Chaos Theory

by M Evonne Dobson

  If he sees us in here, he’ll block our escape. That view of Rugby through the glass walls making a gun with his hand and firing goes on replay in my head.

  Visible through a break in the houses and trees, Rugby passes our hideout. A short time later, he guns his engine back at the original entrance, roaring out into the county road.

  We wait for several minutes. No black SUV, but GV has to be close by now. We ease out of hiding and back onto the county road. My heart pounds when a pearl gray sedan shows up behind us, but it putts along without interest in us, although it makes the same turn toward home. The rural road is a major commuter line from Des Moines to the nearby communities.

  And that’s when I see GV’s silver minivan speeding along the road from home toward us. He slows on seeing EB, and lifts a finger in a farmer’s wave. I wave back. My phone rings and it’s him. I say, “Sorry, we had a situation, but we’re fine. Meet you later at the Bat Cave?”

  He starts to protest, but I cut him off. “I’ve got some stuff to put together before our meeting.”

  He says, “Okay, meet you there. Right now, my chief wants an update. We have to get to that planner, Kami. If we rely on surveillance teams, it’ll get complicated. We don’t have the equipment or the manpower. There’s no cover out there.”

  Tell me about it.

  GV makes a three-point turn behind us, flips on his light, and speeds past the pearl gray sedan and then us.

  For the first time all day, I lean back in the car seat, letting the tension slip away, while filling Daniel in. He constantly checks the roads for the black SUV. Then I text the crime unit: Meet Bat Cave. I’m starved. Bring food, leaving Sandove now.

  That’s followed by a text to Mom and Dad that all’s well. I don’t mention the Bizarro intern or Boyfriend with Ink.

  Neither Daniel nor I mention the morning kiss.

  ***

  Forty minutes later, we stop at a library’s lobby printer. It racks up my MasterCard to print off copies of the photographed official computer reports and also Uncle Charlie’s marked-up reports. I stuff Uncle Charlie’s originals and those copies into my intern bag, while I hold the thicker stack of official reports.

  The Bat Cave climb takes more energy than expected. Last night’s four hours of sleep and the stress is getting to me. Daniel reaches over to take my intern pack, but I hang onto the official report copies. Halfway up, I pause, not sure that I heard someone behind us on the stairs, but that isn’t strange. It is a public college library.

  The gang is waiting in the Bat Cave. We’d cleaned up the mess last time. Sam the Paranoid even sprayed with Lysol. When we left, it reeked with disinfectant, but that smell wouldn’t raise the librarian’s suspicions. Now, though, mouth-watering burritos sit on the coffee table. The smells of refried beans, taco sauce, and the hint of sour cream courts my hungry stomach. With one hand, I spread the official report copies on the coffee table.

  That’s when Sam, Sandy, and Gavin rocket out of their chairs, shooting their arms into the air. Daniel, beside me, freezes. Remember those Firefly scenes where Nathan Fillion says, “He’s behind me, right?” This is one of those. I turn slowly to see Rugby. We hadn’t ditched him, after all. In his hand is a shiny black gun, pointed at us.

  Thirty

  Turns out, it’s instinct to raise your hands in situations like this, and that is what I do—like I’m preprogrammed. My phone is in my raised hand. Blindly, I thumb the pre-set bat signal for help, but don’t know if it went to Gravel Voice and Ponytail or to Mom by mistake. Either’s going to get someone’s attention.

  The phone in my hand beeps. Someone replying to the bat signal; I ignore it and let it ring. New rule for the future: when the bat signal goes up, do not call back.

  Since no one else says anything, I open my big snarky mouth. “You really want that internship, don’t you?”

  Rugby shouts, “Everyone back off. Stand by the window.” From behind him, Jurnee steps out from between the bookcases. Blast it all. And I bet she drives a pearl gray sedan.

  We do as he orders. Will anyone down below and outside notice five students backlit against the windows with their hands in the air?

  The slender black woman is still dressed in her killer business suit. She says, “John, holster your gun.” He doesn’t.

