Cooper woke with a heavy sense of dread in his stomach. He lay in bed and checked the clock. The alarm was due to ring in just a few minutes. Normally he’d roll over and wait for the alarm to ring. And hit the snooze button when it did. Instead, he turned off the alarm and stared at the ceiling.
Fudge sat up and laid a groggy head on the edge of his bed. He worked his hand under her collar and gave her a good scratch. Why hadn’t he just turned around when Hiro called him? Maybe he wanted to punish her. Make her feel really bad. But he ended up doing a number on himself at the same time. Stupid.
The first chance he could, he was going to make it right. He’d see her at the bus stop and say he was sorry the moment he saw her. Cooper imagined the scene in his mind. It made him feel a little better, but the dread still hunkered down in his stomach.
He knew the incident with Hiro was only part of the problem.
It was the lies. The deception. Enough to fill a backpack. And when he woke up every morning he put the pack on and carried it until he drifted off in sleep. The pack felt heavier today.
He forced himself to think of the letters to the police and the newspaper. It was a good move. Even Hiro admitted that. It was also a step toward detection. He reached under his pillow and pulled out the phone Hiro and Gordy had picked up.
Would the police or the newspaper actually call today? He hoped not. The letter should be enough for the police to go on. The newspaper too. The details about the robbery should be enough to prove he was actually there. But what if they called to try to get more information? Could they put a trace on a cell phone? Would they try to keep him on the phone long enough so they could track him down?
“Hello. Hullo.” Cooper tested his phone voice. What if Hammer recognized him?
Cooper sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. One thing was certain. He would keep the phone off until after he was out of school. Until 3:30, just like he put in the note. He stepped over to his desk and slipped the phone in his jeans pocket. And he’d be sure to be in Kimball Hill Park before he turned it on. Someplace far enough from the house in case the police were able to trace the call.
He’d need some way to disguise his voice. Cooper shuffled into the bathroom. The toilet paper roll was nearly empty. He changed out the roll and stuffed a wad of toilet paper in the tube.
Fudge stood by his bedroom door and looked at him.
He put the tube to his mouth like a bullhorn. “Want to go out, girl?” The words sounded muffled and echoed through the tube.
She cocked her head and wagged her tail.
“Wish I could stay here with you today,” he whispered, pocketing the tube. “Or maybe just hide out in The Getaway all day.”
Only Gordy met him at the bus stop. Hiro still hadn’t showed up when the bus lumbered around the corner. She’d never missed the bus as long as Cooper knew her. Maybe she was sick. Sick of him. He hated the thought that he couldn’t straighten things out with her. That he couldn’t apologize for getting mad at her the night before. But she’d asked for it, hadn’t she? Why did she have to keep pushing him to break the Code?
Hiro didn’t show for class either. Maybe she really was sick. Cooper’s stomach wasn’t feeling so hot either—but he knew it had nothing to do with a bug. Now he’d have to wait until after school to make it right with Hiro.
He felt the phone in his pocket. He’d hoped Gordy and Hiro would both be with him if a call came after school. Now it might be just Gordy.
Cooper tried to function with a mind that stayed divided all morning. Even while in class, he kept checking the clock. The library opened at 9:00 a.m. By 9:30 he figured the police had his letter. They’d be checking out the details.
And waiting to call him.
No. He pushed the thinking out of his mind. Not waiting for anything. The police would start looking for Elvis and the clown and Mr. Lucky. Why would they waste their time trying to talk to him?
By the time he made his way to English, the idea of a call from the police consumed him.
He walked alongside Gordy and spoke quietly, the noisy halls providing a place to talk without being overheard. “What if they record my voice and analyze it somehow?”
“Count on it,” Gordy said.
“Great.”
“Just disguise your voice.”
“I’m already on that. I’m just not sure if I should speak in a high or a low voice.”
Gordy shook his head. “Not good enough. If they record you, and they will, they’ll be able to play it back at different speeds to nail your normal voice.”
“I plan to muffle it too.”
“Yeah. Talk with your mouth full. I do it all the time.”
Cooper smiled.
The smile slid off his face when he entered the classroom. A copy of the Daily Herald sat on Miss Ferrand’s desk. There, on the front page, was a picture of Frank ‘n Stein’s and a headline that read, “Witness Letter Raises More Questions.”
Gordy must have seen it too. He nearly came to a complete stop.
“How did it get in the paper already?”
Exactly Cooper’s thoughts. The paper gets delivered early. Before the library opens.
The bell interrupted his thoughts, and Miss Ferrand wasted no time getting down to business. She shut the door and walked back to her desk. She picked up the paper and held it up so everyone could see it. The class quieted down almost immediately.
