She hands me a little plastic card printed with login information and then directs me to a glassed-in room with two tables of computers. I find Number 9 and log on.
I type “Adam Lyons” into the search box. Hundreds of pages pop up. I add “disappearance” and “Rosewood” to my search criteria, which narrows the results to just two pages. The first one is an article from a few years ago about the problem of runaways in warm-climate states. It only mentions Adam’s name in passing, as one of several kids who disappeared from group homes in the Southwest. The second link is to the article from the LA Times that Anna mentioned. It doesn’t say much, only that Adam Lyons was the second ward of the state to disappear from the Rosewood Center for Boys in the past five years. The article goes on to question some of the Rosewood policies and call into question whether the staff members are qualified to care for “at-risk” youth. There’s a tiny black-and-white picture of Adam embedded in the article. It’s grainy, but it still looks a lot like Preston. There’s no mention of the exact date that Adam disappeared, but the article is dated February 11, almost eight years ago.
I try Preston’s name with “Rosewood” and then Preston’s name with “Adam Lyons.” No hits. Other than the picture, there’s no evidence linking Preston to Rosewood or Adam Lyons. I try the name “Violet Cain” with all of the other search terms. Nothing. I drum my fingers on the tabletop, not sure what to look up next.
I’m missing something important, but I don’t know what it is. I turn back to the computer, intending to log off, but instead I type something completely unrelated into the search box: “Alexander Keller Los Angeles.”
A whole string of hits come back. I click on the first one and my father’s picture pops up next to a news story. I study his piercing eyes and square jaw. I wish I looked more like him.
“UCLA Professor of Oceanography Alexander Keller died this morning of an apparent heart attack . . .”
My phone buzzes. Stern Librarian glances up from her desk. She points at a sign that says NO CELL PHONES. Damn, how can she even hear it from way over there?
It’s Parvati, of course. I let her go to voicemail. There’s nothing else for me to find here. I take one last look at my real dad’s picture and then log off the computer. I turn in my internet card as I pass the librarian’s desk on the way out.
The railing for the library steps is a low cement wall, and I hop up onto it and let my feet hang down. I don’t know where to go next. The FBI could probably access more information about Violet Cain or Adam Lyons, but there’s no way McGhee and Gonzalez would believe a crazy story about Senator DeWitt putting out a hit on his own son to cover up some affair he had almost twenty years ago. I can’t even believe it myself.
Drumming my fingers on the cement, I stare off into the distance. The sun is starting to set. A neon sign on the parking garage next to the library crackles to life. Reluctantly, I listen to the message Parvati left.
“Max. I need to see you. There’s something else that you should know. Please call me when you get this.”
Maybe she’s got new information. I breathe in and out a few times and then dial her number.
“Max!” She sounds so happy to hear from me that it kind of makes me feel sick.
“You said you had something else to tell me?”
“Yeah, but not over the phone. I need to see you.”
“I’m not home right now.” I’m also not ready to see her yet. I glance down at the manicured lawn at the bottom of the railing and try to quell the jittery feeling in my stomach. It’s not like what she has to tell me could possibly be any worse than eight-by-ten glossies of her and Pres having sex. “Just spit it out, P.”
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to let me explain the Preston thing.”
“Yeah? Well, I choose later,” I say. “There are more important things than us right now, like finding Preston’s killer. So unless what you want to tell me has to do with that . . .”
There’s a long pause. “No,” she says finally. “At least I don’t see how it could.”
I hear a voice in the background. It sounds like the Colonel. “Isn’t this the day you stay late for newspaper class?” I ask.
Parvati sighs again. “My parents pulled me out of school. I’m going to finish up at Blue Pointe Prep in the spring.”
“What about this semester?”
“I’ll have enough credits that I don’t need it,” she says. “Another thing I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Sorry,” I say tersely. “Didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
“It’s not just because of you,” she starts. “My mom was snooping around in my room and found—”
Condoms? Sex tapes? A lump starts to form in my throat. “I have to go,” I say quickly.
“What? Go where?”
I don’t answer her. I just click the disconnect button and slip the phone back into my pocket. I’m still sitting on the wall, my dangling feet growing heavy in my sneakers. People pass back and forth in front of me, colored blurs against the gray sky.
I spent most of my life being no one, and not really minding. And then I met Pres and Parvati and started to feel different. Not because they were popular or had money—I never cared about any of that. With them, I was part of something. Only maybe I wasn’t. Maybe it was never the three of us. Maybe it was always the two of them, and me. Either way, Preston is gone and I kind of wish Parvati was too, even though that would clearly make me no one again. It kind of sucks having nothing to lose, but it sucks even worse having everything good taken away from you.
Or to realize it was never yours in the first place.
THIRTY-TWO
LANGSTON CALLS ME ON THE way home. I flip on the cruise control and turn down the music.
“Marcus and I took care of your car,” he says.
“Do I want to know what that means?”
“It means that it’s gone for good.”
“Shit. I guess I’ll be walking everywhere from now on.” I drum my fingertips on the steering wheel.
“Sorry.” He pauses. “Better than life in prison, though, right?”
Corporate campuses rush by me on both sides of the highway. I pull the truck into the exit lane to switch highways, swearing under my breath as I nearly sideswipe a black BMW that was hovering in my blind spot.
“There was nothing useful in the trunk. Anything new on your end?” he asks.
“No. I’ve been staying out of it, like you said I should,” I say quickly.
Langston chuckles. “You sound anxious. What’s wrong, Max? Still worried we’re going to revoke your bail?”
“I just don’t know how all this stuff is going to play out.” I swerve around a dead possum, trying not to notice the guts spread all over the highway.