DEX CAME RUSHING into the room so fast his tennis shoes skidded across the wooden floor.
“You got it open?”
I gestured to the piles of paper that were gathered around me on the office floor. “Yep.”
“And?”
I sighed, pulling at the ends of my hair. “And nothing. There’s nothing in here about the hiker in the woods, or about Bryan and Cassidy, or where my dad might have gone. All of these papers are at least a decade old. Most of them seem like ‘research’ for his first story on the Visitors.” I held my fingers up, making air quotes at the word research.
“Let me see,” Dex said. He dropped ungracefully to the floor across from me, one of his knees pushing up against mine. He didn’t seem to notice, reaching instead for the piece of paper nearest to him.
It was an article from a local paper, already faded and yellow, that documented how scientists had flooded into Bone Lake after the meteorite fell. The meteorite itself had been larger than most, the size of a love seat. The crater it created in the woods outside town was more than fifteen feet across. I’d already known that, but what I hadn’t known about was what drew the majority of scientists—and national attention—to our town. It wasn’t the meteorite’s size that caused a stir; it was its composition.
I watched Dex’s eyes go back and forth as they scanned over what I had just read. The Bone Lake Meteorite contained not just silicate minerals, but a substantial amount of amino acids and other organic material. That in itself was relatively rare for a meteorite, but it also contained a streak of a gold-colored unknown metal running through its middle. That’s what really caused all the fuss. People speculated on what the new kind of metal could be, but after testing it was found to be just another, previously unseen kind of iron-nickel alloy. After all that, the whole meteorite crash was really nothing to write home about.
Unless you had the kind of imagination and nose for opportunity that Ike Hardjoy did.
Scattered across the various papers and articles were notes handwritten by my dad. Next to a scientific article detailing the unusually large amount of amino acids in the meteorite, Dad had scrawled, enough to sustain life? Next to an image of scientists in giant yellow hazmat suits lifting the meteorite out of the ground, Dad had written, radiation?!? If you didn’t know my dad, you might look at these notes and think he was some kind of crackpot conspiracy theorist, but I saw what his scribbles really were. They were notes on a story, and my dad had been pumping it for as many exciting details as he could.
“Look at all this stuff,” Dex said, awe in his voice. “Ike was really on to something.”
“Mm-hmm, the short list for the Pulitzer in bullshitting.”
I smiled, but Dex wasn’t having it. The bottom corners of his lower lip tightened, and his dark eyebrows pulled together. It almost made him look older, if you ignored the way his messy hair fell over the tips of his ears or how there was what looked like a small mustard stain near the collar of his shirt.
“It’s easy to be a skeptic, but there are things in this world that go beyond simple explanation,” Dex muttered. “Even you have to admit what’s happening in town is weird. Burned bodies. Missing people.”
Not to mention the sleek black car that had been popping up and the email from “Dad.” But there wasn’t any point in bringing that up and giving Dex more fodder for his overactive imagination.
“Weird, yes. But not unexplainable. It’s true we don’t know exactly what’s going on yet. But I do know with a hundred percent certainty that it’s not ‘alien landings.’”
Dex looked up then, his eyes going sharp. “You can’t say that with a hundred percent certainty. No one can. At least your dad was smart enough to realize there were things out there he didn’t know. You think you know everything, and you don’t.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but then closed it again. The conversation I’d had with my mom was still playing on loop in the background of my mind. I’d thought I’d known certain things about my dad to be absolutely true, and it turned out I’d been wrong.
The truth is black and white.
Not always, hon.
I bit my lip and went back to sorting through my dad’s notes.
“Sorry,” Dex said, looking chagrined. “I didn’t mean for that to come out so harsh.”
“It’s okay,” I said, but I still didn’t risk looking up and letting Dex see how much his words had affected me. I’d been clinging so hard to facts, thinking they’d lead me from point A to point B to a firm explanation. But every time I grabbed hold of new information about my dad, it erased something I already knew. The truth kept mutating, and my grip on facts was slipping.
