KILLER T

by Robert Muchamore

  Charlie seemed embarrassed, making a little snort and looking down at her grubby feet. The way she was opening up made Harry think he might be on to another story, and gave him hope that the cops wouldn’t be finding his bullet-riddled corpse.

  ‘I got into playing baseball, and the advanced programmes at my school opened up a bunch of stuff way more interesting than basic chemical reactions,’ Charlie explained, then buried her face in her hands. ‘I must sound like such nerd!’

  ‘No way,’ Harry said, liking her despite the weird circumstance. ‘It’s good to have a passion for something. Kids knock anything that stands out, but have no idea what they want themselves.’

  ‘True,’ Charlie admitted. ‘Not that it matters any more. JJ says he’s gonna admit to the bombing, but I still made the explosives. I should have ditched them, but that’s hard when you’ve put a lot of work into a project.’

  Harry was amazed by the admission. ‘JJ used your explosives?’

  ‘JJ started being nice to me. So much so that my crazy-jealous sister, Fawn, accused me of wanting to screw him. But I guess he just needed to find where I kept the explosives.’

  ‘You and Fawn don’t get along?’

  ‘She’s so manipulative,’ Charlie said. ‘Grinds everyone down till she gets exactly what she wants.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to JJ since the bomb went off.’

  ‘Twice,’ Charlie confirmed. ‘I was suspicious right away. I wasn’t in school because my little brother has been sick. Rock Spring High is only two blocks from here, so I heard the explosion and started seeing posts online. As soon as I heard it was Deion Powell’s locker, I came down here to check. I’d hidden two watertight packs of explosive. One pack was gone, along with a tin of detonators.’

  ‘But why would JJ act so dumb?’ Harry asked. ‘He must have known he’d get caught.’

  ‘He was doing steroids to bulk up for the season,’ Charlie said uncertainly. ‘They can make you super aggressive. But I don’t care why he’s ruined his own life. It’s the fact he might have ruined mine too.’

  ‘That sucks,’ Harry said, too wary to offer physical comfort as Charlie propped herself on a little dining table.

  ‘Did you see my brother up at the house?’ Charlie asked, her voice wobbling. ‘I’m sorry, I never usually cry.’

  As Harry got to his feet, he realised he was now closer to the gun than Charlie. He could grab it and run, but he was hooked on the revelations.

  ‘I heard a boy shouting and throwing stuff around your trailer,’ Harry said, deciding not to mention that the cops had bailed out of the trailer, complaining that the kid had shat himself. ‘Is he OK? You said you were off school looking after him?’

  ‘Ed’s ten,’ Charlie explained as she rubbed one eye. ‘His skull got crushed by the delivery forceps when he was born and he suffered brain damage. Fawn’s supposed to be his full-time carer. She gets eighteen hundred a month from Ed’s compensation fund, but she’s never home. She’s practically moved into JJ’s place.’

  Harry wondered where Charlie’s parents had got to, but didn’t want to probe and upset her more.

  ‘I heard a cop say social services were coming to collect him.’

  Charlie shook her head. ‘Ed’s a good kid once you know his quirks, but he gets emotional if there’s any change to his routine. He picked up a horrible stomach bug, but he doesn’t grasp that he’ll get better and can go back to school in a few days the way that a normal kid does. And Fawn loses her temper. Calls him dirty boy, locks him in the bathroom then drives off. And I am left – literally – cleaning up the shit.’

  Harry took another half a step towards her.

  ‘I got pissed seeing you snoop around taking photos,’ Charlie told him, ‘but I’m not holding you hostage. Go if you want to. Snitch me to the cops and get your pretty bangs on the six-o’clock news.’

  ‘I’ll stay and talk if you want,’ Harry said gently.

  Charlie gave a huge sob and pushed up from the table. She was muscly and Harry stumbled as she locked her hands behind his back and rested her cheek against his chest.

  ‘I don’t have a single real friend, Harry.’

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ Harry said, feeling awkward as he put his arms round her.

  Charlie’s T-shirt had ridden up and Harry’s hand slipped in the small of her bare, sweaty back. Sobs shook Charlie’s body as Harry breathed her smell and felt a little turned on.

  ‘I’m such a freak,’ Charlie said, staring up with desperate eyes.

