The Silence of Six

by E. C. Myers

  Max connected and pulled up the login page for CloudSource. Risse watched over his shoulder. She gave Penny a defiant look.

  “That file structure doesn’t make any kind of sense,” Risse said.

  “It does to me. Sort of,” Max said. He clicked through folders rapidly to minimize the amount of time he was connected.

  Evan had claimed his organization system was another layer of security, but Max just considered it an extra level of annoyance.

  “If someone miraculously gets past my encryption, I don’t have to make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for,” Evan had said when Max called him on it.

  “So you’re just being spiteful,” Max had shot back.

  “Hell, yeah. If someone’s going through my files, I’m probably on my way to prison. This small revenge will be a solace to me.”

  Prison had always been the worst fate they could have imagined.

  Max blinked a few times and kept drilling down in the folder structure.

  “I thought you said it would only be thirty seconds,” Penny said.

  “This network is sloooooooow,” he said.

  “Seriously, it’s a mess in there,” Risse said. “It looks like he’s clicking on random folders.”

  Max filtered the thousands of items in the folder he wanted by typing in 503, and came up with a few hundred results: all photos taken their freshman year of high school. He recalled the date and the GPS coordinates of The Hidden Word and narrowed it down to thirty. He clicked through the first five, not even waiting for the previews to load fully before moving on.

  “Got it!” He made a local copy of the file and watched the progress meter fill.

  “Great!” Risse said. “Um, did you mean to delete the rest of the files?”

  “Shit,” Max said. “What’s happening?”

  The number of files in the folder was going down.

  “Someone else is in here right now, deleting the files.” Photos were disappearing before his eyes, but since they were all large, shot in RAW format, it wasn’t an instantaneous process.

  “Disconnect!” Penny said.

  “Not yet.”

  The file was almost done copying.

  “Got it,” Max said.

  And then it was gone. The last of the files had been deleted. He clicked up a level and tried to open the folder again.

  Folder not found.

  “It’s all gone.” All those pictures from Evan’s life. Evan had thought of the cloud as an extension of his brain; it was as if someone had killed him again by deleting that part of him. “Someone cleaned it out.”

  “Maybe you hit Delete by accident?” Penny asked.

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just suggest that,” Max said.

  Max logged out and Risse disconnected the computer.

  “The government,” Penny said.

  “It would be a hell of a coincidence if a sysadmin just happened to discover files that have been sitting there for years, the very moment I accessed the folder.”

  “The timing’s suspicious,” Penny said.

  “Little bit,” Max said.

  “Either they’re after the same thing we are, or they don’t want you to have it,” Penny said. “I hope it was worth it.”

  “We’ll find out soon.” Max ran a program to compare the two photos and was rewarded with a plain text file that displayed a long alphanumeric sequence—all the characters Evan had added.

  “Ding!” Max said.

  “What was that?” Penny asked.

  Max blushed. “I hear that in my head when my computer is done crunching a big file.”

  Risse was practically climbing into the front seat now. “That’s code,” she said. “We have to compile it.”

  Max handed the computer back to Risse and she settled back in her seat. She typed for a couple of minutes.

  “Ding!” Risse said, making fun of him. Max twisted around to look at her and she winked at him. “It’s a torrent file.”

  “So we still need to use a BitTorrent program to download whatever it is,” Max said.

  “Yes, but not here. It’ll take forever.” Penny yawned. “We’re almost in San Jose.”

  “Then after we talk to the Millers,” Max said.

  He leaned back in his seat and stared out at the road ahead. They were finally close to getting some answers.

  14

  Max drove slowly past the Millers’ split-levelhouse in Willow Glen, San Jose. There were two cars parked in the driveway.

  “Looks like they’re home,” Penny said.

  “Where should I park?” Max asked.

  “Go back around the block and park in front of their house. We don’t have anything to hide from them,” she said.

  “Except for Max. Maybe he should be the one to stay with the car,” Risse said.

  “But I want to test his disguise,” Penny said.

  After they had reached San Jose last night and checked into adjoining rooms at a cheap motel, Penny had helped Max dye his hair. When he caught his reflection in the car mirrors, he was still surprised; it was strange to see himself with black hair instead of the mousy brown he’d inherited from his dad. Though Max’s mom had left them a long time ago, he still vividly remembered her long, dark hair.

  His next strongest memory of her was how much it had hurt when he’d realized she wasn’t coming back. One of the reasons he’d gotten into hacking was to try to get in touch with his mother, but even Evan’s skills hadn’t been up to that task. Lianna Stein had vanished completely.

  “They might not have seen the news about me,” Max said.

  “Unless they’re living under a rock, everyone has seen you,” Penny said.

  Max pulled the car up and parked on the curb beside the Millers’s driveway.

  “That is definitely no rock,” Penny stared at the house.

  Max scratched his chin and felt the sting of broken skin.

  “Max, stop that,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t have shaved.” Especially not with the cheap plastic razors and soap at the hotel. He’d nicked himself in three places. He now dabbed at the reopened wound with his thumb and it came away with a spot of blood.

