"What's that supposed to mean?"
He shrugs. "Maybe it just happened. Maybe they're just taking advantage of the situation. But for sure we don't have the whole picture. There are too many unknowns."
"I guess. But if the stories are true about the elders, then don't we have a responsibility to help them? And if not them, what about the world in general? Maybe we can actually do something to stop this environmental nosedive we're in."
Chaingang shakes his head. "That crap always sounds good from a pulpit or on paper. It's all political bullshit. Try to do something and it all goes to hell."
"I've still got to try."
We've reached the corner of the building. ValentiCorp is in plain sight, yellow tape and barricades surrounding it.
"Want a ride somewhere?" Chaingang asks. "My bike's not far from here."
I shake my head. I haven't told anybody what I'm planning to do. I've pretty much lost the only people I might have confided in and I don't see much room for me in their lives anymore. Elzie abandoned me for that other world. Marina's better at taking secrets than sharing them. And Desmond ... well, he's Desmond. Big heart, big mouth.
But I want as much of my life back as I can get and there's only one way I can see that happening.
"No, I'm good," I tell Chaingang.
He pulls me back behind the corner of the building and I almost drop the trash bags. He studies me for a moment. "You're not planning to do something stupid, are you?"
"Why would you say that?"
"You've got a look about you." He hesitates, then goes on. "You need to know, bro. What happened with the girls was harsh, but don't hang on to it for too long. Make friends with that hurt and it's going to settle down inside you and never go away. I've seen it happen too many times before."
"I'm doing okay."
"Yeah. That's what worries me."
"Don't. Later."
I can feel his gaze on me as I walk away from him toward the entrance of the Target store.
"Later," he says.
I drop the bags into the big trash can by the shopping cart return at the front of the store. As I walk, I notice all the weird stares I'm getting from people. I might be clean from last night's swim, but the white pants and shirt I took from the lab are streaked with dirt and they don't fit well. My feet are bare and I've got a head full of stubble. I must look like a street person or some guy in a religious cult. Or maybe like somebody who's just escaped from a loony bin.
At least nobody's asking me if I want any help. If anything, they're avoiding eye contact and walking a little more quickly. They're probably scared that I'll hit them up for spare change. Or that I'll start ranting and yelling or something, the way street people sometimes do.
But here's something else new—at least for me. I can smell that fear on them. It's weird and not particularly pleasant, but at the same time, I have to stop myself from strutting a bit as I walk because the mountain lion part of me kind of enjoys making them feel that way.
I look again across a couple of parking lots to where the ValentiCorp building stands gleaming in the sun. The place gives me the creeps. It's not quite noon, but it's already hot. Not enough to burn the bare soles of my feet, but I can feel it on the asphalt. Beyond the yellow tape and the cop cars scattered around the front, I can see that they haven't even boarded up the entrance yet.
I'm looking for someone in charge as I approach the police cars. On TV, the detectives are always in suits, but too many people around here are wearing suits. The one thing I don't want is to get nabbed again by one of those guys from ValentiCorp.
I see a couple of familiar faces. I don't know what Agents Solana and Matteson are doing here—investigating, I guess—but this will make everything a lot easier.
I head toward where they're leaning against the hood of their black SUV, arms folded as they lean in toward one another, talking and checking out what's going on in front of ValentiCorp. Solana notices me first. He glances my way, then does a double-take and elbows his partner. They both start to push away from the car hood, but by that point, I'm in speaking range.
"Boy," I say with a loud sigh. "Am I glad to see you."
Marina
Crossing back over is easier than I expected. I don't know why I thought it might be any more complicated than going to the spiritlands, but that time I was a passenger in a vehicle. This morning it's just a matter of everyone except Chaingang taking a step forward and we're out of the spiritlands and back at the ValentiCorp complex—this time behind the big Target store. A moment later, Chaingang comes through in the vehicle just a few yards to the left of us.
