Weregirl

by C. D. Bell

  “Sorry if this seems like some crazy become-one-with-

  nature crap,” Luc said. “There seriously is something to hear.”

  And then Nessa did hear the sound he meant. Or at least, she thought she heard it. It must have been coming from very far away—the outer limits of her range. It was so far she could hardly believe Luc could hear it too.

  She heard the pack. They were singing songs of their own. Big One was leading. Sister was chiming in. Every time they dropped the line, Mama would pick it up.

  It occurred to Nessa that their pack had been small to begin with, and with the loss of the submissive wolf, it was getting smaller still. Maybe she was thinking of this just now because she was hearing so much sadness in their voices. They sounded just as sad as the humans, actually.

  “You hearing what I’m hearing?” Luc asked her, and she hesitated. The wolves were pretty far away. She was surprised Luc could hear them. If she admitted she could, would Luc be like, “What wolves? I’m listening to the wind chimes hanging in front of True Value”? (Nessa could hear those too.) But then Luc made it easy for her. “The wolves?”

  Nessa opened her eyes in a flash. She suddenly felt uncomfortable. She couldn’t say why, only that she felt that Luc knew more about her than she’d thought he did. She stood. “Sorry,” she said. “But I gotta go.” And without waiting for him to say “okay” or “bye” or anything, she took off, jogging back to the center of town

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Tim Miller was waiting for Nessa and Bree at their lockers the next morning, holding a piece of paper up in the air like it was money and he was waving it to make a bet in the middle of a big fight.

  “I’ve got your information,” he said, and then lowered his voice. “I’d never looked that stuff up in the hospital system before, but one of the residents gave me his password so I could enter a medication request in a patient’s chart, and I was able to get into the system.”

  “Wow,” said Bree, and for once Nessa didn’t think she was exaggerating just to make Tim feel good. Nessa was impressed as well.

  Tim spoke in a low voice. “It’s actually pretty fascinating, how they track bodies,” he said. “There’s something called a chain of custody—all these documents where one person signs off on the body and notes the time they took charge of it. Sometimes you hire a private company to move a body around; sometimes it’s done by the medical examiner’s office. In either case, there’s never a time when you don’t know exactly where a body is and who has it.”

  “Can I see?” said Nessa, holding out her hand for the printout.

  Tim passed it to her, and as she read it, he leaned over her shoulder, using a finger to show her the entries in what turned out to be a log of movements, tracking the body from the Lark home to the hospital. It recorded the precise time when the ambulance crossed the Tether town line and then every subsequent town between Tether and Saginaw.

  “So according to this,” Nessa said, “the body entered the hospital’s system at 11:34 p.m.”

  “That’s right,” Tim confirmed.

  “And it never went anywhere else?”

  “No, it never did.”

  “What if they changed it?” Nessa said.

  “That’s impossible. They couldn’t. See this code?” Tim pointed to a tiny series of numbers to the right of the entry. “This appears when there’s information in the system that only could have been added by someone with a hospital authorization key.”

  “What’s that mean?” Bree said.

  “It’s basically a shortcut. The hospital double-checks all that info, and it’s available publicly and doesn’t need to be notarized or attested to by a hospital employee in legal investigations.”

  “Couldn’t one of those people have changed it? Couldn’t someone have stolen the key?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tim said. He was shaking his head vehemently. “You’d have to have a really strong connection. You’d need someone like a judge or a Senator to make that change.”

  Bree gave Nessa a significant look. They thanked Tim, pocketed the printout, and headed off for their first class.

  “Maybe it wasn’t Billy you heard them autopsying at Paravida,” Bree said when he was gone.

  “I think it was,” Nessa said. “Did you notice what Tim just said about fiddling with the chain of custody? That you’d need someone with the power of a judge or a Senator to do it? Well, the Paravida board has both, and the Chief of Police of Detroit for good measure. It’s on their website.”

  “Whoa,” Bree said. She stopped.

  “What are we going to do next?” Nessa said.

  “We’re going to break into the clinic and look for Billy’s records,” said Bree. She squared her shoulders and stuck her chin out.

