by Rob Cornell
I could only imagine what she’d graduated to as an adult.
Tom laughed for real this time, obviously seeing something in my face that amused him.
I licked my lips and asked the dumb question I had to ask. “Dixie was… Autumn hung with Dixie?”
Tom didn’t give me the sarcasm I expected. He gripped my arm, pulled me to him, and said in a low growl around the pen in his mouth. “I didn’t want the chance to tell you ‘I told you so.’ I wanted to save your ass.”
Neither of us spoke for a while.
From an elementary school on the next block the first morning bell rang. The sound of screeching children swelled then faded. Someone in a nearby backyard started up a lawnmower.
My mind was too hung up on the first memory of Dixie to even touch the second one. I tried picturing Autumn running around with a sociopath. Didn’t mesh with the Autumn I knew then, or even the Autumn I knew now.
“But this was a while ago?” I asked.
“About three years or so after graduation. And before you start making more excuses, go back into that living room and look real close at the dead guy.”
I didn’t have to go back. In my mind I could conjure a vivid close-up of the bloody crater in Doug’s back.
Autumn knew the difference between a “bad crowd” and Dixie Jawhar. She should have told me. I’d already decided to help her. Did she think it would make a difference?
Did it?
I still thought Tom was blowing the relationship out of proportion.
“What’s Dixie doing now?”
Tom shrugged. “Last I heard she was doing time for armed robbery. But that was ten years ago.”
“Autumn a part of that?”
He hesitated, the look on his face like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “No.”
“So it’s guilt by association.”
“Like I said.” He gestured toward the house. “Notice the stiff in the living room.”
A new dose of fatigue rolled through me. I wouldn’t change Tom’s mind by arguing with him. If Autumn was innocent, I’d have to prove it on my own. And I desperately needed some sleep.
“Are we done?” I asked.
Tom rolled the pen from one side of his mouth to the other. “For now, I guess. You all right?”
I nodded, waved him off, and turned to leave.
“Ridley.”
“What is it, Tom?”
More wet sucking on the pen. “Where is she?”
I took a deep breath, ignoring the kick in my heartbeat. “If I knew …” I started, then tucked my hands in my pockets. “I don’t know.”
He pulled the pen from his mouth. “I hope not.”
Chapter 8
“Where is my daughter?”
I barely had my key in the front door. I froze, listening to the heavy breathing right behind me. When I turned, Lincoln Rice took a swing at me.
I dodged, feeling the breeze from his knuckles on my chin. “Wait,” I shouted, but he took another swing. This time I had to block, knocking his fist away with my forearm, and felt a little sting from the impact. For an older guy, he threw a pretty heavy punch.
“Chill a second.”
Face flushed, Lincoln staggered off the porch, squinting against the morning sun. He looked as tired as I felt.
“Where is she?”
“I assume the police contacted you.”
“I told you to stay away from her. Whatever she’s involved with, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“They did tell you what happened, right?”
His eyes scoured me. “He’s dead.”
“And they think Autumn did it,” I added.
He looked toward the sky, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard, the hemp necklace cutting into his tanned neck. Some of the buttons on his shirt were pushed through the wrong holes, and his shirttails hung out one higher than the other. His gray mane hung free, some sweat-darkened locks clinging to his face.
“Trouble follows her,” he said. “No matter what I do, she always finds it.”
“What kind of trouble?”
He brought his gaze down from the sky. “Trouble like you.”
“I’m Autumn’s friend,” I said. “I’m trying to help her.”
“Help her this way.” He swaggered up to me. “Tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Police tell me otherwise.”
“The police are jumping to conclusions like you right now. That’s not going to help anybody.”
He looked at the knuckles on his right hand, maybe thinking about taking another shot at my face.
“And how, exactly, are you helping my daughter?”
“By staying cool,” I said, “and not assuming anything. Do you think Autumn killed Doug?”
He screwed up his face. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Only if you promise the same.” I unlocked my door and swung it open. “If you want to come inside, we can talk. But you can’t start throwing accusations, or punches, at me.”
Lincoln eyed the open door. “I’m a wealthy man, you know?”
I’d heard this before—a declaration of wealth meant as a threat. Life as a private detective wasn’t glamorous. Sometimes it barely paid the bills. Rich people knew this. They thought it gave them leverage. Sometimes, with a business to run and groceries to buy, it did. But I wasn’t a P.I. anymore.
“So am I.”
“No,” he said. “You are merely a scavenger of your parents’ wealth. There’s no power in that.”
“And I suppose you think you own Hawthorne because you have a lot of money.”
“The town respects and knows me. The only thing anyone knows about you is that you don’t belong.”
Who the hell was he to tell me where I belonged? I thought about teaching him how to throw a real punch, but the detective in me offered a better idea.
“You and Doug get along all right?”
Lincoln’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”
“You have to admit, you haven’t been traditionally kind to Autumn’s boyfriends.”
