The Stranger Next Door

by Peg Kehret

  “No,” Mr. Morris said, but Alex was watching Rocky, and he saw a flicker of fear cross Rocky’s face. He wondered if Rocky would tell the firefighter about Duke’s note.

  Although Rocky said nothing, he looked worried.

  “The house is new,” Mr. Morris said. “We moved in last weekend.”

  “That’s rotten luck,” the firefighter said. “A fire is terrible anytime, but when you’ve just bought a new house it’s really bad.”

  “We don’t own the house,” Mr. Morris said. “We’re renting.”

  “You should call your landlord,” the chief said. “He needs to know about the fire. He’ll want to notify his insurance company.”

  “You’re welcome to use our phone,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  “By any chance do you have the number for Alicia Woolsey?” Mr. Morris asked. “That’s who we’re renting from. Her husband built our house, and I think he built this one, also.”

  Mr. Kendrill found the number. Mr. Morris dialed.

  “Don’t let that man come here!” Pete cried. “He’s a mean, terrible person. He hates cats. He hates children. He—”

  Pete’s conversation was cut short by Mrs. Kendrill, who picked up the cat and shut him in the downstairs bathroom.

  “You’ll regret this!” Pete howled. “1 have information that you need. I know who set the fire!”

  The humans, as usual, ignored him.

  “Mr. Woolsey sounded really upset about the fire,” Mr. Morris said, “especially when I told him we barely got out in time. He thought we were moving in next Saturday. He had not yet put batteries in the smoke alarms.”

  The firefighters left.

  “I need to make another call,” Mr. Morris said.

  Alex heard him ask for Gus Franklin, then tell about the fire.

  Alex hoped Mr. Morris would accept his parents’ invitation to sleep at the Kendrill home that night. Rocky could bunk in his room. Rocky had talked to Alex more in the few minutes while he was getting dressed than he had in the entire week since he moved next door. Maybe now they would finally become friends.

  However, when Mr. Morris hung up, he said, “Thanks for the offer, but a friend is coming to get us.”

  Alex glanced at Rocky, to see if he was disappointed, too. Rocky had his head down, staring at the floor.

  Within half an hour, Mr. Franklin arrived to get Mr. Morris and Rocky.

  When they had left, Alex lay in bed with Pete beside him, thinking about the fire. In particular, he wondered why Rocky had looked so scared when the fireman asked if they knew of anyone who might have deliberately set the fire.

  Rocky had said he didn’t think Duke was responsible. Did he suspect someone else? Did the Morris family have an enemy? Or had Rocky himself started the fire, then pretended to be asleep? Did Rocky look fearful because he was afraid of being caught?

  Alex didn’t want to think that. He liked the way Rocky had stood up to Duke; he wanted Rocky to be his friend. Yet he could not deny the fact that Rocky Morris had lived next door for less than a week, and in that time there were vandalized street signs and an arson fire.

  Maybe Benjie was right; maybe Rocky was the troublemaker. He certainly kept to himself and talked only when necessary. Still, that didn’t mean he was a hoodlum. Maybe he was shy.

  Alex didn’t know what to think.

  When Pete lay down on Alex’s chest and started to purr, Alex let him stay. The low rumbling purr was comforting.

  Alex petted the cat. “It’s been quite a night, hasn’t it, Pete?” he said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Pete replied.

  8

  Rocky got in the backseat of Mr. Franklin’s car.

  “There’s a Holiday Inn about ten minutes away,” Mr. Franklin said. “You can stay there tonight.”

  “Do you think they’ve found us?” Rocky asked as they drove away from Valley View Estates.

  “A fire is not the mob’s usual style,” Mr. Franklin said. “If they knew where you were, they would use a method that leaves you no possible escape.”

  “How comforting,” said Blake.

  “There’s always a chance that this was a warning, a form of harassment,” Mr. Franklin said, “but we don’t think so.”