  “A beard would have made it obvious your hair is dyed. Beards don’t do anything to prevent facial recognition anyway.”

  “Neither do glasses,” Max said. He adjusted the clear Wayfarer glasses Risse had loaned him.

  “No, but they can help fool people,” Penny said. “Along with the makeup. Turn this way.”

  Max sighed and turned to Penny. She dusted his cheeks with a soft brush. Through some theatrical trickery, she subtly altered the apparent shape of his face by applying shadows and highlights. It was very disconcerting to not fit his image of himself, and it forced him to consider how much he was changing inside as well.

  It was becoming second nature to peer around every corner for government agents and police, especially now that they were about to question grieving parents about the potential murder of their only child. Even now, as Penny adjusted his makeup, he was looking around them and in the rearview mirrors for anything suspicious. This wasn’t him.

  “Okay. Are you ready?” Penny asked. She dabbed on some lip gloss and checked her own reflection in the visor mirror. She had put on what amounted to her own disguise: a plain white blouse and black slacks. She had pinned back her hair and put in small silver hoop earrings to resemble a young professional, like Ariel Miller had been.

  “No, but let’s do this.” Max got out of the car.

  “Good luck,” Risse said from the backseat. “I’ll text you two if I see anything that looks remotely federal.”

  Max and Penny approached the house. A curtain fluttered in one of the front windows as they moved up the walkway. They climbed the three steps to the p
orch and Penny rang the doorbell. Max brushed his hair away from his forehead self-consciously. It tickled.

  “Stop,” Penny hissed. She reached up and carefully rearranged his hair.

  “Can I help you?” A woman’s voice came from the other side of the door.

  “Are you Ronni Miller?” Penny asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re . . . we were friends of Ariel,” Max said.

  “Oh.” The door opened. A woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing a gray business suit leaned against the jamb. The morning news droned inside the house. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Max and Penny. Was it his imagination, or did her attention linger on him a bit longer than necessary?

  “Who are you?” Mrs. Miller asked.

  “I’m Barry and this is Mel. We worked with Ariel.” Max lowered his eyes and imagined he was talking about Evan. Tears welled up. “We’re so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Miller’s chin trembled.

  “Who is it?” a man called from upstairs.

  “No one! Hurry up! You’re going to be late!” Mrs. Miller hesitated then stepped outside and held the door closed behind her. “Her father took Ariel’s death very hard. We both did, of course. But she was always his special girl.”

  “I understand,” Penny said. “My dad’s the same way.”

  Mrs. Miller nodded. “Your family’s very lucky to still have you.”

  Penny looked startled.

  “I know it’s been almost seven months, but we wanted to talk to you about Ariel, if you have a few minutes,” Max said.

  “I appreciate you coming by, but we’re finally moving on. You understand? I’m afraid. . . .” She glanced behind her and closed the door the rest of the way. “I don’t want to upset Daryl.”

  “We only need a moment of your time. Was anything bothering Ariel before she died?” Max said.

  Mrs. Miller frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Did she seem nervous or act unusual? Did she say anything that surprised you, maybe about her work? Did you see anyone around the house, or anything out of the ordinary?” Max asked.

  “Ariel was killed in an accident. She was doing great, very successful. She was working a lot, but. . . .” Mrs. Miller pulled back. “You said you worked with her?”

  Penny put a hand on Max’s arm. “We’re sorry to bring this all up again, but it could be important.”

  The door flew open behind her and Mrs. Miller jumped.

  “Ronni?” A tall man with short gray hair and a thick beard appeared. He scrutinized Max and Penny. “What’s going on?”

  Mrs. Miller stepped back into the house and her husband wrapped an arm around her. “More people, asking about Ari.” Her voice broke.

  A pained look crossed Mr. Miller’s face. “Why are you doing this to us?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Max said. “We just need to be sure—”

  “Please leave,” Mr. Miller said.

  “Sorry.” Penny stepped backward.

  “Leave us alone!” Mrs. Miller said. She moved back into the house, but Mr. Miller stood and watched them as they got back into the car.

  “We’re going,” Penny said.

  She and Max climbed back into the car. Max started it and drove away.

  “That was awful,” Penny said. “We shouldn’t have come here.”

  “It was worth a shot,” Max said. But he was unsettled too, thinking about the Baxters and how they were taking Evan’s death. “I’m sorry to make them go through that again.”

  “We’ll be helping them too if we find out the truth about how she died,” Penny said.

  “Will we?” Max asked. Finding out she had been murdered wouldn’t bring Ariel back to her parents. Just like how if they completed their mission, Evan would still be gone.

  Max, Penny, and Risse gazed across Walnut Street at the spot where Ariel Miller had been hit. Someone had arranged a candle and a small plush Flounder doll propped against the base of the street sign. The candle was out, but the toy looked new.

  “She was killed on impact, according to eye witnesses,” Risse said somberly.

