Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two

by JC Andrijeski

  Blond hair, blue eyes, big bodies.

  One guy was dark, but he had light eyes, too, from what she said.

  Apparently, he was the real cutie of the bunch.

  So the whole Russian mafia idea was sounding less crazy and paranoid to me, yeah.

  The hotel manager described the dark-haired photographer as their leader. Said he was the best-looking and wore an expensive leather jacket and nice shoes, too. Not exactly the kind of detail I would need to pick him out of a crowd, but it was something.

  When I pushed her more, I got a bit more to go on, too. From her hand held up to estimate his height, he was around six feet, maybe a bit more. Light blue eyes. Short, spiky black hair. Trimmed goatee. At least one earring. At least one tattoo, of a dragon on his left arm.

  And yeah, that would still describe a fair number of people in Seattle, but it wasn’t nothing, so I thanked her, and spared a few bills for her, too.

  Without a police sketch, it would be hard to ID any of these bozos for real, though.

  So yeah, I was thinking it might be time to swing by the station. Maybe I’d bring the guys some coffees, try and smooth over my long absence and being fingered for a terrorist and whatnot. Going to the police station would mean something else, too.

  Namely, I needed a decent cover story, for a change.

  I swung by Greenlake High School first, since it was now inching up towards three o’clock. Jazzy and her friend Hilary had been sophomores there just a few weeks earlier. Hilary’s sister, Marla, had been a senior.

  I got there about ten minutes before school got out for the day, which worked pretty well, in terms of finding the two girls I was looking for.

  Thanks to Mr. Jiāng, I had pictures of Jazzy’s two best friends apart from Hilary, and, more importantly, I had the license plates of their cars. Well, car, really. Only one of the four friends had a car at all yet. Hilary was too young for even a learner’s permit, and Jazzy had only barely passed driver’s ed, from what her father told me.

  That left Laurie Devereaux, the oldest in the group. She drove the rest of them to school, and according to Mr. Jiāng, she only just got her own car for her sixteenth birthday, which had been a few months earlier. Laurie was in the same grade as Hilary and Jazzy, but almost a year older than the other two girls.

  The plate was pretty hard to miss, being “DollGrl8” and attached to the back end of a neon pink, convertible Volkswagon Beetle. The paint job had to be custom. It was so bright it made me blink when I looked at it, but it was hard to miss, so there was that.

  I was leaning against the back end of that same bit of shiny eyesore when Laurie Devereaux got to the parking lot with Jazzy and Hilary’s other best friend, Mimi Braga. The four of them were kind of their own pack, from what Mr. Jiāng told me.

  All four were what I would have considered rich kids growing up, but who probably technically came from the higher echelons of middle class.

  Meaning, both parents worked in tech or some other highly-skilled job like doctor or lawyer, and they maybe had a rental property and a cabin near Mount Rainier in addition to the family home in Greenlake. I’d grilled Mr. Jiāng on Jazzy’s girl-pack a bit already and knew that Laurie’s dad was some kind of quasi-famous game developer, which is probably why he had the cash to throw at the bright pink barf mobile for his daughter’s birthday.

  Mr. Jiāng implied that Laurie’s family had the most money in the group.

  My relatively smooth talk––which I am capable of on occasion, whatever Gantry says––along with an old and near-to-expiration PI license and my direct mention of working for Ms. Culare herself of Culare Modeling School, got me in like Flynn with Laurie and Mimi.

  I offered to treat them to coffee if they’d talk to me for a few minutes about Hilary and Jazzy and what happened around the time they disappeared.

  Laurie was definitely the alpha in the group.

  Well, of the duo that remained of the group, anyway.

  After I’d gotten the two of them mochas with whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top from the local coffee hangout, Laurie slipped into the chair across from me at our sidewalk table, flipped her long, streaky pink, blond and brown hair over one shoulder, then gave me a direct look that didn’t lack for dramatic effect.

