Code of Silence: Living a Lie Comes With a Price

by Tim Shoemaker

  He walked alongside Gordy and spoke quietly, the noisy halls providing a place to talk without being overheard. “What if they record my voice and analyze it somehow?”

  “Count on it,” Gordy said.

  “Great.”

  “Just disguise your voice.”

  “I’m already on that. I’m just not sure if I should speak in a high or a low voice.”

  Gordy shook his head. “Not good enough. If they record you, and they will, they’ll be able to play it back at different speeds to nail your normal voice.”

  “I plan to muffle it too.”

  “Yeah. Talk with your mouth full. I do it all the time.”

  Cooper smiled.

  The smile slid off his face when he entered the classroom. A copy of the Daily Herald sat on Miss Ferrand’s desk. There, on the front page, was a picture of Frank ‘n Stein’s and a headline that read, “Witness Letter Raises More Questions.”

  Gordy must have seen it too. He nearly came to a complete stop.

  “How did it get in the paper already?”

  Exactly Cooper’s thoughts. The paper gets delivered early. Before the library opens.

  The bell interrupted his thoughts, and Miss Ferrand wasted no time getting down to business. She shut the door and walked back to her desk. She picked up the paper and held it up so everyone could see it. The class quieted down almost immediately.

  “According to today’s Daily Herald, last night somebody slipped a letter addressed to the police and another one addressed to the paper in the library night drop.” She sat on the edge of her desk. “Someone in the library emptied the drop box before they went home for the night and found them.”

  That answered the timing question.

  “I’m going to read parts of the article to you.” She looked around the room. Slowly. Stopping to get eye contact with each of the boys.

  Hiro’s empty desk in front of him made him feel way more exposed than normal.

  “The police believe that the person who wrote the letter is in one of my eighth grade classes.”

  The room erupted in excited chatter. Girls leaned across the aisles talking to each other and shooting the boys suspicious looks.

  Cooper reached in his backpack and put his English book on his desk. Actually, Jake Mickel’s book.

  Kelsey Seals turned around and looked at Cooper’s desk, then at Jake’s behind her. “Where’s your English book today, Jake?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Somebody must have swiped it.”

  She cocked her head to the side just a bit—her distrust obvious. Eliza Miller stared at Jake, eyes wide.

  Jake turned to Cooper. “Honest. I had it in my locker.”

  “It’ll turn up,” Cooper said. But not until this is all over.

  Miss Ferrand stood and slowly walked between the rows of desks. She kept talking and focusing on the boys, but Cooper wasn’t following. He tried to figure out what he was going to do when she looked at Gordy. Or at him.

  When she came to Gordy, Cooper watched him as intently as Miss Ferrand did. He looked guilty as sin. Cooper knocked his book on the floor.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You’re a klutz, MacKinnon,” Jake Mickel said.

  Riley Steiner and his pack laughed, but it was just enough to do the job. She locked her eyes on him as if she knew the book had been a diversion. He forced himself to look right into her eyes. Any wavering and he’d be giving himself away.

  She looked at him longer than anyone else in the room so far. Her eyes were light blue. Gray, really. Weak looking eyes. Cooper had to stay strong. He tried to look right through her eyes into her head. Finally she turned away to look at the next suspect.

  She continued through the room, but never went back to Gordy. After her little staring game was over, she made some notes on a legal pad on her desk, then folded the newspaper so she could hold it with one hand without it flopping over.

  “Dear Daily Herald,” she read, then paused and looked up as if to make sure everyone in class was listening.

  The entire class sat stone still. Apparently satisfied, she sat on the corner of her desk again and focused on the newspaper.

  “The police are looking for a boy in junior high in connection with the robbery at Frank ‘n Stein’s last Thursday night. I was there. The way they’re pushing, sometimes I wonder if they think I’m the one who robbed Frank Mustacci. That isn’t true. I didn’t rob the diner or hurt Mr. Mustacci. Frank let me stay while he cleaned up. When I was ready to leave, the front door was locked. I called for Frank because I figured he had the keys. I think he was taking a load of garbage to the dumpster.

