I pushed my glass around, spreading the little puddle of condensation underneath it.
“She didn’t have any idea what was in it?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Are you telling me everything?”
Emmet sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “In case you haven’t noticed, Scarlett, I don’t like it when kids get lost in the system. I’m trying to help you here.”
I gave him a smile for that. A real one.
“I know. You’re a good guy, Emmet.”
“Don’t believe it for a minute.” He noticed the empty space in front of me and started to wave the waitress over. “You didn’t get your pie.”
“Stop,” I said. Emmet took one look at my face and waved her off. She wilted like week-old flowers.
“I don’t want pie,” I said. “I want to figure out what happened to Quinn Johnson. The Globe said he threw something that looked like paper into the water before he jumped. Do you know what it was?”
“Here.” Emmet pushed the wedge of peach toward me. “I can’t eat three.”
“Emmet?” I shoved the plate back.
He took in a long breath and let it out through pursed lips.
“No. We don’t know what it was.”
“Then what did he say to the woman on the bridge before he jumped?”
Emmet’s body coiled up tight as an overwound music box.
“Emmet?”
He jiggled his coffee cup back and forth by the handle.
“You’re not as tough as you think, Scarlett,” he said.
“Probably not.”
“And you’ve got a lot to learn.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.” He shook his head slowly back and forth. “You really don’t.”
I took a bite of pie to try to flush the taste of condescension out of my mouth. It didn’t work.
“Emmet, what did Quinn say before he jumped?”
His brown eyes filled with pain, like they had after Abbi died.
“Promise you’ll come to me for help if you get in over your head with this one?” he said.
“I promise.”
His voice went rough.
“Quinn said, ‘Sam’s safe now.’ And then he jumped.”
“That’s all?”
The pain in Emmet’s eyes darkened down to something more like anger. “That’s all. But you know, Scarlett, I think something—someone—made that boy kill himself. The coroner ruled it a suicide, though, so I can’t do a damned thing about it. At least not officially.”
I reached for his hand, wondering what the hell was up with me and all the hand-holding lately.
It was more than our waitress could stand. She sashayed over to ask if we wanted anything else. Emmet ignored her and looked up at the ceiling. I told her we were set. She tossed the bill on the table and left in a huff.
“Don’t worry, Emmet,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze before I picked up the check. “This one’s on me.”
12
The address Emmet gave me for Quinn Johnson’s family put them in a part of town where the right bank account bought you a prime view of Christie Park. A doorman sat just inside the lobby of their building, watching his phone with one eye and the street with the other. Doormen could be a brick wall or your best friend depending on how you played them. I turned around, hoofed it six blocks north to a flower shop, and came back.
From the way he studied me before he even looked at the bouquet of purple dahlias in my hand, I could tell the guy knew his stuff. Good doormen, the ones worth their holiday tips, always checked faces first.
“These are for the Johnsons,” I said, keeping my eyes wide and innocent. “I’m Scarlett. I was a friend of Quinlan’s at Chandler Academy.”
He gave a sad nod.
“Awful thing,” he said. “Just awful. Hold on a sec.”
He picked up an old-fashioned intercom receiver and punched in an apartment number.
“There’s a young lady down here with flowers,” he said. “Says she knew Quinn. Shall I send her up?”
He looked me over some more while the person on the other end talked.
“Sure thing.” He put the receiver back on its hook. “They aren’t taking visitors right now, sweetheart, but you can leave your posies with me, and I’ll make sure they get where they’re supposed to.”
I blinked a few times and made my smile extra innocent.
“Actually,” I said, “I’m kind of relieved. I was nervous about seeing them. Didn’t want to say the wrong thing, you know? Paying my respects just seemed like the right thing to do.”
I started to hand him the flowers. Stopped midreach.
“Say,” I said, as if the thought had just hit me. “Sam isn’t home, is he? I should check on him, see how he’s doing.”
The doorman got a soft look on his face and nodded.
“Lemme check.”
He picked up the receiver to try again, gave me a smile and a wink as he talked.
Pay dirt.
“Housekeeper says Sam’s coming down,” the doorman said when he was through. “She thinks it’d do him good to see a friend.”
“Oh.” I shifted my smile from wistful to relieved. “That’s great!” I gave the door a drawn-out glance. “You know, it’s such a beautiful day, I think I’ll wait for him outside.”
“Good idea.” Half the doorman’s attention had already drifted back to his phone. “I’ll send him your way.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He tipped his hat. I gave him one last dazzling smile.
Playing it nice had been the right call after all.
Sam Johnson was short, round, and topped off with a shock of indignant red hair. He walked fast, like he’d made up his mind about something and wanted the world to know it.
“Did they send you?” He was all fury, and dangerous as a bad case of hiccups.
“My name’s Scarlett,” I said. “I’m so sorry about your brother.”
He planted his fists on his hips. “They did, didn’t they? Well, you tell them they can all just go to hell!” The freckles across his cheeks merged into angry red blotches.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m not sure who you think I am, but how about we start over?”
