Defender Read online

  “They hear me. For sure. Sometimes they talk back.”

  “He’s nuts, Mom. Our mad munchkin.” I reach down to pat the fiery red hair he got from her.

  “Mad munching.” Squirrel smiles, pulling apart his sandwich.

  Mom pours him some apple juice. “He’s only eight. Crazy in a good way, where he believes in everything. Infinite possibilities. Let him have his magic.”

  He believes in everything. What do I still believe in? What can I trust?

  I’m eating my second sandwich when I hear the front door open. Dad’s home.

  I make a quick exit to my room, and text Stick: Got some new weirdness to share.

  He comes back with: Done with chores. Let’s make a jailbreak.

  I slip out of my room and lock the door. Don’t want a snooping Squirrel finding the finger I’ve hidden. I sneak down the hall, avoiding the kitchen, where Dad’s doing his growly bear voice.

  “I eat squirrels for breakfast!” he says, to squeals of laughter from Squirrel.

  At the front door I bend to pull on my sneakers and notice Dad’s work boots on the shoe mat. They’re covered in fresh mud.

  That stops me. We’ve had a long dry spell. It hasn’t rained in over a month, and no snow yet. And downtown Toronto is like a concrete desert anyway.

  But these boots were sunk ankle-deep in some serious muck today, while Dad was supposed to be out getting plumbing parts. I crouch down and turn one over to find dark damp earth caked in the treads.

  Where did that come from?

  Where was he really? And what was he doing?

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” Stick asks as I shut the door to the office behind us.

  The manager’s office in the lobby is where Dad does stuff like collecting rent checks, processing applications for new tenants, and taking complaints.

  “I need to check on something,” I say.

  The room has a big desk with a laptop, lots of filing cabinets and a wall covered in notices about rules and regulations, city bylaws and tenant rights. Everything’s neat and tidy, the way Dad likes it.

  Two video monitors that show views of the building entrances are mounted on the wall facing the desk.

  “There.” I point at the screens.

  “What’s this gotta do with some muddy boots?”

  I go behind the desk and turn on the computer. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

  After accessing the program for the security cameras, I search through the files. I’ve seen Dad do this to get footage whenever the mailboxes are broken into.

  I pull up the memory files. “These monitors cover the front and back entrances.”

  “How about the cameras on the elevators?” Stick asks. “And the ones in the laundry room, and the lockers?”

  “They don’t work, just dummies to scare off thieves and kids screwing around. Only the front and back ones are for real.” I find what I’m searching for. “Okay. Here we go. This will go quicker with two sets of eyes. You watch the right monitor, covering the front, and I’ll take the left, for the back entrance.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “My dad. I want to see when he left and when he came back.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to say yet. I hope I’m wrong about this. Let’s just see.”

  I start rewinding the coverage. The black-and-white video shows the lobby and front door on the right, and the back exit, with a view of the parking lot, on the left. I speed the video up till I spot Dad returning to the Zoo. The time code says that was twenty minutes ago. I write it down on a Post-it note.

  “Okay. Now I want to see when he left this morning. Let’s try going back an hour.”

  I key in the time I want to check, and the screen jumps to show the views from earlier.

  “The truck’s gone. I’ll go back another hour.” I bring that video up. “Still gone. Now, three hours? Nothing still. And…four? There it is.”

  The pickup is back in our parking space, before Dad took off.

  “Let’s see what happens when he left.”

  “Why?”

  “Just watch.”

  Stick sits on the edge of the desk, focused on the screen, while I key the footage from behind the desk. I hope that I’m just being paranoid, but if I spot what I think I might, I want Stick here to tell me he’s seeing what I’m seeing. That I’m not crazy.

  I fast-forward the video. We watch people rushing in and out. The Zoo is like a United Nations, with tenants of all colors and nationalities. Vega shows up in the wreck of a car she Frankensteined together from parts discarded by the garage where she works. Shopping-cart Dumpster divers go by.

