Return to Paradise

CHAPTER EIGHT

I SPEND THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON AT HOME on the computer, talking to the blog editors. Saturday afternoons must be a lazy day for conspiracy theorists, because GUARD and this other editor named FLYBOY are both online and wanting to talk. FLYBOY seems cool but is much more of a skeptic about the stuff that GUARD and I talk about. Which is good, I guess—sometimes I think we need a rational person to keep us from totally going off the deep end.

It turns out that GUARD called the number Agent Walker gave me and got the same voice mail but didn’t leave a message. A few minutes later, his phone rang—even though he’d purposefully blocked his number. GUARD answered because he’s not the type of dude to let a chance like that go by. The person on the other end of the line kept asking him how he got the number, but GUARD played it cool and kept saying he knew what was going on in Paradise and demanded to talk to someone in charge.

Finally, he got on the line with an FBI guy named Purdy.

According to GUARD, Purdy was a huge hard-ass who sounded really annoyed and anxious to get off the phone until GUARD said he knew about the Mogs. This, apparently, got Purdy’s attention. Only then GUARD didn’t want to talk anymore, and Purdy wasn’t giving him any info about what the FBI knew or didn’t know.

FLYBOY says this doesn’t mean anything, but I think otherwise: if this Purdy guy works for the FBI and recognized what GUARD was talking about, it proves that the FBI here know what’s really going on.

The only question then is how much they know. And who they’re trying to help.

We chat online for a few hours as we try to dig up anything we can on Purdy, but all we find is a picture of a piggish-looking man standing in the background at some government ceremony. It’s not much to go on. Not anything to go on.

My phone buzzes constantly with messages from my teammates over at Alex’s. There are more and more typos in them as the hours wear on. Finally I give in and head over once my brain is so full of government conspiracies and half-formed conclusions that I feel like it might just leak out of my ears. When I tell my dad I’m headed to Alex’s to hang out with the guys, he gets a wide grin on his face.

“Good to see you getting out of the house and being a high schooler again,” he says. “I thought you were turning into some kind of loner.”

I shrug and force a laugh, then head out before the conversation gets any deeper than that. I’m almost out the door when he yells to me.

“My truck’s parked behind yours. Just take mine, if you don’t mind.” He tosses me his keys.

“Sure,” I say. Dad’s truck—the thing he likes to drive when he’s off duty and wants to get away from the police cruiser—is a small, single cab. Kind of a piece of crap, but I’m not going far.

I keep an eye out for any cars following me, but I don’t see anyone. Plus, it’s all back roads from my grandmother’s place to Alex’s, which is about as clandestine as you can be in Paradise.

I think about calling Sarah and seeing if she wants to come, but I know she’ll say no. Especially since the FBI’s got eyes on her. (Would the FBI bother with busting a bunch of underage drinkers?) Besides, I know the guys well enough to guess that they’ll start talking about either me and her or her and John, and the last thing she needs is to be harassed by a bunch of drunk football players.

As expected, everyone at Alex’s is pretty buzzed. Half the team is there, and for a while it feels like it could be any Saturday night out of the last few years. Still, I spend the few hours I’m there sipping on the same warm beer just in case I need to keep my wits about me. No one seems to notice that I never need a refill as long as I’ve got a red plastic cup in my hands and mime drinking every so often.

When it starts to get a little late, I sneak out the back and to my dad’s truck. I don’t bother saying good-bye to anyone—tomorrow morning no one will remember what time I left, and I’ll get a text or two talking about hangovers and asking if I got home okay. I’m about to start the truck when I realize there are extra keys on Dad’s ring. One for our old house. One for my grandmother’s. And a few more with rubber around the tops: the keys to the police station.

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I consider the possibilities of what this could mean.

From what my dad’s told me, the FBI is basically working on-site at the school. That means at this time of night there are only a couple of officers at the station. Maybe a few agents too. But I know my way around pretty well up there. If I were to drop by, I could probably figure out a way to sneak past the front desk and get into my dad’s office, where all kinds of files might be kept. Even if the FBI’s taken over, there must still be initial reports at the station. Whatever it was that my dad and his officers saw when they arrived on scene that night.

If I could get my hands on some of those, maybe they could shed more light on the investigation.

I drive towards the police station before I can talk myself out of it.