He glared at me like an angry garden gnome.
“I’m Scarlett,” I said, handing him one of my cards. “I’m a private detective, and I work for Gemma Archer. You know her, right?”
He looked at the card.
“This is from the crapper at school!”
I smiled, bright and encouraging. “That’s right. I put some in the restrooms there to drum up business.”
“You’re not from the Ch—I mean, you’re really not one of them?”
“I don’t know who ‘them’ is, Sam. Like I told you, Gemma hired me to help her. Maybe I can help you, too.”
He eyed me warily. “Did you put the cards in the boys’ bathroom yourself?”
“I did.”
“You’d have been toast if Stokes caught you.”
“Is he the security guard at Chandler?”
“Uh-huh.” Sam sounded wary now, but his fury was fading. Defying Stokes had earned me some cred.
“I had lots of practice dodging guys like him when I was in school,” I said. “It was good training for what I do now.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Mosley.”
“They’ve got a good basketball team.”
“Yeah. The best.”
He frowned and shook his head like he was reminding himself not to trust me. “How do I know you’re not one of them?”
“Honestly, Sam, I can’t answer that until you tell me who ‘them’ is.”
He looked up and down the street and back again.
“You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t. Gemma came to me because her brother…”
“Oliver.” Sam spat the name out like sour milk.
“Right. G
emma came to me because Oliver’s been acting funny lately. She said he had a fight with Quinn at school. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I thought you might know what was going on between the two of them.”
“Everyone thinks Quinn killed himself. Even my mom and dad.” Sam looked down at his feet and scuffed at the concrete.
“What do you think, Sam?”
His eyes lifted, full of raw hurt.
“My brother wouldn’t ever do that. Not unless someone made him.”
“I think you’re right,” I said.
His forehead smoothed out. His fists unclenched.
“You do?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And the Children of Iblis didn’t send you?”
I thought back to Emmet’s cult theory. In Islam, Iblis was an evil jinn who defied Allah. He was Shaytan. The devil. Maybe a group of nut balls out there had latched on and started worshipping him or some such.
“They didn’t send me,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of them. Is that who Quinn had been hanging around with lately? The Children of Iblis?”
Sam ran the toe of his sneaker along a crack in the sidewalk and nodded.
“You know,” I said, “it would really help me if I knew more about them.”
“Help you how?”
“I want to figure out what made Quinn do what he did, and I want to keep Gemma safe. A lot of weird stuff has been happening in this town. It needs to stop.”
“What kind of weird stuff?” Sam asked.
“Well, for one thing, two women have been following me ever since I met Oliver.”
“Do they have gold rings in their eyes?”
My pulse started jumping rope.
“Yes. Have you seen them before?”
“No, but…”
His voice faded to nothing.
“Are they part of the Children of Iblis, Sam?”
He nodded. “I think so.”
“Can you tell me how Quinn got involved with them?”
Sam hesitated, but not for long.
“It started at Xeno’s Paradise. That’s an arcade with real old games like Pac-Man and Galaga and stuff. Quinn liked hanging out there. You know it?”
I said I didn’t.
He scrunched up his lips. “Anyway, one day he came home all excited about how this really hot girl with gold rings in her eyes had come over to watch him play Street Fighter and stuck around afterward to talk. She let him take her out for pizza. That’s when she told him about the Children of Iblis. She said their games were way better than the ones at Xeno’s.”
He paused, nervous.
“Did she say why?” I asked
“Uh-huh. They do real-life role-playing games.”
“Like Dungeons and Dragons?”
“No. That’s pretend. The Children of Iblis go on quests for real things in the real world.”
“Like what, Sam?”
“Like this old ring that supposedly belonged to a king from the Bible. And some bottle Quinn called a shooba.”
My pulse switched to double Dutch. “Was it maybe a Shubaak?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Anyway, Quinn said he wanted to join, so the girl started texting him little missions. Fun stuff, like scavenger hunts to antique shops. He took me along sometimes.”
“What was her name, Sam?”
“Quinn wouldn’t tell me. Members’ names are supposed to be secret. I knew about Oliver, though.”
“What did you know about him?”
“I heard Quinn on the phone one night telling Oliver how awesome the Children of Iblis were. He said they’d asked if he and Oliver were friends, and did he think Oliver would join them. I could tell Oliver didn’t want to at first. He’s kind of a dick.”
“I’m with you on that one, kid,” I said.
The sheepish look on his face melted into a short, sweet smile that lasted only until he spoke.
“So Quinn talked Oliver into joining, but after a few weeks he told me he wished he hadn’t. He said that with Oliver there, it was like they forgot all about him.”
“The Children of Iblis forgot all about Quinn?”
“Yeah.” Sam’s mouth scrunched up again. “After that he stopped talking to me about them and started going out all the time. He was acting really strange. Scared, even.”
“Your dad works for Archer Construction, right?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Does he keep a lot of work stuff at home?”
