* * *
“Let’s see it,” Justin said, when he and Andrew met up right outside the building.
Andrew opened the planner, the smile fading from his face. The little black notebook was more of a lesson planner than a life planner. The contacts section remained totally blank. Like the rest of the world, Greenly probably kept his contacts in his phone. The calendar section was chock-full, but only with items related to school.
“That was all for nothing?” Justin asked.
Andrew turned the last few pages, reluctant to admit defeat. He reached a section titled Notes. It, too, was empty except for three lines. Each one held a different ten-character combination of letters and numbers.
Andrew’s heart rate picked up.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be as futile as he thought.
He had a feeling he knew exactly what those were.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
For the first time in recent memory, Sabrina ditched her last-period class and went straight home after school, while the rest of her friends were working through the list of teacher suspects. Her neck and shoulders had been throbbing all day from the residual pain of the car accident.
She took two ibuprofen and slipped into the shower. As the hot water cascaded over her, she imagined it washing away the stress. The white van. The accident. The strangely terrifying conversation with Wincott that morning … Nash.
She’d replayed the memory of their kiss many times since then, each time reminded of a new detail. The unexpectedly gentle way he’d touched her cheek just before he kissed her, the smooth skin her fingers had grazed under his shirt, the way their bodies had come together as if by gravitational force.
But what was the point of experiencing something so perfect only to have it snatched away?
Nash had been strictly professional in the meeting, as she’d expected. Sabrina understood the position he was in, but couldn’t help feeling a bit stung. He could’ve given her a sign … a look … something that showed he was feeling the same way she was, even if he couldn’t act on it. Was staying away as hard for him as it was for her? Or was he actually able to turn off his emotions as easily as it seemed?
And would there ever be a point where they could be together? If they solved the case and found the serum, he would no longer be constrained by FBI protocol … and they would be free to do whatever they wanted. It was yet another good, if not completely unselfish, reason to try to find the serum as quickly as possible. Sure, saving the world from any number of terrifying scenarios was the top priority, but getting a chance to be with Nash was a close second in Sabrina’s mind.
A chance to be with him. It wasn’t a given. Solving the case could also mean that he would move on to his next one, wherever that took him, and forget all about her. Sure, he had admitted he cared about what happened to her … and that he’d saved her phone number in case she wasn’t picked … but how much did that actually mean?
Suddenly, the lights went out in the bathroom. She stiffened, on high alert. Was this a sign a ghost was about to appear?
Then the water turned cold, so icy cold that it sent a shiver up her spine. She tried to adjust the faucet, but no matter how she turned it, the temperature remained freezing. Goose bumps erupted on her skin as she reached outside the shower and grabbed her towel, but she didn’t see anything at all. Strange.
As she stepped off the mat, she slipped on a huge puddle of water, catching herself right before she slammed to the ground. Water was all over the floor. Sabrina sighed. The shower must have some kind of leak. Something with the pipes, which would explain why the water went cold. Here she was thinking this was some kind of sign from a ghost, when really it was just another sign of this house falling apart. The power had probably gone out, too. Had her father even remembered to pay the last bill? As many changes as the serum had brought about for Sabrina, it couldn’t change her miserable family situation. Talk about lost causes.
She pulled a few towels from under the sink and started mopping up the mess, wondering how was she going to get a leak fixed on top of everything else she had going on in her life. The lights came back on and she breathed a sigh of relief. Now she only had the pipes to worry about and not the electric bill.
When she finally stood up and looked in the mirror, she gasped.
There, in the condensation, someone had written a name.
Amy Hanson.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Andrew was sprawled on his bed later that afternoon when the call from Nash came through.
“I’m letting you know we’re crossing Manzetti off our list,” Nash told him.
“Why?” Andrew had thought that Sweaty Manzetti’s major credit card debt could have indicated desperation.
“I had a little time today to hack into his home security cameras. He has a totally hooked-up smart house, cameras throughout.” It didn’t surprise Andrew that technology teacher Manzetti had set up such a state-of-the-art system. Maybe that’s what he blew all his money on. “The feed is automatically uploaded and stored to the cloud for six months before it deletes.”
“You went back to the date of Devon’s murder,” Andrew guessed. He knew the medical examiner had given them a four-hour window to work with.
“Correct,” Nash replied. “Manzetti has a camera at every entrance to his house — and then some. I was able to track him arriving home that day, eating dinner with his wife —”
“Sweaty Manzetti has a wife?”
“Focus. After they ate, they had a beer on their porch together and went to bed.”
“Another one bites the dust.” It was both exciting and terrifying each time the suspect field narrowed, bringing them that much closer to the true killer.
“What are you working on right now?” Nash asked.
“Just doing some recon,” Andrew replied vaguely.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Nash — that was Z’s department — but he didn’t want to let on what his plans were for the rest of the afternoon.
