Strange Lies Page 7

  Corny nodded gravely. “He feels awful. He’s the one who bought the poster! Wasn’t that nice?”

  Wow, a forty-five-cent piece of cardboard. What a guy.

  “Show me where he signed.”

  Corny pointed to a spot in the corner where some scrawled words to “DeBalls” were made out in green marker. What was it with boys having the handwriting of serial killers? Benny read the message, feeling his mouth twitch with anger:

  SORRY MY DEER HATES YOU. HE DIDN’T MEAN IT! GET WELL SOON . . .

  The library conference room, 9:20 a.m.

  The detective had a smooth, deep voice, like those commercials where they make it seem like diet margarine will give you an orgasm. Yasmin felt smug that they’d sent the man detective instead of the dog-faced lady one; it meant they didn’t think she’d be easy to intimidate. She sat in the middle of the conference table, flanked by her father on one side, and on the other side Bruce Sherazi, a lawyer so notorious that in Yasmin’s family they called him the Shark.

  “Are you friends with Trevor Cheek?” the detective asked. His last name was Disco. Yasmin wondered if that was Italian, or if it was just a stereotype that all cops were Italian. She leaned over to Bruce and whispered, “No.” Bruce nodded, and only then did Yasmin turn to the detective.

  “No.”

  Detective Disco narrowed his eyes at her. “We have a court order for your phone records. If you have ever had direct contact with Trevor Cheek, we will know about it within the next twelve hours. Better get it out in the open now. I don’t like surprises. Do you like surprises, Yasmin?”

  “Do not answer that question!” Bruce shouted. Unlike Mr. Astarabadi, his Persian accent was perceptible.

  Mr. Astarabadi growled, “You say you have the phone records? Then do your job. Find out for yourself. You Americans. You want everything handed to you.”

  The detective folded his arms. “I grew up in the American foster care system, sir. Some days, lunch was a spoonful of ketchup. Nothing has ever been handed to me.”

  Yasmin smiled to herself. Her dad was winning. Detective Disco’s hard-scrapple orphan ketchup story was pathetic and wouldn’t make Mr. Astarabadi respect him. All he’d done was brand himself the ketchup-eating cop in Mr. Astarabadi’s eyes forever.

  “Tell me about your project, Yasmin,” the detective said, changing course. “It’s called”—he looked at his notes—“a Jacob’s Ladder?”

  Yasmin looked at Bruce, who gave a terse nod. Yasmin recited her lines: “It’s a high-voltage climbing arc. It’s an electric spark that jumps between two parallel wires. I tested it in our home one hundred times and it never once caused any power problems. In a gym with the electrical support to power four-hundred-watt metal halide fixtures, the idea that my simple project caused a minute-long blackout is preposterous.”

  For a moment the detective just stared at her. “Would you like to repeat that in your own words?”

  Yasmin scowled. Her own words? Just because she was a teen girl, he expected her to talk like an idiot?

  “Like, omigod,” she squealed mockingly. “The gym is like, bananas huge. My project used, like, a lip gloss amount of power. If you think this was me, you’re like totally buggin’.”

  Unexpectedly the detective smiled—a long, slow smile that changed the entire look of his face. Then it disappeared. “You’re a good student, Yasmin,” he said. “I understand you have your sights set on Harvard?”

  Yasmin looked at Bruce, who nodded.

  Yasmin also nodded.

  “How many students does Harvard typically accept from Winship each year?”

  “Typically?” Yasmin shrugged. “A few.”

  “Hm. A few. You sure about that? When I looked into it, it seemed more like . . . one. One student from each graduating class. And I understand they’ve already expressed interest in DeAndre Bell. Have they expressed interest in . . . you?”

  The word was loaded with contempt. You. Small, ugly, unpopular, Middle Eastern you. Yasmin wanted to throw his cup of coffee in his face.

  “This is outrageous! We’re finished here!” Bruce yelled loudly. He slammed his fist on the table, providing the violent counterpart to Mr. Astarabadi’s silent, brooding glare. Bruce stood up so aggressively that his chair fell over. Then he did his signature move, which was to snap his fingers and then point them like pistols at whoever was offending him, in this case the detective.

