Sid shouted, “Officer Brady, how do you feel about being an elf when Christopher Vanderwaal will never have another Christmas?”
“I feel . . . um . . . ”
“Don’t answer that jerk.” Tom wouldn’t mind punching Sid King.
Justice barked.
As Tom pulled Andie toward the car, the cameraman and crew walked backward just ahead of them, their lens and lights aimed at her flushed face, the red recording light bright.
“Officer Brady, are you aware that the investigation into your use of force is going to continue?” Sid’s eyes glittered schadenfreude.
Tom extended his fingers so his hand looked like a giant asterisk, and he covered the camera lens. “Have some decency. We’ve been making these kids happy today. This isn’t the time or place for your questions.”
Sid tried to brush Tom’s hand off the lens, but Tom held on like a bolt screwed into iron. Sid sputtered, “You can’t shut us off like this. Ever hear of freedom of speech?”
“Get out of here,” Tom said.
“It’s a public place.”
“And you’re disturbing the peace. I’ll be glad to arrest you.” As Tom hustled Andie away, it crossed his mind that he liked protecting her.
CHAPTER 33
ANDREA
“All clear, Brady. Bring Justice to search,” Tom’s voice crackled on the radio. “Raid complete. Target missed.”
Oh, no. Not again. “I’m on my way.”
Justice, officially back to his drug-sniffing duties, jumped out of the patrol car, where they’d waited down the street from the ramshackle Victorian farmhouse of Ramon Garcia, otherwise known as the Beast. Tipped off about a heroin delivery, Tom and three deputies had turned off the Beast’s water to keep him from flushing drugs down the toilet and his gas to prevent a fire. They’d knocked, cool and calm, like they were his best buddies, and lured his girlfriend, Belle, to the door. Then, guns drawn, they’d burst inside to grab him, but once again he’d outfoxed the law.
As the screen door slammed behind them, Andie and Justice stepped into the house. Belle flicked an unfiltered cigarette’s ashes onto the floor and informed Tom that Ramon was visiting his mother, but she didn’t know her name or address. Belle had the gaunt, inch-from-death appearance of a longtime addict. Her eyes looked as empty as those in the skulls on Jeremy Rosoff ’s NO TRESPASSING! signs.
One glance at the living room and Andie wanted to run outside and disinfect her shoes and Justice’s paws. The house smelled decidedly of cat and rotting food, but that was the least of it. The sky might have opened up and dropped the entire state of Washington’s litter onto the floor. To move around, she had to wade through debris of glass, paper, tin, plastic, rubber, and Styrofoam. An appalling sofa no sane person would sit on faced an old-model large-screen TV, the type that dealers were known to hollow out for hiding drugs.
“It’s all yours, Brady. We’ll stay out of the way.” As Tom escorted Belle outside, he greeted Justice, who nosed his hand to ask for pets. Clearly, Justice remembered that Tom had rescued Andie from Sid King, and he’d decided Tom was honorable and worthy. Andie, who’d mentioned him in her gratitude list that night, had said he’d been “exactly what I needed.”
Today she wanted to find the stash especially for Tom but also for every Nisqually County law enforcement officer who’d been trying for years to put the Beast behind bars. Though Justice might not have understood the urgency, he knew important business lay ahead. His ears alert, his face intent, he assumed his ready-willing-and-able posture.
Andie walked him into the kitchen. To show him where to sniff, she tapped gloved knuckles on the cabinets, whose doors were smeared with peanut butter and whose interiors were cluttered with trash. On the counter, Justice checked around half-drunk cups of coffee containing floating cigarettes. He and Andie searched the garbage can, refrigerator, oven, and sink, piled with dirty dishes covered with grease that cockroaches might have body-sledded down.
Justice’s sniffer was in high gear, but he did not sit to signal that he’d detected drugs. If he’d spoken Spanish like the Beast, he’d have said about the kitchen, Nada. So Andie led him into the bedroom to another ocean of rubbish, sticking out of which like an island was a stained and verminous mattress.
