Rachel comes back to the kitchen. “Hey, Spam. I thought I heard you come in.”
“Hey, Mama-Rach,” she says. “Smells amazing.”
“Chicken Dijon,” Rachel says. “Want to join us?”
“Oh, I wish I could. My dad is making dinner for us. But I wondered if I could borrow Erin for a few minutes?”
Rachel checks her watch. “Fine. Just be back in thirty minutes for dinner. Okay?”
“Will do.” I get up and follow Spam to the door. I pause and look back at Victor. He smiles a normal Victor smile.
“Have fun,” he says.
8
Facebook has a larger database and a better facial recognition algorithm than the FBI. True story.
—SPAM RAMOS
Spam practically drags me down the stairs by my sleeve.
“What’s up?”
“We have to show you something.”
“We?”
“Lysa’s in the car.”
“You can’t show me here?”
“No.”
“Not even in my room?
“No.”
“My attic?”
We round the corner. Lysa is parked behind Victor’s car. As we approach she shifts her car into gear.
“Is this a getaway or something?” I’m joking, but Spam and Lysa don’t even crack a hint of a smile.
“Back or front?” Spam never asks. She always takes the front and will knock you out of the way to get there. When I hesitate, she whips open the door and slips into the back.
“Who are you and what have you done with my friends?” I joke.
“Just get in,” Lysa says.
I climb into the passenger seat. “I have to be home in thirty minutes.”
“Me too,” Lysa says. “We thought you’d handle this better in person.”
“Handle what?” All this intrigue is lighting me up. And, I’ll admit, scaring me, too.
Lysa drives around the block and parks. She turns in her seat toward us. “Me first. So, you know our Cheater Check email account still exists, right?” She pulls out her phone and reviews. “So far, I’ve received three videos, five stills, and six witness statements about the accident. And that’s just since we left school.”
“What are they saying?”
“They’re all defending the skateboarder, of course. Everyone says the accident wasn’t his fault. But no one wants to talk to the new principal or the police about it. They want us to do it.”
Spam flashes a wide-eyed grin. “Because we’re amazing.”
“What do you guys think we should do?” I ask.
“I think we should gather everything, get all the statements and evidence, and then hand it over to Victor,” Lysa says. “He’ll know how to present it to the chief.”
Victor … dang. I drift a little as the image of the FedEx envelope looms.
“Earth to Erin?” Lysa says. She and Spam are both staring at me.
“Sorry. Yeah. Victor would probably be cool with that. Are you taking me home now?”
“There’s more.” Spam leans over the front seat with her laptop open. She clicks some keys. “I was just messing around and thought I’d run the photos through a couple of databases to see if I could ID the skateboarder.…”
“Wait.” I look from Spam to Lysa and back to Spam. “You’re plotting his defense. And you’re stalking him.”
“He was so cuuute,” Spam says.
“How could you tell? Everything happened so fast I barely saw him.”
Spam gives me a serious head-tilt. “Oh, trust me, he’s cute. And yeah, a facial recognition search might sound a little stalker-y—”
I twitch. “Facial recognition … like the NSA does?” I drop my voice to a hush. “Spam, that’s not stalker-y, that’s invasion of privacy.”
“Not really.” She scoffs. “FYI, Facebook has better facial recognition algorithms and a larger database than the FBI.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“True story,” Spam insists.
Lysa waves her hand. “Just show her.”
“Does this mean you know who he is?” I ask.
“No,” Spam says. “But the woman driving the car was in the background of the photo. And I matched to her.”
“So? Everybody knows who she is,” I say.
“Right,” Spam says. “But not everybody knows her picture is on Victor’s murder board.” Spam clicks some keys and brings up a photo of the woman behind the wheel of the car, compared to a photo of the woman on the whiteboard. There is a green border around each photo and the word MATCH.
“She’s a suspect,” Lysa says. “Or a witness. I wasn’t sure.”
“Wait. You took a photo of the murder board?”
“Of course,” Spam says. “So did Lysa. You didn’t?”
“Hmmm. I was going to…”
“Her name’s Arletta Stone,” Lysa says. “She’s head of the Iron Rain Historical Society. She tried to block the sale of the cannery to Journey’s parents. She also testified that the cannery is haunted.” Lysa starts the car. “I’ll research more about her tonight.”
Lysa puts the car in gear and heads back to my house.
A familiar chill envelops me. “Wait, does it mean anything that someone related to Jameson’s case crashed her car at our school, nearly killing us?” I ask.
“You know what you always say about evidence—if it’s there it means something.” Spam shrugs. “Anyway, it creeped us out.”
“What if she saw us and thought the skateboarder was Journey? She could’ve been aiming for him,” Lysa says. “The newspaper article had all of our photos and mentioned how, with Victor back in town, certain cases might be reexamined. If there are any guilty people out there, hovering below the radar, that statement has got to make them nervous.”
“Interesting theory,” I say. “But running over kids with a car in front of a bunch of witnesses at their school doesn’t sound like the best plan of a criminal mastermind.”
“Sometimes criminal masterminds just freak out and panic.” Spam shuts her laptop. “Case in point, Principal Roberts.”