  “Pow,” he said. “Watch your step, detective. I’ll shoot so many holes in your case, your pants will fall down.”

  The detective smiled again, almost a laugh. “Guess I better buy some nicer underwear, then.”

  Fuck you and your sad, cheap underwear! Yasmin screamed at him in her mind. But on the surface she stayed glassy and cool, a trick she’d learned from her dad. She followed Bruce out of the conference room, and Yasmin could feel the detective watching her as they left. His eyes drew hers like a pair of magnets, and she looked at him, not meaning to. For a second it felt like he could see every secret thing about her. He could see her soul, and he found it . . . unbeautiful.

  Yasmin looked away, wishing she could disappear. There was no protection from what other people decided to think about you. Not even her dad and the Shark could protect her from that.

  The gym, 9:45 a.m.

  The yellow DO NOT ENTER tape drooped, flagging in its cautionary duty. Benny gave the doors a slight push. They were unlocked. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was there, then slipped inside.

  His whole body felt tense. He was already wincing, dreading seeing the mangled deer again. But when he arrived at the scene, the deer was gone. The blood had been cleaned up, and the floor shined brightly from bleach. DeAndre’s volcano had fallen off the table and lay upside-down on the floor. The gym was quiet and empty. It felt like a science expo from a ghost town; Benny half expected to see a tumbleweed blowing past the rows of abandoned booths.

  He looked around quickly, having only ten minutes until fruit break was over. Benny had a free period later, but by then the scene could be even further corrupted. He examined the area from every angle. He looked for a banana peel or any sign of one, but was unsurprised not to find one. If there had been a banana, it would have been cleaned up with the blood, or taken by the police as evidence of Trevor’s supposed fall. Benny felt a surge of irritation at the thought of the police having a leg up on him.

  He moved on to the next row of booths, looking for the spot where the purple light had come from. He found Yasmin’s presentation, which she’d called, straightforwardly: HIGH-VOLTAGE TRAVELING ARC. It was a tall pair of attached copper wires sticking in the air. Benny found the switch on the transformer that powered the apparatus. He looked around again, making absolutely sure that he was alone. Then he turned it on.

  A flash of purple light traveled quickly from the bottom of the wires to the top, over and over again. Benny had seen this experiment before in science videos online. It was also called a Jacob’s Ladder, named after a scene in the Torah where Jacob dreams of God. Benny pulled up the verse on his phone, Genesis 28:10–19:

  Jacob dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants.”

  Benny remembered the passage from Hebrew School. It was an important moment in the Torah, one that could be cited as the very formation of the Jewish people. In it, Jacob is chosen over his twin brother, Esau, and shown a ladder to Heaven by which he and his descendants would climb to meet God, while the descendants of Esau would be left to rot. All Jews were supposedly the descendants of Jacob, and thus chosen by God. Benny stared at the swiftly moving purple light, feeling slightly mesmerized. When he died, would he climb a high-voltage traveling arc to Heaven?

  Benny turned it off. Heave
n was a ludicrous fiction, quite literally a dream. If a man in modern times claimed God chose him in a dream, he’d probably be institutionalized.

  He switched the apparatus on again, then off again. Three more times he turned it on and off. The lights overhead didn’t so much as flicker.

  The bell rang. Benny knew he needed to leave. He cracked open the gym doors and peered out between the pieces of DO NOT ENTER tape. Across the lobby a door was open. Inside was a tiny room filled with circuit breakers and transformers. Benny had passed that door a thousand times and had never seen it open. It was an electrical closet. And Benny immediately recognized the man and woman inside: they were detectives.

  Benny had seen this pair before. They’d investigated the “suicide” of Mr. Choi a few weeks ago. The woman had a sharp, cold face; of the two of them, you’d assume she was the smart one. But it was the man, the handsome and muscle-bound Detective Disco, who’d suspected that Benny and Virginia were involved in the strange case. Benny knew that if he were caught lurking around the crime scene right now, Detective Disco’s internal alert would go haywire.