  I was at the front counter when the back door burst open—and somebody pushed Frank inside. I hid behind the counter and two men beat Frank and forced him to give the money from the cash register. Then they said they knew about his safe and made him give the combination. Frank went for a knife, and the two of them beat him again.

  While they were opening the safe, I escaped using Frank’s keys. He was lying on his back behind the counter, with his head toward the dining area. I thought he was dead. Honest.”

  A collective gasp escaped from the room. Ferrand paused and nodded, obviously pleased by the reaction. She scanned the room. Maybe she hoped to see one of the boys unmoved by it all, or nervous. Cooper let his jaw go slack, his mouth hang open as if in total disbelief of what he was hearing. Her eyes caught his for a moment and then moved on.

  She went back to reading the paper.

  “The men heard me escaping and started after me. I barely made it out the front door and turned the lock in time. I didn’t get a good look at them. They were wearing masks. One wore a clown mask. One wore an Elvis one. The clown had a hoarse-sounding voice. Elvis sounded like a DJ. They both had cop pants on. They talked to a third guy, but I never heard or got a good look at him. He was the driver, I think. He came in after they beat up Frank. They called him “Mr. Lucky.”

  That’s why I’m not going to the police in person. I don’t know who I can trust. I can’t identify these guys anyway, so the police can stop looking for me. They need to find out who did this and stop wasting their time chasing after me.

  The one guy got a pretty good look at me. And he threatened me. So don’t even try to get me to say anything more. I have nothing more to say. He pulled the surveillance camera hard drive, which I grabbed on my way out. It won’t help anybody to have it, but it may hurt me. I was in plain sight of the camera. The hard drive will prove I didn’t do anything wrong, but it will also identify me. So it stays with me. That’s everything I know about the robbery.

  I am going to write a cell phone number on the bottom of this letter. I will answer the phone between 3:30 and 4:30 pm to answer any question you may need to ask for me to show this isn’t some prank. I can prove I was there. I can tell you exactly where Frank was laying. I can tell you what was on the floor in front of the counter. I can tell you what they used to break the front window to get at me. I can tell you what I left behind at one of the tables. Find the real robbers. Nail the monsters that did this to Frank Mustacci. Stop looking for me.

  Sincerely, “Silence is Golden”

  Cooper glanced around the room. Girls sat like zombies with pale faces and wide-eyed stares. Kelsey Seals turned, mouth partially open like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t figure out how. Probably a first for her. Eliza Miller, biting her lower lip, stared at Jacob Mickel like she already had the mystery witness figured out.

  The boys’ eyes were on fire. Like they wish they’d written the letter. They had no idea what they were asking for. Cooper tried to mirror their faces.

  Miss Ferrand looked up. “The article goes on to speculate on different theories. The paper believes the note may be legitimate, and they intend to follow up. According to some unnamed source in the police department, the police share a similar opinion. Which brings me to the next point.”

  She walked up and down each aisle. Slowly. So
slowly. Ignoring the girls, but deliberately looking at each of the boys as she did. “The writer of this letter did a very brave thing. And he has every right to be scared right now.” She looked directly at Cooper.

  He crumpled up his brow and tried to muster up a confused expression. He looked behind him and then back at her. She moved on.

  “I want to send my own message to this person.” She went to the white board and wrote a phone number with a red marker. “This is the school phone number. I have a mailbox just like every other teacher. You call me. Leave a message. I can help. I’ll check my messages right up until when I go to bed. Questions?”

  Cooper had some questions for her. Like, was she crazy? Did she really think he would open up to her?

  Kelsey Seals raised her hand. “What will you do?” Obviously she’d found her voice.

  “I’ll go straight to the top,” she said. “The principal is very good friends with Detective Hammer. We’ll make sure the witness is protected.”

  Cooper slouched down in his seat. She was crazy.

  “Like the witness protection program or something?” Jake Mickel blurted it out. One of the jealous boys.

  “I don’t think so. But he’ll be safe. Trust me on that.”

  Trust her? The one who gave pop quizzes with trick questions? Right.

  Eliza Miller raised her hand, cautiously, like she wasn’t sure she should. “What if, like, somebody suspects somebody else in the class?” Her eyes darted toward Mickel for an instant. “What should we do?”