  The smell of burritos wafting up from the coffee table makes my stomach growl. Daniel ignores it, but Sam, Sandy, and Gavin tip their heads to stare at me. I’m too tired and hungry to do more than shrug.

  Gun in hand, Rugby steps up to the crime board and points at it. “What the hell is this? Who are you guys?”

  No one says anything. Apparently, Kami-girl is the designated speaker when it comes to armed madmen. “We’re helping a friend.”

  “How did you get the Jamison internship? I was guaranteed that job.”

  I can’t help myself. “Maybe they didn’t like your rugby shirt.” He flinches at that. Rugby’s clothing choice is as flawed as Daniel’s initial gang rapper attempts. Jurnee smiles at my jab. Obviously, she thought it a dumb fashion statement too.

  In for a penny…“Maybe they saw your GPA and picked me instead. Besides, who are you to ask anything?” I do, however, keep my hands respectfully up in the air.

  Jurnee joins Rugby at the crime board and then looks around our hideaway. “What do you call this? The Lair?”

  Sam the Anal can’t help himself. “Pleeaassse. It’s the Bat Cave.”

  Jurnee swears and turns on Rugby. “You stupid nincompoop. You’ve blown cover with a group of college kids.” Then she asks Sam the Identified Weak Link, “You guys aren’t even in college are you?”

  Sam the Intimidated squeaks, “High school juniors.” Mortified at his reveal, he turns to me and his hands drift down. Then, remembering the pointed gun, he shoots them back up in the air.

  Rugby’s gun swings toward Sam the Now Terrified. That does it for Jurnee. She reaches out, waggles her fingers, and demands he relinquish the gun. He does. I hear her whisper to him: “Have you any idea how many lawsuits we’re looking at here? It will set a new rookie screwup record..”

  That’s when Ponytail comes charging in behind them. GV doesn’t fit as well and gets caught up on a bookcase. Ponytail sees the gun and hits the brakes. Then GV plows into him. Suddenly there are guns everywhere. Even Ponytail has one, and I’m pretty sure the campus cops aren’t supposed to be armed—then I realize his is some sort of Taser.

  In the confusion, my crew keeps their hands in the air. My muscles hurt holding mine up and my stomach never stops growling because of the smell—rich spicy beans, rice, sausage, onions. I gotta have that burrito. Need sleep. Need everyone to leave my place. Students on the sidewalks below are probably gathering and pointing up at us in the lighted window. Are we on YouTube yet? Then I move on to other nice thoughts like our town’s tiny SWAT team (not really, but they have a big van for the annual college open-house riot.) This is a nightmare. Daniel’s eyes plead with me. Gavin isn’t holding up well either.

  With caution, I lower my hands and ask, “Who are you guys?” If they’re worried about lawsuits, they’re not drug dealers.

  GV cautiously draws out his police badge, Ponytail his campus security badge, and finally Jurnee and Rugby each pull out an impressive five-by-seven leather photo jacket: color photo on one side and a metal badge on the other. The badges read U.S. Department of the Treasury. Below that, it says Drug Enforcement Administration. All in all, that’s a lot of impressive metal. I’m overwhelmed with bright shiny, cool-to-the-touch badge envy.

  That’s when the arguments begin. Who should have notified who, and when should they have done it. I don’t mention that Gravel Voice and Ponytail hadn’t timely notified the Sandove sheriff either.

  Rookie Rugby has had enough. “We can argue this later. Right now, how did you get a confidential informant into a position that I was supposed
to get?” GV looks my way. Rugby picks up that I’m responsible. I really had screwed up his day. “You. You did this? You’re only in high school? What the fuck…?”

  Both Ponytail and GV cut him off, but GV wins out. “Treat my CI with respect. We made arrangements with O’Neal’s chairman to assign her there.”

  Rugby snaps out, “You informed one of our suspects?”

  My crime club bristles. This is our plan. Rookie Rugby is tromping into our territory. I’ve given them courage to fight, but GV slowly shakes his head at me. Apparently the DEA trumps the local police department. Collecting the pages from the coffee table, I don’t hand them over—not yet. “I’m going to O’Neal’s tomorrow. And Gravel Voice will be my backup, not you guys. This stays a local police matter as long as I’m inside.”

