Code of Silence: Living a Lie Comes With a Price

by Tim Shoemaker

  Something surfaced in Cooper’s mind. Hiro was operating on her own now. She didn’t show up at school. She visited Frank. Doing everything without letting Gordy or him in on her plans. Wouldn’t the police want to question anyone that came to visit him? Had she even considered that before she went there?

  “Maybe I’ll stay home from school tomorrow,” Gordy said.

  “Great,” Cooper said. “So you’re going to ditch me too, eh?”

  “Ditch you?” Hiro’s chin went up. “Is that what you think I did?”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what you did.”

  “Look, I’m still sticking by that stupid Code of Silence. If I abandon you it will be more obvious than taking a day off school. I’ll break the Code and tell the police myself.”

  Cooper felt his face get warm. Did she just give him a threat?

  Hiro looked down at her feet. “I want to feel safe again. I pray and pray for God to protect us. Then I go right back to living a total lie. How can God respect that? I don’t trust him enough to tell the truth?”

  “The lies will stop.”

  “Only when we come clean. But until then we’re living a lie. I was trying to tell you last night. This is too big for us. We need help. Because of the Code I haven’t told anyone except God. And how can I expect his help when I hide the truth?”

  “You think it doesn’t bother me?” Cooper whispered.

  Her head snapped up and her eyes bore into him. “Not anymore. Lie, lie, lie. That’s all you seem to do.”

  “Really?” Cooper clenched his jaw. Stop. Don’t say another word. Cool down before you say something you’ll regret.

  “Yes, really.” She leaned forward. Like she needed to put every bit of her weight behind her words. “There was a time when you would have felt terrible if you lied. Now you don’t seem to feel anything at all.”

  Her eyes. Cooper couldn’t get past her eyes. Something different there. Missing. The respect was gone. All he saw was disgust. Contempt.

  Her look hit him in the gut just as real as when the robbers wailed on Frank. And it hurt with a kind of pain he’d never felt before.

  How dare she say he didn’t feel anything. She had no idea how he felt. He opened his mouth to lash back. To sting her like she’d just done to him. He looked at his feet and clamped his mouth shut instead.

  “Go ahead and say it, Cooper MacKinnon.” Hiro got in his face. Taunted. “You were going to say something. Get it off your chest.”

  Get it off your chest. Get a chest. What was it with his chest?

  Gordy stepped in, looking more ashen-faced than he did when the police car stopped at the park. “Hey, you two. C’mon, now. We’re all friends here. What do you say we go get something to eat?”

  Cooper didn’t answer. We’re all friends here. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Maybe that was just another lie. Hiro let them down by ditching school. Going to the hospital. Making her own plans. Griping about the Code every time they got together. Some friend.

  “C’mon, Coop,” Hiro said, her voice daring him. Egging him on. “You were ready to say something a minute ago. I want to know what it was.”

  Gordy put a hand on Hiro’s shoulder. “Hey, I think we’d better—”

  Hiro slapped his hand away. “I want to know what Coop was going to say.” She poked Cooper in the chest. “Let’s hear it, Coop. If you can do it without lying that is.”

  “Is that all you think I do? Lie?” She didn’t get it. Didn’t see how he had to lie. “And what about you? What do you call what you told your Mom today about being sick? A little white lie? A half-truth? You say you’re sick of the lies, but you’re no better than me.”

  Hiro’s mouth opened just a bit. Maybe she was surprised at what Cooper said. Maybe she realized for the first time that she really did lie to her mom. Cooper had no idea—and told himself he didn’t care. But when the tears welled up in her eyes, he knew he’d made a direct hit. He saw his pain in her face. And hated himself for doing it.

  Hiro backed her bike away from them. Without another word she straddled it and headed down the street.

  Her reaction twisted Cooper two ways. On one end, happy he’d scored a solid point. On the other a panicky desperation to apologize and make it right.

  “Brilliant.” Gordy glared at him and shook his head. “Are you going to let her leave without patching this up?”

