The Final Step

by Ridley Pearson

  “It’s not like that!” he shouted at her back.

  Lexie kept on walking.

  “It’s not about friendship!” He heard himself speak the words before he thought through their consequences. Turning back to Claudette, he saw her face bunch like a shrunken head. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded,” James called to her.

  But Claudette hung her head, slipped off the bench, and walked in the opposite direction. James in the middle, with two girls walking away from him on either side.

  “Oh, great,” he said.

  CHAPTER 43

  CLOTHED IN A FLOOR-LENGTH ROBE OF RICH purple trimmed with gold piping, James descended a stone staircase into the Scowerers’ underground chamber behind the school chapel. It wasn’t his first time, and wouldn’t be his last, but he nonetheless felt a wave of awe and fascination swell at the sight of the flickering torches and candles lighting the earthen floor and root-tangled walls. Overhead, the largest tree on campus stood outside the chapel nave, its crown stretching twenty yards across, its canopy seventy feet high. Beneath, the roots, as thick as small trees braided like a den of snakes. A long table had been placed in the chamber’s center, around which fourteen men and women wearing black robes awaited the occupant of the empty chair at the head of the table.

  James took his place, his mouth dry at the sight of all these grown-ups staring back at him. He poured himself a glass of water, working hard and winning at keeping his hand from shaking. Headmaster Crudgeon sat to his right, followed by two women, a balding man, and another with a gray beard and grayer eyes. James met eyes with each member of the Directory as Father had taught. He awaited a silent acknowledgment from each, a subtle exchange signaling James’s authority. Crudgeon, serving as deputy governor, relied upon years of service to assume the burden of leading the meeting and keeping James from embarrassing himself.

  “All Directory regents are in attendance. There will be no reading of minutes, as this is a special council to elect a member to fill the seat of chief advocate, vacated by the recent passing of our dear brother, Conrad Lowry. Do I hear nominations for the post of chief advocate?”

  A name was put forward and seconded. Two more, the same. Then a puggish man whom James recognized from the photos on the wall of the estate. It was Mathias Hildebrandt. Shorter than the others, his robe ill-fitting at the shoulders, the round-faced Hildebrandt’s forehead shined and his wet lips sprayed spit as he spoke, some of which sizzled in the candle flames.

  “I put forth Kennedy Wilkes, Esquire.” His overly wide-set eyes briefly searched the members’ faces. The other seconds had been quickly volunteered; this one took longer. Ms. Marion Finley finally backed the nomination. Roger Albright, secretary regent, took down the details. “Ms. Wilkes, as you may remember, served as lead attorney in the Brightman case, and is the daughter of Terrance Wilkes, who acquitted both Denny Vedelis and Pietro Gianoglio.”

  James, having been counseled by Crudgeon for the past two nights running following dinner, had known not only what to expect, but from whom. As with the nominations that had preceded, Crudgeon opened Ms. Wilkes’s nomination to discussion.

  “You are . . . Regent Hildebrandt,” James said, purposely tentative. He wanted to avoid feeding the man’s ego, if possible. “If I’m not mistaken,” he continued, recalling the exact words Crudgeon had supplied him, “Ms. Wilkes’s book, The Timeline of Terror, reflects a political and monetary conservatism that might—only might, I admit—suggest a tighter fiscal policy overseas at a time when domestic revenue is decreasing.” He glanced to Crudgeon, who signaled him he’d done well.

  “I’m sure a fourteen-year-old knows everything there is to know about international jurisprudence and economic policy,” Hildebrandt said.

  James summoned his considerable memorization skills. “My father, and my grandfather before him, held this society to certain standards,” he said. He looked to each of the people around the table for agreement. “I think he called us ‘simple thieves.’” James won some nods. “I know he worked hard to keep us from . . . engaging in the business of drugs, for instance.” More nods. “We are organized. We are criminals. But we are not organized crime. We don’t murder. Torture. Kidnap. There are . . . limits, I guess you’d say.”

