Burning Blue

“Ever really know anybody. Not even yourself. Do you agree? Don’t be afraid to disagree with me.”

“I’d like to think that’s not true.”

“Indeed. We all want to think that way. But the sooner you confront reality, the sooner you’ll be able to move on. Forward. We must keep moving forward.”

I wanted to get out of that car so bad. “I’m over there, next right onto Valedale. I can get out at the corner.”

He kept driving, right into the lot.

“I can get out here, sir, or just by the mailbox there would be great.”

He drove me all the way up to the lobby. The takeout containers were still there, but the rats had licked them clean. Mr. Castro frowned. “Is he home?”

“My father? Why?”

“Not that I think anybody would be foolish enough to try anything with you, but I promised Nicole and her mother I wouldn’t leave you alone.”

“He’ll be home soon.” Okay, so in this case soon meant two days, but I would have said anything to get out of that car.

He gave me a hard nod and wink. “Thank you.”

“Sir?”

“For the information about that car. For being alert enough to get the license plate. That was well done.”

“No problem.” I tried the door but it was locked with the child-proof safety.

“You were looking out for my daughter. You have my gratitude.” He shook my hand. I thought he was going to break it. “You need a haircut.

“Yessir, I’ll get right on that.”

“Do.” He pulled his hand away quickly and the automatic locks clunked up. I got out, and the BMW zipped out of the lot. On my way in, I picked up the takeout trash and chucked it into the Dumpster.

The Castros had private security, but in my building we didn’t even have security cameras. That woman in the Civic knew where I lived. Now I was the one peeking around corners. I went through the apartment room by room, closet by closet, wondering just what I would do if I found somebody in there. I plugged in my phone for a recharge, and two texts from Angela popped up. The first told me what I already knew, that the license plates on the black Civic backtracked to a red RAV4. The second let me scratch Chrissie Vratos from my suspect list. Angela was able to confirm that Chrissie was at her dentist’s when Nicole was hit. She’d filed a note from her mother with the attendance office, requesting that Chrissie be allowed to leave school early that day for a root canal, but records at the dentist’s office showed Chrissie had come in to get her teeth whitened. All of my female suspects had been crossed off the list, except one: Nicole. I was desperate for any information that would rule her out as somebody somehow involved in the attack.

On the kitchen counter the clunky old landline message machine blinked. I hit PLAY, expecting to hear my father’s voice and an apology for being bombed when he called in the night before. The caller was Detective Jessica Barrone: “This is a message for Steven Nazzaro. Steve, I’ve left word for you twice now. I’d appreciate a call back.”

After my ride with Mr. Castro, I had to face the possibility that my father was somehow involved in this thing-inadvertently, not as the acid thrower, of course, but maybe as an unwitting causal agent. Whatever had gone down between Mr. Castro and him must have been pretty bad to keep Mr. Castro mad so many years later.

I wormed into my father’s email. He’d gotten a warning from E-ZPass about approaching a tollbooth too quickly, seventy miles south of Brandywine, down I-95, at an exit called Marathon. I didn’t know anything about the place, except that it wasn’t near Philadelphia, where he was supposed to be. I clicked up some history on the area, heavily industrial, at least until the economy tanked. Now it was a wasteland of abandoned factories. He’d gotten off the highway at 21:36 last night, and then back on at 23:19. What was he doing down in no-man’s-land for an hour and forty-three minutes?

I burned through New Jersey Traffic’s firewall, back-doored my way into the E-ZPass database and scrolled through his E-ZPass statements. Two months earlier, he’d done the same thing on his way to a show in DC, exiting the highway at Marathon. That time he was MIA for a little less than two hours.

Girlfriend? He’d dated exactly two women after my mother died, maybe five or six dates total, and he’d never tried to hide them from me.

This was not the big break in information I was hoping for.

My bedroom doorknob twisted. The lock was broken, but I’d wedged a chair under the handle. I grabbed my baseball bat.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Let me in. Jay, open up.” My father.

I slapped down my laptop screen and cleared the chair from the door. “I thought you weren’t due back till this weekend?”

“Your assistant principal called.”

“Dad, seriously, Kerns totally started it.”

“We’ll get to that later. Why were you blocking the door?”

I told him about the black Civic.

He rolled his eyes. “People are down there hanging out all the time, smoking drugs, fooling around, whatever else. They sleep in their cars.”

“In their trucks, after they’ve been driving all night.”

“You’re being paranoid. The woman came to pick up her husband at the train station, crashed for half an hour until his train arrived, woke up late and sped out of the lot. There. Nobody’s after you, Jay. Relax.” He took off his tie and headed for the kitchen. “I picked up a pizza. C’mon, we need to talk.”

I couldn’t tell him that the Civic’s plates were bad. He’d know I was hacking. If he knew that, he’d figure out that I was hacking him too. So much for asking him about Marathon.

“He squirted me with-”

“Water, Jay.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“You’re lucky his hand isn’t broken. It was a sprain, his mother said. The thumb. Still, it’ll be two weeks before he can get back.”

“Two weeks from school for a sprained thumb?”

“From wrestling. You know, his ticket to Harvard or wherever.”

“You’re always telling me to stick up for myself. What was I supposed to do?”

“You definitely didn’t need to choke him.”

“He-”

“Hey. I can’t afford to get sued, okay? Neither can you. If we have to hire a lawyer, we’re out on the street. C’mon, man. Use your head.” He poked my temple with his index finger as he got up to get himself a Diet Coke.

“Did you get that message from that detective?”

“Gimme a break, Jay. ‘That detective’? You mean the one you had coffee with?”

I should have known Pete would cave. In my experience, when adults give you their word about something, half the time they’ll break it, invoking the old standby clause: I know what I said, but I had to do what was best for you.

My father settled in his chair, rubbed his eyes, eyed me. “The Castro girl. Stay away from her. You’re in enough trouble with this suspension crap. And stay the hell away from Barrone too. She’s a pain in the ass. I helped her kid on a paper once-”