Below the Surface

by Tim Shoemaker

  Gordy looked at Coop’s face. Then Lunk’s. Oh yeah. Hiro was all alone with her theories.

  “You gotta admit,” Gordy said, “that whole Stein thing is so random.”

  Hiro took another step back. Then two.

  “Hiro — it’s not like that,” Coop said. “Not exactly.”

  She nodded and kept backing up. “I think I have a pretty good picture of how it is.”

  “Where are you going?” Gordy said.

  “For a walk.”

  Gordy looked at Coop.

  “Hiro,” Coop said. “Hold on.”

  “Maybe I’ll take another spin on the Typhoon.” Hiro circled her ear with her forefinger. “See if it can unscramble my head.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Coop said.

  She held up both hands but didn’t stop walking. “I need to be alone.”

  Coop took a step toward her. “But what if he really is here? You could be in danger.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” she said. “None of you do.” She turned and bolted. Broke into a flat-out run and disappeared behind a group of geezers wearing straw cowboy hats.

  Gordy shook his head. “She’s mad.”

  “She’s hurting,” Coop said. “And we have to stop treating her like she’s crazy. What kind of friends do that?”

  “Agreed,” Lunk said. “What now?”

  Coop looked dead serious. “We find her. And we follow her. Make sure she stays safe.”

  “She won’t like it,” Gordy said.

  “We tail her without her seeing us.” Coop started running in the direction where Hiro had disappeared. “She won’t know we’re there.”

  Lunk took off after Coop.

  Gordy dropped his plate in a trash barrel and hustled to catch up. Playing cat and mouse with Hiro. This was shaping up to be a great day at the fair after all.

  Cooper slowed after thirty yards. Where did she go?

  “Do you see her?” Lunk fell in step alongside him.

  Cooper shook his head. “She had to know we’d try to follow.”

  Lunk nodded. “And she wouldn’t want to make this easy.”

  Got that right. Cooper hiked his backpack onto his shoulder and kept looking while he walked. Her height wouldn’t help matters any. She could duck behind almost anyone and not be seen.

  Gordy hustled ahead, then circled back. “If we’re going to find her, we gotta think like her.”

  “Good luck with that,” Lunk said.

  At the end of the food aisle, they turned toward the games and rides. “Let’s spread out,” Cooper said.

  They walked past the goldfish game, the basketball game with the bogus rims, and the BB machine guns. No Hiro. By the time they reached the end of the games, a new thought popped into Cooper’s mind. He motioned the others over.

  “The Typhoon. She said she was going there, right?”

  Gordy didn’t look convinced. “She was joking. She hated that ride.”

  “If you lose somebody in a mall or at a theme park . . . where do you look?”

  Gordy smiled. “The last place you saw him.”

  “And she’s looking for Fat Elvis.”

  “Let’s go,” Lunk said.

  They fanned out, approaching the ride from three directions.

  There. She stood with her back to the fence — almost exactly where Cooper’s backpack had been hanging. She was surveying the crowd. Did she really think Fat Elvis would still be hanging around? One thing was clear — she believed that she saw him.

  Cooper got a visual on Lunk. He’d spotted her too. Lunk leaned against a ticket booth and watched.

  Hiro stayed put while the Typhoon thrilled and sickened two more loads of riders. Then she moved. Fast.

  Past the Typhoon. Past Pharaoh’s Fury. Did she see Fat Elvis? Sense him?

  Cooper jogged to cut the distance between them. His backpack thumped against him like Chimpy wanted him to go faster.

  “Coop!” Lunk’s voice called out behind him. “Wait up.”

  Cooper kept his eyes on Hiro. She looked back over her shoulder.

  “She thinks she’s being followed,” Lunk said.

  Cooper nodded. “She is.”

  Lunk laughed.

  Hiro cut between the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Himalayan.

  “She’s moving out of the ride area,” Lunk said. “Where’s Gordy?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I’m sure he’s around.” It was hard enough keeping track of Hiro.

  Hiro crossed the food aisle and ducked behind the Brat Pit.

