Devil's Advocate Read online

  Dana didn’t know very much Spanish but knew that phrase from growing up in Southern California. What’s up, girl?

  She didn’t reply. Ethan stood there, awkward and uncertain, apparently not knowing what he should say or do. Angelo seemed amused.

  “See you around, amigo,” he said, and walked off. When he was a few feet away, he turned and gave Dana the same kind of inexplicable look he’d given her at Beyond Beyond.

  “Freak,” muttered Ethan under his breath.

  “Forget about it,” said Dana. “Come on.”

  They hurried down the hall to the auditorium, where a couple hundred students were looking for seats and apparently all talking at once. No one knew for sure what was happening, and everyone had a theory. But then Mr. Sternholtz walked out onto the stage, followed by a uniformed deputy. The room fell silent, though Dana heard a few snickers and jokes, and three of the guys on the school’s golf team pretended to pass an invisible joint back and forth.

  Principal Sternholtz stopped in front of a microphone on a stand, glared out at everyone, and said, “Enough.” His voice was sharp and commanding, amplified to godlike dimensions by the sound system. Even the jokers in the crowd fell silent. The school nurse and another woman Dana didn’t recognize joined the others onstage. No one looked happy, and from the red puffiness of her face, it was clear the nurse had been crying.

  Dana and Ethan exchanged a worried look. He mouthed, What’s going on? But Dana shook her head.

  “As you all know,” began Sternholtz, “our school and our community have been plagued with a series of tragedies over the last six months. Three young people from Oak Valley High and two from FSK have died in a series of terrible car accidents that could have—no, should have—been avoided. These senseless acts resulted in the loss of those young lives and the destruction of all their potential. It’s a wretched chain of events, and I wish I could say that it was over, that we have all become smarter, that we have learned from our mistakes and moved into a safer, saner phase of our lives.” He paused and looked out across the sea of faces. No one made a sound. Nothing. It was a vast and icy silence. “But this tragedy simply will not end. We have not even buried Maisie Bell, we have not even begun to process our grief over our loss, and now today I am so very sorry to tell you that there has been another death. A third FSK student. Another one of us.”

  Ethan grabbed Dana’s hand and held on, as if she could keep him from sliding off his seat. His hand was ice cold.

  “Today I have learned that senior Todd Harris was killed Tuesday night when his car went through a guardrail near Elk Hill Road. His car was found at the bottom of the hill, submerged in the river.”

  The silence held and stretched to an excruciating point, and then it was shattered by a scream. Everyone turned to see a blond girl go running from the auditorium, followed by three other girls.

  “Todd’s girlfriend,” said Ethan. “Jeez, they didn’t even bother to warn her first? That’s so wrong. It’s cruel.”

  Dana nodded, but her mind was not living in that moment. The news had yanked her thoughts elsewhere. Another death? A sixth teenager. A sixth car accident?

  “No,” she said.

  “What?” asked Ethan.

  Dana leaned close and spoke in a fierce whisper. “There’s no way this was an accident. You understand that, right?”

  There was fresh fear in his eyes but not very much doubt. “I guess so.”

  “Someone’s killing teenagers,” she said. What she really meant to say was, Someone is killing us.

  Ethan looked sick. “I know.”

  On the stage, Mr. Sternholtz turned the mic over to the school nurse, who spoke about the dangers of drugs. She in turn introduced the other woman, a psychologist, who talked about grief management, and the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Then the uniformed officer introduced himself as Deputy Driscoll, and he spoke about the dangers of drugs. They saved the bombshell for last.

  Principal Sternholtz glared out at everyone. “First thing this morning I instructed the office staff to make a series of calls to each of your parents to obtain permission for us to conduct blood tests. Now, before you rise up in protest of a violation of your civil liberties,” he said, his tone condescending, “let me remind you that you are all minors. As long as we have permission from your parents or legal guardians, we can—and we will—do this. The proliferation of illegal narcotics has to be stopped. If extreme measures are necessary, then that is the course we will take.”

  Some of the students sat in stunned silence; others growled and booed. Sternholtz stared them all down.

  “Make no mistake,” he said coldly. “If any of you decline to let our nurse and the volunteers who have come here today from the hospital take blood samples even with parental permission, you will be suspended pending a consideration of possible expulsion.”

  No one said a word.

  “There has been a lot of talk in the press about a ‘war on drugs.’ So far it seems we have been losing that war.” His eyes glittered and he gave them a horrible little smile. “That will change. This is a war I intend to win. Now, throughout the day, nurses will come to each classroom with a list of those students whose parents have chosen to cooperate with our campaign to keep all students of Francis Scott Key Regional High School safe. Dismissed.”

  The students got to their feet, some furious, many shaken, all of them alarmed and frightened.

  Dana leaned close and whispered to Ethan. “This is messed up. It’s wrong.”

  He glanced at her. “What makes you say that?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, but every molecule in my body is screaming that this isn’t what they’re saying it is. Can’t you feel it, too?”

  Ethan studied her for a long time. Then he nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “We have to look at Uncle Frank’s files after school.”