Because Andrew was about to hack into Greenly’s email.
He didn’t want Nash offering to take over the job himself. Andrew was relishing the chance to take Greenly down once and for all.
He hung up with Nash and turned back to his laptop. He’d already entered the email address Greenly had given to his students at the beginning of the year.
Now, the cursor clicked, awaiting the password.
Andrew carefully typed in one of the ten-character combinations from the back of Greenly’s notebook. He clicked enter, holding his breath to see if his earlier hunch would prove to be correct.
Invalid.
He typed in the second one.
Bingo.
Greenly’s inbox filled his screen.
The good news was that it appeared he was the type of person who rarely deleted an email. The bad news was that it meant there were over ten thousand messages to sift through.
Andrew skimmed through the first few pages of Greenly’s emails quickly. He was surprised to find dozens of personal email addresses, indicating Greenly had actual acquaintances he corresponded with, though it seemed to be mostly about Rockies baseball. The teacher was involved in two different fantasy baseball leagues.
After he’d gone through hundreds of emails, nothing jumped out at him. Andrew rubbed his eyes, trying to relieve the tension. The headaches had been getting worse lately, but thanks to a few medical journal articles, he now knew it was due to eyestrain and not a resurgence of his hypochondria.
He returned to the screen, switching tactics and jumping to the emails right around the dates of Lily Carpenter’s murder and then Devon Warner’s. There was nothing to suggest an alibi for either of the dates … no parties, no events. However, there was nothing suspicious either.
Growing impatient, he clicked on the Search Emails field. He typed in “s
erum.” No emails found. That was a long shot, anyway.
He typed in “Devon Warner.” No emails found.
He typed in “Lily Carpenter.”
One email popped up.
However, it wasn’t from Lily Carpenter. It was from a man named Frank Jenkins and it had been sent to Greenly and thirty other people. It was flagged because one of the other recipients of the email had the last name Carpenter.
Robert Carpenter.
It was the name of Lily’s ex-husband. The one she kept in touch with before her death, if the picture on her mantel gave any indication.
Could it be the same Robert Carpenter? And if so, did that mean Greenly knew him?
Andrew clicked to the body of the email.
Hey, guys, can you believe it’s been 30 years since we all lived in Hoover Hall? Who’s going to the UNM reunion this weekend? Would love to see some old faces. Literally.
Frank had attached a photo that looked to be about twenty years old, according to the clothing — a bunch of guys crammed into a dorm common room.
Andrew immediately recognized one of the guys as a young Greenly.
His eyes traveled across the photo and his pulse picked up.
Robert Carpenter, easily identifiable from the photo on Lily’s mantel, was standing next to Greenly.
So Greenly had a connection to Lily Carpenter through her ex-husband. He and Robert Carpenter had gone to college together at the University of New Mexico.
Was Robert Carpenter just an old acquaintance of Greenly’s? There were no other emails between them to suggest a relationship. But wouldn’t Greenly have deleted incriminating correspondence?
What if Greenly had learned about the serum through him? Then he had worked in tandem with Devon Warner and killed him for the serum later?
Which made him think of something else — was one of these men in the photo Devon Warner? He scanned the faces quickly before realizing that the timeline didn’t add up. Devon was in his late twenties. These men were a few decades older than that.
Andrew was startled by the sound of his phone ringing.
“Andrew, where are you?” Sabrina asked, clearly agitated.
“Home. Why? Are you okay?”
“I need your help with something.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Nash was at his desk at Cytology, relieved that the day was over. He hadn’t felt right about the decision to send the group to school today knowing that one of their teachers was a killer who could be on their trail. Way too risky.
However, Patricia had pulled rank, and the only thing Nash could do was periodically check the grainy camera feeds he’d placed around Cedar Springs High to try to catch a glimpse of each of them throughout the day. Unfortunately, the cameras were sporadically placed.
“You’re still watching them?” Patricia had asked at one point earlier that day when she’d poked her head in.
“Just keeping an eye on things,” he maintained coolly. “Protecting our assets.”
“They’re fine,” Patricia said with a dismissive wave. Was she too emotionally involved with the case, causing her to put lives in jeopardy because she wanted it solved? Or did she see the five of them as merely tools? Either way, her lack of precaution alarmed him. Though he could admit the amount of intel the group had funneled to them by the end of the day was impressive, it didn’t ease his nerves.
He turned his eyes away from the school security feed and back to his laptop. Robert Carpenter. That’s the one he needed to concentrate on right now. Andrew had just called him to report the connection between Greenly and Carpenter — they were old college friends. Robert had an airtight alibi for the evening of Lily’s murder. But if he, Greenly and Devon Warner were working together, Robert could have covered his tracks that night. Suspicion would naturally fall to an ex-husband, particularly an ex-husband aware of the serum’s value. Greenly and Devon could’ve done all the dirty work while Robert was the brains behind the operation.