  Rocky chewed on the inside of his lip. He wished his mother were in the backseat with him, instead of in Washington, D.C.

  “I have alerted the program,” Mr. Franklin said. “I told them where you’ll be staying tonight. Someone will notify Ginny.”

  “Can we call her?” Rocky asked. Even though he and Blake were unhurt, it seemed imperative to talk to his mother right away.

  “She’ll call you,” Mr. Franklin said, “as soon as she can. I know she’ll be upset when she learns what happened, but right now her safety, and yours, is our first concern.”

  Rocky folded his arms across his chest, rubbing on the sleeves of Alex’s sweatshirt, trying to get warm. Why did Mother have to be in Washington, D.C., tonight? Why did she have to go there at all? Why couldn’t someone else testify during the trial?

  Mother and Blake had explained the whole situation, but Rocky still didn’t totally understand it all. Something about their explanation bothered him, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong.

  He closed his eyes and thought back to that first night, more than a month ago, when they had moved so suddenly. After Mr. Valdez took them to a hotel room, the three adults had finally explained the situation to him.

  “We are moving,” Mother had told him, “because I’m going to be a witness for the United States government in a major drug trial. The defendant in the case has made millions of dollars selling illegal drugs, and he will do anything to prevent me from testifying against him.”

  Rocky was dumbfounded. How could his mother, who didn’t smoke and who didn’t drink—not even beer or wine—be involved with a drug dealer? It just seemed impossible.

  “When she says the defendant will do anything to keep her from testifying,” Mr. Valdez said, “that includes murder. He couldn’t do it himself, of course, since he is in custody, awaiting trial, but he has a network of henchmen who will gladly follow orders if the price is right.”

  “How did this happen? When?” Rocky stammered, not knowing which of his questions to ask first. He had to move—to change his name and go into hiding—because someone wanted to murder his mother? It was unthinkable!

  “This man often uses old cars to smuggle drugs into the country,” Blake said. “He buys cars that have been in accidents, then has them towed to one of his contacts in Mexico, where packets of drugs, usually cocaine, are hidden in the cars. Sometimes the upholstery is split and small packages of drugs are sewn inside. Sometimes a secret compartment is drilled in the dashboard or under the floor. More than once, cocaine was inside a spare tire in the trunk, or in a fake muffler. The cars are repaired enough so that they can be driven across the border. The drivers choose busy times when the customs agents are harried, and they take along their wives and children, to give the appearance of a family on vacation.”

  “Once the car is in the United States,” Mother continued, “it goes to one of several auto-repair shops in Southern California. Someone at the shop—usually the owner—is in on the deal. He gets a tip when such a car is brought in so that he can remove the drugs when nobody else is there. He does this as quickly as possible, then calls an anonymous contact person who comes to pick up the packages of drugs.”

  “So A-One Auto Repair was one of the places the drug dealer used?” Rocky asked.

  “It’s one that he wanted to use,” Blake said. “He called and offered us a chance to cooperate with him. If we agreed, we would get ten thousand dollars each time a pickup was made.”

  “Only instead of saying yes,” Rocky guessed, “you called the police.”

  “That’s right,” his mother said. “When he made the offer, I said I needed to think about it. Then we notified the police, and that same day someone from the FBI asked us if we
would be willing to cooperate with the government in trying to catch the drug smuggler. We said yes. When the drug smuggler called back the next day, I did as the FBI instructed: I told him we wanted the money and would do what he asked.”

  “We knew when we agreed to do this,” Blake said, “that it might mean we would have to give up our home and our business and move to a new area. We feel it’s important to put a stop to one of the biggest drug-smuggling operations in the world, even if it requires some personal sacrifice.”

  “If the drug smuggler used A-One Auto,” Rocky said to Blake, “why aren’t you the one who has to testify? Why aren’t the henchmen after you? It’s your shop; Mother only helps part-time.”

