by Gayle Forman
“Yeah.”
“Landline or cell?”
“I don’t know. It came up as blocked. But he was at work, so I’d guess cell.”
“On your cell or landline?”
“Cell. I was at work, and we gave up our landline.”
“When?”
“Did we give up our landline?”
“No, Cody. When did he call you?”
“Earlier today.”
“Seriously?” Harry’s voice perks up.
“Yeah. Why, is that bad?”
“Careless.”
“So, bad for him, but good for us?”
“Could be.” I can tell, even through the phone, that Harry is smiling. “You’ll have to give me complete access to your mobile account.”
“Fine.”
“And send everything you have on this Smith guy. Usernames. Any accounts you used to communicate. Anything you have on him. Any electronic trail. Email it all to me.”
If I have to go stand outside Mrs. Chandler’s driveway to pick up a Wi-Fi signal, I’ll do it. Though Mrs. Banks said the library is reopening any day. “Done.”
“And understand I’ll be doing some quasi-legal things.”
“For a good cause,” I remind him.
“I’ll say. I’m going a little crazy at my grandmother’s, so it’ll be good to have a project. I’ll be in touch when I find something.”
x x x
That afternoon I stand outside the Chandlers’ empty house, pirating their Wi-Fi signal, and I send Harry everything. The next day, the library reopens. I go in with the laptop and check the anonymous messaging service All_BS and I used, but there’s nothing. I check the Final Solution boards, but there’s nothing from him there, either. I am pretty certain there will be no more communication from him. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ve gone from being the mouse to being the snake.
x x x
After three days Harry calls.
“That wasn’t easy,” he says. He sounds utterly thrilled.
“Did you find him?”
Harry doesn’t answer. Instead, he tells me a long and complicated tale about how All_BS used Skype to make some kind of VoIP call, not through a phone, but through a tablet. It’s hard to trace a telephone number, but not as hard to track an application’s user. “This is how even the best criminals get caught,” he tells me. “They are so careful—until they’re not.”
“So you did find him?”
“Like I said. It wasn’t easy. The tablet was registered to this guy Allen DeForrest.”
“So that’s him?”
“I don’t think so,” Harry says. “When I dug a bit deeper, this DeForrest had a huge online profile. He’s all over Facebook and Instagram, lots of pictures and status updates. I figured our guy would be more secretive. But I had this feeling. So I dug up more on DeForrest and discovered where he worked. He’s a pit boss at the Continental Casino.”
“What’s a pit boss?”
“It’s like a manager, but you’re missing the point, Cody. It’s at a casino. Your hunch was right! It’s not in Las Vegas, but Laughlin, Nevada, which is like a poor man’s Vegas.”
“But you said you didn’t think it was the DeForrest guy.”
“Right. I still don’t. For one, I thought that your guy, with all his fancy encryption methods, would be more careful than to use his own device. And second, we’re looking for a Smith, right? So I hacked into the employee records at the Continental Casino and looked for people with the last name Smith. As you might’ve guessed, there were a lot of them. But only a couple of B. Smiths.”
“B?”
“All_BS.”
“I thought that meant all bullshit.”
“I did too. And it might. But guys like this, who are doing bad things and keeping it secret, sometimes they still want to brag about it somehow. So I wondered if BS weren’t his initials, especially since we already know his last name is Smith.” He pauses. “So I checked. There are only three B. Smiths employed by the casino. Bernadette. Becky.” He stops. “And Bradford.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “Bradford?”
“Bradford Smith. Age fifty-two. Works in the Continental Casino. There’s more. I looked up his Internet history and found that he pays for the premium broadband package, but, unlike the DeForrest guy, he leaves a very light online footprint. Fits the profile.”
“So that’s him?”
“Might be.”
“How do we know for sure?”
“Would you recognize his voice?”
Our one and only phone call. Brief, but indelible. “I think so.”
“Good. I got a phone number for his actual cell phone. We can call on a blocked line and conference you in. If we get voice mail, you listen to his outgoing message. If he answers, I’ll pose as a telemarketer, and you stay quiet. Either way, you can confirm his voice.”
“That’s all we have to do?”
“Yep. Hang up, and I’ll call you back and patch you in.”
“Now? Won’t he get suspicious?”
“Who gets suspicious of a telemarketer?”
“Good point.”
“Okay. What should we be selling that no one wants to buy?” Harry asks.
“As it happens, I’ve worked as a telemarketer before. No one wanted supplemental life insurance, and it seems oddly fitting to try to sell it to him.” I tell Harry the script.
“Okay. Hang up, and I’ll call you back and we’ll do this.”
When Harry calls back, the line is already ringing. “Shh,” he tells me.
The voice that picks up is gruff. “Hello.”
“Hello. I’m with Good Faith Insurance Agency,” Harry begins in a smooth voice, like he does this all the time. “The reason I’m calling is to let you know that we have drastically lowered our insurance rates in Laughlin. We would love to give you a no-obligation review and quote on your current life insurance policy. If you don’t have one set up yet, I’d love to discuss this very wise investment in your future.”