True.
9
When you find evidence, you don’t always know what it means. But if you found it, you can bet it means something.
—ERIN BLAKE
The girls drop me off at the end of my driveway.
Victor is out shooting hoops, and judging by the huge damp patches on his shirt he’s pushed himself to a punishing workout. He pauses as I walk up.
“Where’d you go?” he asks.
“Nowhere. We just drove around. You know, girl talk.”
He nods. “Are they excited about CSI camp?”
I nod. “Oh yeah. Very excited.”
“Good,” he says. “This camp stuff will be the perfect outlet for your forensic curiosity, which should keep you from messing with any real cases that might come up.”
I blink. Did he really just say that?
Victor bounces the ball to me. “A little one-on-one?”
I bounce it back to him. “Nah. I’m kind of tired.” I wander into the house, dazed about everything: the creepy new principal, the classroom, the lab, the accident, the skateboarder, Arletta Stone, Journey as Victor’s intern … and the big one: Victor doesn’t trust me.
“Perfect timing.” Rachel greets me with a friendly hip bump and hands me a stack of dinner plates. All I want to do is retreat to my bedroom sanctuary, but first I’ll have to make it through dinner.
I drift around the kitchen gathering utensils and setting the table. The structure of the routine grounds me and allows me to swallow back the bad feelings, at least temporarily.
It helps that Victor followed me in and went straight upstairs to wash up.
What does he mean, messing with real cases? Is the strange and violent appearance of Arletta Stone the beginning of a real case? What about gathering witness statements and photos about the skateboarder? Would that be helping or messing something
up? I used to think I understood the parameters. Now I’m not so sure.
I silently assist Rachel in ferrying the food to the table. I can feel her gaze on me. She wears her worry like a gorilla suit. I offer her a thin smile, knowing it’s not enough.
Oblivious, Victor drops into his seat at precisely the right moment and in mid-conversation.
“I have some great guidelines on how we’ll structure the CSI camp. I’m thinking each week will have a theme that supports one of our core forensic techniques. We’ll offer two hands-on science experiments and pair that with some flashy crime scene setups. The rest of the time we’ll focus on learning important skills like observation and deductive reasoning.”
The more he talks, the more his enthusiasm builds.
“Sounds fun.” The words are there, but admittedly my enthusiasm is weak.
Rachel is quietly listening and watching both of us. Finally, she puts down her fork and rests her elbows on the table. “I’m not sure that luring kids into a camp by promising flashy crime scene analysis is a good idea, Vic.”
He looks confused. “What?”
“You’re not a parent,” Rachel says. “You’ve never spent much time around kids. There are things that might seem simple and straightforward to you, but could actually trigger an emotional trauma.”
Victor tilts his head, arching one eyebrow. “I’m not planning anything ‘triggering.’” He uses air quotes around that word.
Rachel shifts her gaze to me, briefly, then looks back at Victor. “What I’m saying is … you don’t know a lot about kids and how they behave, so you might not understand what this kind of stuff can generate.” She trails off by glancing back at me.
“Sis, you need to be specific. I lecture on this stuff. I’ve testified in front of juries. I know about boundaries and how to use them. They write books on this stuff for sixth-graders.”
He doesn’t get it, but I do. “She’s talking about me.”
Victor looks from me to Rachel and back again. Rachel pinches her lips together. An awkward silence attacks the room.
“Are you talking about Erin?” Victor asks. “Are you worried about her working at the camp?”
Rachel inhales noisily and wets her lips. “‘Worried’ might be too strong a word. I’d like to see Erin diversify. Get into art or dance or something other than crime.”
“Rachel, please don’t say I can’t do the camp.” My emotions squeeze the life out of me from the inside. I might be upset with Victor right at this moment, but I don’t want to be blocked from working with him. “It’s an amazing opportunity.” I’m trying so hard to appear normal that I can hardly breathe. My voice is a desperate gasp.
Rachel balls up her napkin and sets it beside her plate. I recognize this motion. What’s coming next is Rachel’s “end of discussion” bottom line.
Victor spots it too. He waves his hands to calm us both down. “Look, sis. Obviously, you have data and experience that I don’t have.”
She acknowledges his comment with a slight nod.
“But I also have data and experience that you don’t have.”
Rachel opens her mouth to speak, but Victor silences her with a raised finger.
“Here’s my suggestion,” he says. “Let’s not decide anything today. I’m sure that what I have planned will ease your concerns—we are including kids as young as sixth grade, so everything will be very tame. But let me get the program together and present it to you before you decide. Okay?”
Rachel thinks for a minute. “Okay,” she says, flashing me a happier face. “I’m willing to table this for now.”
I breathe a sigh. I’m sure if I get my emotions under control I’ll be able to handle Victor’s attitude and my limitations. But once Rachel says no, it’s impossible to get her back to yes.
“I could use some help getting the classroom set up. You don’t have any objections to Erin and her friends helping with that after school, do you?”
“No. That’s fine.” Rachel stands and starts to bus her plate from the table.
“Leave it, Rachel,” I say. “I’ve got it.”
