“According to multiple eyewitnesses, Preston’s car wasn’t there at six, when the sun came up.” Gonzalez leaned forward for emphasis.
Fucking Jacobsen brothers. It had to be. No one else was there. I bet one of them was the mysterious eyewitness who saw Pres and me “arguing” too.
“Can you explain how Preston’s car was parked at the overlook parking lot Sunday morning and also not parked there?” McGhee asked.
“Isn’t eyewitness testimony wrong a lot?” I asked. “My little sister is always watching detective shows, and it seems like I’ve heard that over and over.”
“Sometimes.” McGhee chewed on the end of his pencil. He sighed. “Look, I want to believe you, Max, but I know you’re not being straight with me. I can help you if you tell me the truth.”
“Or,” Gonzalez said, “we can arrest you for obstruction of a criminal investigation if you keep lying to us.”
I looked back and forth from McGhee to Gonzalez and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then I blurted out, “Here’s the deal. The camping trip was just a cover.”
Gonzalez’s eyebrows shot up, but he kept quiet for once.
“What do you mean?” McGhee had a knack for keeping his face perfectly expressionless. It was a little creepy.
I told him how Preston had asked me to cover for him so that he could go to Vegas to meet a girl. As I talked, McGhee made notes and Gonzalez made faces. Snarls and sneers, the kinds of looks you give to someone you think is totally full of shit.
I finished my story and McGhee sat in silence for a moment, looking at me, but not really. More like looking through me at the living room wall. He nodded to himself. “Got a last name for this Violet?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
Gonzalez laughed. A brittle sound, like breaking glass.
“Something funny?” I asked him.
“What’s funny is how often the stories start to change once we catch someone in a lie.” He reached up to scratch the side of his neck. “Although you think quick on your feet, I’ll give you that, kid.”
“It’s the truth,” I said.
“Why wasn’t it the truth yesterday?” McGhee asked, nibbling on his pencil again.
I shrugged. I still didn’t want to tell them about Liars, Inc. It wasn’t like any of our classmates had kidnapped Preston. “I thought everything was fine. I told him I would cover for him, so I didn’t want to screw it up and get him in trouble.”
McGhee nodded. “I see. He hasn’t called you, has he?”
“No.”
“But he should have his phone with him, wherever he is, right?” McGhee asked. “Preston’s mom said he was always glued to his cell.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. My stomach lurched as I thought about Preston’s phone still hanging out in my trunk.
“You don’t mind if we take a look around, do you?” McGhee said. “It’s not like you have anything to hide, right?”
I froze. “I, uh, I think my parents would want to be here for that.”
“We promise not to disturb anything. We won’t even go in their room,” he said.
I could feel the blood draining from my face. My phone buzzed sharply. Gonzalez watched as I accessed the text message. It was from Parvati. One word: warrant.
I tucked the phone into the pocket of my hoodie. “Look. I have to go pick up my sister from school in a little bit. Now’s not a good time for you guys to start looking around.” Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, I added, “Anyway, don’t you need a warrant to search somewhere?”
“We only need a warrant if you don’t give us permission,” McGhee said.
“I think my parents would want a warrant.”
Gonzalez narrowed his eyes. “Just remember, Max. If you make things hard on us we might feel inclined to make them hard on you.”
“Well, it’s all been easy and fun so far.” I made a big show of pulling my car keys out of my pocket and glancing toward the door. “Talk to you guys soon, I’m sure.”
“I guess we’ll get out of your hair,” McGhee said. The two agents exchanged a long look. I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t like it.
They got up and headed for the door. “Hey, Max,” Gonzo called back over his shoulder. “You just turned eighteen, right?”
Just my luck that all of this was going down the exact day I legally became an adult. Happy birthday to me. “Why?” I asked. “Did you buy me something nice?”
He smirked. “Let us know if you’re going to leave town, okay?”
FOURTEEN
PARVATI AND I FISHED THE phone out of my trunk the second McGhee and Gonzalez left. Of course the battery had died. I started scrubbing it down with a baby wipe. No more blood. No more fingerprints.
A giant clap of thunder came out of nowhere, shaking the windowpanes. Raindrops began to plink against the glass.
“Nice call on the warrant,” I said.
“Yeah,” Parvati replied, without looking at me. She was staring at the phone. “If they find that, they’re going to arrest you.”
“So let’s just get rid of it.” Even as I said the words, I knew we couldn’t. We might need it to find Preston’s mysterious girlfriend. There could be other clues on it too. I finished with the baby wipe and then set the phone on the coffee table.
Parvati reached for it. Using the sleeve of her shirt, she pressed the power button. The screen stayed dark. “At least if the battery is dead they won’t be able to track it anymore.” She sighed deeply. “But we can’t just baby-wipe away the smears of blood in your trunk.”
“You really think some random smudges that may or may not be blood are enough to prove I committed a crime?”
“No, but add the smudges to the fact that you had the phone and got rid of it, and that they have an eyewitness that says you and Pres were arguing. All that is more than enough to convince them to test your trunk for blood and go digging for other stuff.”
“Other stuff they won’t find.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure about anything,” I said. “Preston wouldn’t make it an hour without his phone. If he thought he lost it he would have pulled over and gone through his whole car to find it. And then he would have realized he forgot it and turned around. How could it end up in my trunk?” With blood on it. “And who the hell told the cops Pres and I were arguing?”
Parvati rested her forehead against her hands. “It’s almost like you’re being—”
“Set up.” Like I was a suspect in one of Amanda’s detective shows instead of a high school kid. Like I had fallen into someone else’s life. One that might look fun if I was watching it on TV, but sure as hell didn’t feel fun.
I thought about the Jacobsens, the only other people at the beach. They had to be the ones who told the FBI about Preston’s car not being parked at the overlook. But were they the ones who lied about seeing Pres and me fighting? If so, why? The surfing brothers had nothing against me.