Snitch (The Bea Catcher Chronicles) Read online

  “It doesn’t add up,” Daniels continues. “We confiscated his cell phone. Talked to his teachers, the pastor at the church where he sings in a choir, and we came up with nothing. He’s a good student, good kid.”

  “You know as well as I—I’m living proof. Sometimes bad shit happens to—”

  “Good people. I know. But this isn’t the case. I think someone set Junior up. Planted the drugs. Knew there was a narc in the school . . .”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “It was just too easy. An unzipped Nike bag sitting on a bench in the locker room, saying, Hey, look at me. Look what I’m carrying. No one’s that stupid. And then the sudden confession? Doesn’t make sense. He’s considered an adult here in Michigan—first-degree murder—life in state prison.”

  “So . . . you have any ideas? Who would set him up, and why he confessed?”

  He shakes his head. “We checked out his family—most of them are up to no good. A lot of gang activity going on in the house, around their ’hood, and where there’s smoke, there’s—”

  “Someone getting fucked up.”

  “This is serious, Bea. Junior knows something, is covering for someone—but he’s not talking.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense that he’d take the heat for someone else.”

  “That’s what I need you to find out.” He walks back to the bench and sits. “Listen to me; this could be dangerous. Drugs involved. You sure you’re up to it?”

  “Are you kidding me? This is badass shit. I’m in.”

  The sergeant leans forward on the bench, clasps his hands. “Okay. I’m going to have to figure something out, like how to sneak you in the station without raising any eyebrows. Especially with Detective Cole around.”

  “Yeah, that jerk hates me.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He’s just suspicious of you—doesn’t understand . . . the thing you do.” Daniels laughs. “But then again, why would he?”

  “I still say he hates me.” I stand and brush the dust off my butt. “Why don’t you arrest me for something?”

  “What?”

  “I know how to be sketchy. Pull me in like I’m one of the bad guys.”

  He stands, rubs his furry brow. “I don’t know about that.”

  “What time are you thinking?” I pop open the calendar on my phone.

  “I’ll need you about four.”

  “Great. It’ll give me time to get ready. I should have a look going on.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Bea, you don’t need a look. This isn’t a game; we don’t need to pretend anything.”

  “Of course we do.” I check the time on my phone. “Whoa, it’s getting late. I’d better get to school for first period. I already have a few tardies and sure don’t want the office to call and freak out my parents.”

  He crosses over to the exit window and pushes the plywood board—gives the go-ahead. “It’s clear.”

  I crawl through the window and jump down onto the matted brown grass below.

  Daniels follows but struggles, squeezing his more than six-foot frame through the narrow window—one long, lanky leg sticks out, feeling for the ground, followed by the other, then his torso. He ducks his head, but catches the top of his blond hair on the ragged edge of the sill. And then swears.

  I can’t help but laugh.

  He boards up the window, straightens his hair, and brushes off his clothes. “Come to the back door on Fifth Street at four. I’ll take it from there.”

  “ ’K. See you then.” I salute him.

  “Stop with the shit, Bea.”

  “But I wouldn’t be me, would I? Without the shit. By the way . . . your fly’s open.”

  His face instantly reddens as he looks down at the zipped-up crotch of his pants.

  “Happy April Fool’s Day, Dan Daniels.” I climb down the hill, pass the refrigerator box (the homeless guy now stirring), and scamper through the gully. And I know that the Sarge will wait, looking after me—give it roughly three minutes and then he’ll follow, making sure I drive off safely.

  I sometimes slow my pace and listen for his heavy footsteps clunking across the bridge, sense his presence, his eyes watching me, warming my back, guiding me to my car.

  I plop down my bag on the passenger seat, look at the time, take out my Moleskine, and write:

  6 days, 16 hours, and 5 minutes till I’m 18. ☺ I can’t wait! No one can tell me what I should do, who I should see . . . I’ll finally be an adult!

  I study the sketched eyes on the page—what I drew when I looked at him—what he was thinking about. Me. My eyes.