  Cooper and Lunk started running the moment she was out of sight. When they got to the back of the food booth, they barely got a glimpse of her disappearing behind SuWing’s.

  “She’s sneaky,” Lunk said.

  Cooper picked up the pace. “Think she’s onto us?”

  “I don’t see how. She’s never made eye contact with me. You?”

  Cooper shook his head. But she was definitely running from someone.

  On the other side of SuWing’s, Hiro zigzagged her way through the crowd until she got to the giant elephant.

  “Right where she started,” Lunk said. “Think she’s looking for us?”

  Cooper had no idea.

  Hiro crouched alongside the elephant ear booth like she was watching for someone. Cooper sat at a table at SuWing’s, where he could watch her without being obvious.

  Lunk sat down beside him. “Now what?”

  “We wait. See what she’s up to,” Cooper said. “Make sure she stays safe.” He glanced down the aisle. “You keep an eye on her,” Cooper said. “I’ll keep a lookout for . . .” He let the thought hang there.

  Hiro stayed perched in her spot. Cooper could barely make out something in her palm. She shifted it from hand to hand. Her phone. In one of those indestructible cases. She started to text, then stopped and looked around.

  “She looks jumpy,” Lunk said.

  Or fragile. Scared. Cooper figured any one of those words fit.

  “She doesn’t even know we’re here,” Lunk said. “Hiro better learn how to spot a tail if she plans to make it as a cop.”

  Hiro hadn’t moved from her hiding spot. She looked so small crouching there. “I’m thinking we should just walk up to her,” Cooper said. “If she’s scared . . .”

  She fiddled with the phone again, as if debating whether or not to use it.

  Cooper stood. “Let’s go.”

  Lunk walked beside him. Casually. They acted like they didn’t know she was there so she wouldn’t think they’d been spying on her. They were nearly to the elephant when Hiro looked their way. Relief flooded her face.

  “Coop! Lunk!” She stood and waved them over.

  She took a half step toward them, but then a hand reached out from behind her and grabbed her shoulder. Hiro whirled around and struck at somebody with her phone.

  “Hiro!” Cooper bolted toward her.

  Free from the man’s grip, she ran straight for Cooper and slammed into him.

  “You’re okay,” Cooper said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you now.”

  Lunk passed them both, his fists clenched, and disappeared around the side of the elephant. A moment later he was back. “You’d better get over here,” he said. “She decked Gordy, and he’s bleeding pretty good.”

  Cooper sat on the bow of The Getaway and watched the green and red navigation lights of a boat heading toward them. “Seven stitches. You’re never going to live this down, Gordy.”

  “Felt like she hit me with a brick.”

  Lunk laughed. “You sure went down like one.”

  Gordy nodded. “She’s dangerous when she gets scared.”

  “She’s always dangerous,” Lunk said.

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Cooper said, “she felt really bad about it.”

  “So she says,” Gordy said. “But she laughed when I came out of the ER with stitches.”

  “We all did,” Lunk said. “Even your mom.”

 
; Gordy smiled — then instantly winced. “I guess I did it to myself. I was running with scissors” — he pointed to his cheek — “and I got cut.”

  Cooper slapped his cousin on the back. “Your pranks have been backfiring this week. Have you noticed?”

  “Coop whacks me in the nose. Hiro gets me on the cheek,” Gordy said. “Lunk, if you take a swing at me, I’m going home.”

  Cooper and Lunk burst out laughing. Gordy bit his lip and tried not to join in.

  Gordy shrugged. “The nurse says I have to keep it dry for a few days. Infection and all that stuff. How am I supposed to swim?”

  Lunk tapped his lifejacket. “Like me. Wear one of these babies.”

  Gordy moaned. “Our vacation is ruined.”

  “Not ruined,” Cooper said. “Just a little different than we expected.”

  They got quiet and sat looking out over the black water. Cooper’s thoughts split in two directions. There was the dread of putting his head below the surface — especially if the water was deep or dark. And there was the whole issue of Joseph Stein. Hiro seemed so sure . . . what if she was right?