  Why did he have to patch things up? He was trying to protect them all, wasn’t he? They’d made it safely this far because he’d made sure they stuck to the Code. It was the only real option they had. And a good one. Silence is golden, right?

  “Call her back,” Gordy said.

  Cooper watched her biking away. Her black braid beat a furious tempo against the middle of her back.

  He fought the urge to call her back. He had a right to be steamed. To stall until she turned around and came back. Until she saw he was only trying to help.

  “Coop.” Gordy’s voice hinted at disbelief. “She’s not going to come back.”

  She stood on the pedals, picking up speed. Every second the separation between them grew farther. They were supposed to be friends. How did this happen?

  “Hiro,” he called. Probably not loud enough.

  She didn’t turn back.

  “Hiro, hold on!” He shouted this time.

  She must have heard him, but she didn’t turn. It was like last night. The roles were reversed this time. Now he knew how she must have felt when he rode away. He jammed the baseball in his pocket and held the bat against the handlebar.

  “Let’s catch her,” Cooper said, mounting his bike.

  A police siren immediately behind them nearly made him drop the bat. It only bleeped on for a second, but enough to freeze him in place. He turned just as a police car pulled over to the curb behind them. The door opened, and a patrolman stepped out.

  “Can I talk to you boys for a moment?” The officer shifted his gun belt as he walked toward them.

  Cooper glanced back toward Hiro. She was nearly a block away now. She had obviously heard the siren and stopped, with one foot down. She stared for a moment, then pushed off and rolled away.

  She abandoned him again.

  “Excuse me,” the police officer said. “Were you two playing ball in the park ten minutes ago?”

  CHAPTER 32

  Gordy thought about running. It was instinct—and stupid. Instead, he sat on the bike and watched the cop approach.

  The policeman looked like he just walked out of an ad for a health club. Blonde buzz cut, baby face, and a chest that looked as powerful as the gun strapped at his waist. M. Stryker was engraved on a nametag pinned above his chest pocket.

  Gordy imagined himself sitting on a stool with a bright light on his face with this guy interrogating him. In one minute he’d confess. To anything.

  The officer stepped onto the curb and nodded toward Coop’s baseball bat. “You were just in the park. Right?” He towered over them. Gordy figured his head would only get to the guy’s shoulder. Coop might make it to his nametag.

  “Yes, sir,” Coop said.

  The policeman sized them up. Like he was wondering how either of them could have gotten away from desperate robbers.

  Gordy did a little figuring himself. This guy seemed bigger than the goons at Frank’s.

  “We were just knocking the ball around a little,” Coop said.

  “I was watching,” Stryker said. “By the bridge?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Gordy’s red sweatshirt was hard to miss. He was relieved Coop didn’t deny it.

  “You swatted a couple of nice hits there. Why’d you stop?”

  Coop shrugged. “We were just messing around a little. Have to get back to do some homework.”

  That sounded good, but Gordy knew that was a lie. He kept his eyes on the cop’s eyes. To look at the ground now would send a signal. A bad one. He couldn’t mess this up.

  The policeman nodded. “Where do you go to school?”
r />   “Plum Grove.”

  That seemed to interest him. “Seventh grade?”

  Here we go. He knows. He knows.

  Coop sat a little taller on the seat. “Eighth.”

  Maybe he was asking some easy questions, calibrating his own “baloney detector.” Stick to the truth, Coop.

  “What were you doing down by the creek bed when I rolled up?”

  “Looking for the ball.”

  “It seemed like a funny place to play ball, with the creek right there. Why not use one of the diamonds?” He looked at Gordy this time.

  Gordy shrugged. “We weren’t playing a game. Just knocking it around a little. There were only three of us.”

  Stryker looked back at Cooper. “What happened to your friend? It looked like she rode off in a hurry.”

  Friend? Hiro was Coop’s friend, but something was definitely changing.

  Coop looked down. “She’s mad at me.”

  No half-truth there. “Totally steamed,” Gordy said. He couldn’t figure this guy out. Was he stalling until backup came? Maybe Detective Hammer himself? Or maybe he just had to ask enough questions until he decided whether or not to haul them in.