On the dresser top’s peeling veneer, Andie found syringes, lighters, and spoons for heating tar. She sealed the syringes in biohazard bags and the rest in plastic evidence bags, then rummaged through the drawers—and found nothing but more grunge.
“The stash has got to be somewhere,” she told Justice as they went to the shriek-worthy bathroom. Surely in the last century no one had cleaned the toilet, and the mother of all molds fuzzed the shower walls. Just inside the doorway, Justice, who was a fastidious dog, froze with disgust and dug his nails into the grimy linoleum. He could not have said more emphatically, I do not want to enter this foul and loathsome place.
Nevertheless, he dutifully sniffed. In the medicine chest above the sink, Andie found and tossed into evidence bags four empty plastic vials that had once held OxyContin and Percocet, prescribed to Belle and picked up at a Nevada pharmacy. Andie lifted the lid off the toilet’s tank, as dealers were known to hide drugs in waterproof containers there. Nada again. And worry.
As Andie and Justice continued searching the house, each stash-free room concerned her more. How reliable was Tom’s nark anyway? Surely the whole afternoon hadn’t been a waste of time. But maybe it had. Andie could tell that Justice was becoming as discouraged as she was.
To give his premium sniffer a rest, she decided to take him outside. As they passed through the living room, she noticed a paisley shawl covering a narrow table and hanging nearly to the floor. When she pushed the shawl aside, she found a heater vent she’d missed the first time through. She tapped. Justice sniffed and sat, unwavering and resolute. He locked eyes with Andie. Here! Now!
Please, let there be a needle in our haystack, Andie thought as she knelt down and unscrewed the vent. She shone her flashlight into the furnace duct and stuck in her arm.
Eureka! Got him! The Beast had underestimated Justice’s nose. Tucked almost out of reach in a plastic bag were one-ounce balls of tar, packaged in newspaper squares, which the Beast had folded into envelopes. There were dozens of them, ready to sell on the street—enough to lock him away for a good long time.
* * *
Justice knew he’d accomplished something important. In his glory, he swaggered out the front door and unmistakably announced to the world, We did it! He acted like he expected a band to play “Hail to the Chief.”
To reward him for his hard work, Andie offered his tug toy and dragged him by his teeth along the street. He tugged. She tugged. Back and forth they went till she finally let him win and he pranced, victorious, to Tom, who was standing in the side yard, his feet apart and his hands clasped behind him.
The other deputies had taken Belle to the Sheriff ’s Department for questioning, but Tom was waiting for Justice and Andie. “We’ll get the Beast. He can’t hide from us forever. Just a matter of time.”
Tom got on his knees and showered Justice with congratulatory pets, which he received in his most confident maharaja position. As Andie watched, she was drawn to Tom’s hands smoothing Justice’s fur. They were strong, honest hands that she could imagine wielding a hammer and wrestling a bad guy. Though trained to punch and whack, his hands were now delivering gentle touches. Andie noted the contradiction and Justice’s pleasure.
To stop herself from staring at Tom’s hands, she knelt beside him and kissed Justice’s forehead star. “He deserves every hug and pet we can give him,” she said.
“I knew he could do it. He’s a great dog,” Tom said.
When their shoulders brushed, Andie felt his warmth radiate toward her. Their elbows bumped, but neither she nor Tom moved away.
“I have news for you. Sid King ruined my chance to tell you after Shop with a Cop.” Tom got up and grabbed Andie’s hand to help her up, though sh
e was perfectly capable of standing on her own. “I talked with Christopher’s English teacher and his best friend.”
“He has a best friend?”
“Kevin Engelbrit,” Tom said. “Jane and Franz were lying about Christopher staying to himself. Turns out there’s lots they forgot to mention.”
As Justice snapped up his tug toy and continued to prance, Tom described the interviews and explained Christopher’s arrest and the sealed records. “Franz and Jane sent him to an Oregon camp for troubled kids. I’m going there tomorrow.”
Eyes wide, Andie shook her head. “I figured something bad was going on with Christopher, but I thought it was only family problems.”