  Minutes zip by on the timer. I barely blink, waiting. Then—

  “There!” I slow everything down as Dad comes out the back door.

  Walking with that little hitch from his old injury, he strides toward the truck.

  “What’s he got there?” Stick asks.

  Oh no! I wanted to be wrong. But Dad’s carrying a big duffel bag. Whatever’s in it must be heavy, because he’s leaning to his right.

  He opens the truck door and heaves the bag in front, takes a few moments to look around the lot and the alleyway. Like he’s wondering if anybody has seen him. Then he leans on the open door with his head bowed as if catching his breath. Finally he gets in. But nothing happens, he just sits there as the time code shows a minute go by, then two, then three.

  I walk around the desk to stand close to the monitor, focusing on the shadowy form behind the wheel. After five minutes, with me and Stick watching silently, the truck starts up and pulls out, disappearing down the alley.

  The breath I’ve been holding comes out in a shudder.

  “You saw that?” I ask, my voice choked.

  “Yeah. So what are you thinking? What’s in that bag?”

  “The body.”

  Stick’s eyes go wide.

  I step back to the computer and rewind till I can freeze-frame on Dad carrying the bag. It’s big enough, and heavy enough. And the way he’s acting in the video…His face a shadowy blur, he seems unrecognizable.

  Who are you? What have you done?

  “And the mud on his boots?” Stick asks.

  “I think he buried her.”

  WE’RE ON THE road. Stick’s driving. He got Vega to lend us her car for the afternoon.

  “You dent it, I’ll dent you,” she warned him. Like you’d even notice one more ding on this wreck.

  I have the window down, to feel the wind on my face and keep me awake. Long time since I slept, and everything’s got a dreamlike haze to it.

  Stick pulls onto Highway 400, heading north, out of the city. We’re following a trail. After seeing the video of Dad loading that bag into his truck, driving off and returning later without the bag—knowing in my gut what must have been inside—I sneaked upstairs for the spare keys to check inside the pickup. We found no sign of the duffel bag, just more muck on the floor mat.

  But we found something better when I searched through today’s history on the truck’s GPS.

  We know where he went.

  As we drive, I fill Stick in on what I discovered in the logbooks earlier, and we run through some ideas.

  “So if your grandfather did the work, sealing up the chute with the girl inside—if he’s the killer, then why is your dad doing this? Why cover up for his old man?”

  “Who knows why? But…I’ve been replaying how the weirdness with Dad all started, when I first told him about the body in the basement, how confused and surprised he was. I don’t think he was faking that. The lies later were more obvious now that I look back. But his initial reaction was shock. I really don’t believe he knew the girl was there, buried in the wall all these years.”

  “But why hide his father’s crime when the guy’s been dead so long?”

  “There’s got to be more to it. Maybe my dad was involved somehow. Maybe he’s been keeping it secret since then.”

  I check my c
ell phone for the GPS memory I copied from the truck, with the map of where Dad went and the coordinates of his final destination.

  “How far are we going?” Stick asks.

  “About forty miles north, before we get off the highway. Then he drove some back roads out to nowhere. There’s no place marked anywhere near there. Guess that’s the point, an out-of-the-way hiding spot. It says he stopped there for over an hour. Long enough to dig a hole deep enough.”

  “What are we gonna do when we get there?”

  “Not sure. I’m just taking this step by step.”

  “Yeah? What if your next step takes you off a cliff?”

  “That’s why I’ve got you, Stick. To pull me back.”

  He puts his hand on my knee, and I cover it with my hand. It’s a tight fit for me in here; even with the seat cranked all the way back, my knees are pressed to the dash. I can only drive in Dad’s truck, set up for our size. Don’t know how I’ll ever ride in it again if there really was a body in that bag, tossed up front. Don’t know how I’ll do anything.

  The day is clear and cool, and with it being Sunday there’s no real traffic. We’re making good time.

  “Up here is where we turn off.”