“I’ve already told you, I’m not interested,” he says. And hangs up.
We sit there for a moment, in a triangle of silence: Me. Harry Kang. And the disconnected voice of All_BS.
30
Once again, I’m back at the library for research, but this time, it’s easier. I only have to figure out how to get to Laughlin. The hard part is over.
I can’t quite believe it. I’ve been looking for All_BS for weeks, and at times, it has felt like chasing a ghost. But he’s here. I have an address. Last night Harry called me once more, this time with all of All_BS’s—Bradford Smith’s—contact information.
“You are a fucking genius, Harry Kang!” I told him.
“I don’t know about effing genius, but I’ll take genius,” he said. And I could hear the smile in his voice once again.
“Thank you, Harry. Thank you so much.”
“No. Thank you,” he said quietly. “It was fun. But it also felt good. Like maybe I could do something for Meg.” He paused. “Are you going to the police now?”
“I’m not sure. I was thinking I might go there myself first.”
Harry went quiet. “Be careful, Cody,” he said after a bit. “It seems abstract when you’re dealing with people online, but they are still people, and some of them are not nice people, not the kind you ever want to be in a room with.”
Sometimes you don’t even need to be in the same room for the damage to be done. “I’ll be careful,” I promised. “Thank you, again.”
“Like I said, I’m glad to do it. And it’s not that hard to find someone.”
“Really?”
Harry laughed. “Maybe not for me.”
And tha
t’s when I had the other idea. “Do you think you might be able to track down one more person?”
x x x
The Greyhound to Laughlin takes thirty hours, requires three transfers, and costs three hundred dollars round trip. I have the money, and I can take off the time if I need to. But when I start to contemplate sixty hours alone on the bus, I begin to feel a little sick, the darkness clawing at me. I can’t do this alone, with only Bradford and Meg keeping me company.
I list the people I might ask to go with me. There’s no one in town. I’d never ask Tricia, and the Garcias are obviously out. The friends from school, never all that close, have fallen away. Who else? Sharon Devonne?
Maybe the Cascades people. Except Alice is still working at Mountain Bound. Harry is in Korea until mid-August. That leaves Stoner Richard. It’s not the worst idea in the world. He’s home in Boise for the summer, and that’s on the way. I could catch a Greyhound to Boise, and we could drive from there.
There is one other person. And as soon as I think of him, I understand that there is no other person. Because he is somehow as linked up in all this as I am.
His voice mail is still on my phone. I never listened to it, but I haven’t deleted it. I listen to it now. All it says is this: “Cody, what do you need from me?”
Words can have so many meanings. That question could be harboring exasperation, annoyance, guilt, surrender.
I listen once more. This time I let myself truly hear that familiar growl of fear and concern and tenderness behind his words.
Cody, what do you need from me?
And so I tell him.
31
Ben offers to come pick me up at home, but I don’t want him to come here. We arrange to meet in Yakima, outside the Greyhound station, at noon on Saturday. Then I call Stoner Richard.
“Cody, long time, no hear. What’s the latest and greatest?”
“What are you doing Saturday night?”
“Are you asking me out?” he teases.
“Actually, I’m asking if I can sleep with you,” I tease back, before explaining that I’m heading out on a road trip and need a place to crash Saturday night in Boise.
“There’s always room at the Zeller homestead. Just be prepared: if you come for a Saturday night, the rev might want you to do things the Jerry way on Sunday.”
“Okay,” I say, not sure what the Jerry way means, but figuring it’s some Jerry Garcia reference. “Also, there’s a slight catch.”
“Isn’t there always?”
“Ben McCallister’s going to be with me.”
I hear Richard inhale sharply. Either in dismay, or he could be taking a bong hit. “Are you and him, are you guys . . . ?”
“No, no! Nothing like that. I haven’t even talked to him in more than a month. He’s just helping me out.”
“Helping you out? I’ll bet he is.”
“It’s not like that. It’s about Meg.”
“Oh.” Richard’s voice goes serious.
“So can you put us up? We’re leaving here around noon, so we should get there around six or seven.”
“Easily. Speed limit’s seventy-five on I-84, but no one goes slower than eighty. You’ll make good time.”
“So, it’s okay for us both to stay?”
“There’s always room in Reverend Jerry’s manger,” Richard jokes. “We’re used to having lost souls camped on the floor. For you, we might even scrounge up a couch.”
“The floor’s fine.”
“So long as it’s a separate floor from McCallister.”
x x x
I wait until Friday night to tell Tricia that I’m going. I’ve already canceled my Monday and Tuesday cleaning jobs, figuring I’ll be back by Tuesday night at the latest. I don’t know why I’m nervous about telling her.
She gives me a long look. “Where are you going?”
Tricia doesn’t keep me on a leash. But if I tell her, it’ll wind up right back with the Garcias, and I don’t want them to know anything until I have something solid, something helpful. Also, if I tell her, I’m scared that Tricia, even hands-off Tricia, won’t let me go.