  He watched them from the tiny crack in the gym doors. He couldn’t hear their voices, but they were discussing something and shining their flashlights at a particular electrical panel. Rick the janitor stood by, holding the keys. Then the two detectives did something odd: they began circling the entire lobby, seeming to be examining the walls.

  They’re looking for power outlets, Benny realized. When they didn’t find any, they talked for another minute. Then they took some notes, and Rick shut and locked the closet door. Then they all left.

  Benny waited a beat before slipping into the lobby. He went to the door and turned the door handle, hoping by some stroke of luck that Rick hadn’t locked it properly. It didn’t open. Benny stepped back and surveyed the area. That’s when he suddenly understood:

  The girls’ bathroom.

  It was directly next to the electrical closet. They shared a wall.

  The second bell rang. Benny was now officially late for Chemistry. He stood for a second, deciding whether to go to class or pursue his line of thought. Benny hated being late. It was rude and attracted unwanted attention. But he couldn’t leave now.

  He pushed the door to the girls’ room open with his foot. It didn’t sound like anyone was inside. The anxiety of getting caught—the scream of girls, being labeled a pervert forever—made his stomach hurt.

  Go, he commanded himself. He opened the door, his heart pounding. The bathroom was empty. He remembered how it had seemed last night—dark and dingy, the lair of a mysterious drug dealer. Now it seemed bright and clean and normal. A place girls went to brush their hair. Benny wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for. He quickly scanned all the walls, searching for power outlets. There weren’t any.

  The fluorescent light in the ceiling caught his eye. It seemed a little dim. He squinted at it. Under the plastic shield it appeared that one of the long, tubular bulbs was missing.

  There.

  Benny jumped onto the sink. He wasn’t strong, but he was nimble and had excellent balance from his aikido training. He swiftly pushed the large, rectangular piece of plastic from the ceiling. Peering into the exposed fixture, he saw that where the second bulb should be, there was a homemade outlet with a pair of wires sticking out. And plugged into it was a little white square.

  Benny reached and grabbed it. He hastily returned the plastic shield to its place and hopped down, then bolted out of the bathroom. He instantly realized he should have looked first. The detectives were standing right outside. He tried to hide behind a trophy case, but they’d already spotted him through the lobby’s immense windows.

  Idiot! he yelled at himself. Trying to hide had just made him look ten times more suspicious.

  “Well, hi!” Detective Disco said, swaggering through the lobby doors. “I was wondering when I’d bump into the Mysterious Club.”

  “Mystery Club,” Benny corrected him.

  “Of course, of course. Because where there’s crime . . .” He let the words dangle, as if they were the first half of an expression that he expected Benny to complete.

  Benny clutched the plastic square in his right hand. He tried to relax his fingers so it wouldn’t be so obvious that he was holding something. But he was afraid he would drop it.

  “I’m just on my way to class,” he said.

  “Well, you’re late, son! Want us to write you a note? We can say you were helping us. It doesn’t even have to be a lie. Do you want to help us?” While Detective Disco spoke, his partner looked Benny up and down.

  Don’t look at my hand. Don’t look at my hand.

  “I-I don’t have any help to be,” Benny said ineptly.

  For a long, torturous moment, the detectives stared at him.

  “Well!” Detective Disco said finally. “Let us know if you want to combine efforts this time, son.”

  Stop calling me “son”! Benny yelled in his mind. He’d disliked Detective Disco since the moment they’d met during the investigation of Mr. Choi. Detective Disco had the same smarmy demeanor as the officer who’d shot Tank. The same impenetrable wall of smugness. The kind of man who’d never admitted that he’d done anything wrong in his life.

  “Here’s my card.” Detective Disco reached inside his pocket. It was obvious he was right-handed; he removed the card with his right hand, and presented it unconsciously (or possibly consciously) toward Benny’s right hand, which was clutching the white square. Awkwardly Benny extended his left hand to take it. The detective clearly perceived the awkwardness of the handoff. He narrowed his eyes, then gave Benny’s shoulder a weird squeeze.

  “Do you work out, son?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You should work out. I used to be a scrawny guy like you. Felt like a stranger in my own body. Now I feel great!”