  “Talk to me and tell me why,” Ferrand said.

  This thing could turn into a real witch hunt. Nice move, Miss Ferrand.

  More hands shot up. More mindless questions. Cooper tuned most of them out. His mind snapped back to Hiro. Did the Yakimotos get a paper? He imagined her absorbing the article. At least she should be happy the plan worked.

  “Paper and pencil out, everyone.”

  Miss Ferrand’s voice pulled him back into the classroom. “I want each of you to write my number down right now.” She pointed at the board. “And you call me. Understand?”

  Maybe the principal put a bounty on his head.

  The noise level went up as kids scrounged in backpacks for something to write on. Cooper fished out a scrap of paper. He looked up at the number like he seriously intended to write it down. Instead he wrote fat chance across the paper, folded it and slipped it in his pocket.

  He watched Gordy hesitate for a moment, then write something on the paper. He looked at the number on the board again and checked his paper as if to be sure he got it right. Gordy put on a convincing show of it—and hopefully that’s all it was.

  “Or if you want to talk after class, I’m here for you. Understand?”

  Heads nodded all over the room. Cooper nodded his head too. He understood all right, but he’d stick to the Code of Silence, thank you very much.

  Miss Ferrand made another notation on her legal pad, then looked directly at Cooper. “Does everyone have my number?”

  Cooper nodded again, but had the uneasy feeling she was especially concerned that he wrote it down. That whole “women’s intuition” stuff was spooky. Something nobody could really explain or understand. Hiro had an extra dose of it.

  Miss Ferrand looked at him again, picked up her legal pad, and started toward him. Maybe she didn’t want to take a chance on whether he’d stay and talk or not. She looked like a reporter on her way to a juicy interview.

  The bell rang, and the kids erupted into excited talk like it had been bottled up inside them for days, and they couldn’t handle the pressure anymore.

  Girls jumped up in the aisles and hovered around Miss Ferrand as if they needed protection somehow. Seals and Miller led the charge. Which was just fine with Cooper. He slipped by her in the confusion and made a beeline for the door with Gordy right on his heels.

  “Cooper MacKinnon!”

  He heard her call just as he rounded the corner into the hall, but acted like he didn’t hear a thing. Out of her line of sight, he took off at a run. He figured he had five or six seconds before she’d break free from the girls in class and make it to the hallway.

  Kids burst out of other classrooms and filled the halls. Cooper kept count of the seconds. Three, four, five. He ducked in front of a herd of seventh graders piling out of Mrs. Brittain’s class and stopped running. Gordy scooted in right next to him.

  “Don’t look back,” Cooper said. He kept his head down and walked fast, hoping she wouldn’t spot him.

  Maybe Hiro had the right idea. Taking a sick day might be good for his health.

  CHAPTER 28

  This is nuts,” Gordy said, hustling to keep up with him. “Think she suspects us?”

  “Not us. Me.”

  “Why just you?”

  “The letter made it sound like I was alone. She’s looking for only one person.”

  “Think you’re at the top of her suspect list?”

  Cooper chanced a look over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t following. “I don’t know why, but by the way she looks at me … yeah.”

  “Top of Hammer’s list. Top of Ferrand’s list. Ditching her won’t help any.”

  “Thanks for the reminder. I only need to buy some time.”

  They hustled into the cafeteria side by side. Cooper stopped and pulled a sweatshirt from his backpack and pulled it over his head.

  Gordy gave him a questioning look. “What are you doing?”

  “Changing how I look a bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Ferrand comes looking for me during lunch.”

  “Tell me you’re not going to pull the hood up.”

  Cooper smiled and kept walking.

  “I wish Hiro was here,” Gordy said.

  Hiro. Cooper’s heart sunk. “Me too.”

  “Ferrand will expect us to sit together. Think we should split up?”

  “Might help.” Cooper scanned the lunchroom. “See you on the bus.”

  Gordy nodded and headed for the hot lunch line. Cooper pulled his bag lunch from his backpack and looked for someplace to sit. He wanted to find a spot all to himself so he could think. And keep an eye out for Miss Ferrand. But sitting alone somewhere was a little obvious. The smart thing would be to sit somewhere he wouldn’t normally consider sitting. Like under a table.