Now Nash was attempting to piece together an accurate time line for Robert during the time frame of Devon’s murder. Robert may not have been as careful to secure an alibi that night as he had been for Lily’s. Nash was also keen to get a better idea of why Lily and Robert’s marriage had dissolved and what level of acrimony it had reached — and not necessarily from Patricia, who had been too close to Lily to be objective on the matter. Of course, it was possible that Robert hadn’t been involved in any murders at all. Greenly could have learned about the serum from Robert and acted on his own accord with Devon.
Either way, it was a big find from Andrew. So why was Nash having such a hard time focusing on it?
There was something blocking him. A feeling that there was more danger he had missed. Or that there was something else hurtling toward them that he hadn’t anticipated. It was only an instinct, but he never ignored his instincts. Not only had they saved his life and others in the field, they were what had led him straight into the FBI in the first place. It was rare to be recruited right out of high school, but the FBI had been watching him since he was ten years old.
Ever since they killed his father.
Nash had been just a toddler when his father left, and his subsequent visits over the years were rare. Random drop-ins that made Nash, his mother and his stepfather increasingly uncomfortable. Nash’s father was always ranting about something new — secret wars, government robots, apocalyptic notions. Nash might not have understood the bizarre theories, but even as a child, he knew the thinking behind them was flawed and inaccurate.
On his father’s last visit to Nash, they met on his mom’s front porch and Nash made no move to hug him. For one thing, they rarely had physical contact. But his father smelled acrid this time, like motor oil.
He asked Nash what grade he was in and if he still played soccer. After a few more routine questions, his father circled back to soccer.
“You still play over at Woodley Park?”
“Sometimes,” Nash answered.
“When?”
“On the weekends.”
“Never after school?”
Nash told him no. There were too many lowlifes, junkies and cops hanging around the park on weekdays because of the courthouse right next to it. His father made a few comments about how the government was responsible for the mass addiction problems of the poor in this country and how the wrong people were being tried in that courthouse.
Later that night, Nash replayed the conversation in his head, something telling him not to let it go. His father had kept asking him about soccer. Why? He’d never been interested in any sports. Why had he suddenly taken such a keen interest in where and when Nash played?
When Nash woke up the next morning, it hit him all at once. The leading questions to confirm that he wouldn’t be at Woodley Park on a weekday … the stench of motor oil emanating from his father’s body as if he’d bathed in it …
Nash had never been more certain of anything in his life.
His father was going to blow up the courthouse.
He barged into his mother and stepfather’s room and begged them to call the FBI. He was so insistent that they finally did. Agents found his father in the basement of the courthouse that day; he’d already killed two guards to gain access. He was moments away from detonating his homemade bomb, but the agents shot him dead right before he flipped the switch. Ten-year-old Nash had saved hundreds of lives … though he would never forget that it had been at the expense of his father’s life.
When an agent questioned Nash later that day, he was impressed with the boy’s deductions. He gave Nash a few games and puzzles to play with while he waited. At the time, Nash had thought it was to distract him from his father’s death, but now he understood they were tests. The same agent checked in on him every year until he finally realized he was being vetted.
And his performance in
the FBI had apparently been as impressive as they had hoped. There were only a select few in the FBI who knew who Nash’s father was, but he still worked doubly hard to distance himself from that infamy. Step by step and year by year, he had built a name for himself within the agency, and he wasn’t about to break his streak now.
He’d never been on a case with so much at stake. Was this imminent danger he sensed something that was right in front of him or something that had yet to show its face?
Nash turned back to his screen.
Time to focus on Robert Carpenter.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The original Cedar Springs Public Library was basically empty when Sabrina entered it later that afternoon with Andrew. It was the oldest building in Cedar Springs, one of those places where you felt that you were entering another world as soon as the massive oak double doors slammed shut behind you. Once you were in the ancient building, the sun could be blindingly bright outside and you’d never know it.
“Why did we need to come here?” Sabrina asked as Andrew led them to an antique wooden table in the back corner. “I thought we were looking for Amy Hansons’s obituary online.” She’d told Andrew about the name scrawled across her mirror — and that she suspected it belonged to the ghostly girl who kept appearing. Andrew was her best shot at confirming her identity and discovering why she kept visiting Sabrina. She had debated asking Nash for help as well, but her gut told her to leave him and Patricia out of it for now. After all, the girl had warned her about Nash and Patricia in the first place.
“I want to hack into the library’s server,” Andrew told her. “A lot of these obituary databases make you pay if the death was more than a few years ago. If we do it here, I can use the library’s passwords so we can get it for free and we won’t leave a virtual footprint.”
While Andrew settled into his seat and pulled out his laptop, Sabrina considered what he’d just told her about the connection between Greenly and Robert Carpenter.
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