  “I never thought I’d say I was glad I was grounded,” she announced, as if she’d told the same story more than a few times already. “Glad. I. Was. Grounded,” she repeated, pausing to blow on the whip cream, creating a dimple in the foam. “...Which, yeah. No way, right? Not that I didn’t know something was fishy about that whole modeling thing,” she added, in that knowing tone that only a sixteen-year-old can adopt.

  Again, I had to fight not to roll my eyes.

  Mimi sat down more carefully and self-consciously next to her, sipping at her own mocha through a thick, red straw. She didn’t hold eye contact with me really, and seemed openly nervous. Even so, I looked at her a few ticks longer, trying to get a sense if I was seeing more shyness or evasion, or equal amounts of both.

  I looked back at Laurie when she started speaking again, a little louder that time. I got the impression she was peeved at me paying attention to Mimi at all.

  “That hotel,” Laurie snorted, rolling her eyes. “Total shithole.”

  I nodded. Couldn’t really argue with that.

  “How did you find out about the modeling show?” I asked, looking between them. “Who first saw the flyer? Was it one of you four?”

  “Hilary,” Laurie said promptly. “Some guy gave it to her outside of her favorite clothing store. Hansy’s Hot Wears. You know that place?”

  I nodded, noncommittal.

  I didn’t really know it. I had a vague memory of giant, neon, red and pink letters covered in hearts above a storefront not far from the food court in the big indoor mall on Pine Street. It was one of those stores with pop music blaring out the open doors and a lot of kids working the clothing racks, looking bored out of their minds.

  “Yeah, well.” Another flip of the pink, blond and brunette hair. “Hil gets the pitch from this guy, and she says he’s cute, like real cute, you know? And he tells her to bring her friends. So we all wondered what’s the dealio. I mean, he was cute...like, a real model, you know? And older. Maybe even twenty or so.” She gave me a sniff. “Like you, maybe,” she said with utter disdain.

  I fought my expression still.

  “Did you see him?” I said.

  Laurie rolled her eyes. “Well...yeah. Smart phone. Duh.”

  It took a second for that to click, then I held out my hand. “Can I see it?”

  Sighing as if I’d just asked for a pint of her blood, Laurie flipped her hair again, and dug around in a purse big enough to hide a small dog. While she rummaged, I looked at Mimi again.

  “What about you?” I said. “Were you grounded, too?”

  Glancing up from her purse, and sliding her phone across the table, Laurie answered me that time, too, rolling her eyes.

  “Mimi’s dad’s like...crazy,” she said, her disdain in full force once more. “Meems spent the whole day pulling weeds or some crap in the garden. Building character.”

  Laurie snorted again and rolled her eyes dramatically to make sure I got the point. She wanted me to know in no uncertain terms what she thought of that idea.

  I looked at the image on the phone, taking a mental snapshot. He could be the hot guy the hotel manager described to me. Long sleeves, so I couldn’t look for the tat, but he had the short dark hair, at least one earring and stunning blue eyes. A short-cropped goatee darkened his jaw, more five o’clock shadow than a real beard. Maybe early twenties, leather jacket, definitely had that recent-immigrant look. He was pretty hot, all right.

  “I’m sending this to my colleague, all right?” I was already doing it as I said it, so it was sort of half-assed permission, but oh well.

  I’m not a cop. It has its advantages.

  I typed in Irene’s number from memory, along with a brief note to
run a search on the guy in the photo. I slid the phone back across the table, even as my eyes returned to the quiet one, Mimi.

  “Weeds, huh?” I said, smiling at her. “I used to have to do stuff like that,” I lied. “My mom was big on character, too.”

  My mom was big on drinking and passing out, actually, but little Mimi didn’t need to know that. I wasn’t about to tell these kids I would have killed to have parents who scolded me and gave a damn about me when I was their age...versus hiding evidence from child services of my own mother’s crazy crap and trying to avoid foster care for me and my brother, the bisexual con artist-slash-prostitute.

  Mimi was still stuck in high school hell, however, and believed having loving parents made her “uncool.” She flushed bright red at her friend’s words, plowing the straw in erratic lines through the whipped cream of her mocha.

  “Berries,” she muttered. “We went berry picking. At a farm.”