  It still wigs me out—this bizarre skill I have—the skill that Sergeant Daniels calls me in for. Pen in hand, paper in front of me, when studying someone, an image may come charging through my head like a wild stallion—galloping, kicking dirt up in my face. Sometimes it tickles as a feather would, fluttering in and out like a daydream. And sometimes what I see hits me hard, like an anvil crushing down, and my head pounds for hours afterward. As the image appears, it possesses me—possesses my right hand, and I sketch it down on paper.

  I can draw the truth out of people . . . literally.

  This whacked-out, freaky power happened when I got sober—the first time—nine months ago in rehab. It was like I was airing out my brain, freeing it from the drugs and making room for the wicked insight into what others were thinking—and some of it was not so cool.

  Last fall, Sergeant Daniels didn’t believe me when I saw and drew the truth out of Willa Pressman, the most popular girl in our senior class. I sketched the face of the man who raped her—a serial killer. Daniels thought I was full of it until the creep was positively ID’d by Willa herself.

  Now he calls me in to our secret place whenever he needs my assistance. That’s the only positive thing about my skill: I help Sergeant Daniels catch bad guys. I guess you could say that I’m a paranormal forensic artist.

  Weird, right?

  The first time he used me was right before Christmas. I was asked to park my butt in the middle of the local mall and draw Santa Claus. Daniels had an inkling that the recent wave of shoplifting had something to do with the man in the red suit.

  Excited for the challenge, I made a trip to my favorite vintage clothing shop. Leila, the owner, rocks, big time. She haunts estate sales, trolls eBay, and pulls in the trippiest shit, and at a bargain-basement price. I don’t know the last time I bought something new.

  I had picked out a bloodred, velvet eighties blazer—with two-inch shoulder pads that could compete with any fullback on the Detroit Lions. I wore it with black leggings and my over-the-knee, “don’t fuck with me” leather boots. And keeping in the spirit of things, I festively combed a sprig of holly in my then very short, cropped hair.

  A long line of children wrapped around the giant, tinsel-draped fake fir tree. At first I was only picking up images from the kids: toys, action figures, dolls, train sets flooded my mind and filled the pages of my sketchbook.

  But then, staring into Santa’s beady blue eyes, it hit me—hard. Bam. Mr. Claus was thinking about a little boutique jewelry store on the second floor of the mall, focusing on a silver-beaded clutch purse in the window—the one I had drooled over a month ago but couldn’t afford. This was one of those headache images (a headache that took two days to get rid of). I guess hearing for the second time in my life that Old Kriss Kringle was a phony set the migraine off.

  I texted the Sarge, tipping him off, and Santa’s break was interrupted as he attempted to tuck the sixty-dollar clutch into his black patent leather, silver-buckled belt. He was quietly and calmly taken aside and arrested; and I’m sure Mrs. Claus must have been disappointed, because the clutch went back to the window display.

  The other case I helped crack involved insurance fraud. The image of water whooshed, flooding through me when I searched a plastic surgeon assistant’s eyes—cascaded down like a waterfall. Sergeant Daniels pressed her with this information, and she caved—blurted it all out.
Her boss was hiding away in an Upper Peninsula cabin near the Tahquamenon Falls (they were bonking each other, too).

  But today is a first. . . . In the police station. Wow.

  6 days

  15 hours

  55 minutes

  I pull my rusted-out, kick-ass Volvo sedan into the parking lot. I’m in my second semester of my senior year at the local public school, Packard High. The name is appropriate, because it’s packed with over two thousand (mostly) high students. I’ve been here ever since I was expelled from a very elite private school, Athena Day School for Girls, because of my gnarly drug problem (and a messy incident at a rave in Detroit last summer). I was thrown into rehab for three months and then deposited here, at Packrat High—as Chris calls it.

  I really don’t want to do this high school thing anymore—get up every morning and deal with another day of the shoulds. I’m so done and have no idea how I’m going to trudge through the bullshit sludge of the next month and a half. I wish it were just senioritis. But I know it’s not. It’s an ’itis, for sure, though—malignant, doesn’t have a cure—and is spreading fast through my body.

