Wanted!

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Shadows leaped in her face. Shadows rushed past her, and got in front of her, and suddenly Alice realized that the afternoon was late; in fact, it was nearly evening. She was going to need dinner and a bed.

  Cars were entering and leaving the student parking lots. Doors were slamming, engines were refusing to turn over, gears were jammed, horns were honked, radios were blaring.

  Food she could get. She had a little cash and there would be a cafeteria. But a bed?

  How casual the girls in the van had been. How easily they accepted her as a classmate in need of a ride. Could she convince somebody she was just another classmate in need of a mattress?

  She walked on, hardly able to tell where she had been, never mind where she was going. The similarity of each building to the next and to the last made each step seem pointless. She was on a treadmill, like one of those pathetic muscular people you saw in gymnasium ads: running, running, running, their little headphones chatting to them, their sweaty backs going no place.

  In front of her materialized the Stefan R. Saultman Computer Center. They probably didn’t name a building after you unless you had a middle initial. Stefan R. Saultman had more character than the other buildings, and the doors were not ground level. She had to ascend a dozen cement steps to a pair of glass doors so heavy that at first she thought they were locked. Only when she hauled with all her strength did one open for her. She could hardly keep the door open long enough to get through it.

  Inside was an attractive room with marble floors, like a state senate. How surprising to see this attention to appearance. Velvet cords hanging from low chrome posts made a little corridor within the room. These led to a second set of doors…with an electronic scanner.

  INSERT COLLEGE ID WITH PHOTO FACEUP.

  The second set of doors smiled at Alice, knowing that she had no ID.

  No people appeared, as if she had entered some human-free zone.

  Alice stood in the marble silence, immobilized by this defeat.

  She nearly seized the velvet rope for a weapon when a living person did come in behind her. She tried to think of an excuse for being so frightened, but the guy who walked in had not even seen her. Even nerdier than Alice was, not just loser glasses and brand X cap and ears sticking out, he also sported pocket protector, Bic pens, and laptop. Alice was pretty sure the whole world was invisible to this guy. She prayed for him to drop his ID card, but of course he didn’t, and he passed on through and the inner door shut heavily behind him.

  I could have leaped through when he did, she thought. There was time. Should I cram myself through with the next person?

  But what excuse would she give for such behavior?

  It was interesting that she was still worried about good and bad manners. We murderers must not concern ourselves with appearances, she said to herself, but the joke did not work, because she thought of Dad, and her silly words sewed her lips together, like a dragonfly stitching her soul. She did not believe in the dragonfly myth any more than she believed herself a murderer, and yet—

  Her mother believed.

  Up the outside stairs came a bunch of boys, jostling and punching and swearing and laughing in the loud way she associated with boys in junior high. She had figured by college you would outgrow this. Alice reminded herself that the worst that could happen was the boys would say No, and she said, “Oh, you know what? I’ve forgotten my ID. Can I just slip through the door with you?”

  They barely glanced at her. Perhaps, like Alice, they had learned to study a member of the opposite sex in one casual, split-second flicker.

  They had to line up in order to run their ID cards through the scanner, and lining up did not come easily to this kind of boy. The second-to-last boy in line put his arm out, sweepingly, like an usher about to seat a guest at a wedding, and Alice, hoping she had not misunderstood, let herself be gathered into the line, and she and the boy lockstepped through.

  He smiled at her. “I forget mine all the time,” he said. “I’ve spent half the year standing outside the dorm at night waiting for somebody to let me in.”

  She was blinded by his smile, or perhaps by the relief of being helped. How did people stay on the run? She had been running for only half a day, and already she was so desperate for a hug and some comfort she’d surrender if a policeman appeared right now.

  She reminded herself that the police, like her mother, would be a poor source of comfort.

  “Come on, Paul, move it,” said the last guy, and he, too, smiled at Alice, rather sweetly, as if they had shared something once, and the boys moved it, going down the hall in a group kind of way, bumping and talking in the code of good friends.