  “Are you serious?” Nessa said.

  “Yes,” said Bree. “If Billy had those special scrubbed cells, my guess is that they were using him to test some new therapies. And it backfired. The autopsy would then become essential to help tell them what went wrong. Even if you have judges and Senators on your board of directors, I’m sure you don’t ask them to help out covering up an illegal autopsy. Unless you have a really good reason.”

  “You think we can break in?” Nessa said.

  “Can we? I already infiltrated their system once!”

  Nessa drew a total blank.

  “With Cassian, remember?” Bree prompted. “I totally hacked the appointment calendar back in September. This spy stuff comes very naturally to me.” She half-closed her eyes and raised her eyebrows as if she were modestly deflecting an enormous amount of praise.

  “Oh, brother,” Nessa groaned, and then she realized Bree wouldn’t have suggested the break-in if she hadn’t already been obsessing over how to make it happen. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Bree explained over Oreos at Nessa’s kitchen table. “Since the clinic closes at eight o’clock, we’ll get there just before eight, like 7:50. I’ll run in and tell Gina at the desk that I have to pee. She knows us, so it won’t seem weird.”

  “And then you’ll stay in the bathroom until after they close?”

  “No, that won’t work. Gina and Mary will remember me. You’ll be the one in the bathroom.”

  “I thought I was waiting in the car.”

  “You’ll be waiting by the back door.”

  “Of the clinic?”

  “Right!”

  “What about security cameras?” Nessa said, separating the two halves of her Oreo.

  “I’ve thought of that. Halloween masks,” Bree said.

  “Seriously?” Nessa said. “You think that’ll work?”

  “Remember my plan to get the most popular guy in school to fall for you? That plan worked.”

  “For a while,” Nessa said.

  “For a while? What do you mean, ‘for a while’? Cassian is crazy about you. The whole soccer team is talking about it.”

  Nessa shrugged. “I told Cassian I wasn’t interested anymore, and I’m not.”

  “What!? When did this happen?” Bree demanded.

  “At the Larks’ that night when my mom and I brought the tuna casserole over,” Nessa replied. “The Thomases were there.”

  “You break up with the hottest guy in the entire town of Tether, and you didn’t tell your bestie?” Bree practically shrieked. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Well, there were a few other things going on,” Nessa said.

  “Yeah, well, you still need to keep your priorities straight,” Bree deadpanned. When she saw the stricken look on Nessa’s face, she rolled her eyes. “Just KIDDING.”

  “Let’s get back to the plan,” Nessa said. She put both halves of the Oreo in her mouth, prepared to listen.

  “After I go to the bathroom,” Bree said. “I’m going to go to the water cooler and get a drink. While I’m drinking, I’ll stand at the bulletin board. As soon as I verify no one’s looking,
I’ll take two steps to the back door, pop it open for you, and then make sure that I am seen leaving the way I came in.”

  “It sounds so simple,” Nessa said.

  Bree held up another Oreo as if offering it up for a toast. “The best plans always are.”

  Breaking into the clinic was easier than Nessa had thought it would be. Or maybe it was just that Bree was more skilled as a criminal mastermind than her sunny attitude would suggest.

  First, Bree dropped Nessa off behind the clinic. Nessa was careful to avoid anyone’s line of sight from the windows as she made her way to the back door. She heard the Monster drive around to the front of the clinic and then its engine went quiet. She stayed close to the building and slipped on an old princess mask of Delphine’s.

  After about five minutes, the back door opened. Nessa caught the handle before it closed. Once inside the hallway, she saw just the back of Bree’s shoe as she turned the corner by the desk on her way out the door.

  For a minute, Nessa stood still, listening to the sound of her own breath, feeling a chill on her skin, registering the smell of disinfectant. She was a few steps away from the alcove where she’d had her blood taken when she’d been accused of doping.

  Now, she wondered not for the first time if her blood had been shipped off to Paravida, just like Billy’s. But even if it had, what did they want it for? Were they doing the same thing to the wolves that they had been doing to Billy?