  I free-fall into a fit of sneezing, my car swerves, and I almost wipe out a gaggle of geeky freshmen from the birdwatcher’s club. They appropriately flip me the bird. I wave an apology. “Sorry, didn’t mean to almost kill you.”

  Damn. My nose won’t stop running. I feel for the box of Kleenex sitting next to me, shotgun. The box is empty. I dart my eyes at all the junk in the backseat. My car has been sort of a mobile locker for the last year—school stuff, odds and ends, and half my closet lives back there. I rustle through books, papers, a pair of jeans that are way too big for me (I cuff them high on my shins and cinch them around my waist when I’m feeling a bloated day coming on), empty Styrofoam coffee cups, Chris’s extra-large hoodie, red high-top sneakers that look wicked good with my shredded jean miniskirt—but I can’t find a tissue. I get my hand around a roll of toilet paper—try to remember why it’s there . . . actually, on second thought, don’t want to—and tear off a few squares, roll the end of the tissue into a ball, and stick it up my nostril—shove it in like a tampon. Not a pretty sight, but it does the trick, and then I park in the designated senior lot.

  Chris is standing behind his car, madly sucking face with his boyfriend, Ian, a junior, and, LOL, the guy he wants me to draw because he’s afraid he isn’t into him anymore.

  Chris jumps as I toot my horn, and he smooths the long side of his hair. He was there, holding my hand, supporting me when I decided to let my mom buzz me last fall—again, long story—so he decided to let her cut his. But he chickened out mid-buzz, so baby-fine, bleach-blond hair hangs straight, tucked behind one ear, and the other side he keeps short.

  I roll down my window (yes, roll . . . that’s how old the car is). “Jesus, get a room, you two,” I joke.

  “What the hell is up your nose?” Chris asks, lifting the camera that hangs around his neck—always (he wears it like an accessory, and is an awesome photographer)—and snaps a picture.

  “Toilet paper.”

  “Hah,” he mocks. “I knew you were full of shit.”

  I stick my tongue out at him, and he shoots another pic.

  Ian’s red bangs fall down into his freckled face—his blue eyes are thinly lined with black. “You guys act like you’re two.”

  “Do not,” I say.

  “Do too,” Chris parries.

  “Nice Guyliner, Ian,” I say.

  He punches Chris’s shoulder. “Told you it looked good.”

  “What does she know?” Chris says.

  I get in his face and cross my eyes. “Everything, you moron.”

  Click, click. “Yeah . . . full of shit, like I said.” He leans in, whispers, “I don’t know . . . what do you think—is Ian acting different?”

  “Stop being so paranoid, dude,” I whisper back.

  “Dang. I love those bell-bottoms you have on, Bea,” Ian says as we walk toward the school.

  “Yeah, they’re so wide, you could hide small children under them.” Chris laughs.

  “Groovy, aren’t they? Vintage sixties—from Leila’s place.” I remove the snot-ridden clump from my nose and toss it in the trash. “Damn these allergies. To hell with those bees and their sex lives.”

  “Speaking of a Bea’s sex life, how’s Wendell?” Chris nudges me.

  I sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to be ready for that yet.”

  “Are you kidding me? He’s like a god.” Ian fans himself.

  Chris’s brow furrows.

  “He is, isn’t he?” I shrug my shoulders. “It’s weird—but it doesn’t feel . . . right. Not with him at least.” I mumble the last part.

  “I heard that. What do you mean at least? You got someone else goin’ on? Let me see your phone.” He shoves his hand in my purse.

  “Stop it.” I slap him away.

  “Why? What’s on it that you don’t want me to see—who’ve you called, huh?”

  “Nobody.” I can’t help smiling. But, I don’t want him to see the texts from Sergeant Daniels.

  The bell rings on the prison yard, and students scurry out of their cars, from behind cinder-block walls, up from the bleachers in the football stadium, out of parked school buses. Clouds of cigarette and marijuana smoke hover, dissipate, floating up into the sky as they approach the sprawling redbrick walls of higher learning . . . not.