  ‘Beautiful freak,’ Harry said, and wondered where the hell that came from. He half expected her to recoil, but Charlie cracked a soft, flattered smile.

  I want to kiss her, but that’s the last thing she wants right now.

  Charlie sensed Harry’s awkwardness, peeling sweaty hair off her face as she backed up.

  ‘Sorry I put a gun to your head,’ Charlie said, wearing a doomed smile as she scratched one ankle with a dirty big toe.

  ‘Maybe it’s not that bad,’ Harry suggested. ‘You made the explosives a long time ago and you didn’t know JJ was going to steal them. Maybe, instead of hiding from the cops, go over to the house, surrender and tell them what happened. You’re a smart kid, you’ve never been in trouble before …’

  ‘Two flaws in your plan,’ Charlie said as she slumped in a plastic chair. ‘First, if I was covering my ass, the story I would tell is that JJ stole the explosives and that I knew nothing about it. It happens to be the truth, but will the cops believe me?

  ‘Second, I have been in trouble before. Some kids started teasing Ed at the mall one time. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and foamed the little pricks. One guy slipped and when the foam ran out I belted him over the head with it.’

  Harry’s eyebrows shot up. ‘For real?’

  ‘You can smirk, but I fractured the little turd’s cheekbone and Canyon Mall said there was over two thousand dollars in damages. I got a fine, three anger management sessions and the judge said if I put another foot wrong I’d be booking my ticket for juvenile detention.’

  ‘But they started on your little brother,’ Harry said indignantly, then jolted as a phone rang loudly behind him.

  ‘What’s happening, JJ?’ Charlie said anxiously as she answered her cell. ‘I’m dangling here.’

  Charlie was on the phone for six minutes. Harry listened, but struggled to follow, beyond the fact that it was someone called Mr Elkmann, using JJ’s cell.

  ‘JJ’s lawyer,’ Charlie explained, after the call. ‘He’s just left the precinct after handing JJ over to the cops. Elkmann says the best thing is for me to surrender too – and don’t say I told you so. JJ’s dad is rich so he’s going to fix me up with a good lawyer, and I’m supposed to stay calm and polite, but keep my trap shut until the lawyer arrives.’

  ‘Why would Jay Janssen Senior pay your lawyer?’ Harry asked suspiciously.

  ‘I guess he has more control over his son’s case if my lawyer is in his pocket. Nothing can be worse than the public defender I had for the fire extinguisher deal. She saw me for ten minutes and basically said plead guilty, or else.’

  ‘So, you might get off?’ Harry asked.

  Charlie shook her head. ‘JJ said he’ll take the rap for the bomb, but Elkmann says I’ll face charges for illegal possession of explosives.’

  ‘Could you get locked up for that?’

  ‘He said it hinges on how badly Deion Powell and the girl are hurt.’

  ‘Last I saw online, the hospital was saying seriously injured, but not life threatening,’ Harry told her.

  ‘Because of my age, Elkmann says I’d be unlucky to get more than nine months for an explosives charge. I can handle that. It’s Ed I’m worried about. He always asks for me when he gets upset and he’ll lose it if I’m not around.’

  ‘I’ll give you my number, so you can call if you need anything,’ Harry said. ‘Pass your phone – I’ll put it in your contacts.’

  ‘Doubt I’ll be allowed my cell whe
re I’m going,’ Charlie said, but she still passed him her cheapo cracked-screen smartphone. ‘If you want to do me a real favour, take that and make it vanish.’

  Harry looked up from the phone and saw Charlie pointing at the gun.

  ‘It’s covered in my fingerprints,’ Charlie said as she reached under the locker units and pulled out a double-length thirty-two-round clip, filled with tarnished bullets. ‘I can do without extra hassle over an unlicensed firearm.’

  Harry was startled as the clip landed heavy next to the gun. But Charlie wasn’t done, reaching deeper under the lockers and coming out with a black, plastic-wrapped package about the size of a house brick.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Harry asked.

  ‘If you’re thinking five pounds of homebrew C4 explosive,’ Charlie said, enjoying Harry’s shock. ‘It’s stable,’ she added. ‘Drop it off a rooftop or throw it in an incinerator. Nothing will go bang without a blasting cap. If someone sees it sliced up in the garbage, they’ll assume it’s dried out plasticine. Or break it up and flush it.’