  She had misjudged them, because of their racket and their pushing. And who, right now, was misjudging Alice?

  “Thank you,” Alice called after them, but she didn’t think Paul had heard her.

  Paul.

  She was in high school with a computer wizard named Paul. No nerd, that Paul was gorgeous and athletic and a senior and everybody had crushes on him. He had been accepted at awesome institutes of technology—Massachusetts; California—and was trying to decide which one to honor with his presence.

  She tried to imagine calling upon that Paul for computer assistance. Or any other kind of assistance. It was beyond possibility. He would not have spent a millisecond noticing Alice, the sophomore.

  Of course, he was probably thinking of her now. The whole high school was probably thinking of her now. Alice? they were saying to each other. Sweet dull Alice?

  Not the kind of girl you expect to be a killer, they were probably saying to the television reporters.

  It seemed impossible to Alice that she could be a figure on the evening news: the kind they loved to linger on, a shocker. A bloody, cruel, awful shocker…and it was Alice.

  Oh, like wow, her classmates were saying to each other, my locker is next to hers. Wonder if she’s had a submachine gun in there all this time.

  She tried to imagine herself going back to that high school, or any high school, under such a cloud.

  Cloud?

  Suspicion of killing your own father was not a cloud.

  It was a forty-foot brick wall with rolls of slice wire on top.

  It was prison.

  The boys disappeared down the corridor and Alice followed. She hoped they were headed for an open lab, rows of cubicles each with keyboard and screen. When the boys clattered up to the second floor, so did Alice.

  She had chills. The place was overly air-conditioned. At the top of the stairs was a lounge, walls lined with vending machines, drinking fountains, padded black vinyl benches…and phones.

  Was Mommy by the phone? Was she holding the phone book with its quilted cover? Playing with the china cat which held pencils? Sitting on the slipper chair with its pattern of white geese, and its pillow of stuffed sheep? Was Mommy praying Alice would call again?

  What about Grandma and Grandpa, in Florida in their retirement home? Did they know yet?

  Her grandparents adored Alice. Alice adored them.

  Alice could possibly get to Florida on her credit card.

  But—hide out in Grandma’s spare bedroom? Abandon her life? Leave her friends and classes? Her wardrobe and her cat?

  She wanted desperately to hear her mother’s voice. To hear Mommy say, No, no, darling, it was all a terrible mistake, Daddy is fine, he’s been out looking for you, and—

  She seized the nearest phone, like a trapeze artist seizing the approaching swing. She called her mother.

  A strange voice answered. A voice she had absolutely never heard before. A slightly harsh and loud woman’s voice. “Robie residence,” it said. Alice froze, trying to imagine who it could be, where her mother was.

  After the tiny pause, the woman said in a slow, careful voice, “Alice? Your mother is lying down, Alice.”

  The woman left little spaces between each sentence to encourage Alice to speak. “I’ll go ask her to come to the phone, Alice.”

>   “Who is this?” said Alice.

  “This is Detective Burke, Alice.”

  This is how criminals get caught, thought Alice. They call their mothers.

  “Your mother is desperately worried about you, Alice.”

  Alice hung up, as gently as if she were replacing crystal on a shelf.

  Police were between Alice and her mother. Alice could not picture them among the plump quilted pillows, the baskets full of potpourri, and the rows of wooden kitty cats along the windowsills.

  Alice leaned against the wall phone, bursting with anger and grief. Police! Invading both Alice’s homes, answering Alice’s phone, reading Alice’s E-mail, possibly—no, definitely—squirreling through Alice’s bedroom and possessions and privacy.

  She had to call someone. She had to talk.

  She thought of Kelsey, of Laura and Cindy and Mardee and Emma. What if one of their mothers answered the phone? Hi, Mrs. Schmidt, it’s Alice Robie; can I speak to Laura please? And it would be, Alice, aren’t the police looking for you? We don’t let Laura be friends with girls suspected of murder.