  I wave and mouth hi at the security camera tucked away on the ceiling as we enter the heavy metal doors. Principal Nathanson monitors the camera every morning like an SS guard. Who knows what he’s scanning for or what he’d do if he actually saw someone smuggling something bad in the school. I could be hiding a couple bricks of weed under the bells of my bottoms, and he wouldn’t have a clue.

  “I’ll see you at lunch?” Chris pinches Ian’s ass.

  “If you’re lucky.” Ian winks and walks off.

  Chris bites his knuckles. “God, I love him so much it hurts. Who do you think he’s into?”

  “You, you idiot. You were all over each other in the parking lot, sheesh.” I open my locker and brace myself for the crap that will undoubtedly fall out.

  Books, shoes, art supplies, and my crumpled PE T-shirt tumble toward me. “Oh, cool. I was looking for that.” I toss the tee into my bag, shove the rest of the shit back in my locker, and slam it shut. “The coach said I’d get a detention if I forgot my uniform again.”

  “How the hell do you know where anything is, Bea?”

  “I don’t. I’ve given up trying to control things. I figure if it’s meant to be in my life, it’ll surface somehow, right?” I wipe my runny nose on the sleeve of my sweater.

  “Bea! Chris!” Willa Pressman, wearing her cheerleading uniform, prances up to us, her sleek, blond ponytail swaying back and forth like a palomino’s tail.

  “Hey, Willa.”

  She gives me a once-over, scans me up and down like I’m a bar code, then pulls a compact box of tissues out of her purse and hands it to me.

  “See, Chris? Meant to be.” I blow my nose. “Allergies,” I say to Willa.

  She then pulls out a large bottle of hand sanitizer from her rolling backpack, obviously not believing me. “You should keep this on you at all times.” And then she gives me a European air-kiss on both cheeks. It’s a greeting all the cheerleaders have adopted, and weirdly, somehow, I’ve been included in the ritual—accepted in the pack, whether I like it or not. Very odd—me being a part of the rah-rah crowd. I’ve always been an outcast, made fun of by those types. But Willa accepted me into her world, and that meant everybody else has to, because she’s, like, the school rock star.

  Got to give props to her, though, because rock star or not, Willa went through hell and back last fall, surviving the brutal beating and rape in September and kicking a wicked drug and alcohol problem in the butt (she’s been sober almost six months—a little longer than me). Now she flits around the school, organizes dances, manages clubs, and ti
relessly works every week on a rape hotline. It’s hard to keep up with her.

  The rest of the uniformed pack approaches.

  “Hi, Bea.” Sarah waves a curled pinky. “Mwaa.” Air-kiss #2 for the day.

  “Hey, girlfriend.” Eva Marie hip-butts me. Air kiss #3.

  The girls finish their mimed greetings (very sanitary, if you think about it) and hand Willa the floor. “Listen up. A special person is turning eighteen next week . . .”

  Oh no, she remembered. Please, Willa, don’t make a big deal. But why am I surprised? She probably has the birth date of every person in the whole school neatly filed away in the contact app on her phone. All eyes are now on me, and I’m expecting a piñata or disco ball to break through the heavens and descend upon us.

  Instead, Willa’s asshole boyfriend, Zac—unfortunately my neighbor—joins us, leans against a locker, and pulls her in, wrapping his thick, hairy arms around her waist.

  He’s King Jock Itch here at Packard High—the star wrestler, with season record-breaking pins. Full of BS, he somehow successfully pins down teachers and Principal Nathanson, talking them into passing grades with a wink and a flex, and, unbelievably, he aced the SAT—a nearly perfect score. He won’t shut up about it.

  “What are you all talking about, huh?” Zac’s smile disappears when he sees that I’m part of the crowd. And then his jaw does this weird twitchy thing—seems to happen whenever he sees me. It spasms like an imaginary tie is tightening around his neck.

  “Your SAT score, of course.” Chris falsely swoons. “What else is there to talk about?”

  “Fuck off, dweeb.” Zac flicks the words out at Chris like he’s toe fungus.

  “That’s enough, you two.” Willa stands on tiptoe and kisses Zac on the cheek. “We were talking about Bea’s birthday, and I was thinking we could pull together a little party . . .”