“According to today’s Daily Herald, last night somebody slipped a letter addressed to the police and another one addressed to the paper in the library night drop.” She sat on the edge of her desk. “Someone in the library emptied the drop box before they went home for the night and found them.”
That answered the timing question.
“I’m going to read parts of the article to you.” She looked around the room. Slowly. Stopping to get eye contact with each of the boys.
Hiro’s empty desk in front of him made him feel way more exposed than normal.
“The police believe that the person who wrote the letter is in one of my eighth grade classes.”
The room erupted in excited chatter. Girls leaned across the aisles talking to each other and shooting the boys suspicious looks.
Cooper reached in his backpack and put his English book on his desk. Actually, Jake Mickel’s book.
Kelsey Seals turned around and looked at Cooper’s desk, then at Jake’s behind her. “Where’s your English book today, Jake?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Somebody must have swiped it.”
She cocked her head to the side just a bit—her distrust obvious. Eliza Miller stared at Jake, eyes wide.
Jake turned to Cooper. “Honest. I had it in my locker.”
“It’ll turn up,” Cooper said. But not until this is all over.
Miss Ferrand stood and slowly walked between the rows of desks. She kept talking and focusing on the boys, but Cooper wasn’t following. He tried to figure out what he was going to do when she looked at Gordy. Or at him.
When she came to Gordy, Cooper watched him as intently as Miss Ferrand did. He looked guilty as sin. Cooper knocked his book on the floor.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You’re a klutz, MacKinnon,” Jake Mickel said.
Riley Steiner and his pack laughed, but it was just enough to do the job. She locked her eyes on him as if she knew the book had been a diversion. He forced himself to look right into her eyes. Any wavering and he’d be giving himself away.
She looked at him longer than anyone else in the room so far. Her eyes were light blue. Gray, really. Weak looking eyes. Cooper had to stay strong. He tried to look right through her eyes into her head. Finally she turned away to look at the next suspect.
She continued through the room, but never went back to Gordy. After her little staring game was over, she made some notes on a legal pad on her desk, then folded the newspaper so she could hold it with one hand without it flopping over.
“Dear Daily Herald,” she read, then paused and looked up as if to make sure everyone in class was listening.
The entire class sat stone still. Apparently satisfied, she sat on the corner of her desk again and focused on the newspaper.
“The police are looking for a boy in junior high in connection with the robbery at Frank ‘n Stein’s last Thursday night. I was there. The way they’re pushing, sometimes I wonder if they think I’m the one who robbed Frank Mustacci. That isn’t true. I didn’t rob the diner or hurt Mr. Mustacci. Frank let me stay while he cleaned up. When I was ready to leave, the front door was locked. I called for Frank because I figured he had the keys. I think he was taking a load of garbage to the dumpster.
I was at the front counter when the back door burst open—and somebody pushed Frank inside. I hid behind the counter and two men beat Frank and forced him to give the money from the cash register. Then they said they knew about his safe and made him give the combination. Frank went for a knife, and the two of them beat him again.
While they were opening the safe, I escaped using Frank’s keys. He was lying on his back behind the counter, with his head toward the dining area. I thought he was dead. Honest.”
A collective gasp escaped from the room. Ferrand paused and nodded, obviously pleased by the reaction. She scanned the room. Maybe she hoped to see one of the boys unmoved by it all, or nervous. Cooper let his jaw go slack, his mouth hang open as if in total disbelief of what he was hearing. Her eyes caught his for a moment and then moved on.
She went back to reading the paper.
“The men heard me escaping and started after me. I barely made it out the front door and turned the lock in time. I didn’t get a good look at them. They were wearing masks. One wore a clown mask. One wore an Elvis one. The clown had a hoarse-sounding voice. Elvis sounded like a DJ. They both had cop pants on. They talked to a third guy, but I never heard or got a good look at him. He was the driver, I think. He came in after they beat up Frank. They called him “Mr. Lucky.”
That’s why I’m not going to the police in person. I don’t know who I can trust. I can’t identify these guys anyway, so the police can stop looking for me. They need to find out who did this and stop wasting their time chasing after me.
The one guy got a pretty good look at me. And he threatened me. So don’t even try to get me to say anything more. I have nothing more to say. He pulled the surveillance camera hard drive, which I grabbed on my way out. It won’t help anybody to have it, but it may hurt me. I was in plain sight of the camera. The hard drive will prove I didn’t do anything wrong, but it will also identify me. So it stays with me. That’s everything I know about the robbery.
I am going to write a cell phone number on the bottom of this letter. I will answer the phone between 3:30 and 4:30 pm to answer any question you may need to ask for me to show this isn’t some prank. I can prove I was there. I can tell you exactly where Frank was laying. I can tell you what was on the floor in front of the counter. I can tell you what they used to break the front window to get at me. I can tell you what I left behind at one of the tables. Find the real robbers. Nail the monsters that did this to Frank Mustacci. Stop looking for me.