“I’m sure they were part of it. Looks like something had been building up in him for a while.”
“Why would he steal shirts?” Andie asked.
“Probably just rebelling. Or doing a trial run before stealing something more valuable,” Tom said. “He might have wanted money. Just because drugs weren’t in his system when he died, it doesn’t mean he never did business with the Beast.”
“Could he have been wrongly arrested?”
“He admitted stealing shirts in an essay for his English class.”
Distracted, Andie rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know who the real Christopher was anymore. This makes me sad.”
“I thought you’d be happy. We’re finally getting an honest picture of that kid.”
“How can I be happy? I killed him. I still feel terrible about it. He was a human being.”
“And he stabbed Justice and wanted to stab you,” Tom reminded her. “From the get-go he was a delinquent. We can feel sorry about whatever got him moving in that direction, but he’s still earned some disapproval.”
“I don’t know. My feelings are more complicated than that.” Andie’s exhale seemed weighted with sand.
“Brady, you’ve got to make peace with this.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Tom narrowed his eyes. “You can’t let Christopher ruin your life.”
“Have you ever killed somebody?”
“No, but I came close in Seattle once,” Tom said. “Look, I know how hard it is to shoot someone, and killing him would be even worse. For sure you can’t forget it. But Christopher attacked you. You need to look at it right.”
“How else can I look at being responsible for somebody’s death? You’re not seeing how painful that is.”
“You’re not helping yourself.”
Andie bit her lip as her barometer cheeks reddened. He didn’t get it. Go ahead. Tell me how I’m wrong, and tell me what to do. Act like my lord and master. “You can’t expect me to shrug off killing a troubled kid,” Andie said.
“I didn’t mean it that way. Nobody can shrug off a death. I understand that.”
No, he didn’t understand. Andie had let down her guard and told him too much. Once again he’d managed to weasel behind her wall, and she resented it. She turned away and said, “Justice needs to go home.”
CHAPTER 34
TOM
Tom had planned to ask Andie to come with him to Oregon, but he’d changed his mind after she’d left the Beast’s house in such a rush. Her moods seemed to jump all over the map. She’d be approachable one minute, then turn on him the next. Maybe he’d gone a little heavy on advice, but he’d been trying to help.
Forget it. So much for her. Tom had more important things to think about right now.
Swallowing against the bad taste she’d left in his mouth, Tom turned off the highway at the Sand Cliff Camp sign he’d been told to look for and traveled down a dirt road. The camp, he soon saw, had no sand and no cliff. It was in the middle of woods so thick that the sun had to fight its way through the fir trees just to dapple the ferns and sorrel. It would be dismal here on a stormy day; no wonder campers came only in summer.
He parked beside the central log cabin. It was about the size of San Julian High School’s gym. Around it were shabby Quonset huts for dorms, connected by a maze of paths. Along one of them, Tom found Christopher’s counselor, Matt Stone, digging a trench for electrical wiring.
He was dour and bristly. A machete might have been the best shaving tool for his stubble, and his buzz cut was as stiff as a vegetable brush. When Tom introduced himself, he wondered how kids would like a counselor who looked like he smiled maybe once a month.
“Working hard?” Tom asked.
“We upgrade when the camp’s closed,” Matt grumbled. “The director decreed electricity had to go to the dorms to charge electronics. There’s a pandemic of affluenza here.”
“Lots of entitled brats in the world,” Tom said.
“Tell me about it,” Matt said.
“I’d think your boot camp would bring them down a peg.”
“We’re not a boot camp. Those programs scare the bejesus out of kids so they never misbehave again, but we offer wilderness therapy that lets nature heal them. We support the campers so they figure out their lives themselves.”
Except the campers might not figure out much around someone so stern, Tom thought. “Did wilderness therapy help Christopher Vanderwaal?”
Matt looked like he’d just found a slug curled up in the bottom of his beer. “That kid was one of our failures. A closet sociopath.”
That sounded harsh for a teen who’d only stolen shirts. “Most people I interviewed said he was neat and polite,” Tom said.