“Oh. Thank you.” She looks a little surprised and a lot grateful. “Okay then, I’m going to head over to Charles’s for a bit. We’re going to watch a movie.”
There have been a lot of surprises over the last few weeks, not the least of which is that I found out that Rachel had been secretly dating Chief Culson for over a year. Things are out in the open now, but when I first heard it I was in shock.
“Have fun,” Victor says.
After Rachel leaves I start to clear the table. Victor listens until he hears her get to the bottom of the stairs, then he picks the conversation right up from where we left off, completely ignoring Rachel’s concern.
“You probably know this, but there’s already a summer camp program at the school that’s run by Coach Wilkins.”
I nod as I remove Victor’s plate from the table.
“We’ll be an offshoot of that,” he explains. “A much cooler and more fun offshoot.” He grins. His attitude is infectious.
“Definitely cooler and more fun,” I agree.
“We’ll operate the same five days, Monday through Friday, and during the same hours. The kids will bring a sack lunch; we’ll provide a snack. I’ll handle the heavy lifting, which will be a great way to ease me into the teaching environment. And you and the girls can teach them all your tricks.”
By tricks I assume he means all those things I did to uncover what Principal Roberts had done and what Victor now considers “messing with a real case.” “Do you mean teach them how to lift prints and chromatography?”
Victor’s gaze travels around the room as he thinks about my question. “Chromatography, definitely … because that has a strong science base. Not sure about the fingerprints. I still have to get some approvals from the new principal.” At the mention of Miss Blankenship, we both make a spontaneous “there is no emoji for her” face. “You saw her opinion about this stuff on the TV interview. So, I’ll have to consider how much she will let us do.”
I shiver just thinking about Blankface. She is the coldest person I have ever met. If someone told me she was a robot, I would totally believe it. I plan on keeping my distance from her.
“Sounds good,” I say, loading dishes into the dishwasher.
I want to ask him about the FedEx envelope, too. Get all my angst and trauma over in one swoop. But I don’t know how to broach the subject. He has no reason to think that I suspect anything. And there’s also a good chance that envelope deals with his work problem.
In the end, I focus on taking care of the dishes and trying not to worry about Victor or the FedEx envelope. When I’m done, I head upstairs to my bedroom.
I flip on the bedroom light and survey my overflowing laundry basket in the middle of the room. It might be all in one place, but it’s not going to wash itself.
Ugh. Maybe later.
Instead I retreat to my attic with my book.
I step into my giant walk-in closet and pull the cord dangling from the ceiling. A set of narrow stairs accordion down and I climb up through the dark hole. At the top of the stairs I flip on the light, washing the area in a gentle glow.
When I first discovered this space, I kept it a secret from everyone, including Rachel. I used it to hide my secret Cheater Checks lab—and my mother’s murder box. It turned out I wasn’t the only one hiding things. Rachel had stashed my mother’s belongings up here—her furniture, photographs, and letters. Everything. Once I saw it and lived with it, there was no way Rachel could take it away.
Victor helped me convince her that keeping this space sacred for me, and me alone, would help me process all that I had lost. The murder box of evidence went back to the police department, of course. And there’s not really a lab up here anymore. But there is a sofa and coffee table and lamps. And there’s even a desk and cabinet on one side. It’s a cool place to hang out and it’s the one place I never let get messy like my be
droom.
I lay back on the sofa and try to feel her presence. “Hey, Mom,” I whisper. My new ritual doesn’t include anything gruesome like hugging a box of murder evidence or lying on top of an outline of her body. I just spend time thinking about her and trying to remember things.
I lie down, close my eyes, and think of the very earliest thing I can remember. I continue to hope that one day I’ll grasp an actual memory of her. A memory of my mother’s touch or of an expression or gesture. I’d even love to be able to lock in on the way she smelled. But I was very young when she was murdered, so there’s not much there to work with.
For years, I was irrationally terrified by the tiny shadow of a cross. But I didn’t understand why until the night Principal Roberts admitted what he had done. Finding my mother’s things hidden in our attic and having access to what was contained in her murder box filled in some of the blanks for me. The photo on the front of the old newspaper filled in even more.
It was taken the night Rachel discovered us—me, curled alongside my mother’s cold, lifeless body. The photo showed the front of our house, surrounded by flashing lights, officers, and crime scene tape. In the foreground, a stunned, tearstained, and disheveled Rachel sits on the bumper of an ambulance, gripping baby me, wrapped in her jacket.
Her finger is pressed against my chin to avert my face from the activity in the house. But my eyes are trained on the action as a body is wheeled out, shrouded in dark plastic.
I’d like to think I understood that was the last time I would ever see my mother. But I’m unable to grasp the memory to confirm that. Periodically, I try to tap into it using various relaxation, breathing, and visualization techniques, because if I don’t, I risk forgetting about it altogether. And that’s something I’m not willing to do.
Just as I’m starting to relax into my memory I hear a squeak from the closet stairs. I sit up as Journey’s head pops up through the hole in the ceiling.
10
Feelings of dread, flashbacks, nightmares, and even a loss of personal identity, also known as a fugue state, can be expected after an intense, emotional, or life-threatening event.
To Right the Wrongs Page 5