  There’s a universal, ‘Huh? Who’s Gravel Voice?’

  I struggle to remember GV’s real name. Ponytail smothers a grin. Remembering it, I say, “Detective Bob. I work with him—not you guys. If you try to replace me now or try to squeeze us out,” pausing for emphasis, “then I will personally see your covers are blown.”

  It’s Rookie Rugby’s turn to get in my face. “Is that a threat? I can lock all of you up for obstruction.”

  I get even closer into his. “I don’t want you there. The police are perfectly capable of handling this.”

  Gavin lets out a frightened groan. A second conviction stacked on top of his computer hacking will cause serious problems.

  No one threatens my crew on my watch. “I’m the one inside and I’m putting together the evidence.” I hold up the pages. “Try to stop me and you’ll have to wait for a warrant to get them. I don’t think they happen as fast as you see on TV. But if you agree to my terms, you can have them right now.”

  Daniel’s steaming. As I touch his hand, he and the whole unit calm as if I touched each of them.

  The voice of reason comes from Jurnee, not Rugby. “It’s a deal.” When he opens his mouth to protest, Jurnee says, “Want me to call Johnson and tell him how you drew a gun on the Beanie Bop Club?”

  That does it. My crime unit drops into full anger mode at being called the Beanie Bops.

  Jurnee says, “Easy guys.” She turns to Rugby. “Think you can live that down, rookie? If those are the official doctored reports, then with the shipping manifests I got today we’re well on our way to a prosecution. This kind of investigation normally takes months. She’s got results already.” She turns to me. “One day. That’s all you have. Is it enough?”

  I nod and give her the reports. It’ll have to be enough. Then business cards are passed around like candy. Since we can’t have badges, we at least need business cards.

  They file out through the narrow opening, except for Ponytail who asks me, “Can you get what you promised?”

  While my crew relaxes and plops down by the burrito feast, I say, “Probability is in my favor with the right plan.”

  “And can you do it without the pages they took?”

  I snort. “Those are the dummied official numbers from my phone. I can reprint them. The handwritten doctored notes are here.” I pull out the pages from my intern pack. If he’d let me, I would have told Rugby. He hadn’t and it was his loss. Ponytail doesn’t suggest I chase after the DEA agents to hand them over. His nose is out of joint over this too.

  “Interpreting these will take serious time.” I lay the pages out on the coffee table. This is like a tight rope, but by concentrating and keeping my balance, there will be answers. And speaking of answers, I ask him, “Why is it the DEA? Why not the FBI or the ATF people?”

  He laughs. “Short answer or long?”

  “Short.” I wave at the papers. “We have lots of data-crunching to do.”

  “DEA handles prescription drugs. ATF handles gang violence and explosions, which can include drugs but generally it is illegal drug-making or cooking. The real excitement comes in when the IRS gets involved.”

  “So there could have been more badges tonight?”

  “That’s not counting Iowa’s Department of Criminal Investigations, or IA-DCI, and the Department of Narcotics Enforcement, IA-DNE.”

  Sam the Back to Normal whistles. “They like their acronyms, don’t they? I vote we become the CIU for Crime Investigator Unit.” Then he adds, “And we’re getting business cards.”

  Ponytail adds, “That planner? GV’s worried. If you can’t get into the planner, then we have to notify the DEA. This isn’t Omaha. Any teams we set up to tail Jamison and Greg will be spotted. If you want DEA out of this until the meet, you have to know where that meet is taking place. They’ll need time to set up.”

  And how am I going to do that? I wonder. Ponytail tips a non-existent hat and slips through the book stacks.

  “Kami?” Sandy asks.

  I look her way. She’s been in a possible shoot-out, and she’s been very un-Sandy-quiet. “Yes?”

  She says, “Things went really bad at the chaos locker today. You’d better sit down.”

  Rather than sit, I collapse. The idea of my bed anytime soon seems like a pipe dream. “Can’t it wait?”

  “It can’t.” She stumbles over the words, talking fast. “We prioritize the locker letters by order of at-risk. We write the responses and run them past the school counselor. Once we do that, then Sam posts our answer. We’ve done about fifteen already.”