“Some, I guess.” He did the scrunchy lip thing again. It was a cute tic. He probably hated it.
“Can you tell me anything more?” I asked.
His shoulders slumped. “You mind if we sit down?”
I steered us over to a nearby bench. As we sat, the slump spread to the rest of his body.
“You okay, Sam?”
He nodded. Looked at the ground. “Yeah.”
I scooted closer and bumped him with my elbow. His eyes lifted. Searched mine. Found whatever it was he’d needed to keep going.
“So one day Dad came home really upset because someone had broken into his office at The Parker site.”
“Did he say if they took anything?”
Sam shrank into himself and dropped his voice so low I could barely hear him.
“No.”
He was holding something back.
“Sam?”
He looked so scared I wanted to hug him and make it go away.
“I’m going to help you, kid.”
He sniffled.
“Quinn did it.”
“Did what?”
Sam swiped at his face with his sleeve and mumbled something I couldn’t make out.
“What?”
“Quinn broke into the trailer, okay? He’s the one who did it!” Sam shouted. Waves of pain and anger rolled off his rigid body like heat from a furnace.
Emmet had said it was an inside job—that whoever broke in had used a key but wasn’t authorized to be there after hours. I moved away from Sam on the bench. Gave him space. Time. And slowly, slowly, he came back to me.
“Sorry,” he croaked.
“Don’t be,” I said. “You’ve got every right to be mad.”
“I do?” He was exhausted.
“Hell yes. If my sister got sucked in by these Children of Iblis people, I’d be more than mad. I’d want to destroy them.”
He sat up taller.
“You would?”
“I would.”
He watched a pigeon peck at a stray candy wrapper. I waited.
It paid off.
“I saw something in Quinn’s room,” he said. “A note. From the guy who’s building The Parker.”
I thought back to the Globe articles I’d dug up, found the guy’s name filed away in my brain under “Stuff I Shouldn’t Forget.”
“George Fagin?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“What did it say?” I didn’t speak gently, didn’t baby him. We were allies, Sam and I.
“Not much. It was a thank-you note to an architect for blueprints he’d done.”
“What were the blueprints for?”
“A new wing for some old building. That’s all the note said.”
“Do you remember the architect’s name?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“Was there a return address?”
“Uh-uh. I didn’t see the envelope, and the note wasn’t typed or anything. It was really short. Fagin wrote it himself.”
“Where’s the letter now, Sam?”
He got quiet again, but he didn’t shut down.
“I think Quinn took it with him to the bridge.”
I gave the moment time to breathe and braced for the hardest question of all.
“Why did Quinn go to the bridge, Sam?”
His voice broke as he spoke, but Sam did not.
“He went because of me.”
“How do you know that?”
Sam shuddered. “The day it happened, I heard a text alert go
off in Quinn’s room. He was in Dad’s office with the door shut and couldn’t hear. I snuck in and read it.”
“What did the text say, Sam?”
A sob shook his body. I put my arm around him and shot a dirty look at the woman staring at us from the sidewalk.
“If I give you Quinn’s phone,” Sam said, his words coming out in hitched little bursts, “you’ll get them, right? You’ll get the Children of Iblis and prove my brother didn’t want to kill himself?”
I hugged him tighter.
“Yeah, Sam. I’ll get them,” I promised. “I’ll get them.”
13
I liked the library near our apartment, liked hanging out with schoolkids and homeless people and moms with toddlers, all of us breathing in the smell of old varnish and ideas. I liked the librarians who were happy to help you. I even liked the ones who weren’t. It was the kind of place where you could lose yourself, which was why I went there after my visit with Sam.
The best spot in the whole joint was a dusty room on the top floor filled with rows and rows of flat, wide drawers. Each held a map, along with the promise of someplace better. Melvin, the room’s librarian, nodded at me when I walked in. I gave him a wave and went straight to my favorite drawer.
Inside it, the world on paper was as beautiful as ever. I ran the tip of my finger from Las Almas all the way across the Atlantic, south through Africa and the Indian Ocean, to Bali. Bali was where I went when things got too crazy. I closed my eyes, pictured blue water, white sand, the feel of sun on my skin. It was always quiet in Bali. And with any luck, if what Ummi and Abbi had taught me about Qadar was true, maybe I was destined to end up there someday.
The funny thing was, I’d always been a skeptic when it came to Qadar. I didn’t like the idea that everything was already set, that no matter what choices I made, my path through life had been mapped out a long time ago. But ever since Gemma had shown up at my door, fate had yanked the steering wheel from my hands and hit the gas pedal hard. This case wasn’t just about some rich kid getting messed up by a cult. It was about old devils and new ones. It was about my faith. My family. About me.
Melvin sneezed loud enough to cut my trip short. I opened my eyes, caught him watching me. He went back to his book. I said good-bye to Bali, sat down in front of the room’s only computer, took out Quinn Johnson’s phone, and pulled up the last text he’d ever received.
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