“If you’re referring to yourself, I never knew the two of you were involved until long after she came to her senses and ended it.”
“There had to be a reason she went out of her way to keep you from meeting me.”
“She had no trouble introducing Doug.” He crossed his arms. “Maybe it was you.”
I didn’t take the bait. “You never answered my question. How did you and Doug get along?”
“Just stay away from my daughter.”
Lincoln turned and walked toward his Lexus parked across the street.
“You already said that,” I shouted at his back, but the words didn’t sound as satisfying as they had in my head.
When I made it to my bed, I collapsed, clothes still on, and drifted away. I think I dreamt about my parents, but the people in my dream looked nothing like them. I woke up with an oily taste in my mouth and the feeling I was forgetting something. The only thing I’d forgotten was to set my alarm before passing out. My digital clock glared at me with the red numbers 3:17.
My bedroom was stuffy. The t-shirt and jeans I’d fallen asleep in had twisted around my body. A funky smell I was afraid came from me hung in the air.
The shower revived me as only a three-thousand dollar shower-tower could. The first time I’d tried to use the thing, more water had ended up on the bathroom floor than on me, but my parents had installed the things in all the bathrooms, forcing me to learn how to master the luxury. Much like the BMW, I’d grown to appreciate it.
Refreshed, if a little thrown by the odd hour, I settled down at my laptop, removed the flash drive I’d found at Autumn’s from the key ring, and plugged it into the USB jack in back of the laptop.
My computer sounded a two beat musical tone letting me know it recognized the drive. I clicked through the appropriate icons to access the files, and a window popped up with an empty box under a prompt for a
password. A cursor in the box blinked at me mockingly, if that’s possible. Probably me projecting my frustration. But, really, I think the cursor was mocking me.
I rubbed my head, trying to massage the password into my brain cells. I typed in Autumn’s name, hit enter.
The password box cleared itself and the message informed me I had two more chances to correctly type in my password.
“Or what?” I asked the humming computer. “You’ll self-destruct?”
I canceled out of the password prompt, shut down, and slapped the laptop’s screen closed. I glared at the flash drive plugged into the back of the computer. Sticking out like that, the drive looked like a middle finger.
Seemed my whole computer had turned against me.
I plucked out the drive. “Screw you, too.”
I sat with the flash drive squeezed in one hand and stared at a blank space on the wall. Wall-staring might not look like work, but I used to bill clients for the time. Some of my best ideas came from glaring at a few square inches of drywall or plaster.
A name popped into my head almost immediately. If anyone knew how to access the files on the flash drive without a password, it was Devon Whitegard.
I grabbed my coat and headed out to talk to an old friend.
I leaned over Devon’s shoulder to peek at his computer screen and watched the same password box pop up for him.
“That’s just what I got.”
Devon curled up his shoulders. He blew his devil’s lock out of his face. “Dude, I need some space.”
I backed off. “Can you get at the files?”
Devon spun in his office chair to face me. The glow from the computer screen illuminated him from behind, turning him into a shadow. For some reason he insisted that the lights in his room remain off. Judging from his bugged out eyes, I got the impression the computer screen was the only light he ever saw. Even during the day, very little light would reach this room since it occupied a corner of his parents’ basement.
Not only had Devon never left Hawthorne, he had never left home. When I arrived at the house it was like old times. His mother answered the door, told me where to find Devon in the basement, and offered to warm up some frozen mini pizzas.
I had passed on the mini pizzas.
“Do I look like an amateur to you?” Devon asked.
I glanced around his room. Memorabilia from when the Detroit Tigers last won the world series in 1984 sat on shelves next to action figures or hung on the walls next posters of supermodels from the 80s who now probably modeled support hose, rubber soled shoes, and dentures. He had two other desks besides the one his computer sat on, their surfaces littered with computer parts and knots of electrical cords.
“You’re all pro, Devon.”
He jerked his head and gave me a “duh” look, then twirled back to his computer and started banging on the keys.
“Just cause I still live at home don’t mean I’m a total loser.” He stopped typing for a heartbeat. “I make six figures with my little business running out of here. And no fucking overhead.”
“And all you can eat mini frozen pizzas.”
“Don’t knock it.”
“Hey, Dev. If you’re pulling six figures, why go through the trouble of auditioning for that singing show just to get a free trip to Hollywood?”
He muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“I’m trying to concentrate here.”
I put up my hands. “My bad.”
While he worked, I took down a Darth Vader action figure from a shelf. Poor Darth looked a little rough around the edges, missing his cape and light saber. I wondered if Devon still played with him. With a six-figure income, you’d think he’d be able to buy a whole case of new Darth Vaders.
“Shee-it,” Devon said and slapped his palm down on his desk.
I set Darth Vader back on his shelf. “Can’t do it?”
“No, somebody just stole my sword of excellence.”
“You’re what?” I peered at the computer screen and saw an elf hacking away with an axe at something big and green. “What the hell is that?”