  “Coop?” Lunk said. “You still thinking there was a murder?”

  It didn’t sound like he really needed to ask. “Yeah. I do.”

  “Even after processing what the cop said about the anonymous calls?”

  Cooper nodded. “I do. And I wanted to tell Hiro that today. Wanted to tell her I was sorry for going back and forth on it so much. I guess I bombed that one.”

  Gordy’s eyes got wide. “What about the overactive cop imagination?”

  Cooper shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t want to believe what was happening. Maybe I was in denial or something. But we know Hiro. She’s not always right . . . but she’s never all wrong.”

  “Agreed,” Lunk said.

  “What about you, Lunk?” Cooper looked right at him. “How do you weigh in on all this?”

  “Definitely leaning toward Hiro’s way of thinking. Even with the pickup trying to run you down.” He got quiet, as if he was debating whether to say more. “You think she saw Fat Elvis at the fair?”

  Cooper thought for a moment. “I really do.”

  Lunk whistled softly. “Now the big question. You think Fat Elvis is really Stein?”

  “I’ve asked myself that a hundred times since the fair,” Cooper said.

  Gordy stared at him. “What did you come up with?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. It seems like a stretch — but what if?”

  “So,” Lunk said, “you’re not ruling it out.”

  “I don’t dare — no matter how much I want to believe she’s wrong this time,” Cooper said. “If she’s right . . .” He couldn’t finish. Not out loud. If Stein was in the area, watching her, then she was in danger.

  Lunk nodded slowly like he understood. “What should we do?”

  Cooper thought for a moment. “We throw ourselves into the investigation,” Cooper said. “If she wants to check something out — we do it. No questions asked.”

  Gordy touched his stitches. “I can’t swim for a couple of days anyway.”

  “Exactly,” Cooper said. “It’s time we show her complete support.”

  Gordy sighed. “Okay. I’m in. But how do we help with the investigation?”

  Cooper had been thinking about that. “We look for the camera. All of us. We’ll check every inch of the shoreline.”

  “We should look out in deeper water too,” Lunk said. “Where the girl jumped off Krypto Night — just in case the camera sank.”

  Cooper nodded. He’d forgotten about that angle.

  Lunk and Gordy were quiet for a minute.

  “Then it’s settled,” Lunk said. “Tomorrow, we look for the camera.”

  Cooper reached into his pocket for his phone. Then he checked his other pockets. “I don’t know what I did with my phone.” He looked at Gordy. “Let’s send her a text so she doesn’t go to bed feeling like we’ve all ganged up on her. Again.”

  Gordy whipped out his phone. His thumbs flew over the screen, saying the message out loud like he was dictating it to himself. “Let’s-look-for-the-missing-camera-again-tomorrow. Send.” He put his phone back in his pocket. “There. Now Hiro will have sweet dreams.” He looked at Cooper. “Too bad that’s not what you’re gonna have tonight.”

  “What?”

  “Lunk can’t go underwater wearing a lifejacket. I can’t go down because of my stitches. So that just leaves you to do the salvage operation, amigo.”

  Hiro sat on the balcony and read the text again. Why the sudden interest in the camera? And why did Gordy send the text and not Coop?

  Because if it came directly from Coop, it would be too obvious. Coop had probably talked the guys into playing along with her. Make her think they actually believed something very bad had happened on Krypto Night. That’s why he had Gordy send the text. It would appear more innocent. “I know you better than you think, Cooper MacKinnon.”

  The fact was, none of them believed that anything bad had happened to the girl on that boat — other than a short argument and a long swim to shore. They didn’t believe the pickup deliberately tried to force Coop into that wall. They didn’t believe someone had been watching them. They didn’t believe she’d heard someone stalking her by the river or that she’d seen Fat Elvis at the fair. And they certainly didn’t believe Fat Elvis was Joseph Stein.

  It all boiled down to one thing: They didn’t believe her. She rubbed her necklace. They didn’t trust her judgment. Her cop sense. Her intuition. And if they stopped trusting it, how long before she started questioning it?