  Harry gawped. Before today, the worst trouble he’d ever faced was one-day suspension from his London school for calling a teacher a petty-minded cow when he got told it was against the rules to tie his sweater round his waist.

  ‘This stuff will get me in more trouble,’ Charlie pleaded, her eyes more desperate than ever. ‘Do you want to help or not?’

  ‘I guess,’ Harry sighed, knowing he was crossing a line from wannabe journalist to an accessory to a serious crime.

  He was already half in love with this messed-up girl and her giant blue eyes, but simultaneously imagined a scene where he got busted carrying explosives and a gun.

  ‘Use this,’ Charlie said, grabbing a Rock Spring Middle School tracksuit top off the back of a chair. ‘Wrap the stuff in that to keep your DNA off. Cut the explosive in small bits and put it in the trash, then wear plastic gloves and wipe the gun before you dump it.’

  ‘I’ll google the best way to clean it,’ Harry said.

  Charlie nodded as she hunted around the gloomy floor, pushing her feet into trashed sneakers. ‘Now get your fancy-pants camera out. You can film me surrendering to the cops.’

  8 CHEESY BALLS

  Charlie claimed her explosive was stable, but Harry had seen the bloody mess made of Deion, and didn’t like having five pounds of the stuff strapped on his back. Nor did he like the massive risk he’d taken to help Charlie out. But those blue eyes, and the smell of her when they’d hugged …

  Stupid idiot. This situation is a million kinds of crazy. You could get locked up for this and you’ll probably never see Charlie again.

  Harry walked fast, getting honked at by an old bird driving an RV as he stepped off a kerb without looking. His brain was scrambled egg. The sun was impossibly hot and the pack crammed full, with the gun digging his back.

  Once Charlie had surrendered, he’d sprinted back to the CVS, then jogged a mile and a bit down South Rainbow, until he came to a little outdoor mall. It had the usual suspects: Starbucks, Burger King, Kurt’s Sporting Goods and Dollar Dominator. He’d been here twice with his aunt and knew he’d find men’s toilets by the kids’ play area.

  Stupid American toilets, Harry thought, seeing a row of aluminium partitions that started ten inches from the floor and stopped below head height. But nobody’s in here and it’s pretty clean …

  He bolted a stall at the far end, went down on one dirty knee and opened his backpack. The Nikon was Harry’s most prized possession, but he’d shoved it in the bag without the lens cap, and it felt horrible seeing it covered in dust, fingerprints and blood from his grazed hands.

  But camera cleaning came way down the list. He unrolled Charlie’s jogging top, brushing his hand on the gun as he pulled out the plastic-wrapped brick. It had an oily, metallic smell, even though Charlie had sealed it in a heavy-gauge rubble sack wound with several yards of duct tape. Harry tried getting inside with his nail, but he only got a couple of tiny strips off before realising it would take forever.

  He needed something sharp. His first thought was a key. He’d carried several back in London, but out here the Sinatra’s apartments opened with a plastic fob, he had no bicycle to lock and Rock Spring High lockers had combination dials.

  Luckily, Harry had left home in a rush. He’d pulled all the schoolbooks out of his pack, but a bunch of pens and his geometry set still rattled at the bottom. The compass point speared the plastic, releasing a burst of the heavy oil smell. He stabbed and gouged until the explosive brick was fully exposed.

  The outer layer had dried to a bluish-green crust, with dozens of dead bugs stuck to it. But when Harry dug in – using his protractor as a scoop – the inside was gooey, like the little French cheeses his aunt liked.

  He let a chunk plop into the toilet and flushed, not relishing the idea of having to fish it out if it didn’t go down. But it went down fine and he flushed two more lumps, before realising that the swirling water had drowned out the sound of his phone ringing.

  ‘You’re having a great day, young fella!’ Ellie Gold said cheerfully as soon as he picked up.

  ‘Am I?’ Harry said, unconvinced, as he kneeled in front of the toilet, looking at a slab of explosive that could level a house.

  ‘Do you want the good news or the great news?’

  ‘Whichever,’ Harry said, straining not to be rude, but desperate to flush the explosive and get out of the restroom.

