“Let me check with Victor.” I pull out my phone to send a text. But instead of bars of cellular dominance I have a disappointing red circle with a slash through it. “Wait, no cell service?”
Spam gasps, horrified. “That can’t be right.” She whips her cell phone out of her back pocket and checks the screen. “I have one bar. Nope, gone. Seriously?”
Lysa’s already gazing at hers. “Yep. Looks that way.”
Clay pops his head out of the storage room and points with his paintbrush. “There’s a phone on the wall by the door. You can use that.”
I wander over and pick up the receiver on the wall phone. I regard it curiously. It’s so big and bulky. “When did they start doing this?”
Clay laughs. “You’re kidding, right?”
I give him a blank look.
“You’ve never noticed there are phones in all of your classrooms?” he asks. “It’s a required safety feature.”
I dangle my cell phone. “Why would I need to notice something like that?”
Clay shakes his head. “You kids.” He closes the door to the storage room and goes back to his painting.
“So call him,” Spam says.
It’s completely awkward to have to look up Victor’s number on one phone and then dial it into another. But at least it’s ringing.
After a few seconds, Victor answers. “Yeah?”
“Hey, it’s me. Um, Erin.” In case he doesn’t recognize my voice. “Are you coming back to the school and can you give me a ride home?”
He tells me he’s on his way back. I nod and wave to Lysa and Spam. “He’s coming. You guys can go.”
After I hang up with Victor, Clay comes out of the storage room. “I’m going to wash out these paintbrushes. The storage room is done. I moved a few things so I wouldn’t get paint on them. But the only part that might still be wet is the ceiling.”
“Okay.” Once he leaves, I duck into the storage room to see what needs to be moved back. There are a few boxes of supplies on the floor that belong on the top shelf. I’m tall enough to slide them into place without even using the stepladder.
At first, when I hear voices from the other room I think maybe Spam and Lysa have come back. But it turns out it’s Coach Wilkins and his cousin, Arletta Stone. They’re peering into the lab through the steel mesh grate. Arletta has her cellphone out and is even taking photos.
“Can I help you?” I step out into the classroom.
“Oh hi, Erin,” Coach says. “I was just showing my cousin the new lab.”
Something feels off about this. “You should come back when Victor’s here,” I say. “He’ll probably give you a full tour.” Or maybe he’ll tell them to mind their own business, which is what I’m really thinking.
“We’ll do that,” Coach says. He tugs on his cousin’s arm. “C’mon. We should go.”
She drops her phone into her purse and starts to follow him out the door but she pauses in front of me. “It’s so exciting that we have one of those labs here in our city now. I’m just crazy about those forensic shows and how they catch people. Aren’t you?”
I nod. “Yep. Big fan.” I refuse to get too chatty, hoping they’ll just leave.
As they’re passing through the door, Clay comes back. He notices my wary stance. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Did they do something?”
I shake my head. “No. But I don’t think they’re supposed to just be lurking around when Victor’s not here.”
Clay raises his eyebrows. “The guy’s been here nearly every day. But he’s a teacher, right?”
I shrug. “He’s the coach, so yeah. But you ought to let Victor know that he’s been hanging around.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Clay says. “I’ll keep an eye on things like that. Anyone else I should look out for?”
I shrug. “The principal, maybe.”
“She’s been here too. Not as often. She says she’s checking on the construction.”
I pinch my lips together, not sure what to say.
Clay nods. “Got it. I’ll mention both of them to the boss.” He turns his attention to hanging some bulletin boards, and I take a seat at the teacher’s desk and turn on the computer that Spam set up. I initiate a search for ballistics.
We’ve turned in our activities for the camp to Victor, but I still have a few facts about ballistics to flesh out.
“This is so amazing,” I mutter, while jotting down a few notes.
“What’s that?” Clay asks.
“This stuff I’m researching. Like even the slightest remnant of a gunshot can be traced to a specific firearm, where it was sold, and the owner.” I look up at Clay. “How do they even do that?”
“Beats me,” Clay says with a shrug. “But I guess you’re going to find out, huh?”
“I guess so.”
Looking up stuff about guns reminds me of Jameson’s case. I run back through the facts again. It was his shotgun. They know that. They know where it came from. They even know that it had been handled and loaded by him at some time in the past. What types of evidence could possibly prove that someone else loaded that gun and swapped it with the paintball gun that night?
An eyewitness. Except there wasn’t one.
I consider fingerprints and even shoe prints, since those helped me build the case against Principal Roberts.
Have they added anything to the murder board?
I go to the window and peer into the lab. The angle of the murder board makes it a little hard to see from here. But I try anyway.
“They haven’t done anything in there in a couple of days,” Clay says. “They’ve been too busy.”
“Yeah. They have been crazy busy.”
Based on Victor and Journey’s workload, I decide it’s okay for me to research the evidence in Jameson’s trial. Lysa’s right. Researching is just reading, and it’s all public record.
Except that everything I read leads to more questions.
Police didn’t find any unused ammunition on the premises. But they collected a handful of spent brass shells. What happened to the paintball gun and paint balls? Also how did a shotgun with no ammunition kill an innocent kid?