  Slipping into the bathroom quickly, Nessa closed the door behind her and encountered an unanticipated wrinkle in the plan. The windowless room was pitch dark, the only light coming from a gap at the bottom of the door. Nessa felt her way across the room, holding on to the changing table like it was the railing of a balcony.

  And then she waited. She flipped open her phone and checked the time. It was already 7:58. She would wait until 8:10 before leaving the room. Bree had watched the parking lot empty the night before and knew that all of the workers left within minutes of the official closing.

  The time dragged. 8:01. 8:04. Finally, 8:09. Nessa counted to 60 slowly in her head, then opened the bathroom door.

  The door let out a groan and Nessa froze, but then she saw that the hallway was lit only by the red Exit sign at one end. Nessa poked her head into the staff kitchen and the various offices on her way down to the empty reception area. She tried the door to a storage closet. It was open. She tried the door to the suite of offices where the Dutch Chem study was administered. Locked.

  Nessa moved to the back, listening at the door for the return of Bree’s car. When she heard it—Bree cautiously parked at the edge of the lot, near the woods—Nessa waited for a light knock on the door, and then she opened it.

  “Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re in!” Bree half-squealed, half-whispered through her Freddy mask.

  “Are you sure everyone’s gone?” Nessa asked.

  “Absolutely,” Bree said. “I heard Mary leaving while I was in the bathroom. There were three other cars in the lot, and they’re all gone.”

  “Okay,” said Nessa. She told Bree about the doors to the clinic study rooms being locked. “Now what do we do?”

  “Let’s start with Mary’s desk,” Bree said. “Maybe she keeps keys?”

  “Wait,” Nessa said, putting a hand on Bree’s arm. She paused at the mini-greenhouse where Mary grew cheery succulents. “I feel bad, going through Mary’s stuff. I mean, she’s kind of like our friend. She’s always super-nice to Nate.”

  “It’s one of two possibilities,” said Bree. “She’s in on it. Or she’ll be glad if we figure out she’s mixed up in something that’s bad for kids.”

  “You’re right,” Nessa agreed. She plowed ahead.

  Bree sat down in Mary’s chair while Nessa held Bree’s phone with the flashlight app over her head. In her drawer, they found the usual office stuff—a stapler, rubber bands, pens, gum, Post-its. There was a little makeup kit and a hairbrush. There were a couple of pictures of Mary with her family. They used to live in Tether, Vivian had told Nessa—they lived in Saginaw now. Her grandmother had a nice smile, and there was no grandfather. There didn’t seem to be anything else, so Bree shoved the metal drawer closed. And it caught on something.

  “Huh,” was all she said. She slid the drawer open and closed it more slowly this time. It caught again.

  “Just a second,” she said. This time she pulled the drawer out all the way and set it carefully on the floor. She reached her arm in as far as she could and burst into a big smile.

  “Keys,” was all she said.

  Seconds later, Nessa and Bree were sitting at a desk in the main examination room of the kids’ clinic study, or the North Central Michigan Long-Term Pediatric Inclusion Study, as it was formally known.

  “Let’s start with the computer,” Bree suggested.

  She hit a key, and a blinking cursor asked for her username.

  “Crap,” she whispered. “Any ideas?”

  “Sure,” Nessa replied. “How about TRAAB, for Thomas Raab?”

  “Worth a try,” Bree said as she typed. “Holy crap, Batgirl,” Bree said as another screen appeared. “You’re hot.”

  Except that this time, it requested the password.

  “Could it be written down somewhere?” Nessa asked. She scanned the desktop. There was a prescription pad and two pens. A blank pad. A plasticized sheet with lists of phone extensions and their owners.

  “It’s a known fact that people are idiots about their passwords, even Nobel laureates,” Bree announced.

  She typed in “123456” and hit Enter.

  The small dialog box shook violently and rejected it.

  Next she tried “Paravida.”

  Another rejection.

  “Try ‘stem cell,’” Nessa suggested.