And that was frightening in about fifty different ways. None of which I was ready to share with Dex—or anyone.
We both went back to silently going through the papers.
Dex held up the local article again. “Hey, did you see this part? About when the meteorite was discovered?”
I looked back over the yellowing front page of the article. There was a one-paragraph mention of Tommy Cray, a Bone Lake resident who was the first to find where the meteorite landed after it fell from the sky. The paragraph had been circled four times in dark red ink.
“What do you think that’s all about? Why would your dad circle this section?”
I shrugged.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Dex said, after a few moments. “These papers are all old, but I know Ike keeps notes from his most recent stories in his safe. So maybe he was working on this story again, and some of these notations are newer. Ike did think that what happened to the hiker was connected to the Visitors. Maybe he went back over his old notes for that story, trying to find a new angle.”
Dex peered at a bit of my dad’s handwriting that was scrawled on what looked like a printed-out AP News brief. It covered how government scientists had closed off the meteorite crash site to journalists and the public while they were figuring out how to test the area. In the upper corner, Dad had written Cover-up? with a blue pen. Underneath that, in black ink, was the question Government agency—why?
“Wait, look at this,” Dex said. He was holding another old article in his hands, this one from the Traverse City Record-Eagle. “It’s not about the meteorite at all. It’s from a few years later. Maybe it can help you with that story you’re working on for college?”
I straightened, reaching automatically for the piece of paper. I hadn’t given my Northwestern article much thought since the moment I tripped over what was left of Bryan and Cassidy in the woods.
Residents of Bone Lake Resilient in the Face of Plant Closure. The article quickly covered the accident, Mr. Jameson’s responsibility, the lost military contract, and the subsequent permanent closing of the factory. The mayor had submitted a vague, PR-ready answer about how Bone Lake was a robust community that would survive this setback, and the few residents interviewed gave answers that were even more vague, if that was possible.
“One guy screws up and it all goes away,” said Wally Watting, who lost his job as a quality inspector at the plant after working there for seven years. When asked about the specifics of the accident that led to the plant closing, Watting had no further details to provide other than those that were already delivered in the official report. “It was just gross human error, not the plant’s fault at all, but that doesn’t matter, apparently,” Watting said. “I guess now it’s just time to move on. Best not to think too much about it.”
I sucked in a breath.
“Something wrong?” Dex asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve seen these words before. Or heard them, actually. Whenever I ask someone in town about the plant closing, they give this line—‘best not to think too much about it.’”
Dex tilted his head to look down at the paper in my hand. His eyebrows knitted together again. “They say that exact line?”
“There’s got to be an explanation,” I said. And then I tried to think of what that explanation might be. Maybe everyone in town had read this article and started unconsciously quoting Wally Watting?
I shook my head. I’d come back to the weird line later. Right now was about finding Dad.
“Why did my dad have a copy of this locked up with his research anyway?” I asked. “The plant had nothing to do with the meteorite . . . right?”
Dex shrugged. He pointed to the last page of the article, which had one of Dad’s business cards attached to it by a paper clip. Across the top edge of the card, Dad had scribbled, also in red ink, X10-88.
“X10-88 . . . What’s that?”
Dex moved even closer to get a better look at the card, his shoulder bumping against mine. His hair smelled like maple and sugar, like he’d just been in Cindy’s kitchen.
“I’ve never heard of it,” he said. “But look, Penny . . .” He pointed to the lettering on my dad’s business card with one long finger. There was Dad’s name, and his “job title” of Reporter, and his phone number and email. “This is a new card. Look at his email.”
“You’re right,” I murmured. My dad had used the same old Hotmail account for years before Strange World finally forced him to get a business email—last summer.
“That means I was right! This note he made in red pen is new,” Dex said. “Hold on.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed X10-88 into Google. “Nothing’s really coming up. . . . Looks like it’s the designation for some sheet metal products. . . .”