  “I answered the phone when he first called,” Mother said. “I’m the one who talked to him, and I’m the one who told him yes, we would do it. I was the only contact person; I made all the arrangements.”

  “Not that it would make any difference at this point,” Mr. Valdez said. “No matter which of your parents was testifying, your whole family would still need to go into the program.”

  “Program?”

  “I work for the United States Marshal’s Office,” Mr. Valdez said. “We run the Witness Security Program. It’s designed especially to help people like you, people who need to assume different identities and begin new lives because they’ve agreed to be witnesses for the government.”

  Rocky stared at his mother and stepfather, and at this stranger who was so deeply involved in his family’s future.

  “We pretended to go along with the drug deal,” Mother said. “Two weeks later, one of the cars was brought to the shop, and we found the packages of cocaine. I called the number I had been given as a contact and gave the code word. When that person came to pick up the drugs, he handed me an envelope containing ten thousand dollars in cash.”

  “The FBI arrested the contact person in the parking lot of A-One Auto,” Mr. Valdez said. “An hour later the head of the whole operation was arrested, too. He’s the one who made the phone calls. He’s the one who made all the arrangements. He’s the one we’ve been trying to put out of business.”

  “The man that your mother will testify against knows that he got caught because of his contact with A-One Auto,” Blake said. “He knows that he’ll likely spend many years in prison as a result of her testimony.”

  “If she could be prevented from testifying,” Mr. Valdez said, “the government would have no case against him. The outcome of the trial rests on her. We could still prosecute the contact person, but not the man who actually shipped the cocaine. We’ve known for years that this man was head of a huge drug-smuggling operation, but this is the first time we’ve had the evidence we need to convict him.”

  “So once the trial is over and he’s convicted, we can go home?” Rocky had asked.

  “I wish we could,” Blake said, “but after your mother testifies against him, his mob will seek revenge. We’ll never be able to go back.”

  “Your mother is a courageous woman,” Mr. Valdez told Rocky. “It isn’t easy to go on the witness stand and testify in a major trial of this kind, especially when you know the accused so well.”

  Riding now in Mr. Franklin’s car, Rocky’s eyes flew open. His thoughts returned to the present, to the night of the fire, when his mother was in Washington, D.C., preparing to testify during the trial.

  Those were the words that he had not fully understood at the time. They had been bothering him subconsciously for weeks: “especially when you know the accused so well.”

  Mother didn’t know the accused man at all—did she? He was only a voice on the telephone, someone who had made arrangements to have a car delivered to the shop, someone who gave her a phone number and a code word to use after the drugs were found.

  “Blake?” Rocky said.

  Blake turned in his seat, to look at Rocky.

  “I just remembered something. That first night, when you told me about the drug smuggling and why we have to hide, and about the man that Mother’s going to testify against, Mr. Valdez said that it would be hard for her to testify against somebody she knows. What did he mean?”

  Even in the dark car, Rocky could tell from Blake’s expression that the question was important.

  “Your mother and I were hoping you wouldn’t ask that,” Blake said, “but since you have, you deserve an honest answer. The reason the drug smuggler called A-One Auto—the reason your mother was offered the chance to get ten thousand dollars per deal—is that the drug smuggler, the man she’s testifying against, is your father.”

  Rocky could not answer. He felt as if he were living a bad dream, hearing words that could not possibly have been spoken.

  “We think he called A-One Auto as a way to help you,” Blake said. “He never sent any support money because he didn’t want anyone, even you and your mother, to know where he was. If we had gone along with the scheme, we still wouldn’t have known his location. We believe he felt guilty about neglecting you, and he was trying to get some large sums of money to you through the shop. He knew that if your mother and I were involved in the illegal drug deals, his connection would be kept secret. He gambled that your mother would cooperate in order to make your future financially secure.”

  “That’s why she is the only witness who can convict him,” Mr. Franklin said. “She recognized his voice. She can swear that he made those phone calls.”