  “Yes, we do,” she said, and the ferocity in her own voice surprised her.

  Ethan pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I only have gym and Latin today and then I’m done. What do you have?”

  “History and English,” she said.

  “Okay, meet me at the chem lab as soon as you can. Let’s talk to the guys in the science club before they shut down the school for the day. Maybe they’ll be able to help.”

  Dana was ten minutes into her first class when an aide appeared with a list of names. Hers was on it.

  The sense of betrayal stabbed deep, but less so when she learned that she would be tested tomorrow and it was her father, not Mom, who had agreed. For her and Melissa.

  CHAPTER 33

  Francis Scott Key Regional High School

  11:43 A.M.

  They looked like a frog, a stork, and a praying mantis.

  The three other members of the science club were clustered around a table and glanced up when Ethan and Dana entered the room. They looked exactly as Dana expected.

  The frog was a short tenth grader with huge eyes, a wide mouth, tiny ears, and a potbelly. He wore a T-shirt with Luke Skywalker on it and jeans that Dana was positive had to be at least a hundred years old. His sneakers looked even older. Ethan introduced him as Jerry Gomer.

  “Hey,” said Jerry, and he blushed a furious red as he said it.

  Not used to talking to girls, thought Dana.

  The stork was a girl. Sylvia Brunner was very tall and very thin, with a long, slender neck dotted with several moles that Dana thought looked like one of the constellations, but she couldn’t remember which one. Sylvia had a bland face that wasn’t pretty but was cheerful and open. She wore glasses with thick brown frames and no makeup, and had a lot of messy hair piled into a sloppy bun. There was absolutely nothing threatening about Sylvia, and no trace of judgment in her pale green eyes.

  “My cousin Dave talks about your sister all the time,” she said. “I think he has the hots for her.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Dana, and they smiled at each other.

  The praying mantis was a black girl
with eyes that never seemed to blink, who moved with slow, controlled precision. There was a lot going on behind those eyes, thought Dana, she was one of those people who took in every detail but seldom shared what they thought.

  “Tisa Johnson,” said the girl, introducing herself.

  “Good to meet you,” said Dana.

  The classroom was otherwise empty, and the members of the club had been working on a complex chemistry problem using small wooden balls and pegs to create models of organic molecules.

  Sylvia said, “Just to get it out in the open, Dana, we all heard about what happened in the locker room.”

  “Um … okay.”

  “Ethan says you’re not out of your mind,” said Sylvia, “so we didn’t bring a straitjacket to school with us.”

  “Okay. Thanks…?”

  “I watched you during the assembly,” said Tisa. “You and Ethan.”

  “Oh?”

  “You weren’t buying what they were trying to tell us, were you?”

  Dana glanced at Ethan, who gave her an encouraging nod. “Not much, no.”

  “What’s your theory, then?”

  The three of them looked at her with the intensity of a jury at a murder trial. Or at least that was how Dana felt.

  She dumped her heavy backpack on the floor and sat down. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she admitted. “I only know what I’ve experienced.”

  “I’ve heard ten different versions of that,” said Sylvia.

  “Whispers down the lane,” said Jerry.

  “Tell us your version,” said Tisa.

  And so she did.

  They listened to the story. When she was done, there were almost thirty seconds of silence, and she could see the members of the science club going inward, thinking it all through, processing it their individual ways. Jerry perched on the edge of his chair and traced small circles on the table with his index fingers, one circling clockwise, the other counterclockwise, and at different speeds. Sylvia leaned back and looked at the ceiling. Tisa stared at Dana with piercing, unreadable eyes.

  It was Tisa who broke the silence.

  “Extrasensory perception is a valid aspect of science,” she said in a voice that was measured and precise. “It’s been studied by the top universities all over the world. It’s studied by the military. Ours and everyone’s.”

  “It’s creepy,” said Sylvia, “but it’s also pretty cool. I saw a guy on TV just last week, on one of the talk shows. I forget his name. The Stupendous something-or-other. Doesn’t matter. They said that he’s been helping police find the bodies of murder victims. So … the police must think there’s something to all this.”

  Jerry cleared his throat. “They said that all the teens who died were taking drugs and died in single-car accidents.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Dana.

  He stared at her with his huge frog eyes. “It’s a statistical improbability for that to happen in a town this small. Even taking into account the number of people in the whole county, the numbers won’t work.”

  Dana gaped. “Wait, so you guys believe me?”

  Sylvia gave her a huge smile. “Ethan believes you. You knew things about Maisie that you couldn’t have known unless you’d met her.”

  “And you said you never met her,” said Jerry, nodding.

  “So,” said Tisa, “unless you are a tremendous liar—and by tremendous I mean tremendously good at it—then, yes, you experienced some kind of psychic phenomenon.”

  Dana felt a massive weight lean and fall off her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said.

  But Tisa held up a finger. “The problem is,” she said, “that we don’t have enough information to form any kind of useful theory.”

  “Nope,” agreed Jerry.

  “Not a chance,” said Sylvia.

  “Swell,” said Dana. She turned to Ethan. “Uncle Frank?”