There's no one around, but we still get out of there as fast as we can. All of us except for Chaingang, who immediately begins to wipe his prints off the car, and Josh, who stays behind with Chaingang. That's not what Cory told us to do, but Cory's already jumped the fence behind the Target and disappeared along with Rico, who changed to a snake and went under it.
I don't know why Chaingang called Josh over, but as I look, I see him handing Josh those trash bags. I'm glad he thinks of all that stuff. I look at the wrecked SUV and my fear of being discovered near it has me moving out of there quickly.
I reach the back corner of the Target store and look out toward the parking lot. ValentiCorp rears in the distance, surrounded by police barricades and the proverbial yellow tape. There are a lot of cop cars over there, too. People in the Target parking lot seem oblivious—caught up in their own little worlds—just going about their usual shopping and walking back and forth with bags, shopping carts and noisy children.
Except for what's happening over at ValentiCorp, life looks completely normal. But normal feels strange right now, as though
this
is a dream and everything that happened yesterday was more substantial, though disturbing.
I could easily get lost in thought about that, but right now I need to come up with a story that might appease Mamá about why I didn't make it home last night.
Then I think of Julie, my old surfing buddy. She'll back me up. I take out my phone and look at it. Almost noon. Luckily I still have about an eighth left on the battery. It's enough. I start to jog toward home.
When noon comes, I stop jogging and dial Julie's number. As usual, she's hanging around outside the school campus, where cell phones are allowed.
"Hey, girlfriend," I say. "I need a favour—parent business. Can you back me up on a story? I didn't make it home last night."
Normally, I would never dream of doing anything like this, but Julie's got a wild side and this is right up her alley. I feel bad for taking advantage of her, but I'm not the best schemer in the world and she's the only resource that I can come up with on such short notice.
"I never thought I'd see the day," Julie teases. "Welcome to the club."
We agree that I'll say I was with a bunch of friends out searching for Josh last night and that we knew our parents would be worried about the danger, so we didn't want to tell them what we were up to. We searched all night and then I was afraid to go home, so I crashed at Julie's for a couple of hours.
The searching for Josh and being afraid to go home parts of that story are true. I wish I had something better, but concocting lies isn't my forte. I hope I haven't given Mamá a heart attack worrying. I pray she hasn't called Papá. Ampora would have a heyday with this. If she finds out, she'll mock me forever, plus she'll rat on me if she so much as suspects my story is untrue.
Julie is dying to know exactly what I
did
do all night, but the most that I give her is 'you wouldn't believe it if I told you,' which just makes her all the more curious. But I say that my battery's dying, which it is, and that I'll tell her the juicy details in person when I see her at school. That'll be yet another complication, since I'll need to come up with a whole other story for her, but that's the problem with lies, I suppose. They complicate everything.
I start to run again, praying to all the
santos
I only half-believe in that I won't be grounded forever when I walk through the door.
Josh
Solana and Matteson push off the hood of their car and close the distance between us.
"Are you okay, kid?" Solana says, holding my upper arm. "Do you need a medic or anything?"
"What happened to you?" Matteson asks. "Where have you been?"
I'm surprised that he seems genuinely concerned.
I remember the advice that Cory gave me what seems like a century ago now. The best way to lie is to have your story be mostly true. I point to ValentiCorp.
"I was in there," I say. "Guys that work there Tazed me when I was leaving school and when I came to, I was locked up in a laboratory five stories underground."
"
You
did that?" Matteson says, pointing at the twisted metal and broken plate glass that litters the area where Chaingang drove the vehicle through the doors.
Some of his former antagonism is creeping back into his eyes.
"As if," I say. "I don't know what happened over there. All I know is that I was able to escape in the confusion."
Matteson frowns. "But that happened hours ago."
I nod. "Yeah, it was night when I ran out of the place wearing this crap." I pluck at my shirt. "They took my clothes and dressed me in this. When I ran, I was still feeling kind of woozy—they shot me up with tranquilizers or something."