  “And there are opportunities,” Hildebrandt said. Clearly, he wasn’t alone. He, too, received agreement from the others. “There is progress. I’m not suggesting anything close to drugs. No kidnapping. Do not exaggerate my position, please.”

  “We’re negotiating percentages with our Eastern European partners,” James said. “That’s hardly a negotiation for a lawyer who sees us pulling out of Europe. Your nominee isn’t right for us at the moment.”

  “There’s no such animal as an Eastern European partner,” Hildebrandt countered. “That translates to Eastern European tyrant. We don’t negotiate with tyrants. We shouldn’t be doing business there.”

  More heads nodded in favor.

  “But, if the Eastern European deal is handled incorrectly, we could easily lose territory and get nothing in exchange.”

  “You would suggest?”

  “I will make suggestions. But they will be to our new chief advocate. When the time comes, a list of options will be put before this Directory.” James struggled to keep from looking at Crudgeon for approval.

  “You are a child. You should be listening, not talking.” Hildebrandt was quickly losing patience.

  “The nice thing about being fourteen,” James said, “is you don’t waste a lot of time shaving. It frees up more time for study.”

  All but Hildebrandt chuckled.

  Hildebrandt talked of his nominee’s ability to consult her father and to draw from his experience. “If you have your own nomination, Governor Moriarty, please, let’s hear it.”

  Crudgeon had advised James to be quiet if Hildebrandt pushed for a name.

  “I nominate an idea, not a person,” James said. “In honor of my father, I request the society not enter into destructive practices. I think you are suggesting we help terrorists to get money without being caught. You say there is enormous profit to be made.”

  “Thirty percent or more,” Hildebrandt said.

  “They kill Americans.”

  “Not those I suggest doing business with. They are rebels for freedom.”

  “They are terrorists. Even worse than drug dealers.” James leaned on both elbows, his face red. “How could we do something like that?”

  Not pleased, Hildebrandt squinted at James. “How?” He was mocking James. “We vote on it?”

  Ms. Ewa Latak, an olive-skinned woman with dark hair, served the board as a parliamentarian. “There is no motion to be made at this time. We lack a quorum.”

  James fought back a smile. Headmaster Crudgeon had talked two members of the Directory into missing the meeting.

  “Any other discussion on nominees or other nominees to put forward?” James said. Discussion continued. Board members appeared split on Hildebrandt’s nomination. Crudgeon had expected this. He’d also predicted that when the time came, Hildebrandt would get the nominee he wanted.

  But James had used his time wisely, had reminded the Directory of the dangers of expanding into international money laundering. He’d exposed Hildebrandt as a man focused on profit, not patriotism.

  Crudgeon gave James a slight nod. A tiny smile of congratulations. James had scored points against a man who’d recently been the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country. For now, that was the best that could be hoped for.

  A bigger mission presented itself: James needed Hildebrandt off the Directory before the man wrecked everything Father had worked for.

  That wasn’t going to be easy.

  CHAPTER 44

  THREE MASSIVE FLAT-SCREEN MONITORS, A LAPTOP, and a high-speed internet connection from a satellite dish James and Maletta had installed next to the dorm’s chimney, the wires carefully tucked behind a drain pipe, comprised what James called the War Room. The gear was
set up inside James’s dorm room closet, a place the proctors never looked, knowing most kids shoveled their clothes in there in order to pass inspection.

  Dressed in underwear and a T-shirt, James sat in his desk chair with his legs inside the closet, the wall of video in front of him. The motion-and-sound-sensitive cameras they’d installed in Hildebrandt’s apartment recorded hi-def images and sound to four external hard drives. It was James’s job to review every video clip, no matter how short or apparently insignificant. Some were sound-only, the camera picking up a conversation in a nearby room. Then, there were the false recordings, mostly of the driveway, when the recording was tripped by a squirrel or deer crossing into the viewfinder. James had to study these as well before discarding them. He’d never understood how time-consuming surveillance could be. Even using fast-forward, it took him over three hours to review a day’s worth of captured video. Very few conversations interested him. Those that did, he copied into a special file and also onto cloud-based storage. He left no trace of the cloud storage account on the laptop. The only mention of it existed in a secret email to be automatically sent to me, his sister, if anything bad happened to him.