  “Why is that?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out,” Coop said. “We were having a good time. Then she said something that got me frustrated. So I guess I said something not so kind back to her.”

  “Like reminding her how she lied to her mom,” Gordy said.

  The policeman cringed. “That will do it.”

  Cooper let his hands drop to his sides like the situation drained all the strength out of him. “She got all upset and rode off. I was just going to go after her and talk to her when you pulled up.”

  “Probably best to let her cool down a little.”

  Coop looked down the block. “I just don’t get it. Everything was going great.”

  Gordy looked for Hiro too. He couldn’t help it. Like he’d expected her to come back. Gordy wondered if she ever would.

  Coop turned back to face the cop. “I just wish I could figure girls out.”

  Stryker laughed. “That, my man, is a question you’ll struggle with all your life. Women are mysterious creatures.”

  “Crazy, if you ask me,” Gordy said.

  The cop laughed again. “But try to live without them. You can’t.”

  Gordy wasn’t so sure about that. But Coop nodded like he agreed. He really seemed busted up about things with Hiro. If it was an act, he was good at it—and he ought to consider trying out for the school play.

  The cop stepped onto the curb. “Women are wired different. They’re like computers. Complex. Unpredictable. Temperamental. Sometimes they drive you nuts.”

  “And sometimes they crash,” Gordy said. “Like our friend Hiro.”

  Stryker gave Coop a pat on the shoulder. “Give her a little time before you talk to her. She’ll be back around.”

  Coop didn’t look convinced. And honestly? Gordy had to go with him on that one. Which made him feel kind of sick inside. It was always the three of them. They stuck together—and he’d do just about anything to keep it that way. To get it back. Stryker walked around the front of his police car. Suddenly he turned. “Do either of you have a cell phone?”

  There it was. The cop made it sound like a casual request. He dropped the big question when their guard was down. Smooth.

  Gordy stuffed his hands in his pockets and pulled them out empty.

  “I’ve got mine,” Coop said.

  “I just needed to make a call,” Stryker said. “I was hoping maybe I could just borrow one for a minute.”

  Right. Just long enough to look at the number and slap the cuffs on him. Gordy could kiss the rock they’d hidden the Walmart phone under.

  Coop pulled out his real cell. “You can use mine.”

  Stryker took the phone, punched in a number, and put it to his ear. He wasn’t on for more than a minute, and he handed it back with a smile, apparently satisfied neither of them were the mystery witness. For now.

  Coop waited until the police car turned a corner and drove out of sight before he said anything. “Well, that got my heart pumping.”

  “Good. Maybe you can get mine going again.” Gordy held his hands out in front of him. “Look at my hands. They’re all jittery.”

  They mounted their bikes and began a slow pedal home.

  Gordy should have been happy, but the way things ended up with Hiro put a big shadow over things. He hoped the cop was right about letting her cool off. That everything would be okay tomorrow. But somehow he didn’t see how it could. Not unless Coop turned in the hard drive and broke the Code. Which wasn’t going to happen.

  “How upset would you say Hiro is?” Coop broke the silence.

  Gordy shot him a quick glance. “On a scale of one to ten, I put her at least a seven.” At least.

  “Great.”

  Gordy replayed the way her face looked before she rode off. “Maybe eight.”

  “Or nine,” Coop said.

  Gordy shook his head. “Not nine. She’d have tried to deck you at nine.”

  The little joke didn’t do anything to lighten Coop up.

  “But still,” Coop looked down the block, like he was hoping he’d see Hiro pedaling toward them. “Eight is pretty bad.”

  “Your crack about her lying to her mom really got her.” Lying. That’s what it all came down to. The lies were ripping the three of them apart. He saw Coop’s side of it. Hey, if they could just hang together until the police picked up the goons, they could put all this behind them. But he understood Hiro’s side of it, too. And Hiro was coming unglued. Like the lies were toxic, and it was killing her. Killing all of them.

  Coop coasted for a moment. “Think she’ll spill?”