It started with the ammunition so I wonder if there’s a way to track the purchase of that stuff. I’m sure I’ve seen them do this on TV. A cursory check tells me tracking a large order might be possible, but no one is keeping records on a random box of shotgun shells. That’s simply not a thing.
About that time, Victor comes flying in the door. He’s juggling a shopping bag in one hand and his cell phone against his ear with the other.
“Hello … hello?” he says. “Did I lose you?” He drops the bag on one of the desks and heads back toward the door. “If you’re still there, I can’t hear you so I’m hanging up.”
He hangs up the phone and looks at me.
“No cell service,” I say.
“Exactly,” he says. “And I absolutely love that about this space. It forces me off the phone with people I didn’t want to talk to in the first place.”
“Is that about the—you know—” I ask.
“Yes,” he confirms. “And I told you, that’s for me to worry about and you to forget.”
I surrender. Hands up, palms out. Whatever.
“Is the contractor still here?” he asks.
Clay sticks his head out of the storage room. “Yep. Just wrapping up. Journey said you wanted to talk about door locks. If you tell me how many you need I can pick them up at the hardware store.”
Victor unpacks the items from the shopping bag. “I’ve got them right here. We’re putting biometric locks on every door.” He points to all the different areas. “Exterior doors, both sides. The door between the classroom and the lab. The door to the storage closet. And then this silver one here is for the evidence locker because it works differently.”
Clay lays out the boxes. He pencils LOCKER on the silver box. “Biometric, huh?”
“That’s right. Your key is your—” Victor ho
lds up his finger.
“I’m familiar with it.” Clay raises his eyebrows. “You don’t usually see James Bond technology in the schools, though.”
“Biometrics are becoming quite common,” Victor says. “Heck, the kids even use it to unlock their cell phones these days. It’s the same principle.”
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Clay wonders. “Like if there’s a power failure or something? Don’t you need a fail-safe plan?”
“The locks for the doors have a safety release. If the power goes out, they automatically unlock. The one for the locker works in reverse. If the power goes out it seals it in the closed position. For anything else, a master key will be kept in the safe in the school office. And probably one at the police department, too. But you don’t have to worry about that. I just need you to do the installation so we can get rid of the clunky padlock. And then we need to discuss the safety equipment.”
Clay examines the parts of the lock that Victor has presented to him.
“I’ll get these in tomorrow,” he says. “Then we can go over the safety stuff.”
“Sounds good.” Victor and Clay shake hands.
This gets more exciting by the day. The new classroom and lab are already high tech. But biometric locks are supercool.
“It’s good that you’re putting in the locks,” I say. “Because people have been snooping down here.”
“Snooping?” Victor says. “Who?”
“The coach and his cousin were down here today.” I give Victor a studied look.
Victor shrugs. “Yeah. Wilkins is all wound up about this. Thinks it’s really cool. Wants to be my new best friend or something.”
I make eye contact with Clay and nod toward Victor.
Clay clears his throat. “Yeah. The principal has made a few trips down here too. Says she’s checking on the construction.”
Victor shrugs again. “That’s okay. She’s just doing her job. Anyone else, though, needs my permission to be in here. Got it?” Victor looks from me to Clay.
We both nod. “Got it,” Clay says.
I shoot Victor the thumbs-up.
30
Never before in our long, legal history has science played a role this important in the protection and enforcement of our laws.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
On the drive home, Victor’s abnormally motormouth and can’t shut up.
“A shipment is arriving around ten tomorrow. If I’m not there, you can sign for it. It’ll be supplies and stuff for both the camp and the classroom. You guys can unpack it and arrange it in the storage room. Oh, and we need to start setting up the evidence locker, too. I’ve requested the evidence from Jameson’s case. That’s coming sometime this week.”
This sounds promising.
“You need us to help with the evidence locker?”
Victor glances over. “No. Sorry. That’s on Journey’s to-do list because, you know—”
“Yeah. I know,” I say, adding a sigh, which he completely ignores.
“Good.” He starts up again. “If Clay gets the locks installed tomorrow, we’ll need to create the biometric files. Can you round up all your friends to be there at the same time? Then I can do the basic files all at once. Is that possible?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Sorry if I’m running through this fast,” he says. “This thing with the job is giving me a rash.”
My head snaps around. “I thought you said it was fine?”
“And it is,” he says. “It’s fine. They just want a bunch of answers to all of their questions and I have ten other fires burning to get ready for this camp. I don’t have time to deal with them right now.”
Victor continues to talk and plan all the way into the driveway and even as we climb the stairs together. I already heard from Rachel that she has a meeting after work and won’t be home for dinner, so I’m planning to make lasagna and salad for Victor and me.
He dumps his briefcase and stuff on the kitchen table … which is still piled with his work folders and papers from last night.
I silently contemplate the mess on the table.
My room was always kind of a disaster, but Rachel and I had an understanding about leaving our stuff lying around the rest of the house. Neither of us do it. But I don’t want to say anything. Victor charges up to his room and I start working on the lasagna. Hopefully, by the time I get out the plates for dinner, he’ll realize we need a place to eat.