  ‘BBC Online came in and offered fifteen grand for the exclusive on the video. Those licence-fee-funded English pricks have more money than sense!’ Ellie paused before adding, ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’

  ‘The even better news is people are loving the helmet shot. Seven newspapers have picked it up in the last hour, plus a dozen TV stations and some online outlets. Each syndication only earns three to six hundred dollars, depending on image resolution and exact usage. But those numbers add up fast.’

  ‘Cool,’ Harry said. ‘But I’m in the middle of something …’

  ‘Have you got anything else for me?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Not right now,’ Harry said warily. ‘Cheers for telling us, but I really have to go.’

  Harry had yet to look at the shots of Charlie’s arrest, but he’d already decided to ditch them. He didn’t want anything publicly linking him to Charlie and the explosives. He planned to upload all the other pictures on the memory card, then smash it into fifty pieces.

  ‘I’ll stay in touch,’ Ellie said warmly. ‘And check your email when you get a chance. Sue-Ann should have sent through a contributor form.’

  Harry’s hand was trembling and he almost dropped his phone as he pushed it down his shorts. Someone locked a bolt three stalls down, ripping an epic fart as Harry used the protractor, scooping, dropping and flushing until all that remained was a bundle of torn plastic with slimy residue and dead bugs in the bottom.

  Plastic would never flush, so Harry balled it with the explosive-smeared protractor and compass inside, reeled off a massive wodge of toilet paper then wound it around until it was a white clump, roughly the size of a volleyball. Harry waited for the guy taking a dump to wash his hands and exit, then put his backpack on.

  Why didn’t I stay home? Is this the dumbest decision of my life? It’s definitely the weirdest day of my life …

  After a cautious glance, Harry stepped from the cubicle and swiped his hand under an automatic faucet. He made the ball of tissue wet so that it stuck around the plastic and hopefully hid the strong smell. Then Harry pushed the soggy blob through the flap of a wall-mounted trash can. Finally, he disguised it further by dumping heaps more paper towels on top.

  A kid of about seven started peeing at the urinal as Harry blasted his hands with four squirts of soap. The bright pink gel stung the cuts on his palms, but he ignored the pain, scrubbing hard and trying to free anything incriminating from under his nails.

  It was a relief to get back into the sun, without the fea
r of exploding. He spent a few seconds thinking about Ellie’s call. Eight hundred up front, seven-and-a-half-grand share from the video, more from the helmet photo.

  If Ellie pays. He seems decent, but don’t count chickens till the payment clears.

  The little kid raced past, flapping his wet hands before retrieving a frozen-yoghurt tub from a hot mom with a stroller. Harry thought about the gun. How to destroy fingerprints and DNA?

  He sat on a concrete bench outside a Sunglass Hut, vaguely recognising some girls from his school strolling by. Harry made sure full privacy was switched on before searching. Google led him to a hobby site called The Forensic Enthusiast. The article claimed that regular chlorine bleach broke down all DNA in under an hour.

  He read carefully, then checked the public comments below the article, to make sure there weren’t a bunch of people claiming the advice was bad. A few comments suggested alternatives, such as oven-cleaning foam, but the majority agreed that most criminals would use bleach, because it cost less than a dollar a bottle and was available everywhere.

  Harry made a shopping list in his head as he strode towards Dollar Dominator at the far end of the mall: cleaning cloths, strong bleach, Ziploc bags, rubber gloves, strong plastic sacks.

  Be meticulous. Clean the gun and dump it where it won’t be found for a long time. Throw out your backpack and everything inside it. You’ve got heaps of clothes, these are comfy running shoes but there’s probably tiny bits of explosive trodden in the sole and stuff so ditch them too … What else?

  You can’t make one single mistake …

  9 DAZED AND CONFUSED

  Charlie had surrendered, but the cops still slammed her to the ground, causing a nosebleed. Her clothes had to go for forensic examination, so she wound up on a green vinyl bench in a police cell, naked beneath a disposable paper suit, with drips of blood down the front.

  It was hard to keep time in the windowless cell, but Charlie guessed it was early evening when the door swung open. Her nose had finally stopped bleeding, but the clot felt like a thumb wedged up her nostril, and red-splattered napkins were balled all over the floor.