  “Oh...yeah,” Laurie said, undaunted by her own inaccuracy. “Whatevs. He’s all big on family time, so she can hardly do anything on the weekends. It’s sooo lame.”

  Remembering my own absent father, I had an urge to tell Mimi she was lucky, that her friend was a moron, and that she would probably one day wish she’d appreciated the hell out of her parents while she could. Hell, I wanted to say it if only to wipe away that smug contempt I could hear in Laurie’s voice. I mean, shit. Were kids really this dumb that Mimi lacked coolness for the crime of having a dad who actually wanted to hang out with his daughter?

  Again with the bizarre emotional reactions, though.

  Why was this even getting to me? They were just kids. Doing and saying normal, dumb, kid things. The same things kids said when I was their age. And I was over the stuff with my own mom...and with dad, for that matter. I hadn’t needed them in that way in a long-ass time. Hell, I was closer to Jake than I was to either of them, and that was saying something. I hadn’t even bothered to call mom or dad since I got back from my inter-dimensional wander with Nik.

  Needless to say, I didn’t say any of those things aloud.

  I just nodded again, noncommittal. Mimi was just going to have to figure out on her own that her friend, Laurie, was kind of an asshat.

  “So did you hear from either of them?” I said, neutral. “That day, I mean. While they were at the talent show?”

  “At first, yeah,” Laurie piped up at once. She paused to take a long slurp off the mocha. She wore baby blue eyeshadow filled with glitter, I noticed. It was weirdly distracting with her bright green eyes. She would probably be really pretty when she got older, I found myself thinking, although she was already carrying more baby fat than was strictly healthy, even for her age. “...They texted us like every two seconds at first,” Laurie added, oblivious to my appraisal. “It was all, like, O-M-G, this is so AWESOME...there are so many people here, the clothes are super cute...these guys are really hot...and on and on and on...totally lame...”

  The jealousy was audible in her voice, even now.

  “What time did the texting stop?” I said, still neutral.

  Laurie shrugged.

  I glanced at Mimi, but she avoided my eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Laurie said, when I didn’t react to her leading silence. “Maybe like five o’clock? They were all ‘I’m so cool’ and ‘wow, we’ve made the final rounds’...bragging, you know? Like they were America’s Top Model or something...”

  Hearing the audible tinge of jealousy in Laurie’s voice a second time, I gritted my teeth, but only nodded. She’s just a kid, I told myself. A dumb kid. She doesn’t really get what happened to her friends.

  I honestly couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.

  Some part of me had an almost visceral reaction to the fact that Laurie still thought what happened to her friends was kind of cool...or at the very least, dramatic enough to be interesting. On the other hand, the only way she would really understand what happened would be if the same thing happened to her, or if she saw someone else experience it firsthand. I couldn’t wish that on anyone, no matter how obnoxious they were.

  Maybe it was better if she made it Pretty Woman in her head, at least until she turned twenty-one or so and grew an empathy organ somewhere.

  Remembering my own career in high school and how dumb and mean kids could be, I fought back another flush of anger. Maybe to get my eyes off Laurie, I glanced at Mimi, who looked more troubled as she continued to play with her whipped cream with the straw, a concentrated look on her face.

  Mimi surprised me then, by speaking at all, I guess.

  “Do you know where they are?” she asked me.

  That troubled note came through in her voice, too.

  I shook my head, but kept my words noncommittal. “I’m working on that,” I said. “The police are, too. I’ll share anything I find with them, of course.”

  Mimi nodded, her expression solemn.

  I could tell she wanted to ask me something else, but it took her a few more seconds to work up the courage to do it. Once she had, she met my gaze directly.

  “My dad said they’re probably dead,” she said.

  Before I could figure out what to say to that, Laurie burst in between us. She waved a hand decorated with lime green nail polish, her voice annoyed, verging on bored.

  “They’re not dead,” she said, her voice annoyed, too. “This isn’t a third world shithole, Meems, like where your dad grew up. People don’t just ‘disappear’ like that. Not in Seattle.”