  She was already second-guessing herself. How many times had she waffled on this thing? She’d been a pendulum. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  And it wasn’t just that the guys didn’t trust her judgment. It was worse than that. They made a joke of it, laughed about it. Two days ago, she’d have said that what she really wanted from this trip was to find out the truth. To fight for justice. And that was still part of it. But what she really needed was to know that her best friends trusted her judgment — trusted her.

  So now they wanted to look for the missing camera? Right. Coop didn’t care about the camera because he didn’t believe there had been a crime. Looking for the camera was all about Coop trying to make her feel better.

  Thanks, Coop, but no thanks. She didn’t want him to make her feel better. She wanted Coop to believe her. And that definitely wasn’t going to happen if she kept waffling on these issues. So what did she believe? She grabbed a pen and paper to make a list:

  • The girl on the beach (Lynn) was not the girl in the boat (Pom-Pom).

  • The girl in the boat (Pom-Pom) was Wendy Besecker, the missing girl.

  • Wendy Besecker is missing — but not because she ran off with some guy. On Sunday night she went on a date with Tommy Kryptoski on the Krypto Night. Wendy hadn’t turned up because she is dead, drifting in the currents of Geneva Lake — just below the surface.

  • Tommy Kryptoski isn’t just an egomaniac with a nice boat. He is a charming sociopath — and worse. He is a murderer. A monster.

  • Fat Elvis is Kryptoski’s handler — or babysitter or bodyguard. We know him by another name: Joseph Stein. And that makes him a wanted man. And dangerous.

  • Kryptoski isn’t the only guy that Fat Elvis is watching. He’s also watching me. And Coop. Gordy. Lunk. He’s watching all of us for some reason that only God knows.

  Hiro set down the pen. She folded her hands to keep them from shaking and reread the list. This is what she believed. She just needed someone else to believe too. Coop? She wished. But how could she make him believe?

  If Dad were alive, he’d believe her, wouldn’t he? They’d work the case together and figure it out.

  A name popped into her head. Someone she could talk to. She weighed the idea. Did she dare? Hiro tried to force the name out of her thoughts and think of someone else. But the more she tried to avoi
d it, the more that one name kept nudging its way back into her head.

  She slipped her phone from her pocket, opened her contacts list, and scrolled down. She hesitated. If she made this call, she had to be sure. Really sure.

  Hiro looked at her list again. Did she really believe? Back and forth. Back and forth.

  C’mon, Hiro. Make up your mind. If you believe it, make the call. And if you can’t make the call, then don’t expect anyone else to believe you any time soon.

  She could see the Riviera from the condo’s balcony. The docks. Part of the lake. She just couldn’t see a clear answer. “God, please. Guide me. Please.”

  “Hiro?” It was her mom’s voice.

  Hiro stood. “I’m out here.”

  “Can’t sleep, honey?” Hiro’s mom stepped onto the balcony, a sleepy smile on her face. “Give me a hug.”

  Hiro held her mom tight and inhaled — just drawing in the fresh scent of fabric softener on her mom’s pj’s. It was the smell of home. And good things. Safety. “Dad was a good cop, wasn’t he.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  Mom put her hands on Hiro’s shoulders and eased her back. “He was the best.” Her eyes searched Hiro’s.

  “He had that cop intuition, didn’t he?”

  She nodded. “That was his gift.”

  “Was he ever wrong? His hunches, I mean.”

  Mom smiled. “Often. But he was right a lot of the time too. Does this have anything to do with that missing girl?”

  Hiro nodded.

  Her mom hugged her again. “Follow your gut, honey. That’s what I always told your dad.”

  That was exactly what Hiro knew all along — deep down. But it was nice to hear it.

  “We’re going to hang around town tomorrow morning. Hit some shops. It might do you some good to take a little break from all this.”

  Hiro nodded. Her mom was probably right.

  “Come to bed soon.”

  Hiro smiled and nodded. She looked back toward the lake again and bounced her phone in her hand. Follow your gut, Hiro.

  She scrolled further down the contacts list on her phone until she came to the name. Hiro took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She touched the screen to make the call — and held her breath.