Paul Griffin - Burning Blue

“Yeah.”

She said to the woman behind the counter, “Two vanilla shakes, two fries.” She turned to me. “What are you getting?”

We grabbed a booth in the back. Angela drew her phone and clicked up an email from Arachnomorph: I know you’re looking for me. It’s over on my end, unless you start me up again. If you keep stirring the nest, I’ll bite you too.

“Untraceable?” I said.

“Would I be here if it was traceable?” She was slamming the fries and shake. For somebody who couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds, she could put it down.

“Why are you doing this?” I said. “Trying to help Nicole. What’s in it for you?”

“Hello, moron, the reward money? That and she was nice to me.”

“Nice doesn’t mean you risk your life for her.”

“She was very nice, okay? Last year, while you were gone. Things sucked and I’d had a few too many drinks.” She saw I wasn’t too surprised. “In school, Spaceman. I went to the bathroom to throw up. I’d been suspended once already for cutting too many classes. One more suspension, and I was done for the semester. I purged and was feeling better, or at least well enough to fake my way through the rest of the day. I’m walking out of the bathroom, feeling like I just might get away with it when I run into Nicole in the hall. She pushes me back inside the bathroom. At first I’m like, are you seriously looking for me to dig your eyes out of your head with my thumbnails? But then she pointed to my pants. I had missed the bowl and splattered vomit all over my jeans. Lucky me, I happened to be wearing white that day. Nicole gave me hers.”

“Her pants? And she wore yours?”

“Dude, I’m like size zero. You think Nicole Castro would fit into my jeans? She told me to wait in the stall, and then she went to the music room and came back with band pants and we made the switch.”

“ Band pants? Those goofy things that go up to your chest?”

“Baggy as eighties disco, exactly. She wore those and gave me her jeans.”

“Why didn’t she just stay in her jeans and give you the, like-”

“Band pants? I wondered the same thing. She said she didn’t want me to risk drawing attention to myself.”

“So then she’s walking around like the goof, and everybody’s looking at her?”

“Everybody was looking at her anyway, and she wasn’t drunk. Look,” she said between long pulls on her milkshake, “I don’t know why people do these things, screwing themselves for other people, but they do. It’s annoyingly inexplicable. They’re just freaks, what can I tell you? Are you gonna eat those fries?”

I pushed them her way. My stomach was weak. I was suddenly panicked. If Angela had traced the leaking of the Arachnomorph emails back to me, then Detective Barrone and the NJPD cyber crime team easily could have too. “How’d you know I leaked the emails?”

“I didn’t, till now. Not for sure, anyway. I mean, I suspected it, of course. Jay, c’mon, the way you were looking at Nicole in Schmidt’s office? In love with her even after the burn, huh? I don’t know if that’s super-sweet or super-weird.”

“I’m not in love with-”

“Right, okay, whatever, here’s my proposal: We team up and split the reward.”

“I’m not doing this for the money.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, more for me. Look, whatever your reasoning, you know by now this is too big a job for one person. Even if the Recluse is somebody from school, if you include staff, that’s almost thirty-eight hundred suspects to check out. Then you throw in people outside of school who could be jealous of her, and you’re dealing with like half the population of New Jersey. What are you riding for taps?”

“Conficker88.”

“Please tell me you’re not serious.”

“What?”

“Freeware punched holes in that thing ages ago.”

“You’re kidding.”

“ You’re kidding. Riding 88 and expecting to stay anonymous? Maybe teaming up with you is a bad idea.”

“When was it blown?”

“At least yesterday. Maybe even the day before.”

Somebody who could talk my language. Very cool. “What’s your horse?”

“The Sleeze321 worm.”

“Charming.”

“At least she can keep a secret.”

“Infect me.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” She zipped it to my phone with a patch that I opened first to prevent the worm from vaporizing my hard drive. We compared notes. We had the exact same suspect list. I told her I had ruled out Sabbatini, Schmidt and Mr. Sager.

“Let’s get back to Bendix,” she said. “What’s your take on him?”

“Long shot.”

“Right,” she said. “No motivation. You’re sure he asked her to lie about something?”

“What else could he have been doing?”

“We better check him out, then. I’ll run strings on him.”

“I already did,” I said.

“And?”

“Nothing.”

She popped a fistful of fries. “Look, that thing that happened back at that house party freshman year: Obviously I was bombed.”

“I’m surprised you remember it.”

“Caitlin told me what you did for me.” She frowned. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“You can relax, though. I’m not into you that way. You’re a little too clean for my taste, no offense.”

“Absolutely none taken.”

“Good.”

“Hey, this is crazy, but do you think she could have done it to herself?”

“Why would Nicole Castro burn herself?”

“Right.” I sipped my shake, studying Angela as she looked at her phone and Nicole’s Facebook page. I was getting into business with a girl who drank in school, but did I have any choice? Angela was right: I needed a hand. She was going to hack at this thing anyway, until she got her reward money. She would be happy to do the one thing I couldn’t: hack Nicole. I didn’t want to violate whatever was going on between us, friendship or certainly the beginnings of it. Also, I was afraid of what I might find in her files. If nothing was there, Angela wouldn’t bother to tell me about them. She didn’t strike me as the type to waste time on gossip. If she did find something scary, she would tell me. I was okay with that. My ears were open to any information that would help Nicole, or help her help herself, if she did in fact burn herself. Whether Angela was an alcoholic or not, I had to work with her. That didn’t mean I had to trust her, yet.

A little after one in the morning the phone rang. My father. I was sure he’d talked with Detective Barrone. He said, “You couldn’t call me to check in?”

“You couldn’t call me ?”

“You sound weird. I don’t know, afraid or something.”

“You’re leaving me alone since I’m thirteen. I’m just mainlining a little heroin.”

“Jay? I’m sorry, okay?”

Now I knew he was drinking. I’d been about to ask him what went down between Mr. Castro and him all those years ago, but no way I was going to get anything substantive out of him when he was smashed.

“Jay?”

“I heard you. Look, just go to bed.”

“I didn’t mean it, Jay.”

“I know. I gotta go.”

“Okay. Okay. Jay?”

“Yes, Dad ?” Rolling my eyes.

“I’ll see you Saturday. Maybe we’ll go to the driving range.”

“Or we could just smash our hands with sledgehammers and guzzle Drano.”

“Why do you have to. . Look, just stay out of trouble.” Click.

“Right,” I said to the dial tone. “’Night.” I tapped into his phone account and scanned his Calls Made list. He still hadn’t returned Detective Barrone’s call.