Sincerely, “Silence is Golden”
Cooper glanced around the room. Girls sat like zombies with pale faces and wide-eyed stares. Kelsey Seals turned, mouth partially open like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t figure out how. Probably a first for her. Eliza Miller, biting her lower lip, stared at Jacob Mickel like she already had the mystery witness figured out.
The boys’ eyes were on fire. Like they wish they’d written the letter. They had no idea what they were asking for. Cooper tried to mirror their faces.
Miss Ferrand looked up. “The article goes on to speculate on different theories. The paper believes the note may be legitimate, and they intend to follow up. According to some unnamed source in the police department, the police share a similar opinion. Which brings me to the next point.”
She walked up and down each aisle. Slowly. So slowly. Ignoring the girls, but deliberately looking at each of the boys as she did. “The writer of this letter did a very brave thing. And he has every right to be scared right now.” She looked directly at Cooper.
He crumpled up his brow and tried to muster up a confused expression. He looked behind him and then back at her. She moved on.
“I want to send my own message to this person.” She went to the white board and wrote a phone number with a red marker. “This is the school phone number. I have a mailbox just like every other teacher. You call me. Leave a message. I can help. I’ll check my messages right up until when I go to bed. Questions?”
Cooper had some questions for her. Like, was she crazy? Did she really think he would open up to her?
Kelsey Seals raised her hand. “What will you do?” Obviously she’d found her voice.
“I’ll go straight to the top,” she said. “The principal is very good friends with Detective Hammer. We’ll make sure the witness is protected.”
Cooper slouched down in his seat. She was crazy.
“Like the witness protection program or something?” Jake Mickel blurted it out. One of the jealous boys.
“I don’t think so. But he’ll be safe. Trust me on that.”
Trust her? The one who gave pop quizzes with trick questions? Right.
Eliza Miller raised her hand, cautiously, like she wasn’t sure she should. “What if, like, somebody suspects somebody else in the class?” Her eyes darted toward Mickel for an instant. “What should we do?”
“Talk to me and tell me why,” Ferrand said.
This thing could turn into a real witch hunt. Nice move, Miss Ferrand.
More hands shot up. More mindless questions. Cooper tuned most of them out. His mind snapped back to Hiro. Did the Yakimotos get a paper? He imagined her absorbing the article. At least she should be happy the plan worked.
“Paper and pencil out, everyone.”
Miss Ferrand’s voice pulled him back into the classroom. “I want each of you to write my number down right now.” She pointed at the board. “And you call me. Understand?”
Maybe the principal put a bounty on his head.
The noise level went up as kids scrounged in backpacks for something to write on. Cooper fished out a scrap of paper. He looked up at the number like he seriously intended to write it down. Instead he wrote fat chance across the paper, folded it and slipped it in his pocket.
He watched Gordy hesitate for a moment, then write something on the paper. He looked at the number on the board again and checked his paper as if to be sure he got it right. Gordy put on a convincing show of it—and hopefully that’s all it was.
“Or if you want to talk after class, I’m here for you. Understand?”
Heads nodded all over the room. Cooper nodded his head too. He understood all right, but he’d stick to the Code of Silence, thank you very much.
Miss Ferrand made another notation on her legal pad, then looked directly at Cooper. “Does everyone have my number?”
Cooper nodded again, but had the uneasy feeling she was especially concerned that he wrote it down. That whole “women’s intuition” stuff was spooky. Something nobody could really explain or understand. Hiro had an extra dose of it.
Miss Ferrand looked at him again, picked up her legal pad, and started toward him. Maybe she didn’t want to take a chance on whether he’d stay and talk or not. She looked like a reporter on her way to a juicy interview.
The bell rang, and the kids erupted into excited talk like it had been bottled up inside them for days, and they couldn’t handle the pressure anymore.
Girls jumped up in the aisles and hovered around Miss Ferrand as if they needed protection somehow. Seals and Miller led the charge. Which was just fine with Cooper. He slipped by her in the confusion and made a beeline for the door with Gordy right on his heels.
“Cooper MacKinnon!”
He heard her call just as he rounded the corner into the hall, but acted like he didn’t hear a thing. Out of her line of sight, he took off at a run. He figured he had five or six seconds before she’d break free from the girls in class and make it to the hallway.
Kids burst out of other classrooms and filled the halls. Cooper kept count of the seconds. Three, four, five. He ducked in front of a herd of seventh graders piling out of Mrs. Brittain’s class and stopped running. Gordy scooted in right next to him.
“Don’t look back,” Cooper said. He kept his head down and walked fast, hoping she wouldn’t spot him.
Maybe Hiro had the right idea. Taking a sick day might be good for his health.