  After ten minutes on the paved back road, the map says to make a right. There are no signs out here, and the road was nameless on the GPS, but it’s taking us where we’re supposed to go. When the road becomes just wheel grooves in the dirt we keep on it, till we’re bumping over uneven ground without even a hint of a path.

  “You sure this is the way?” Stick says. “How far do we go? I don’t want to crack an axle and break down out here. Vega would slaughter me.”

  “We’re real close. Stop up ahead, before those trees.”

  When Stick kills the engine, it’s dead quiet. Nothing for miles. Not a soul.

  “Dad parked for about an hour,” I say. “One hundred yards straight that way.”

  I open the door and get out, stretching my bad knee. It’s aching from being cramped up in the car. My shoes sink in the damp earth. Stick scans the ground.

  “Tire treads,” he calls out. “Fresh ones.”

  The marks are clear, pressed deep. We follow them toward a wooded area and find where Dad parked. End of the line.

  The clouds have closed in, graying the landscape.

  I spot Dad’s footprints leading to a stand of birch trees. I walk next to them, matching their long stride.

  The birches are skeletal without their leaves, and white as bone. The bark peels from the trunks in thin sheets, like the pages of a book.

  The prints end where years of fallen leaves carpet the ground. Walking among the trees, I search for any sign of disturbance. But I don’t notice anything, until my shoes sink deeper into a soft patch.

  I stop. The leaf cover is lighter here, and the earth shows through in loose clumps, as if it’s been freshly turned.

  I reach for a fallen branch and use it to sweep away the scatter of leaves, revealing a four-foot-long area of broken ground.

  “This is it,” I say.

  “What now?” Stick shakes his head in disbelief.

  I’ve come this far, I need to know for sure. “Now we dig.”

  He stares at me wide-eyed.

  After discussing how to do it, we head back to the car to find something to dig with. In the trunk there’s a spare tire, some tools and two hubcaps. Stick takes one hubcap and hands me the other. “Better than nothing.”

  We start shoveling with the caps, hunched over opposite ends of the spot. With the earth so loosely packed, it doesn’t take long before there’s a good-sized hole and piles of dirt heaped to the sides. Dad did a thorough job. We have to go deeper.

  After a few minutes, there’s room for only one of us in the hole. It’s too small for me, so I step out while Stick scrapes deeper.

  “Got something,” he grunts as he brushes a final layer of dirt clear.

  “Get out. Let me see.” Stick climbs from the hole and I crouch down inside it. He’s uncovered some kind of cloth. I study it. There’s a strangely familiar pattern on it, bright yellow sunflowers against a sky-blue background. It takes a moment before it hits me.

  That’s my old sunflower blanket, from when I was little. A thick winter one I haven’t used in years, stuffed away in a closet and forgotten. Seeing it here is surreal.

  “What is that?” Stick asks.

  Takes me a second to find my voice. “Blanket. It’s mine.”

  He leans over, peering in. My hand is shaking as I reach out. When I touch it, my brain is flooded with memories of lying beneath this blanket and counting the flowers as I fell asleep. The softness of it under my fingertips is so familiar. I pull the blanket back.

  The edge comes free, showing me what’s beneath. A tangle of dark matted hair. Then the face.

  I let go of the blanket and sit back on my heels.

  “Wow,” Stick whispers. “Wow.”

  When I stand up, I have to lean on a pile of dirt to keep from falling. My hand sinks into the cold soil. Feels like I’m going to collapse, can’t get enough oxygen. I look away, up through the branches of the birch trees at the darkening sky. Not sure how long I’m gasping for air before I feel Stick’s hand on my shoulder.

  “You okay?”

  “No.”

  “Want to get out of there?”

  I nod and he gives me a hand up. I hang on to him till my legs can hold me.

  “You see that? See her?” I need him to witness this nightmare.

  “Can’t believe it, but I see her. What…what do we do now?”

  The ground feels like quicksand, ready to suck me down and swallow me. I’m panting. I want to run, get away, never look back.

  “I don’t know, Stick. Don’t know.”