  Penny looked at her sister with concern.

  “What are we expecting to find here? It’s been six months,” Penny said.

  “I just wanted to see it,” Max said. “We can still learn plenty. This isn’t exactly a busy intersection. It’s a quiet residential street. Two-way traffic, no lights, but stop signs on every corner. Speed limit’s what? Twenty-five?”

  “An unlikely place for an accident,” Penny said.

  “Maybe it was a DUI. But they never found the driver, or the car. For once, security cameras would have been useful,” Max said.

  He stepped off the curb, staring down at the asphalt.

  “Careful,” Risse said.

  He heard a car approaching from his left and looked up. A blue pickup truck rumbled up the street toward him, slowed, and rattled to a stop before it proceeded through the intersection. He had trouble imagining Ariel being surprised by an approaching vehicle, if it had been following all the proper traffic rules.

  He looked both ways and walked into the middle of the intersection.

  “If she was hit here, why aren’t there any skid marks?”

  “From May?” Penny asked.

  “There was a hit-and-run back in Granville. The car tried to stop in time, and it skidded ten feet. Burned rubber the whole way. That was a year and a half ago, and the marks are still there,” Max said.

  “If someone was trying to kill her, they would have to know where she would be, or they were following her. What was she doing in San Bruno in the first place?” Penny asked.

  “What’s even around?” Max walked back to the sidewalk and pulled out his phone.

  He looked at the area on a map. “There are a couple of hotels down over on San Bruno Avenue. A coffee shop. If she was heading that way, maybe to meet someone, she must have been crossing south on Fourth Avenue.” He turned around to look up the block. “And there’s nothing back that way. The road ends.” A yellow sign read not a through street.

  “Maybe she was coming from meeting someone,” Max said.

  Risse opened her laptop and put it on the hood of their car. “I doxxed the three people interviewed in the news articles Evan collected. Two of them live around here. . . .” She nodded. “One of them said, ‘Whenever I saw her, she always had a smile.’ That was Gawain Wilson of 531 ½ Walnut Street.”

  Max picked out the small house a couple of doors down from them.

  “Sounds like she was around the neighborhood a lot,” Max said.

  “If this was part of her routine, it would be easy to predict where she would be and when,” Penny said.

  “He also said, ‘I heard a screeching sound that made me look out my window. Then I heard a scream and a horrible bump that I knew was a person. By the time I saw the body crumpled on the other side of the road, I knew she was already gone. The car that hit her was nowhere in sight,’” Risse said.

  “I’m going to go see if Mr. Wilson is in.” Penny straightened her blouse and set off. Max and Risse hung out by the car, keeping an eye on her. A man in a red baseball cap and a jean jacket came to the door when she knocked. Penny started talking and Wilson glanced over at them curiously.

  “Hey, do you have any matches?” Max asked.

  “Of course. In the bag.” Risse didn’t look up from the article on Ariel she was rereading.

  Max rummaged around in their go-bag and came up with a waterproof box of matches. The girls really were prepared for anything.

  Max crossed the street and crouched to relight the candle in the glass jar. He noticed a worn photograph of Ariel, the same one from her Panjea profile, in a picture frame secured to the signpost with wire.

  He stoo
d up and looked over to check on Penny. She was standing on the sidewalk half a block down from Wilson’s house. She used her phone to snap several pictures of the road. She then held up her phone and walked sideways back toward the car, holding the phone steady, as if she were recording a movie up and down the length of the street.

  Max got back across the street just ahead of her. Even from a distance, he could tell she was excited.

  “Gawain heard the whole thing, just like he said in the paper. He was surprised that the police and the article kept calling it an ‘accident,’” she said.

  “He thinks she was hit intentionally?” Max asked.

  Penny nodded. “I could tell he was nervous talking to me about it. But check this out. You were looking for skid marks?” Penny held up her phone and showed Max a photo of black tire marks on the dark pavement. She swiped through a couple of close-ups.

  The marks looked like black crayon rubbed over the asphalt, stretching for about six feet.

  “I’m no expert on forensics, but those look like acceleration marks,” Max said. “I made those with our car when I was learning to drive and hit the gas a little too hard. I remember how loud the screeching was. My dad was so freaked out.”

  “This is how far they are from where Ariel was hit.” Penny scrolled through a stitched-together panorama of the block-and-a-half of street between the skids and the point where Ariel was apparently struck, right where they stood.

  “From what Gawain said, it seems like he heard the car when it was accelerating, and then it hit Ariel a moment later,” Max said.

  “She screamed, so she saw it coming, but she didn’t have enough time to get out of its way,” Risse said.

  “And the driver didn’t slow down or try to steer around her,” Max said. “Did Gawain know Ariel?”

  Penny nodded. “She lived near here. She rented a room in a house at the north end of Fourth Avenue.”

  Risse frowned. “The articles all said she was from San Jose, not San Bruno.”

  “Newspapers get details wrong all the time. Like calling murders accidents,” Max said.

  15