  A burst of laughter from a table full of girls caught his attention, and probably every other person in the cafeteria. Julie VonMoose had an empty spot next to her, but he didn’t feel that desperate.

  Cooper looked over his shoulder and checked the entrance. Still gobs of kids piling in, but no Miss Ferrand. He couldn’t keep standing in the middle of the aisle. If she walked through the doorway he’d be dead.

  Steiner, Tellshow, and Demel pushed through, talking loud and tough. Clearly wishing they were a part of the unfolding drama around the robbery, and trying to make up for the fact that they weren’t.

  Cooper started toward a table at an opposite corner of the cafeteria than he usually sat. He’d get a good view of the cafeteria, and an exit door was just a matter of feet away. There were several empty spaces. Cooper swung a leg over the bench and sat quickly, keeping an eye on the entrance. He pulled out his sandwich and took a bite.

  “Hey, MacKinnon. Have a fight with Gordo or something?”

  Lunk’s voice. Cooper’s stomach tightened. He hoped he would just keep going.

  No such luck. Lunk swung a leg over the bench and sat across from him with a tray loaded nearly as heavy as Gordy’s normally was.

  Lunk eyed him through shaggy black hair. “So why aren’t you sitting with Gordo and Yaki-dodo?”

  “Yakimoto. Hiroko Yakimoto.” Cooper chomped another hunk of sandwich. “Hiro isn’t here today. Must be sick.”

  “She’s always sick.” Lunk smiled. “Wants to be a cop. Right? Definitely something sick with that girl.”

  Cooper looked past him. Miss Ferrand stood just inside the cafeteria doors scanning the room.

  Lunk followed C
ooper’s gaze, then studied him, eyes squinting just a bit. “Waiting for someone?”

  “Uh-uh.” Cooper lowered his head just a bit and focused on his peanut butter sandwich.

  Miss Ferrand started walking. Slowly, like a prison guard pacing the cell block, watching the inmates. He could see her scanning the tables. Not a routine, making sure everything is under control type scan. She was looking for someone. Him.

  Lunch wasn’t even close to being over. Was she going to walk around the entire perimeter of the room like this? She reminded him of a cat he’d seen stalking a bird in their backyard. The cat moved slowly. Deliberately. Getting closer and closer to the little chickadee that was busily tearing into bread Mom had thrown out in the yard. Cooper envisioned the cat pouncing on the unsuspecting bird at any moment. He’d pulled off his shoe and threw it at the cat just in time.

  Cooper saw Gordy come out of the hot lunch line. He walked to the usual table with his tray in front of him and sat down. Ferrand was on him like the paparazzi. Gordy shrugged and looked around the room, while he talked to her. Miss Ferrand nodded briefly, and resumed her search. Whatever Gordy told her must have worked.

  Miss Ferrand got closer. Arms folded across her chest, her claws painted red. A cat on the prowl. And Cooper was the bird.

  “Avoiding someone?” Lunk leaned in closer. The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. The kind of smile that said he knew.

  Hammer had singled him out. Ferrand was zeroing in. Now Lunk. Was everyone psychic or was he that easy to read?

  Cooper ignored Lunk and tried not to look at Miss Ferrand. He couldn’t help but steal a glance. She’d rounded the corner and slowly patrolled his way. He needed a shoe.

  “You in some kind of trouble?” Lunk’s voice was low.

  Cooper didn’t answer. He needed some quick, witty remark. A comeback that would get him off the hook. But he couldn’t think. His brain seemed as mushy as the peanut butter sandwich in his stomach.

  “I’m taking that as a yes,” Lunk said. He looked down the aisle. “You want to get out of here?”

  Cooper stared at his lunch bag. What’s the worst that could happen if Miss Ferrand had a little talk with him? She’d ask some questions. He’d hatch more lies. He was getting pretty good at avoiding the truth. The real issue was whether she would see through him. And if she did, would she talk to the principal, or Detective Hammer? All the Detective needed was a decent reason to single him out for questioning. Ferrand might be able to supply that if she could get him one-on-one.