I t was 3:30 and Susan found herself once again at Cleveland High School. She hadn’t attended school this regularly when she was enrolled. Her plan had been to ambush Justin at his car, but now that she stood in the parking lot, the orange Beemer was nowhere in sight. Great. She sure as hell couldn’t pretend to be his mom in person. Plus, she didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to run into any more of her old teachers. And she certainly didn’t want to get lectured by that janitor again.
So now what? She had a lot she wanted to ask JAY2, like what exactly he’d done to get himself a record and why she should care and, most important, why someone else would think she should care and who that someone might be.
And now she couldn’t find him.
The kids were all dressed like it was summer—T-shirts, shorts, miniskirts, sandals. The sun was bright and even the biggest puddles had dried up, but it was only fifty degrees. Most of the trees were bare. The kids streamed around Susan to their cars, clutching enormous book bags and backpacks.
Then she saw a kid who looked like Justin. Same surfer haircut, similar clothes, same age. He was walking toward a Ford Bronco, punching a text message into a phone. Remembering the tribe mentality of high school, she took a chance that kids who look alike are usually friends.
“Do you know where I can find Justin Johnson?” she asked, trying not to look weird or dangerous.
He frowned. “J.J.’s gone,” he said.
“Gone?”
“They took him out of sixth period. His grandpa died or something. He was going right to the airport to fly down to Palm Springs.”
“When’s he going to be back?” Susan asked.
The kid shrugged. “I’m supposed to get his homework for a week. McCallum was pissed. Said he was faking. That his grandpa had already died freshman year. Threatened to put him back in detention.” He examined Susan and seemed to come to some affirming conclusion. “You looking for product?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “And I’ve lost J.J.’s number. Can you give it to me?”
Archie sat across the table from Dan McCallum. He had the arson squad’s report in front of him. McCallum was a small man with a lot of thick brown hair and a walruslike mustache that hadn’t been fashionable since before McCallum was born. His arms and legs seemed too short for his thick torso and his hands were small and square. He wore his button-down shirt tucked into his brown pants, which were held up with a wide leather belt. The belt buckle was a brass cougar head. They were sitting in the vault-cum-interview room at the bank task force offices. Claire Masland leaned against the two-foot-thick door, arms crossed. McCallum was grading papers. His fingers had writing calluses on them. You hardly ever saw that anymore, thought Archie.
“Can I interrupt a minute?” Archie asked.
McCallum didn’t look up. His eyebrows looked like second and third mustaches. “I’ve got a hundred and three physics tests to have graded by tomorrow. I’ve been a teacher for fifteen years. I get paid forty-two thousand dollars a year, not including benefits. That’s five less than I got paid last year. Want to know why?”
“Why, Dan?”
“Because the state cut the school budget by fifteen percent and they couldn’t find enough janitors and school nurses to fire.” McCallum laid his red pen carefully across his stack of tests and looked up at Archie. The eyebrows lifted. “Do you have kids, Detective?”
Archie flinched. “Two.”
“Send them to private school.”
“What happened to your boat, Dan?”
McCallum picked up the pen again and wrote a “B-” on one of the papers and circled it. “There was a marina fire. Three boats burned, including mine. But I assume you know that.”
“Actually, it seems that the fire started on your boat.” This got McCallum’s attention. “Burn patterns indicate that your boat was the origin. And that the fire was started with an accelerant. Gasoline, specifically.”
“Someone burned down my boat?”
“Someone burned down your boat, Dan.”
One enormous eyebrow started to twitch. McCallum tightened his hairy hand around his red pen. “Look,” he said, his voice rising an octave. “I told the detectives where I was when those girls disappeared. I had nothing to do with it. I’ll give you a DNA sample if you want. I don’t teach biology because I don’t like to dissect frogs. Whoever you’re looking for, it’s not me. I don’t know why someone would burn down my boat. But it has nothing to do with those girls.”