Jex Malone (5 page)

I've never known anyone who has worn shoes like Deva's for real, but I have no doubt this girl would never put fake anything on her feet.

“So,” I say and pause dramatically. “You all seem to know a lot about me. I know nothing about you. What's your story?”

“Oh, I like how you phrased that,” Deva responds. “I've always liked the idea that everyone has a story.”

“We don't have a story,” Nat counters. “We live in the most boring neighborhood in Green Valley. Vegas is a few miles away. It's interesting; we're not. People don't even think people actually live near Vegas. They actually just think people come here to gamble.”

“That's true,” I back her up. “When I told my friends in New Jersey I was coming out to Vegas, they all said: ‘I didn't know people actually lived in Vegas.' Stupid, right?”

“So back to my story,” Deva interjects. “We—I mean I—was, of course, born here. My parents are from India and came here for medical school and never went back. My dad is a cardiologist and my mom is an anesthesiologist, but they don't practice anymore because they are very busy running a business that runs doctors' offices.”

“What Deva is trying to tell you is that she's rich,” Nat adds with a sly smile.

“Correction, Nat, I am very rich—and unsupervised,” Deva adds with a sly smile. “It's the best of both worlds; wouldn't want to be one without the other.”

I turn to Nat, somewhat astounded at the ease of Deva introducing herself.

“Uh, I'm Nat—but you knew that already,” she says. “I've lived here all my life too. My parents are educators. My family is Jamaican. I like school and I guess that's about it.”

“Well, that wasn't very impressive, Nat,” Deva scolds her. “Pretend like Jex is a college admissions officer and you're trying to impress her. This will be good practice for next year when you're out there trying to wow people with your brilliance. Tell her about your freakish math ability and that you've aced every science class on the planet, that you are gifted in
everything
. Nat's probably my parents' secret child—or at least the one they should have had. Or at least that's what they tell me.”

I look at them a bit horrified at the bluntness of their back-and-forth and then realize they are all smiling and that their little shtick with each other appears to be perfectly normal—for them.

I suddenly feel sad and a little left out—except the three of them are sitting there eagerly smiling at me like they are waiting for me to tell them some big secret that they don't already know about me.

We compare notes on school and teachers and boys. Their parents seem normal—cooler than mine because they are, well, not mine. They tell me that they have been friends since some Mommy and Me class when they were all toddlers and, as the story goes, Cissy was given a cookie and burst into tears when it broke into pieces and Nat and Deva rescued the crumbs to give back to her. This was much to Deva's mother's horror since she went to med school and knows there is no five-second rule in the world of microbiology.

I notice they finish each other's sentences at times and have perfectly seamless memories of everything about their lives. Even as we start to run out of things to talk about, they are fine just being with each other when it's quiet.

Not me. I hate lulls in the conversation.

I pause for a second. They seem trustworthy, don't they? Before I know what I am doing, I turn to the computer sitting on the desk there in the den and ask them: “Hey, you guys want to see something cool?”

A few taps of the keys and I am back in my dad's electronic case files.

“Is that what I think it is?” Nat asks. “Is that the Vegas Police Department's case management system? You gotta be kidding me—how'd you get into it?”

“I break into police computers all the time,” I answer in a casual, offhand way.
Where'd that come from? Did that sound cool or is Cissy going to think I'm some kind of juvenile delinquent? Why did I even say that?

“My dad would kill me if he knew we were doing this,” I warn them. The second I say “kill,” Cissy takes a major step back and sits her butt down in a chair away from us.

“Cissy, shhh,” Nat says, now hovering so close over my shoulder, I can see a light misting of sweat glistening on her brow. Why is she wearing a hoodie in the middle of the summer anyway? “I've been a Police Explorer for two years and did two summers in forensic camp, but I've never see the actual case management system.”

“I had no idea it was so … special,” I answer, somewhat absurdly. Mom calls it my whimsical voice.

“Are you kidding? They put
everything
in there: all the details, all the witness statements, all the forensics, all the evidence,” Nat answers. “They can put cold cases in there. The computer database scans every detail and makes connections between crimes humans can't detect. It's a powerful tool.”