“Tacoma,” I say.
“Again?”
“Alice invited me down.”
“I thought she was in Montana.”
I should’ve learned my lesson from all my dealings with All_BS. The safest way to lie is to shadow the truth.
“She is. She’s going home for the weekend,” I reply, hoping Tricia doesn’t remember that Alice is actually from Eugene.
Tricia eyes me again.
“I’ll be back Monday night, Tuesday latest,” I add.
“You need me to clean any of your houses?”
I shake my head. Some messes can wait.
x x x
I can’t sleep at all Friday night, so Saturday morning I pack a few things—my boxful of cash, which now totals five hundred and sixty dollars, my computer, and my maps—and catch the first bus to Yakima. I arrive at nine thirty and plant myself at a depressing coffee shop near the bus station, spreading my maps in front of me. It’s a straight thousand-mile shot from here to Laughlin, cutting a triangle through Oregon and another through Idaho, before shooting down the eastern spine of Nevada.
The waitress keeps refilling my coffee cup and I keep drinking, even though the burnt swill is doing awful things to the acid in my stomach, not to mention my frayed nerves. For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve done nothing but second-guess the decision to call Ben.
The door to the diner rings. I look up absentmindedly and am surprised to see it’s him. It’s only ten thirty; he’s not due for another hour and a half, and it’s a two- to three-hour drive from Seattle, so he must’ve left at the crack of dawn, or sped like the devil, or both.
My first impulse is to hunch down in my seat, buy myself more time. But I’m about to spend two days cramped in a car with him, so I man up. I clear my throat and say, “Hey, Ben.”
His face goes blank for a second, and then his eyes skitter around until he sees me in my booth, the maps splayed out. He looks both nervous and relieved, and once again his face is like a mirror, reflecting my feelings, because that’s exactly what’s going on with me.
He sits down across from me. “You’re early,” he says.
“So are you.” I slide my coffee over to him. “You want some? She just refilled it. So it’s fresh, or fresh to my cup, anyhow.”
His fingers curl around the cup of coffee, which is black, no sugar, the same as he likes it, I now remember. I take him in. His eyes are violet this morning, almost bruised; they match the purplish skin under them. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says.
“Seems to be going around,” I say.
He nods. “So what’s the plan?”
“Drive to Boise today. We can stay with Stoner Richard—I mean, Richard Zeller. You remember Meg’s roommate?”
“I remember.”
“He said we could crash at his place. It’s his parents’. Unless you want to stay somewhere else.” He probably has plenty of places to stop, plenty of rock-and-roll crash pads.
“I’ll go where you go.”
A simple statement that feels like a blanket.
“You going to tell me what it is we’re doing?” he asks.
When I called Ben, I told him I’d found a person linked to Meg’s death and needed someone to come with me while I talked to him. I hadn’t told him anything else. I figured he didn’t need, nor would he want, to know what had happened in these past few weeks when we’d been absent from each other’s lives. But now that he’s asking, I’m scared to tell. Harry sent me a few cautioning emails, with links to articles about girls meeting guys they’d met online and gruesome things happening. I appreciated his concern but wasn’t sure it was appl
icable. Those were girls with romantic hopes, guys with depraved intentions. That isn’t me and Bradford.
But what if Ben doesn’t see it that way? What if I tell him and he chickens out? What if he refuses to take me?
When I don’t answer right away, Ben asks, “Am I on a need-to-know basis, or something?”
“No. I just . . .” I shake my head. “It’s a long drive.”
“What does that mean?”
“There’s time. I’ll tell you. Later. I promise.” I pause. “How are the kids?” I ask.
“I brought pictures,” he says. And I expect him to show me on his phone, but he pulls out one of those envelopes you get from a photo developer, and slides it across the maps to me. I open it up, and inside are a few snapshots: Pete and Repeat chasing a piece of string, washing each other’s faces, curled up sleeping together at the foot of Ben’s bed.
“They’re so much bigger!”
Ben nods. “Teenagers. Pete brought home a dead mouse. I’m sure it’s a gateway thing. It’s only a matter of time before they’re bringing home all sorts of animals.”
“Birds. Rats.”
“Then it’s possums, then small ponies. I wouldn’t put it past those two.”
I laugh. It feels like the first time in ages. I hand the photos back.
Ben shakes his head. “They’re for you.”
“Oh. Thanks. Do you want something to eat? Before we go?”
Ben shakes his head. “I came to kill time while I was waiting for you.”
“And here I am.”
“Here you are.”
The awkward silence that follows doesn’t bode well for the next two days.
“Should we get going?” I ask.
“Okay. I should warn you, the cigarette lighter outlet for the iPod is acting up, so the music situation is precarious.”
“I’ll deal.”
“Also, less important to me but maybe not you: the AC’s kind of on the blink, which is going to make Nevada desert driving in July rather interesting.”
“We’ll just stop at gas stations and douse ourselves with water and leave the windows open. It’s what Meg and I used to do.” And then I stop myself. Everything spools back to Meg. Every piece of my history, it seems.