  I nod. All that routine is standard procedure. “What’s the problem? Is someone suing us or something?” Tiredness slides my snark into nastyville. “Is someone mad at our answers?” I don’t even look up from the pages. I have my priority and it isn’t Dear Locker letters.

  “Kami. One of the writers said she was going to kill herself.” No exclamation points.

  “WHAT?” I drop the files and Daniel, like a balloon that loses its gas, keels over into the sofa beside me, shock on his face.

  His tight and low voice mirrors his hunched body. “You threaten suicide, it’s real. We can’t blow this off.”

  He’s right. If Julia told anyone about her plans, she might be alive today.

  Sam the Assurer says, “We found her. We stopped...”

  Sandy finishes the statement like they’re an old married couple. “…her in time. It was close, Kami. Really close. She’d taken pills, just like Julia did.”

  My voice trembles as I ask, “How did you find her?”

  “It was the third letter from her: the same handwriting, the same pink butterfly envelop. Same paper and pen color.” Sandy pulls them out and lays them on the table. “This is the first letter. It was so ordinary, we ignored it! Too many more interesting ones came in.”

  I read it out loud: “’My friends don’t understand me! No one understands me! Am I weird?’ So what happened next?”

  “This one.”

  I open the second one and read it: “’You’ve answered everyone but me. Aren’t I important enough? No one thinks about me at all! No one understands me! Even my family thinks I’m stupid!’ Ouch.”

  Sandy sighs. “Yes, ouch. The other letters were about drugs or alcohol or boyfriends. We even answered one on stupid sports injuries. Kami, we let this one slip through the cracks. It seemed over the top and whiny, you know?”

  “And the last letter?”

  She hands it over.

  Sam the Wise says, “What scared me is she dropped off the exclamation points. The others were full of them.”

  I remind myself, she’s okay. They got to her in time. I read it out loud: “’I’m a failure at everything. My family’s better off without me. Someone stop me, because after school I’m taking pills I got from Julia. Do you care?’”

  Daniel surges out of the sofa. I think he’s going to hit something, but just as quickly deflates. He leans his head against the cold window, looking down at the round patches of light that dot the central campus sidewalks.

&
nbsp; “She didn’t sign these,” I say.

  Sam says, “Right, and the school didn’t have a clue about who she was. It’s like this girl was invisible; just like she says.”

  Uncle Charlie’s papers are spread out on the coffee table. I sweep at them with my hand and they fly around the room.

  Sandy says, “We traced her through the other letters. Remember the first time the letters came all at once from three friends?”

  I nod.

  “One of them had e-mailed me a thank you.” Sandy looks like a small rose after a tornado—battered, leaves gone, with nothing but roots and a stem left. “Kami, it was awful. Sam, Gavin, and I went to her home. No one was there. Gavin broke a window and we climbed in. She was on the bed…”

  Daniel gives a huge groan and covers his eyes. The scene is too much like his sister’s death.

  Sandy gulps and continues. “She’d vomited all over the bed. Sam pulled her body into his arms and cleared her mouth and throat. He started heart resuscitation.”

  It’s Gavin who finishes the story. “The EMTs said it was the only thing that saved her life. Otherwise we would have been too late.”

  The enormity of what they’d done shocks me, leaving me cold and motionless. “You saved her life.”

  Sandy grabs my hand. “No. We, all of us, saved a life today.”

  Daniel’s stretches his arms out across the cold glass window like a bird seeking escape.

  I want to escape too. I want to go back to looking down on the world—not connected to it or the people in it. That cold scientific data that I’ve hidden behind all my life has been cut away. I’m free-falling into the chaos below. This isn’t about numbers and data. What we’re doing is important. It isn’t a scientific puzzle to solve anymore. This is about saving real lives.

  Thirty-one

  Silence falls, as do my tears. Wiping them away, I pick up Uncle Charlie’s scattered pages. Correlating and analyzing these numbers has to be our priority.

  Sam takes the pages. “We’ll work on these. You’re beat. Couple hours sleep last night doesn’t cut it. Go use the sofa.”