  Running away meant you left your friends someplace else.

  I shouldn’t have run, she thought.

  But running had come so naturally. And having started, she was not willing to stop.

  She thought of perfect Paul in high school, but he didn’t know her and she didn’t know how to spell his last name. He had one of those very complex names nobody could spell, so nobody used it. They didn’t call him Paul Chmielewskiwicz or whatever it was; they called him Paul Chem. She wasn’t going to find his number in a phone book that way.

  Alice knew who to call. The number on her father’s Caller ID display. The number where—

  Where he was murdered? thought Alice.

  She believed it now, and yet she could not believe it at all. Would she have to see her dead father to believe it? She never wanted to see him anything except laughing and glad to have her around. If they offered her a chance to see him dead, she would refuse.

  But how else would she know if it was true?

  The telephones were entirely exposed, nothing but a few inches of Plexiglas separating one from another. Alice hoped that the people using the other phones were too pleased with the sound of their own voices to listen in on Alice.

  It was time to find out where her father had been. She needed to know who answered the phone at 399-8789.

  She rang up the zillion digits required for a credit card call. Her hands hurt just tapping the buttons. Sometimes Grandma could not do crossword puzzles because arthritis made holding the pencil difficult and now Alice knew how it felt; it felt cold and cruel and helpless. You didn’t have to be seventy. You could be fifteen and alone.

  The phone rang once. A quick masculine voice said, “Yes?”

  One syllable. One single ordinary syllable that everybody in America used every day, and Alice had to identify the speaker from that.

  I can’t, she thought. I don’t know who this is, and I don’t know if it’s one of the voices in the condo. Am I speaking to my father’s killer? Who is on the phone with me?

  She said, “This is Alice.”

  There was a gasp.

  Alice stood very still.

  The person on the other end hung up.

  Alice’s hand did not let go of the phone, but remained curled around the receiver. She did not know who this man was, but he knew who she was.

  Under the circumstances, it seemed to Alice that any grown-up would have questions for her. Any grown-up would try to keep her on the phone, try to locate her, try to get answers, and bring her in.

  Any grown-up except the man who already had the answers.

  She got her hand loose. She gave it a piece of book bag to clutch instead and she turned herself around and walked away from the phones. A sign poking off the top of a chrome stand said:

  LAB OPEN 24 HOURS

  ALL STUDENTS MUST PRESENT ID

  But there was nobody checking IDs and she simply walked in and nobody looked up, because people using computers never look up, and Alice circled the room, found a carrel, sat down, flicked on the computer, and there they were, friendly little icons willing to work for her whether she was accused of murder or not.

  She took out her father’s disk, and she saw his hands, his long thick fingers, strong and clever fingers, taking this disk, entering information on it, possibly dying for it.

  She let herself slide into a daydream in which Daddy had met her for ice cream after all, and he said to her, “I’m so proud! You drove all this way without any problems? In the toughest car on earth to drive? Not a scratch on it? Wonderland, you’ve saved my life.”

  But I didn’t save his life, she thought, falling out of the dream.

  He’s not going to kiss me eleven times on the hair, and he’s not going to play caveman and yank my hair and pretend to drag me over for ice cream.

  Daddy called her Wonderland because he said Alice had made his life a Wonderland, and he was the luckiest guy on earth; must have been magic and Cheshire cats that gave him such a perfect daughter.

  She was pretty sure that your college ID number was your social security number, and if you didn’t type that in, you couldn’t boot up. Even if she knew her social security number by heart, which she didn’t, she wasn’t enrolled here and her number wouldn’t accomplish anything. She scanned the busy room, waiting for somebody to get up and forget to shut down the computer.

  The room was divided among PCs, Macs, and a dedicated row for Internet use only. The Internet.