  The sound of the door to his room opening abruptly caused James to immediately yank off his headphones and slide the closet door shut. Standing, he pushed the desk chair back against the wall. James slipped his shirt up, as if just pulling it on, so that as Mr. Cantell appeared through the door it might look as if James was just getting ready for bed.

  “Ah, Mr. Moriarty. Glad you’re still awake.” That was news to James. Typically, the hall master frowned upon students with lights on past eleven, though such rules did not exist beyond dorm curfew. The comment felt like a trap.

  “Just going to bed, Mr. Cantell.”

  “Not quite. You have a visitor. Dorm lounge. Straightaway. Off you go.”

  “I’m in my underwear, sir.”

  “Don’t be rude, young man. Pull something on. Get going. You don’t keep a man like this waiting.”

  James swallowed dryly. Hildebrandt? He hopped into the legs of warm-ups, and followed Cantell barefoot to the dorm lounge.

  Colander! The superintendent sat imperiously in one of the lounge’s uncomfortable chairs, looking impatient though not tired. He patted the arm of a stuffed chair beside him, making James feel like a child, so James remained standing. Colander indicated the chair again. James sat down.

  “If we might have the room?” Colander said to Cantell, who had followed James. Cantell looked embarrassed as he left.

  “I wish I could do that,” James said. “Make him go away like that.”

  Colander smirked. “The power of a badge, my boy. Nothing puts the fear of God into a person like the sight of a bit of tin.” He cleared his throat. It didn’t help his accent any. James concentrated so as not to miss some words. “You asked me to look into the details of Mr. Lowry’s death. I have done so. It was the bullet wound. Two, to be exact. Both to the abdomen. It must have been a difficult sight for you.”

  “He was lying down,” James said, recalling finding the man in the woods. “It was dark. Capture the flag.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “I guess. Not really. Not at all. I’ve known him forever.”

  “Such a strange expression coming from someone so young.”

  “I don’t feel so young. Not anymore. Everything changed when my father . . . It’s been . . . different.”

  Colander touched James’s arm and James flinched. “We learn to put these things behind us,” Colander said. It might have been his accent. It might have been the man himself. But the comment lacked any sympathy whatsoever. It sounded more like the man was reading.

  “I’ll never put him behind me,” James said. “He’s with me every day. I hear him. I see him. I don’t exactly believe in ghosts, but if I did, I’d say they’re a lot friendlier than I thought.”

  “Hmm,” Colander said. “Something of a philosopher, are we?”

  “No. Just a son.”

  Colander turned his head to look at James, but James continued looking straight ahead. “Maybe not so young after all,” Colander whispered.

  James felt a chill.

  “Dirt and debris on his clothing is inconsistent with the area of the street where he was discovered.”

  “I told you.”

  “The report suggests he was likely shot in a nearby city park.”

  “Not true.”

  “That he made his way some distance and collapsed.”

  “He made his way from the woods down the hill,” James said. “That’s some kind of walk, here to Boston.”

  “Tell me about it,” Colander said. “Did you happen to see if he was wearing one shoe or two?”

  James felt an air bubble seal his throat. He didn’t dare try to speak.

  “The police have searched the park for blood evidence and the shoe. Nothing so far. Wounds to the abdomen produce a good deal of bleeding.”

  “Let me guess,” James said arrogantly. “There’s no blood trail on the street or the sidewalk or anywhere around where they found him, is there? That’s because he was probably in the trunk of a car.” James heard himself and was reminded of his former roommate. Sherlock Holmes had left a bigger impression on James than James would admit. He appreciated facts now. He felt confident, even over-confident, when delivering them. He’d hoped to steer the conversation away from the missing shoe. No such luck.