He charges down the stairs, dressed in a pair of sweats, and bounds out the back door. I’m thinking he’s going down to shoot some hoops. Instead he returns a few minutes later, lugging a very large box that’s at least five feet tall and three feet wide.
“Guess what I bought today?”
“No clue,” I say, eyeing the box.
“An actual desk,” he says. “So I can get all my junk off the table.”
“Good one. Where are you going to put it?”
“I haven’t talked to Rachel yet. But I was thinking of setting it up in a corner of the dining room.”
I shrug. “We don’t use that room anyway.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” he says. “Want to help me?”
“As soon as I get this into the oven.”
Helping Victor assemble the desk reminds me of all the things that I’ve loved about him from the very beginning. He’s funny and smart and we can just hang out for hours with each other. We’re just easy like that.
I read the instructions and hand him the parts and he does the assembly stuff.
In no time, an actual desk appears before us.
“Impressive,” I say.
“Any parts left over?” Victor asks.
“Nope.”
“Then we must’ve done it right,” he says. “Now to find the perfect spot.”
We first move the desk into the corner, on the shared wall between the kitchen and the dining room. But Victor thinks that’s too dark. Then we try it on the exterior wall below the window that looks out over the driveway. Victor even turns around a chair and sits down, trying it out. But in the end, he doesn’t like that placement, either.
“I’m used to sitting at a desk that faces out, not facing a wall,” he says.
I stand back and survey the area.
“We could take the leaves out of the table, which will make it smaller. Then it will fit against the wall to the kitchen.” I stand in the middle, gesturing like one of those guys on an airport runway. “That way your desk would fit in the middle…”
“And the credenza could go behind it. Perfect. Grab an end,” Victor says.
We move the furniture around, positioning each piece, until the room looks a lot more like an office than a dining room. There’s even a space where the credenza used to be that perfectly fits a couple of chairs and a small table, in case Victor has visitors.
He scoops up the large pile of mail that had been stacked on the credenza and dumps it in the middle of his desk. Then he goes to the kitchen table and scoops up all of the papers, bringing them to the desk too. “I will take care of all of this tonight,” he says. Then he pauses and gives me one of his high-eyebrow, tilted-head, “wait for it” looks. He burrows his fingers deep into the stack and pulls out a FedEx envelope and frames it between his hands. Actually, it’s the FedEx envelope.
“This is it. Unopened.” He shows me both sides. Then he opens the center drawer and places the FedEx envelope inside. “Let’s agree that we will put this in here.”
I nod. “Agreed.”
We high-five and even do the basketball shoulder slam to seal the deal. When we’re done celebrating we turn to see Rachel standing in the doorway.
Her face is blank and her eyebrows are peaked.
I know this look.
I can’t say she’s mad, exactly. But she’s not happy, either.
Victor sees her and lights up. “Hey, sis. Look, I’m cleaning up all of my crap.”
“I can see that.” She blinks a few times and I
can tell she’s carefully choosing her words.
“I hope you don’t mind if I set things up in here,” Victor asks. “Obviously, once school starts I’ll be able to move more of this stuff to my classroom. But in the meantime, like Erin says, you hardly use this room.”
“Thanksgiving,” Rachel says. “We use the dining room on Thanksgiving.” It’s subtle, but Rachel crosses her arms over her chest. It’s her personal barricade.
Victor shrugs a little self-consciously. “Noted. That’s still some months away. But I will make sure the dining room is available by Thanksgiving.” He suddenly wilts a little, as if he realizes he might have overstepped bounds. “Listen, if you’d rather, I can move it all upstairs now. There’s room and it’s not a bother.” He gestures broadly. “I was just really enjoying hanging out in the family space.”
“No,” she says. “It’s fine. Really. It just took me by surprise is all.” Now she turns her gaze on me. “I was curious to see what you were up to, though. You guys sounded like you were having so much fun. I could hear you all the way outside.”
Hmm. So that’s the other part of it. Rachel heard Victor and I yukking it up. As much as I love Rachel, that’s not something that she and I do.
“I thought you were going to be late tonight?” I ask.
“I was,” she says. “But the meeting ended early, so I thought I’d come home and see what you two were up to.”
“I made lasagna for dinner,” I say.
She pulls me into a hug that is about so much more than dinner. “I was thinking maybe we could go out. Just the two of us. Like old times.”
* * *
Rachel and I leave Victor with a timer set for when the lasagna should come out of the oven and we head off to our favorite neighborhood fish restaurant. I always order the fish and chips and Rachel always orders the grilled salmon.
We chatter casually about work and school, finals, and the camp. The chief and Journey.
“Victor told me you two talked.”
I freeze. Is she referring to the Schrödinger cat, FedEx envelope talk or…? What other talk could she be referring to?
“About?” I have to play this one safe. I can’t just walk out on an emotional ledge without knowing what Rachel knows or where she’s coming from.
To Right the Wrongs Page 16