“I’ll do some more research,” I said, stretching my back. “It might mean nothing at all—”
I was interrupted by a loud banging noise. Dex jumped a little, and it took me a second to realize someone was knocking on the front door.
I opened the door to see two men standing on my front porch. They were both of average height and build, both with pale skin and dark, brownish hair. The man on the right had a squarish jaw, and the other wore a bright yellow tie with a gray chevron pattern. Other than that, they were practically identical, down to the dark suits with crisp white shirts and shiny, shiny shoes.
They looked like the men I’d seen at the sheriff’s office earlier that day, but I couldn’t be 100 percent sure. Their faces were incredibly generic; they’d be a sketch artist’s worst nightmare.
“Miss Hardjoy?” the man on the right asked. He took off a pair of sunglasses, revealing small blue eyes. The man with the yellow tie kept his sunglasses on.
“Uh, yes,” I stammered. “That’s me.”
The man on the right held up a white card with writing on it. “My name is Agent Rickard, and this is Agent Shanahan. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“The . . . FBI?” It was a dumb question to ask, but my head was still adjusting to the fact that two federal agents were standing on my front porch. That they’d asked for me by name.
“We’re investigating the recent murders in Bone Lake. You were present at the discovery of the last two bodies, yes?”
It was a question, but Agent Rickard said it like a statement. Next to him, Agent Shanahan remained immobile, his eyes completely unreadable behind his dark sunglasses.
“I . . . yes. But I thought the sheriff was investigating . . . ?”
“The first victim was a resident of Wisconsin, and the second two are residents of Michigan, killed in the same way. That makes this a multistate investigation. We were called in to assist.”
His words bounced around in my head. Something about what he was saying didn’t add up, but before I could really catch hold of that thought, he went on.
“We have a warrant to search the premises of one Mr. Ike Hardjoy. This is his primary residence, yes?”
Again, that question felt like it was really a statement. My heart sped up at the word warrant. I was still standing in the doorway, blocking the two agents from the inside of the house. But I knew I couldn’t keep them out if they had a warrant. I wondered if Dex was standing somewhere behind me, or if he was in Dad’s office still, surrounded by all his creepy notes on aliens. What would the agents think if they searched Dad’s office? Would everything in there help build a case against him? Could it possibly paint him into looking like an unhinged killer?
I stalled, my hand gripping the edge of the doorway.
“Miss,” the second agent spoke up, “the paperwork’s in order. We’re going to need you to move.”
Agent Rickard took one step forward, and I couldn’t do anything but step back, letting them in. They both immediately headed toward Dad’s office, as if they knew exactly where to start looking.
“My dad didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, finally finding my voice as I followed them back through the hallway. “He’s missing. He might be in trouble.”
They didn’t answer me.
I was just two steps behind the agents by the time they walked through my dad’s office door. Some of his papers from the open safe were still strewn about on the floor, but I noticed many of the piles were noticeably smaller, with some papers missing. Dex was missing, too. And the office window was wide-open, letting in the breeze from the backyard. I stifled my sigh of relief.
“We’ll start in here, miss,” Agent Rickard said, pulling a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. “Please wait in the front area until we are done.”
It was stated like a request, but I knew it wasn’t one.
I walked back into the living room and perched on the edge of the couch, unsure what to do with myself. Should I offer the agents water? Should I turn on the TV or check my phone? Nothing seemed right. Instead, I stared out the front window, at the agents’ black car, which sat parked in front of our yard.
The shiny, new-looking black car.
I nearly jumped off the couch. The wayward thought that had been bouncing around the back of my mind suddenly thudded into place. These agents had said they were called in to investigate the murders after Bryan and Cassidy had turned up in the woods, because they were killed in the same way as the out-of-state hiker.
But I’d seen that car before. I’d seen it driving around Mrs. Anderson’s street. I’d seen it moving slowly past my own house.
Two whole days before Bryan and Cassidy’s bodies had even been found.