  Bree typed, and as soon as she hit the Enter key, all of the lights in the clinic came on, and a special red security light that Nessa had never noticed began to flash on and off. There was a loud horn sound, and a mechanical voice announced, “PLEASE LEAVE THE PREMISES AT ONCE. THIS IS A GOVERNMENT-APPROVED LEVEL FOUR SECURITY SITE. PLEASE LEAVE THE PREMISES AT ONCE.”

  Bree and Nessa looked at each other. Nessa could hear the faintest sound of a police siren in the distance. “We’ve got to get out of here. NOW!” Nessa cried.

  Bree pulled open the filing cabinet under the desk and grabbed a couple of folders hanging there. Nessa was already halfway out the back door.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Nessa easily sprinted the short distance out the back door of the clinic to Bree’s car. For once, Bree kept pace. They leapt into their seats, pulled off their masks, Bree started the engine, and pulled out so quickly she laid down some rubber on the new tarmac. Instead of turning on to Willow Street, she scooted cross-lots into the back parking area of Tether Credit Union and then a small strip mall. She instinctively drove in the direction opposite the rapidly approaching police siren. When she saw a car ambling down Center Street, she signaled and turned to follow it. As they drove past the Tether town square, they could see the flashing lights of the police car as it pulled into the clinic a quarter of a mile away.

  They drove straight to Nessa’s without a word. Another police cruiser passed them, siren wailing, headed to where they had come from. When they parked in front of Nessa’s yard a few minutes later, their bubble of tension and fear suddenly burst, and they both started to laugh. Hysterically.

  “Oh my god, that was close,” Bree finally managed to wheeze.

  “You’re not kidding,” Nessa said.

  “The computer must have been connected to a security system. Three wrong passwords, and it activates an alarm system,” Bree said. She sounded amazed.

  “Have you ever heard of the police responding so quickly before?” Nessa added. “They were there in less than three minutes.”

  “That’s what I guess you get with Level Four security,” Bree said. Which started them laughing all over again.

  The front porch light went on an
d Vivian stuck her head out. “You girls coming in? Where’ve you been?”

  “Okay. We’ve got to get control of ourselves,” Nessa said.

  “Can you take the files? My mom sometimes looks in my room,” Bree said.

  Nessa looked at the seat next to her. Vivian was coming down the walk, so she quickly shoved them into her backpack.

  “If you find anything good, text me. Otherwise, let’s throw them out. I’ll figure out where,” Bree said.

  Nessa hopped out of the car, headed up the front walk, and gave her surprised mom a peck on the cheek—“Hi Mom!”—before heading inside. Bree gave Vivian a cheerful wave, and without waiting put the Monster in drive.

  “Teenagers,” Vivian muttered. She shook her head and watched the Monster turn around and head in the direction of Bree’s house. “Always up to something.”

  Nessa grabbed an apple from the bowl in the kitchen and headed to her room. She would have to wait until everyone was asleep to look at the files. And Delphine was a night owl. Nessa looked at the clock, pulled out her novel for English, and started to read. It was something called Jane Eyre, and the time flew. Before she knew it, Delphine was showered, changed, and under the covers. The rest of the house was already still. When she heard Delphine’s breathing change and slow down, she put her book aside, and went out to the living room with her backpack.

  The first folder had no label. It contained, oddly, a bunch of clippings about the Dutch Chem lawsuit, dating back ten years, and the Paravida takeover. They were from sources like the Wall Street Journal and not the local Michigan papers.

  Next was a folder filled with information about how to care for succulents. Mary’s personal life in a nutshell, apparently.

  A file marked “Personnel” contained tax forms, and there was another about the clinic’s employee benefits.

  Then things got more interesting.

  The next file folder was simply marked “Mary Clovis.” It contained Mary’s retirement account statements. What was strange to Nessa was that she was pretty sure that it was for a personal, not corporate, retirement account. She paged through them carefully. They dated back almost thirteen years. The sums invested steadily grew with each paycheck, until seven years ago, when she started to withdraw, sometimes in large amounts. Mary once had $145,744 worth of stocks and bonds. Today the account was worth less than $38,000.