Andrew Klavan - The long way home

Once again, Rick and Miler exchanged a look. Miler shrugged. Then Rick shrugged. "I guess it's possible," he said.

Josh's voice came over the two-way. "Well, I guess we're going to find out. Here we are."

We all turned back to the laptop again. On the monitor, Josh was spinning the steering wheel to guide the Camry into a parking space. Through his window, I could see parts of the high school going by in the background.

"All right," said Josh. "I guess this is it."

He sounded excited, as if this was an adventure. That worried me. He should've sounded scared, as if this was dangerous. Because it was dangerous. I mean, I was scared, and I wasn't even there.

"You got the names of those kids?" he said.

Beth handed me my little sheaf of news stories. I paged through them until I found the names.

"Paul Hunt and Frederick Brown."

Hunt Wyatt High School is a pretty rough place. It's in a rundown section of town-the section Alex had to move to after his dad left. A lot of the kids who go to Wyatt have really hard lives: no fathers, not enough money, sometimes violent homes and stuff like that. They have a big problem at the school with booze and drugs. They also have a big problem with gangs-a lot of the kids belong to them. A couple of times, the police have had to rush to the school to break up fights on the field out back. These weren't just schoolyard punch-outs either, they were full-scale melees with knives and baseball bats and so on.

The idea of skinny, pale-faced, geeky Josh with his big glasses and his goofy smile wandering around asking these kids questions didn't make me feel any better about the situation. But there he was.

Josh spent some time fumbling around in the car getting his spy gear all hooked up. He was wearing slacks and a checked button-down shirt with a tan windbreaker over it: sort of the official geek uniform. He hooked his webcam up to the collar of his windbreaker. We couldn't see it, but he told us it was made to look like some kind of medallion so it wouldn't be so noticeable. He hooked his microphone up to his shirt collar near his mouth, under the windbreaker so no one could see it. Then he pulled a watch cap down over his head. It was a little warm to be wearing a watch cap, but it hid the earpiece. Finally, he strapped a laptop case over his shoulder. He had to carry it with him so the webcam and mike would work.

Now he stepped out of the car.

In the empty parlor of the Ghost Mansion, with the cool air blowing in from the graveyard through the broken window, Beth and Rick and Miler and I crowded around our own laptop, watching the monitor intently. We couldn't see Josh, but we could see whatever was in front of him. At first, as he climbed out of his mom's Camry, the scenery swung around wildly in this kind of sickening way. We caught tilted, pixilated glimpses of the parking lot and the school's grassy backfield and the school building itself-which was one of those old-fashioned brick buildings with the clock tower and the white cupola up top.

Then Josh started walking and the picture steadied. It still kind of bumped around with his footsteps, but at least it didn't swing back and forth anymore.

Josh narrated into the microphone under his breath. "Here I go, moving across the field…"

"We can see that, Josh," said Miler. "You're wearing a camera on your shirt."

Josh ignored him. "I'm looking around now to find someone I can talk to…"

"Dork," muttered Miler with a sigh.

As Josh turned to look this way and that, we got a pretty fair view of the field. We could see that even now, about an hour before lunchtime, there were a lot of kids out there. I guess they were mostly seniors who didn't have many classes to go to. Some of them were playing basketball on the paved court to one side of the field. Some of them were kicking a soccer ball around in the grass. A lot of them were just standing in clusters, talking and sneaking cigarettes and looking shiftily this way and that as if they wanted to make sure there were no teachers nearby. I knew they weren't allowed to wear gang colors at school, but I'm pretty sure some of these kids were gangsters all the same.

"Okay," whispered Josh into his microphone. "There's someone…"

On the monitor now, we saw a small cluster of kids coming closer and closer as Josh approached them. They were standing right at the edge of the field, near one corner of the parking lot. There were four of them, four guys standing together. They didn't exactly look like Mr. Friendly and his Happyface Pals. They were big, dressed in denim, one dude with cut-off sleeves so you could see his enormous arm muscles. Two of them were smoking cigarettes. None of them were smiling. Over the two-way, we could hear them talking in low voices, almost grunts. They would nod and frown and steal a look around and talk some more, as if they were sharing secrets.

Beth, Rick, Miler, and I all looked at one another. We were all thinking the same thing: this was not a good idea.

"Josh," I said into the two-way. "I don't think you should…"

"Hi, guys!" Josh greeted these thugs in his squeaky, goofy voice. "I was wondering if you could help me out!"

The guy with the big muscular arms looked at Josh. It was the way you might look at a spider when you were thinking, Look at that disgusting little thing. I'm gonna step on it. He didn't say anything. So Josh just plunged right on.

"I'm looking for a couple of guys I need to talk to for an article for my school paper. Their names are Paul Hunt and Frederick Brown. Any idea where I might find them?"

Beth and the guys and I stared at the laptop monitor. I think all four of us were holding our breath.

The guy with the big arms ran his eyes up and down Josh as if wondering just what kind of spider he might be. But the next minute, he kind of gestured with his head, giving it a little move that pointed across the field. The way he did it-it was like he thought Josh ought to be crushed to a green pulp, but he just couldn't be bothered to take the trouble.

Josh turned and followed the gesture. As he did, his camera swung around, and for a second I had a look in the direction the big-armed guy was pointing. Right away, I spotted one of the thugs who had approached me that night with Alex in the Eastfield Mall.

"Josh, there he is!" I said into the two-way.

"Where?" said Josh.

"What?" said the guy with the muscular arms.

"Oh," said Josh. "Uh, nothing."

"Just thank the nice man and move away, Josh," I said. "I'll guide you to the guy."

"Right," said Josh. And then to Mr. Big Arms, he said, "Hey, thanks a lot, dude."

Big Arms made another gesture with his chin, which I guess meant either You're welcome or Get away from me, spider, before I change my mind and kill you. But whatever it meant, Josh gave him a jolly, finger-waggling wave and moved off across the field.

"He is so gonna die," said Rick.

"Ssh," said Beth, afraid Josh might hear him.

"I'm just saying," said Rick.

Josh's breathless whisper came over the two-way. "Okay. I'm on the move again. Where is this guy?"

I peered into the monitor, searching. "Turn more to the left," I said. "Wait, turn back a little. There he is. You're heading right for him."

He was standing across the field. I didn't know if he was Hunt or Brown, since they hadn't introduced themselves when they were trying to bully me in the mall parking lot. At the time, I just thought of him as Crewcut Guy because he'd had his blond hair cut to a nub on his head. He was built like a low brick wall, short and thick and powerful. He was wearing a black jacket and black jeans.

Everyone else in the field was gathered in clusters with friends, but Crewcut Guy was alone. He was leaning against a diamond-link fence at the edge of the field. He had his thumbs hooked in his pockets and one of his legs bent back so his foot rested against the fence. His eyes were narrowed and his gaze moved slowly around the field, taking everything in. He reminded me of a gunfighter in an old cowboy movie, waiting for the shooting to start.