  “How did the police know where to find him?” Rocky asked. “Were the phone calls traced?”

  “The FBI has had him under surveillance for years,” Mr. Franklin said. “All we needed was proof that he’s sending drugs into this country.”

  His father. Rocky had wondered dozens of times what his father was like, but his mother had given only vague answers.

  “Is that why she divorced him?” Rocky asked.

  “She suspected he was connected with illegal activities, but she didn’t know what they were. She divorced him because he lied to her.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry she isn’t here to tell you this,” Blake said. “We probably should have told you from the start, but we worried how you would feel if you knew. Your mother has always wanted you to think that your father is a good person who loves you but doesn’t know how to show it.”

  “Instead, my father is an international drug dealer,” Rocky said.

  “In spite of what he did, I think he loves you,” Blake said. Then he added softly, “And so do I.”

  Rocky nodded. He didn’t remember his father at all. Blake was the one who had fixed broken toys and played catch and gone to conferences with Rocky’s teachers. Blake was the one who coached Little League and read bedtime stories and made him (at age five) take a piece of bubble gum back to the store when he had stuck it in his pocket without paying. Blake was his real father.

  Still, it hurt to know that the man who was his biological parent was a criminal. In the last couple of days, he had begun to feel that his life was returning to normal, and now this happened.

  All the anger and fear that he had felt the night when they first moved returned. He had done nothing wrong; why should he have to change his name and leave his friends and his dog? Why should he have to be afraid that someone, whose name he didn’t even know, was hunting for his family, wanting to kill them?

  “Doesn’t it seem odd,” Blake said, “that only five days after we move in, our house goes up in flames?”

  “It is very strange,” Mr. Franklin said, “especially on the eve of your wife’s testimony. The arson squad will look at the evidence carefully, and so will the FBI.”

  “What do we do now?” Blake asked. “We can’t live in motels forever, and we don’t want to leave this area unless we have to. Rocky just got started in school; it wouldn’t be fair to yank him out and start over again somewhere else.”

  “I don’t think this fire is related to your situation,” Mr. Franklin said, “so you can stay here for now. I’ll talk to Thurgood or Alicia Woolsey tomo
rrow. They have several unsold houses that are ready for occupancy; I’m confident that you can rent one of those. You should be able to move in within a day or two, as soon as we can buy some furniture and get the utilities turned on.”

  At least I won’t have to go to another new school, Rocky thought. Even so, he knew it would be a long time before the memory of waking up to smoke, flame, and instant fear would fade.

  Half an hour later, Rocky sat shivering on the motel bed as Blake and Mr. Franklin watched a newscast about the fire. Although he wasn’t cold, he couldn’t stop shaking. He kicked off Mr. Kendrill’s too-big shoes and got under the covers.

  He longed for the real Rocky, the one with four legs and a wagging tail. He wished his dog would jump on the bed beside him right now, and lick his hand, and beg to be petted. He knew it couldn’t happen.

  “A dog is too easily tracked,” Mr. Valdez had explained. “Airline or hotel employees see hundreds of people each week but only a few animals. If questioned, those employees could remember a dog and provide information about you or your destination.”

  Rocky knew Mr. Valdez was right, but he still wished he could have kept his dog. In his imagination, he could feel once more the coarse fur and the velvety ears and the cold nose.

  Rocky closed his eyes, fighting back tears. He wanted to be Clifford again; he wanted to quit pretending and quit being scared that someone would recognize him. He wanted his mother to be home, reading or listening to music or making popcorn, instead of on the other side of the continent getting ready to testify that her former husband, Rocky’s father, was a drug smuggler.

  Rocky wanted to go back to his old life, when he wasn’t so afraid.

  9

  Alex hurried into his classroom the next morning, hoping to see Rocky, but Rocky wasn’t in school.

  Duke stopped beside Alex’s desk, just before the bell rang. “My brother and I drove through Valley View last night. We saw the fire.”