  “Great.”

  The woman detective’s cell phone rang. “We gotta go, Mitch,” she said.

  Detective Disco gave Benny a final look. “Well, I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

  “Where there’s crime . . . ,” Benny replied weakly. The detectives both laughed. Their laughter was fake and hollow. Benny didn’t like it.

  As soon as the detectives were gone, Benny exhaled and looked at his watch. He was now ten minutes late for chemistry. But he couldn’t go to class without taking a closer look at the thing he’d found plugged in the bathroom. He moved to an empty hallway in case the detectives came back. Then he opened his hand.

  He was pretty sure he already knew what it was. He’d have to google it to be certain, but it looked like an X10 controller. When plugged into an outlet, it could be linked to a smartphone and used to control the electricity on that particular circuit. Which meant Yasmin Astarabadi hadn’t caused the power to go out. It was the drug dealer in the bathroom.

  Benny took photos of the device from every angle. Then he snuck back into the girls’ room and returned it to the hidden outlet in the ceiling. Whoever had put it there would have to come back for it eventually. If Benny could figure out a way to sneak a motion-sensitive camera into the light fixture, all he’d have to do is wait for the drug dealer to show up and expose himself.

  Benny grinned at the photos on his phone, feeling creepily like Gollum with the Precious. The proof was his and his alone. The detectives were idiots. They should have looked in the bathroom immediately. But their minds were limited and full of walls.

  It was the drug dealer, Benny thought triumphantly. And now all that was left was to find out who he was.

  The library, 11:31 a.m.

  Virginia felt very Benny-ish and smart, sitting in the empty upstairs part of the library drawing a diagram onto graph paper. She’d spent every minute between classes plus her free period tracking down who had seen Trevor slip on the banana. The information had been pretty easy to get. Everyone was talking about DeAndre and eager to spill their guts to anyone who would listen. From what Virginia had gathered, there’d been
a number of people near Trevor and DeAndre’s booths at the moment of the blackout, but only three people had actually heard Trevor slip. Two were Constance Bouchelle and Yu Yan. And the third person—Benny was going to freak—was Craig Beaver.

  “Isn’t there some guy who solves mysteries?”

  “Like Sherlock Holmes?”

  “No . . . Scooby-Doo.”

  “Winn, you’re so silly! Scooby-Doo is a dog!”

  Virginia twisted around in her chair. In the corner, half obscured by a bookshelf, Winn Davis and Corny Davenport were making out in a fake leather armchair. Corny’s shirt was unbuttoned, and Winn’s hand was practically on her boob. Virginia felt her face flushing hot. The video flashed in her mind: Winn’s ecstatic expression, Corny’s legs in the air. Stop being perverted, she told herself.

  “Benny Flax solves mysteries,” she said loudly.

  Corny and Winn looked up from their make-out session. Winn seemed embarrassed, and Corny squealed. She fell off Winn’s lap, giggling.

  “What did you say?” Winn asked.

  “Benny Flax solves mysteries,” Virginia repeated, leaning back in her chair.

  “Shhh!” the witchy upstairs librarian hissed at them.

  Corny was quickly buttoning herself up. She yanked Winn’s arm and skipped out of the library, giggling and dragging Winn behind her. Winn seemed slightly dazed, looking over his shoulder at Virginia as he clumped down the stairs. Then they both disappeared.

  What was that about? Virginia thought. Maybe Winn was the drug dealer in the bathroom, and he knew Mystery Club would be on his trail. She thought about the suspect list: Winn Davis and a question mark. She knew she should have told Benny to add Min-Jun, but he’d been so annoying when she’d mentioned his e-mails. It was obvious that Benny didn’t think Virginia could handle herself around Min-Jun, which was totally unfair. She’d handled herself fine—twice—once in his car and once on the bridge. Benny was just a control freak who didn’t want her to do anything besides make dumb diagrams. He wouldn’t even tell her what happened to his dog. But it was hard for Virginia to feel too indignant when she knew there were things Benny didn’t know about her, either. Things she wasn’t eager for him to find out.