  He looked pained, but he nodded. “Uncle Frank.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Hale Residence

  1:19 P.M.

  “You’re sure he won’t walk in on us?” asked Dana as she followed Ethan onto his front porch. There were no cars in the driveway or on the street. The house was an old, weathered A-frame with a postage-stamp front lawn that was completely dominated by a gnarled elm that looked like something out of a Tolkien novel.

  Ethan fished a ring of keys from the bottom of his book bag and fitted one into the heavy lock on the front door. “Not a chance,” he said. “Uncle Frank’s working double-shift today because of Todd Harris, and he usually goes out with his partner to the diner on the highway. It’s where the local deputies and some of the state troopers hang out.” He paused, then added, “Actually, I’m kind of surprised he wasn’t at school today. Maybe the sheriff is really going with this as drugs, booze, and bad driving and not buying into anything deliberate like murder.”

  He opened the door and stood aside to let her enter. A gentleman, thought Dana. Wow. I thought they were extinct. It was a line cribbed from her mother.

  “You said your mom was gone. Does that mean your parents are divorced?”

  A cloud seemed to pass in front of Ethan’s face. “My, ah, mom died when I was four.”

  “Oh … I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t really remember her much. She was sick for a couple of years. Cancer. So I never got to spend a lot of time with her.”

  Dana touched his arm. “That’s awful.”

  “It’s ancient history,” he said in a way that clearly showed that it wasn’t. Not to him. Ethan closed the door and tossed his keys into a dish on a side table. The living room was small and dark, with the shades down and curtains pulled across. For a house of bachelors, there was no obvious clutter or dust, and she guessed that this was more Ethan’s doing than anyone’s. He was a very neat and tidy guy. The furniture was the kind bought at the big chain department stores. Same for the landscape paintings on the wall. They were of the kind probably sold already framed. No vases of flowers, no knickknacks, no personal touches.

  “How’s your dad?”

  Ethan sighed. “Dad’s never around, like I said. He’s always working. He works for the government, but he can’t talk about it. Not that he’s ever around to talk about it. Uncle Frank says that Dad was different before Mom died, but that’s all I’ve ever known, y’know? There’s that expression, ‘married to his job’? That’s Dad. Uncle Frank did more to raise me.”

  And you raised yourself, thought Dana. Did a good job, too.

  “My dad can be pretty distant, too,” she said.

  “I heard,” said Ethan. “Navy captain, right? Does he have his own ship?”

  “Not at the moment. He did when we were in San Diego, but they moved him here for some kind of special advanced naval warfare training thing. He’s teaching classes, but he can’t talk about anything he does, either. He’s gone a lot, too, and when he’s home he can be really intense. Snaps at Mom, treats Melissa, Charlie, and me like we’re sailors who don’t know how to swab a deck. Everyone has to be A.J. Squared Away.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  She shrugged. “Only one of us who doesn’t get stepped on by him is my oldest brother, Bill, who joined the navy. He wants to be exactly like Dad.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It’s okay, I guess,” said Dana. “My mom says that Dad’s under a huge amount of pressure at work and that this will all pass.”

  Ethan gave her a knowing smile. “It’s all good.”

  “Yup,” she said, agreeing to the lie because it was easier than deconstructing something they each knew might be beyond their power to put back together again.

  “Dad won’t bother us today, though. He’s away for a few days on some classified thing. We have the place to ourselves.” Ethan’s comment was intended to sound offhand, but it was obvious there was a bigger and possibly sadder story that he didn’t want to share. He smiled, but it looked painful, and Dana asked no further questions.

  Ethan led
her down a short hall and into a room that was clearly a combination library and office. There was a big oak desk, a small fireplace in which an electric space heater had been placed, threadbare old armchairs, and shelves lined with books. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Dana almost gasped when she saw them, and for a few moments she drifted along the walls, looking at the titles. The books were, she discovered, arranged alphabetically by type. There were books on law and police work, books on the history of evidence collection and on modern forensic science, books on a score of other areas of science, ranging from entomology to abnormal psychology. There were also books on astronomy, mathematics, and physics. These nonfiction works filled about half the shelf space, and the rest was entirely given over to fiction, and of those, most were mysteries and detective novels. The works of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were prominent, as well as books by Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, Agatha Christie, and many others, some of whom Dana had heard of, many that were new to her. She wondered who here in the Hale household read those books, or if reading was the one thing that they all shared. Overall, the house felt cold, like a dead battery. Loveless.

  It made her want to give Ethan a hug.

  She didn’t do that, of course, because so far in her life boys had been friends or tormentors, not prospects. Not like Melissa, who had been caught kissing boys when she was nine.

  “It’s in here,” said Ethan, and that pulled her out of her own head. She followed Ethan over to the desk and watched as he pulled a small key from his pocket and fitted it into the lock on the bottom desk drawer. “Uncle Frank doesn’t know that I had a copy made last year.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Because he made me mad when he said that I couldn’t handle seeing accident and autopsy photos.”

  Dana smiled. “Works for me.”

  The lock clicked open, and Ethan pulled the drawer out and removed a heavy file that was at least three inches thick and closed by heavy rubber bands.