  “No way. Not Hiro.” Gordy hoped it was true. “The three of us stick together. Right?” But even that didn’t seem to be true. Not anymore.

  Cooper didn’t answer. Like he sensed something had changed. Gordy had to think of a way to patch things up.

  They rode to Coop’s drive in silence. Gordy hoped she’d be there. Waiting for them. Wanting to end the tension between. He scanned the front porch. The gate in the cedar fence to the backyard was closed. No bike. No Hiro.

  Maybe Coop had the same hopes. He definitely looked disappointed. Gordy tried distracting him. “So what’s next?”

  Coop coasted to a stop and swung his leg over the bike. “I have another letter to write. And deliver. You want to meet after dinner?”

  Gordy nodded. “I’m in.”

  Coop smiled, but his eyes weren’t smiling a bit. “You’re always in.” He clapped him on the back. “Thanks.”

  Gordy knew what Coop meant. Gordy also knew that Cooper’s smile would have looked a lot better if Hiro were with them right now.

  “Lucky we hid that phone,” Coop said. “You think he really believed us?”

  “Totally. Don’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Guess so?”

  Coop kicked a stone off the drive. “It’s just that if he didn’t totally believe us he might try to check out our story.”

  Gordy shrugged. “He let us go without even frisking us. What’s left to check?”

  Coop didn’t answer for a long moment. “What if he goes snooping by the creek and finds the phone?”

  CHAPTER 33

  I’ve got some good news, and some bad news,” Dad said. He took a last bite of mashed potatoes and leaned back.

  Cooper held his breath. He had a feeling part of the news had to do with the police interviews. Maybe they got past the hurdles.

  “What’s the bad news, Carson?” Mom’s eyebrows went up with a pleading look that lined her forehead.

  “Don’t worry, Babe. It’s not that bad.”

  Which set Cooper’s stomach a bit more at ease, but it still felt like a knotted dish towel.

  “I have three tickets to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The greatest show on ea
rth.”

  “Yes!” Mattie jumped up from her seat and ran around the kitchen table. “We’re going to the circus!”

  “A satisfied client offered me the tickets. They didn’t cost me a thing.”

  “When?” Mom picked up the calendar.

  “This Thursday night.”

  “That’s Halloween.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’re going to the circus in two days!” Mattie circled the table again with her arms out like wings.

  “The problem is,” Dad looked at Mom. “With only three tickets one of us will have to stay back.” He pointed at himself and shrugged.

  Cooper imagined being at the Allstate Arena with hours of acrobatics and amazing stunts. It would be a good place to get his mind off things.

  “Will there be ponies?” Mattie stopped running and grabbed Dad’s arm.

  “Absolutely.”

  Mattie jumped up and down. “And clowns?”

  “All over the place.”

  Clowns. Cooper could see it now. Three rings with guys in clown getup. “Hold on, Dad,” Cooper said. “I’ll stay back.”

  “What? And miss all the fun?”

  “The way I see it,” Cooper said, “you bringing home The Getaway was like bringing me tickets to the circus, the Super Bowl, and maybe even Disneyworld all wrapped up together.”

  Dad smiled. He beamed, in fact. Cooper scored some points with that one.

  “Mattie can see some ponies and have some one-on-one time with you and Mom.”

  It was settled pretty quickly. Dad and Mom would take Mattie. Cooper would stay home. He wouldn’t have to look at clowns for three hours.

  After dinner he made an excuse to do homework on the computer in the family room, but he worked on the letter instead. Cooper had it pretty much written in his mind, so he was able to type it fast and print two copies without anyone coming near. One copy he folded and sealed in an envelope right away. The copy for The Herald.

  After deleting the letter on the screen, he took a sheet of plain paper and pressed his hand flat on it, making sure every finger made full contact. He held it there for a full thirty seconds, wanting to be sure the oils from his hand left clear prints. Taking a pen, he traced his hand on the paper so the police would know exactly where to dust for fingerprints. He folded the second copy of his letter, along with the handprint sheet, and then slipped it into a different envelope. But he didn’t seal it.