You’re spying on me? I’m scrambling like an idiot to raise bail yesterday, last night, all these years. For you. You know what, Jay?” He let go of my collar with a shove and hit the gas. “It’s none of your goddamn business what I was doing in Marathon.” He turned up the stereo, annoyingly repetitive baroque organ. A few minutes later we were home. He pulled up to the lobby entrance. “Get out,” he said.
“Where you going?”
“Food shopping.” He sped out of the lot.
Nicole had called. I called her back. A half hour later her Saab was pulling up to my lobby. I hopped in. “I’m furious with you,” she said. “You could’ve been killed.” She kissed my cheek.
“Let’s go visit Emma,” I said.
“I was by this morning. She’s feeling sick today.”
Nicole wanted to walk around. We went to Jersey City. We parked by the waterfront shops and hiked to Liberty State Park. It was packed. The weather was crazy for November 4, low seventies, dry, breezy, no clouds. At one point Nicole just stopped and drew in a deep breath. “Nice,” she said. “I keep forgetting to do that. Let’s go into Manhattan.”
&nbs
p; “I can’t leave the state.” I lifted the cuff of my jeans to show her the tracking bracelet.
She took my hand, led me to a bench and rested her head on my shoulder. “The detective said she’ll be tested today. At the lockdown hospital. A prolonged psychiatric evaluation. If they declare her sane, she goes to juvenile detention. According to the detective, she’ll likely cop a plea.”
“Do you hate her?” I said.
“I want to.”
“You should.”
“You don’t have to tell me how to feel, Jay.” She leaned forward and looked out onto the water. “I do, okay? I hate her.” She did a double take to something on her right. “Oh god, let’s get out of here.”
Some kid in a leftover Halloween mask was flying a skeleton kite intentionally low, buzzing us. The mask was Phantom of the Opera. The half face mask.
We went back to her house. Sylvia was in Newark with her family for her day off, and Mrs. Castro was with Emma. We shot some one-on-one hoop out in the driveway, under a flickering garage light. “You throw some sharp elbows there,” I said, rubbing my ribs.
“You have me by like ten inches and seventy pounds, and you’re crying about my D?” She stole the ball, quick-stepped over the paint line to check it and drove for the hoop. I grabbed her at her waist, lifted her so she could slam-dunk the eight-foot rim.
A woman called out to us from the mansion across the street. “Nicole? Is that you making all that racket?”
“Sorry, Mrs. Wooly.”
Another one from the svelte-granny-in-the-canoe section of the L.L.Bean catalog. “That ball bouncing is awfully loud, isn’t it? We don’t do that here.” She was talking to me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“As indeed you should be. It’s almost dinnertime. Can’t we eat in peace?”
“I apologize,” I said.
“Don’t,” Nicole said. She took my hand and led me into the house.
We were up in her room, at her desk, ostensibly to cram for her home school chem test. “Do you think you’ll come back now?” I said. “To the Hollows?”
“Maybe eventually, I guess. I don’t know, maybe not.”
“I forget, you know? When I’m with you. About the seizure. The pep rally.”
“Me too. About the attack, I mean.” She looked away and combed her hair over the bandage on her cheek. “Until I remember.”
I held her hand. “Six years ago. I was ten. My folks and I were at the Clarion for the annual holiday party. My father promised he would stay dry and be designated driver, but ‘just one’ turned in ‘just one more’ and so on. He asked my mother to drive. She’d had a few herself. She liked to have a good time, my mom. To laugh, you know? This guy Pete, my uncle sort of, said he’d drive us home, just give him a minute to get his coat. He got hung up talking to his boss, and after a couple of minutes my father was like, I’m exhausted, I have to get home, let’s go. My mom voted we wait for Pete, but Dad was on his way to the car.”
“Oh Jay.”
“My father says the car hit black ice, but my mother was looking at me, in the rearview, right before the crash. Her eyes weren’t on the road. Whatever happened, she swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, and the car spun out into a light pole, head on. The airbags deployed, and my Dad was okay except for some minor neck trauma and a broken collarbone, but Mom hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. I didn’t do too well in the backseat. The doctor defined it as ‘serious head trauma.’ The swelling in my brain went away a couple of weeks later, and then they came on fast. The seizures.”
“He’s trying, though, right?” she said. “Now, I mean. Trying to stay sober. He’s there for you as much as he can be. He didn’t abandon you. He created a situation, and he’s owning up to it.” We were facing each other. She turned to hide her left cheek.
I put my fingers to her chin and gently turned her face to mine. “I won’t run away. You don’t have to hide from me.”
“I do, though. You don’t want to see it. Trust me. I’ll be right back.” She went into the bathroom. The door closed softly, the lock clicked.
I flipped the textbook to a page she’d flagged, the chemical diagram for hydrochloric acid.
FORTY-SIX
Nicole didn’t come “right back.” She was in the bathroom for a while. She was pale when she came out. She said she was feeling under the weather. I checked the window: perfect sunset, balmy breeze. “I’ll let you get some rest,” I said.