"Are you sure you don't need a medic?" Solana asks.
I nod. "I'm okay now. I didn't get far last night, but I managed to hide behind a dumpster before I collapsed. I only just came to."
Solana is giving me all of his attention, but Matteson's not as focused on me. I can almost see the cogs whirring in his head.
"The people who snatched you," Solana says. "You're saying they brought you here—to ValentiCorp?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would you stand up in court and swear to that?"
"Yes, sir. It's the truth."
He puts a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry, son. You're safe now."
"I hope so," I say. "The other kids they took didn't ... they didn't get a chance to escape like me."
"Other kids?" Solana asks. "Did you know any of them?"
I shook my head. "It was awful ... I think they were all dead. They were in this kind of morgue. They'd been all cut up … dissected."
The agents exchange glances.
"Goddamn," Matteson mutters and pulls out his phone. "Chief?" he says into it. "We just caught a break. We found the Saunders kid—yeah, he's safe. But get this. He's fingering ValentiCorp for the abduction and he says he's not the only one they snatched, but he's the only one who survived. That's right. He says there are kids' bodies in the building. I think that gives us enough probable cause to get a warrant, don't you? And since Black Key runs their security, we should run the faces from those abduction videos against Black Key's staff here in Santa Feliz."
He listens for a moment longer, then takes the phone away from his ear and looks at me.
"The Chief wants to know if you can hang on until he gets here."
"Sure, I guess ..."
"We'll be waiting for you," he says back into the phone.
He puts it back in his pocket and gives me a thoughtful look.
"You're not shitting us on this, are you, kid?" he asks. "It's not too late to come clean, if you are. But once we've got that warrant and go in there—if things aren't like you say, you're going to be in real deep shit."
"Jesus, Paul," Solana says.
Matteson turns to him. "The Chief's been out for blood ever since this whole thing blew up in our faces. Do you really want to take the fall if this goes sour? His job's on the line and that means our jobs are on the line."
"I get it," Solana says. "But after everything Josh has already been through ..."
"It's okay," I say. "I know how crazy this all sounds. I can't even guarantee that the bodies will still be there."
Matteson whips around to fix me with a dark look. "What?"
"Well, they've had all morning to move them, haven't they?" I say.
"We would have seen them doing that."
"Sure, except do you know they've got a network of maintenance tunnels under these parking lots—just like at Disneyland?"
"Aw, come
on
," Matteson groans.
"It's true." Remembering some of the details that Cory told me about last night, I point to Pep Boys at the far side of the parking lot. "One of them comes out at the big bay on the side of that building. There are more exits behind some of the other stores. They could have moved the bodies out through any of them."
He gives me a long, dirty look. "Yeah, right."
I don't say anything more. I just meet his glare.
"Crap," he says. "We'll need to cover those when we go in."
He gets back on his phone and asks for backup.
"Are you sure you don't need anything while we wait?" Solana asks. "Something to eat or drink?"
"Well, I wanted to call my mom last night, but I lost my phone."
"Here," he says and hands me his.
It's hard talking to Mom. I try to tell her what happened to me—sticking to the same story I gave the FBI agents—but she keeps asking me over and over again if I'm all right and then I have to backtrack to fill in the parts she missed, because she's too panicked to listen.
"Just a sec," I finally say. I hold my hand over the mouthpiece and turn to the agents. "Can my mom meet us here?"
They exchange looks, then Solana nods.
"Of course," he says.
"What if she doesn't give permission for him to come in with us?" Matteson asks.
"She'll be cool," I say. "And I'd like to ask her to bring me something else to wear."
"Crap," Matteson says. "If she sees him looking like this ..."
"Tell her where we are so that she can meet us," Solana tells me, "but don't say anything about bringing clothes. We'll get you fixed up."
I raise my eyebrows.
"Don't worry. We won't get anything that sucks."