  She thought: I know the passwords. I can read my mother’s E-mail. I can read what I supposedly sent: the message in which I supposedly confessed to killing my own father.

  Chapter 6

  MOM I DON’T KNOW WHAT happened. We got into an argument and we yelled and you know how much i hate yelling and he was asying bad things about you and you know i cant stand when you 2 say bad things sabout ech other and i kept saying stop sotp stop and he didn’t and the fight went on and i hit him. mom its awful it really happenede i hit him and i hit him again and i know i have to call 911 but i hid uhndr the car ihstead but i couldn’t get away from the blood mommy come get me please come get me ally

  Of course she believed it, thought Alice. I believe it. It’s perfect. Who wrote that? I don’t use capital letters when I write E-mail, I don’t start with Dear and I don’t end with Love, and I say Mom, except when I’m really upset or angry and then I say Mommy. She’s the only person who ever called me Ally. I’m an Alice, sort of prim and careful.

  Well, she knew now how her father died. He’d been hit. Over and over. There was a lot of blood.

  Alice shuddered, and when she fought off the tears, she was not sure whether they’d have been for Daddy or herself. Or even her mother.

  How did they think little Alice had done this to her very big father?

  There must have been a frenzy in it, a rage, and they must have assumed her father wasn’t ready, or had his back turned, or didn’t take it seriously.

  And they would be right. Only frenzy would make the killer say, “I killed him good,” so that Alice could hear. And Dad had not taken it seriously, or wasn’t ready, or had his back turned.

  Suppose Mom read that the moment it came in. This was likely, because Alice and Mom usually E-mailed if they weren’t going to see each other that night, and Alice was staying at Dad’s. Once she read that, of course she’d have called the police! “Go rescue my daughter! Get there fast! And save Marc.”

  Mom would have wanted sirens and speed. Mom would have said to herself, it can’t be that bad! It can’t be!

  Mom would have left work, too, rushing, taking left turns on red, never mind right, using her horn like a private siren—the way Dad would have loved to drive but Mom would have never dreamed of driving.

  The police had been on the way while Alice was bolting in the Corvette; they must have been racing in the front door just as she was racing through the cit
y.

  No.

  They didn’t race in.

  Because Alice had thrown the dead-bolt from the inside and closed the garage door. Mom didn’t have keys. Who had let them in? Or had they broken down the door?

  Dad would have loved that. He had always wanted drama and quick crazy action. Police to the rescue, smashing in the door!

  The girl next to Alice was staring at her. Alice was panting: tiny quick little huffs to match an unbelievably quick pulse and an unbelievably bad headache, throbbing and grating with shock.

  Alice tried to sit very still. If she could quiet down the leaping ions and screaming synapses of her brain, maybe she could think again.

  This terrible confession could probably be used in court. It was so real. Assuming the killer was bright enough to use gloves—and he seemed more than intelligent enough—there would be no fingerprints on that computer but hers and Dad’s.

  How could Alice combat that confession?

  How could she convince people that No, somebody else wrote that?

  And there would be other stuff…she had scrambled under the car. That rough cement would have scraped off hair, and her terrified fingers pressing down might have found the only grease spots and left perfect prints there, too. And her clothing—the dress that had scraped against the underside of the Corvette was wadded up in the bathroom.

  Alice closed the screen, throwing the mouse arrow around until she was out of there, slamming little electronic doors against this nightmare.

  Alice stood up stiffly, as a whole group of exhausted, pale girls agreed that this was enough already and gathered their books and notebooks and trudged out of the lab. Sure enough, two had neglected to turn off their terminals.

  Alice took a seat, tilted her seat back and looked down the row of college kids.

  A gum chewer: jaw barely moving, but moving steadily, unbreaking.

  A waist rotater: a girl hoping to find the right word by swaying.

  A hair patter: a guy hoping the solution would come if his hair were neater.

  A hummer of tiresome tunes, who was about to get socked by the hair patter.