  “The man’s right shoe is missing. Strange, don’t you think?”

  “It’s probably in the car, too,” James said, providing a lie that sounded perfectly reasonable. “Or maybe it fell off when they moved him. Have you heard of a man named Mathias Hildebrandt?”

  “The FBI director?”

  “Used to be. Not anymore.”

  “Once an FBI director, always an FBI director.” Colander amused himself with that one.

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Haven’t any idea. Should I care?”

  “He killed Mr. Lowry.”

  Colander chuckled. “The most powerful policeman in the United States? Or former policeman? Hunted him down in the woods, did he? Here, in Connecticut, behind your boarding school. I highly doubt that, young man.”

  “Or one of his guys, maybe.”

  “Because?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  Another chuckle. “You might want to find that missing shoe. Put those shoes together, you’d have a suspect.”

  Put those shoes together, James heard. Forest elf. Lexie and he had talked about the Brothers Grimm clue, the story about the naked elves making shoes for a cobbler. Putting shoes together. James tuned out Colander. Tuned out the dorm. He put himself back in the woods with Lowry. Back with Lexie talking about the meaning of the fairy tale. Lexie saying how the story didn’t have much of a moral. He thought about his former roommate’s way of flipping pieces of evidence around and building one thing out of others. “Putting shoes together” became “taking them apart.” A pair of shoes became two individual shoes. Separate shoes. James could taste the truth of the thing. He nearly had the answer right there in front of him. But it was like trying to swipe a fly out of the air. To catch a mosquito and squish it. Putting together. Taking apart. Separate the shoes. Take them apart.

  There it was. That thing. That perfect gem of an idea caught. Captured. His!

  Take the shoe itself apart. Whatever clue Lowry left him was built into the shoe.

  “Whoever has that shoe is the killer,” James heard Colander say, having no idea what he might have missed.

  “What? No!” James protested harshly. The shoe was in his dorm room. “I mean, yeah. I suppose. But not necessarily, right? I mean, who knows where it fell off? A groundskeeper could have found it, I suppose. A student.” He tried to swallow. “Maybe it’s still out there.” James was already forming a plan to put the shoe back into the meadow where he’d found Lowry.

  Colander looked at James sternly. “Possession
is nine-tenths of the law,” he said. “That shoe will point to the killer.”

  “Maybe,” James said, thinking that it might point to the killer in ways Colander had no idea of.

  “Let’s just say I believe you now,” Colander said, “about the body having been moved. The evidence does support it. Or lack of evidence, I should say. I’d like you to show me where you say you found him.”

  “To look for the shoe,” James said, though his voice cracked.

  “To look for the shoe,” Colander said. “But with no one the wiser. You understand? Tomorrow afternoon? I could meet you down at the hockey rink.”

  “I might be busy tomorrow afternoon,” James stuttered. “School’s getting harder right now.”

  “Is it?” Colander didn’t trust him. “Interesting.”

  “I’ll call you,” James said. “If not tomorrow, soon.”

  “Tomorrow,” Colander said. “I don’t have to remind you, a man was killed.”

  “No, you don’t have to remind me,” James said.

  CHAPTER 45

  JAMES FOUND THAT WALKING CALMLY IS A CHALLENGE when your heart is racing. All he had to do was leave the dorm lounge without looking suspicious, without stirring Colander’s curiosity. It took all his concentration to pull it off.

  Back in his dorm room, he breathed for what felt like the first time in minutes. Naked elves. Shoes. How had things gotten to this? he wondered.

  His patience tested further, James sat on the edge of his bed for another ten minutes in case Cantell or Colander pulled another surprise visit. If only the dorm rooms locked. He briefly considered moving to a bathroom stall, which did lock, but he needed a hard surface like his desk. This, in turn, led him to realize he would need tools—cutting tools, gripping tools, the kind of tools found in what students called “the steamer,” technically, the Multidisciplinary STEAM Makerspace.