  “We’re from Brazil,” Mimi protested, her brown eyes widening as she stared at her friend. “It’s not a shithole...”

  Laurie snorted, rolling her eyes dramatically. “Sure it’s not.”

  “It’s not! My dad’s family owns a bunch of hotels down there. I told you that. They have a lot of money...and servants and way bigger houses than here!”

  I leaned forward, raising a hand and putting it between the two of them.

  My waving hand had the desired effect, which was to cut off the obviously longstanding argument between the two girls before it could really pick up steam.

  Both of them looked at me.

  Laurie frowned at my hand as if I’d threatened to hit her.

  “They might be dead,” I admitted, looking at Mimi.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I did it anyway, if only to see Laurie glare at me for daring to contradict her.

  “I really hope not, Mimi,” I added, talking to her alone that time. “But your dad’s right, it’s possible. I’m hoping to find them before that happens...or before they’re taken out of Seattle. At the very least, I’m hoping to find out who did it, so they can’t do it again.”

  Laurie rolled her eyes again, like she thought I was bullshitting her, or trying to scare them, maybe. She looked like she wanted to make a smart-ass remark, but didn’t when I gave her a hard look before she could open her mouth. Her cheeks flushed pinkish then, and I saw her looking at me warily, like I’d become some kind of dangerous animal who might bite her.

  Clearly, she wasn’t used to having her authority questioned.

  Like most bullies, however, she wasn’t going to go up against anyone who wasn’t an easy mark.

  “And Brazil’s not a shithole,” I told her, because yeah, I’m an asshole like that. “It’s got good parts and bad parts, like anywhere. Don’t you read books? There’s also this thing called the internet...maybe you should check it out.”

  Laurie’s green eyes turned as hard as glass.

  Mimi smiled, but I saw her try to hide it by taking a drink of her mocha with the straw.

  Anyway, that pretty much concluded our interview.

  I kept talking to them for a while longer, but they didn’t have much more to tell me.

  At least not much more that was of use.

  I got out of Mimi that she’d been the one to come forward to the police about where Hilary and Jazzy had really gone that day...which, yeah, I’d more or less figured out on my own. After
they’d been missing for two days, Mimi confessed to her father that she’d lied to the police.

  Laurie had been pissed––and still appeared to be pissed––that Mimi spilled the beans. She insisted, even now, that Mimi broke the “friend code” by opening her mouth. Apparently they’d pinky-sworn or whatever that they’d cover for Jazzy and Hilary, and never breathe a word of their true destination that day.

  Even with them missing, Laurie saw Mimi telling her father as a betrayal.

  I also found out that Jazzy had a “boyfriend” of sorts, a gamer, nerdy kind of kid who also played on the basketball team. I didn’t get the sense I’d learn much from him, since he was out of town camping with his family the weekend Jazzy disappeared. I couldn’t help but wonder if Jazzy’s dad knew about him.

  I got his name from Laurie, who clearly thought he was a dork.

  I wrote it down anyway, just in case it ended up being relevant.

  He was another kid of tech-industry parents, according to Jazzy’s friends, which was no surprise. He designed his own games, too, at seventeen. Eric Gordon, but his friends called him “Gecko” apparently, since that was his gaming handle.

  When I left, I felt more frustrated than anything.

  Kids were really fucking dumb.

  It was easy to forget how dumb they were, and how often they lied to adults for stupid reasons. It was also easy to forget how vulnerable that made them, especially in a world that increasingly seemed to view them as prey.

  By the end of that conversation, I was on the fence as to whether I should go see my friends at the Seattle PD. I was tempted to stave that off until I resolved this case, just on the off-chance it ended up sucking up a lot of my time. I was a little worried they might want to throw me in a line-up or something, or even hold me overnight.

  Irene was the one who settled the question.

  I called her to make sure she got the photo I’d sent and to tell her the rest of what I’d learned so she could do some research on the gamer kid, Gecko, along with the hotel where they’d held the modeling show itself. When I called her, she was freaking out because apparently the cops had been by her place, looking for me.