“It’s Susan. I’m going to read you some numbers and I want you to tell me what you think they are.” She read the numbers.
“Court-case file number,” Parker said immediately. “The first two numbers are the year—2003.”
Susan told Parker the story of the mysterious envelope.
“Looks like someone’s got herself an anonymous source,” Parker teased. “Let me call my guy at the courthouse and see what I can find out about your file.”
Her laptop was sitting on the coffee table. She opened it up and Googled “Justin Johnson.” Over 150,000 links came up. She Googled “Justin Johnson, Portland.” This time, only eleven hundred. She started scrolling through them.
The phone rang. Susan picked it up.
“It’s a juvie record,” Parker said. “Sealed. Sorry.”
“A juvie record,” Susan said. “What kind of crime?”
“Sealed. As in ‘cannot be opened.’”
“Right.” She hung up and looked at the name and numbers some more. Drank some coffee. Looked at the name. A juvie record. Why would someone want her to know about Justin Johnson’s juvie record? Could it have something to do with the After School Strangler? Should she call Archie? About what? Some weird envelope she’d found in her newspaper? It could be about anything. It could be a prank. She didn’t even know any Justins. Then she remembered the student pot dealer in the Cleveland High parking lot. His vanity plate had read JAY2. The letter J squared? It was worth checking out. She dialed the number for the Cleveland High administration office.
“Hi,” Susan said. “This is Mrs. Johnson. We’ve been having some truancy issues and I was wondering if you could tell me if my son Justin had made it to school today?”
The student office volunteer told Susan to hang on a minute and then came back on the line. “Mrs. Johnson?” she said. “Yeah. No worries. Justin’s here today.”
Well, what do you know? Justin Johnson went to Cleveland High. And he had a criminal record.
She punched in Archie’s cell phone number. He answered on the second ring. “This is going to sound weird,” she said, and she relayed the story of the parking lot and the envelope.
“He’s alibied,” Archie said.
“You know this off the top of your head?”
“We looked into him,” Archie said. “He was in detention. All three days in question. He’s accounted for.”
“Don’t you want the case number?”
“I know about his record,” Archie said.
“You do?”
“Susan, I’m a cop.”
She couldn’t resist. “Did you see my story?”
“I liked it very much.”
Susan hung up and squirmed with pleasure. He had liked her story. She set the envelope on a stack of mail on the coffee table. It was just before 10:00 A.M. Justin Johnson would be out of school in about five and a half more hours. And she would be waiting for him. In the meantime, she was much more interested in Archie Sheridan. She poured herself some more coffee and called Debbie Sheridan back on her landline. It was Friday, but Archie had said that his ex-wife worked at home on Fridays. Sure enough, Debbie picked up.
“Hi,” Susan said. “It’s Susan Ward again. You said to call back?”
“Oh, hi,” Debbie said.
“Is this a better time? I’d still really love to get together to talk.”
There was a brief pause. Then Debbie sighed. “Can you come now? The kids are at school.”
Susan beamed. “That sounds great. Where do you live?”
She got directions, pulled on skinny jeans, a red-and-blue-striped T-shirt, and red ankle boots, grabbed her black pea coat, and took the elevator downstairs. It was a gorgeous elevator, all steel and glass. Susan watched as the numbers blinked from 6 down to the subterranean garage, and then at the last moment, she had an idea and she hit L. The doors slid open and she stepped out into the lobby and walked into the building’s chic administrative and sales office. Good. Monica was working.
Susan put on her best sorority-girl face (it was pretty good, even with the pink hair) and approached the bamboo counter, where Monica sat frowning over a fashion magazine.
“Hi,” Susan said, stretching the word out to four syllables.
Monica looked up. She was a committed platinum blonde. No roots. Ever. With the kind of automatic smile that becomes meaningless by definition. Susan wasn’t sure what exactly she did besides read magazines. She seemed to function as bait for the building’s sales team. Like pumping a cookie-baking smell into a model home. Susan guessed she was in her mid-twenties, but with the amount of makeup she wore, it was hard to tell. Susan knew that Monica didn’t know quite how to process her. The pink hair obviously confused the hell out of her. It must have appeared, to Monica, that Susan had engaged in some sort of self-mutilation. But this seemed to make her all the more determined to be nice.
“Listen,” Susan said. “I’ve got a secret admirer.”
Monica perked up. “No way!”
“Totally. And he left me a love note in my newspaper this morning.”