  Can’t take my eyes off that tortured face, the lips stretched back to reveal a chipped front tooth.

  My legs tremble, which causes an electric shiver of pain from my bad knee. It distracts me and I break away.

  “Gonna be dark soon,” I say. “Nothing we can do right now. So let’s just…put everything back how it was. I’ll think later. Can you…cover her face?”

  Stick lets out a shuddering breath, looking as sick and scared as I feel. He leans over the edge of the hole and pulls up the blanket to hide her again.

  Then we shove the piled earth back in the hole. The sun is going down. It’s hidden behind the clouds as we pat the mound flat, and I grab an armful of leaves to spread over it. You’d never know we were here, or what lies beneath.

  The sweat freezes on my back as I stand.

  “Let’s go, Ty. Before it gets too dark to find the road.” Stick leads the way out of the trees, carrying the hubcaps.

  In the car I hug my arms tight, trying to stop the shakes. The headlights bounce over the rough ground as we slowly make our way out in silence. I breathe a little easier when we reach the road again.

  I keep flashing back on that blanket, and all the cold winter nights I slept warm and safe under it. How many times did Dad tuck me in?

  Sweet dreams, he’d say.

  On the highway, the headlights from cars speeding by flare in my eyes, leaving flickering afterimages.

  And when I close my eyes, I see sunflowers.

  WHEN THINGS GO bad, get busy. That’s what Mom says.

  After I hurt my knee I didn’t leave the apartment for days, just limped around, depressed. Mom got me moving again. I was damaged, not done.

  If I just surrender now and hide out in my room this whole mess will drown me. So I keep going as if this is any other day.

  When I got home last night with Stick, two days of no sleep caught up with me and I crashed. I collapsed in bed and blacked out for eight hours. Dreamless, thankfully.

  Now, I pop a painkiller to take the edge off the ache.

  And I get busy. Acting normal. I have an appointment with my physical therapist. I’m sticking to my routine, so I do my stretches and sneak out to the kitchen for my morning shake.
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  Mom’s scrambling eggs, and Squirrel’s at the table chattering away, reading from a schoolbook about how the first astronauts were monkeys.

  “Astrochimps, they called them.”

  “You want some eggs?” Mom asks me.

  “Just this.” I toss a couple of bananas in the blender with chocolate milk and protein powder.

  “Missed you at dinner yesterday.”

  “I was out with Stick.”

  “Enjoying your break?”

  “Sure. Joy.” I fire up the blender.

  No sign of Dad. While I’ve been hiding from him, he seems to be avoiding me too. Out early on the job, home late. When we do cross paths, he barely makes eye contact and doesn’t speak much more than a grunt.

  As I gulp down my shake, Squirrel shows me a picture of a monkey in a space suit.

  “You want to be an astrochimp when you grow up?” I ask him.

  “Astro-mountain-climber,” he tells me. “Because it says here they got mountains on Mars bigger than anywhere.”

  “Where you off to today?” Mom asks as I put my glass in the sink.

  “I’ve got a torture session for my knee.”

  “Right. Good luck with that. Going to be home for dinner?”

  “Maybe not. I’ll grab something.”

  I leave her listening to Squirrel’s plans for Martian mountaineering.

  While I’m changing in my room I get a text from Roxy, a shooting guard on my team. Our top scorer, sharp and speedy—Rocket Rox. She’s putting a pickup game together down the block on the courts in Moss Park.

  Get in the game, girl. It’s Tiny Time.

  I send back: Can’t. My knee’s still in rehab. But you go rock and shock.

  It’s been tough watching my team play from the bench. We’ve been on a losing streak since I went down. Missing me—our monster in the middle. Watch and learn, Coach says, because I’m still kind of new to the game. But I’m a bad student on the sidelines. Can’t stay still. I need to be on the court battling with my girls. And I was getting some serious attention from the scouts before I got hurt. Don’t want them thinking I’m damaged and done. Gotta get back in.

  I head downstairs.