“You’ve never played this game? It’s a MMORPG. It rocks! Except when some bastard says he’s in your clan then steals your fucking sword of excellence.”
“What the hell is an MMORPG, and what the hell does it have to do with the flash drive I gave you?”
“Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.” Devon shook his head. “Where’ve you been?”
“Waiting for you to help me. I haven’t got time for this, Devon. Seriously.”
He tapped a button, and his game blinked off. He folded his arms and turned to me. “What’s this about anyway?”
“It’s private.”
He laughed. “So what the hell are you doing back here?”
“I need access to what’s on that drive. I’m sorry I don’t have time for frozen pizza and video games, but this is really important.”
“Excuse my life for being so fucking trivial, dude.”
I took a deep breath before I said something else insensitive. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, that’s not what I meant either, ass crunch. I was asking you what the hell you were doing back in Hawthorne. You know? Making conversation.”
“I don’t have time for conversation.”
He sucked on his teeth, jerked his head to toss his devil’s lock off his face. “You haven’t changed one bit since high school.”
“Now this is about high school?”
“No, man, it’s about your attitude. Even when you’d hang out with us, the big school losers, it was like you thought you were better than us.”
I tried to compare my high school experience with the one Devon described. They didn’t mesh. The reason I hung out with guys like Devon and Tom—the so-called nerds—was because I felt I was one of them. I never got along with the popular kids. I didn’t belong with them.
“That isn’t true,” I said.
He waved a hand. “Forget it, right? You’re too damn busy to give a singing lesson, but loser Devon has all the time in the world to play your personal hacker.”
“It isn’t like that.”
He blew a raspberry, fluttering his devil’s lock away from his face. “You know what? Fuck this.” He crossed his arms. “You want me to hack this, you gotta give me a singing lesson.”
I massaged my temples. The lack of light started a headache behind my eyes. “Right now?”
“No, not right now. But you have to promise to give me one. And not like next year or something. Sometime this week.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Hey, Rid? I’m a busy man. You want me to do this or not?”
My palms started sweating. My stomach felt like an overcrowded fishbowl. Symptoms of stage-fright, as if I was about to step into a spotlight right there.
“Isn’t there anything else? I could pay you.”
He leaned back in his chair with a crooked smirk. “Six figures, remember?”
“Why, Dev? Why do you want to go on that silly show?”
“Why do you want to crack this flash drive?”
I closed my eyes, counted down from three. “I told you, it’s personal.”
“So is this.”
“Fine.” I held out my hand. “Give the damn thing back.”
His buggy eyes bugged out more. “You serious?”
“I can’t sing. I just can’t.”
“You are severely traumatized,” he said and laughed.
“I never expected you to understand. You don’t want to do this for me, just hand it back.”
Devon snorted and swung back to his keyboard. “Whatever, dude.” He punched a sequence of keys and leaned back. “It’s already done.”
“Already… When?”
“Right before I lost my sword of excellence.” He rolled away from the desk. “Have a gander if you want, but it’s cracked for good, so you can access it on an
y PC now.”
I moved in and took control of the mouse. A list of nearly twenty files filled the window displaying the flash drive’s contents, all them word-processing documents. I scanned the file titles, most of them cryptic and incomprehensible. Then one caught my attention and sent a shiver down my spine.
MOBVIOLENCE03.
It almost seemed too easy. I wasn’t aware of any mob presence in Hawthorne. But I couldn’t fight the jolt I got from finding a possible clue. Maybe Doug had uncovered something that got him into trouble. I clicked open the file and found about twenty single-spaced pages of notes written in a journal format, each entry headed by a date in bold font. The date on the first entry was from seven years ago. I scrolled down to the final page in the document. The last entry was dated six and a half years ago.
I returned to the beginning of the document and started reading, stopped after the first paragraph. The notes dealt with mob violence as depicted in films.
The thrill drained out of me as quick as a blown circuit.
“Not what you were looking for?” Devon asked.
The other file titles didn’t look half as hopeful.
GR8PRT.
BMB.
TWRP.
DEADANI.
And others that looked more like personalized license plates than computer files. Of course, I checked the DEADANI file. A quick reading of the first short entry told me it was a story about poachers up state. Scrolling down a couple entries, I learned Doug had single handedly exposed a group of hunters killing all sorts of animals off season. But the dates on the opening entries, like the MOBVIOLENCE03 file, were nearly seven years old.
The file titled BMB looked like BOMB to me. I opened the document, found another dated entry from just over six years ago. What I read had nothing to do with bombs, but was no less disturbing. BMB was Doug’s shorthand for black market baby. The first couple entries detailed his investigation into an illegal adoption ring in Port Huron, which was on the other side of the state.
Frustrated, I returned to the top of the file list and opened each one in turn to check the date of the first entry and read a few lines. Every set of notes started at least six years ago. But according to Autumn, Doug had moved to Hawthorne and started working at the high school five years ago, and they married a year later. All these stories were from his old journalism days.