“Neat, polite kids can be the ones you have to watch the most. They look like they’ve just left Sunday school, but under that wholesome exterior can beat the heart of a psycho.”
“So Christopher was that bad?”
“Not for the first few days, but he showed his true colors on a camping trip with five other boys.” Matt rammed his shovel into the loose dirt he’d piled up, and leaned his elbow on the handle. “I’d pegged that kid as shy and weak. A follower, you know? Turns out he got the other boys to follow him. They threw this camp into an uproar.”
“How?”
“I’d been showing the campers how to get a fire going without matches. I was rolling the spindle between my hands and waiting for an ember. All of a sudden the six little bastards jumped me. Never happened at this camp before or since.”
“You couldn’t fight them off?”
Matt scoffed. “Ever had a pack of teenage boys drag you to the ground? Six of them, one of me. I fought and kicked. Then I thought, how am I going to explain their bruises on Parents’ Day?”
Matt wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. Digging had warmed him, but recalling that camping trip also seemed to resurrect the heat of anger. The kids had beaten him up, Matt admitted, and Christopher had kept yelling, “Break his leg!” They’d tied Matt to a tree with the rope for setting up tents and taken off into the woods.
Tom made sure his jaw didn’t drop; he couldn’t appear so professionally unseasoned that any delinquent’s story could take him by surprise. Still, he could hardly believe that Christopher had led a revolt. It sounded like a missing link between his arrest for theft and his attack on Justice and Andie; step by step, Christopher had progressed from mere acting out to increasingly violent behavior.
“I assume you rounded up the kids,” Tom said.
“We had search parties, and helicopters flew around here for a few days,” Matt said. “We tried to keep it quiet. Parents don’t want to send their kids to a place like Lord of the Flies.”
“But you pressed charges,” Tom said, as if only a fool would refrain from going after those kids. He pictured more sealed police and court records, more frustration.
“Nope. No charges,” Matt said. “The director nixed arrests, but he did expel the boys. A lot of hard feelings all the way around, I can tell you.”
“Any idea why Christopher turned out to be sadistic?” Toward Matt, then Justice and Brady. If Andie hadn’t killed him, he might have moved on to shooting up his high school.
“Ninety-nine percent of our campers come from dysfunct
ional families, or bad genes get thrown into the mix. If Christopher had stayed here longer, our one-on-one mentoring sessions might have gotten through to him, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“He was sure screwed up.” Tom had seen too many teens like that—and always a waste of potential. It was hard to intercept the self-destructive downward spiral and turn those lives around.
“I never got a very clear sense of him because he didn’t mix much. That’s why I was shocked the other boys went along with him.”
“Was he withdrawn?”
“Yeah. He hung around waiting for the mail every day. The only thing he seemed to care about was letters from his girlfriend.”
Girlfriend?!
CHAPTER 35
ANDREA
Andie lost half an hour waiting for the cooling of her COP cakes—so named for their coconut, oats, and pears. They’d made her late for Chief Malone’s department Christmas party, to which Justice, as a valued member of the force, had also been invited. To dress him up for the occasion, Andie had tied a red satin bow around his neck. She’d fed him dinner with hopes it might keep him from cornering colleagues and persuading them to share their Buffalo chicken wings.
She hurried Justice to her Honda, where he settled on the passenger seat and quickly marked the window with his damp, coal-lump nose. Though late, at the end of her driveway she stopped, hunkered under her coat’s hood, and jumped out of the car. She intended to tie a red bow like Justice’s around her mailbox post—her only Christmas gesture, since she’d not mustered the holiday spirit for her usual tree, wreath, and lights. Better a little something than nothing, she thought.
Her skirt flapping in the wind, Andie snipped the ribbon from a spool and looped the piece around the post. As she started to tie the bow in place, a black SUV approached. Its wipers squawked across the windshield as it drove by Andie, then stopped. The brake lights turned the forest red. The car backed up and parked next to the mailbox. Jane Vanderwaal stepped down onto the road.
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