“Stay.”
“I have to go to work anyway.”
She walked me to the door. We hugged, and when I broke to leave, she held on a little longer before she let me go.
I was on one of our archaic computers, checking to see if BJ’s online had an item we had sold out of in the store, a forty-dollar piece of junk chiminea. The customer I was trying to help was practically leaning his head on my shoulder, trying to see the computer screen. His breath reeked of the onion rings we try to get you to buy when you walk in, because of course everybody needs to have his mouth stuffed with fried junk food while shopping for staircase bunk beds with a merlot finish.
I was about to log out when the sidebar ad changed from one that tried to sucker you into thinking that only a 99-inch television was acceptable when watching X-Factor to one about weed killer. A cartoon spider climbed a daisy. The spider was a happy little guy. He lay back on the flower, put four of his arms behind his head and winked.
Why didn’t Barrone seem at all happy after Angela Sammick’s arrest?
“Jay.” Dave Bendix gripped my hand and clapped my shoulder. “Thank you, man. For everything you did for Nicole.”
“How’d you know I work here?”
“Nic told me. I told her I had to talk to you. Look, I want you to know it’s okay. You and Nic, I mean.”
“Dave, again, we’re just friends. Seriously, nothing’s going on.”
“Maybe not on your end. I heard it in her voice.” He teared up. “I want her to be happy. You’re a good dude. I just wanted you to know that we’re still cool, okay? You have a tissue?” I gave him my coffee napkin. He blew his nose. “What gets into somebody’s head that they ruin somebody like that? Did you get any sense from Detective Barrone why Angela did it?”
And that’s when I knew Dave Bendix was hiding something big. “No,” I said. “It’s a mystery.”
Ten minutes before we closed, I picked up the cheapest laptop BJ’s offered, came to a hundred and eighty bucks cash with my employee discount. The police had seized my computers, but fortunately not until two hours after the kill call, according to our building super, who had to let them into the apartment.
I rode my bike home, two blocks past my building to this house that had been foreclosed on and abandoned. In the basement was a bucket of filthy rags. Beneath those were a bunch of computer parts and one totally sexy bandwidth thief I’d picked up at swap meets, all untraceable. I mixed and matched them into the crappy laptop shell, and in half an hour the machine was built. I was invisible again.
The next day, Friday, the story went wide under the title GOTH GIRL BURNED BEAUTY. The detectives found Angela’s laptop in her backpack. She’d done it all, the chem lab video post, the emails to Mrs. Marks, to me. I was particularly grateful to her for the one with the strobe lights. I was betting that at her size, she wasn’t having a good time in jail. No bail for Angela Sammick, obviously. The more I thought about her, the madder I got, and not just at her. I was disgusted with myself for having let her dupe me. Not wishing serious pain on her was a challenge.
Nicole invited me over for lunch, but I was going to have to pass. Her father was spending the day at the house. I admired him in some vague way, but in the end he had to land on my jerk list. I just didn’t want to be around the guy, his intensity, those eyes that cut right through you and made you feel like you were hiding something, even if you weren’t. I had some digging to do anyway.
I had hit Dave’s Facebook page at least twenty times in the past couple of weeks. I’d sc
anned everything he’d posted, and I’d never found anything out of place. Yet I went at it again, reviewing every picture, clip and comment for anything I might have missed. Nothing. I shifted over to what wasn’t there anymore. You might think you deleted that goofy picture you slapped onto your wall when you were huffing Magic Markers, but the moment you clicked it up there, it was and is there forever and for the taking by anybody with kindergarten-level hacking skills. Once you post, you’re toast.
Sure enough, Dave had deleted a video from his gallery. He’d pulled it from his wrestling videos folder the day after the attack. It was a recording of one of his matches from the previous spring. In the video, he finishes crushing his opponent with a savage pin job. Nicole, watching from the first row of the bleachers, jumps up clapping and screams, “Woohoo.” She leans out from the bleachers toward the home team wrestlers’ bench. Dave is sitting now, and Nicole whispers something into his ear. He turns to her, glares, and then turns back to watch the next match. Nicole leans back into the bleachers. The whole exchange lasts less than two seconds.
I replayed the video again and again. Sure, every couple has arguments, but Dave was treating Nicole coldly. They’d only been going out for a couple of months at that time. No way Dave would disrespect her like that. I zoomed in. The girl whispering into Dave’s ear wasn’t Nicole. She was a dyed chestnut Angela Sammick.
My quandary: Do I tell Nicole that Dave was cheating on her? No, she has enough sadness in her life.
Dave had held back information from the police, the kind that could have led them to Angela a lot sooner. That’s obstruction of justice, the same charge I was facing. If I’d seen this video, so had Detective Barrone. Did Dave know she was onto him? And why hadn’t Barrone arrested Dave?
FORTY-SEVEN
“Perhaps it fascinates you,” Schmidt said.