Wow, they are way more interested in this than I realized they would be, and I'm getting second thoughts on whether this is a good idea. Nat elbows me out of the chair and wiggles her butt into my place, her fingers flying over the keyboard—impressive, I think. And then I realize how much trouble I am going to be in if I get caught in this major Malone-family security breach. This is exactly what Dad said not to do.

Keeping one nervous ear on the front door, I focus on that loudly ticking clock down the hall that makes my heart jump every time the minute hand moves.

“What are we looking for?” yawns a bored Deva, who has now moved towards the computer and, out of nowhere, whips out a nail file to do a quick fix on a jagged end.

“What are we looking for, you asked?” I respond. “Well, my dad investigates murders.”

Big blunder. When am I going to learn how to keep my mouth shut?

From the corner of my eye, I can see Cissy actually putting one full finger into her mouth and then nibbling on the entire thing like it's a pretzel. She's like James Franco in that mountain-climbing movie where he has to give up one good arm in order to live.

Good thing she has nine more fingers to go, because it is going to be a long afternoon. I have turned my back just long enough on Nat that when she speaks up, I realize she's tapped into an actual case file.

“Oh, this is interesting,” she says to no one in particular. “
Pool of blood
—now there's a phrase you don't see spelled out every single day. Pool. Of. Blood. And if I click here, that will take me to the forensics on said pool of blood.”

Her long brown fingers click the mouse and a new screen flashes on with digital images that mean nothing to me, but to Nat it's like reading a fourth-grade math card. “That's the DNA signature on the suspected perp. They did a mouth swab,” she informs me.

“Do you even know how to administer a DNA test? You can use saliva. Swab the cheek—one and done,” Nat goes on gleefully.

“Of course,” I respond. “The good old saliva test. Do it all the time.

“Nat, aren't you hot?” I ask. Maybe I can distract her from the case file and, while she's not looking, try to hit the screen sleep button. I'm too slow because she notices and continues to click away.

“I'm perfect,” she insists. “But thanks for asking.” She doesn't take her eyes off the screen as she searches through the digital file looking for little tidbits of heaven knows what.

“Enough of this cop stuff. I propose we move on to something more important—hair,” Deva suggests. “Jex, is that your real hair color? It's fabulous—so natural. Natural redheads are very rare.”

“Very rare,” I say unenthusiastically and swiftly lean over to grab the mouse and click the screen sleep button in the upper right hand corner of the screen before Nat realizes what I am doing and can stop me. I catch her starting to say “Hey!” in response before Deva makes another announcement.

“Well I propose in honor of our new friend Jex spending the summer in our neighborhood that we think of something fabulous to do. Who is up for an at-home pedicure party?”

Both Cissy and I shoot our hands up in the air to volunteer as tributes.

“You're a woman; you've got female intuition, and you're a detective—what could be better?”

—Jill Munroe,
Charlie's Angels

So this is apparently how it works: Deva gets an idea that we should all have pedicures, calls the housekeeper and tells her said idea, and then the housekeeper drives over in a very large Mercedes sedan and delivers to Deva a very large case that has two dozen very expensive Chanel colors of nail polish and all the manicure and pedicure tools anyone could need.

I end up with just a manicure since I wasn't sure if my feet were in any condition to be revealed to brand new friends. Make that, I absolutely
knew
that my feet were in no condition to be revealed to brand new friends. I refuse to take off my sneakers.

“You're just like Nat with that hoodie; she doesn't want to show her boobies, you don't want to show your toes—repressed much?” Deva huffs.

Pretty soon my dad is probably going to be home—so I have to figure out how I am going to get these girls out of here before I face a litany of questions about letting strangers into the house. But maybe not, since he has seen them around the neighborhood all these years, although—surprise, surprise—he's never mentioned them once.

First thought: Maybe I can just ask them to leave. But then I'd be alone, and the afternoon is sort of flying by. Plus, Nat and Cissy like junk food just as much as I do, which falls into the definite plus column since I live with the world's most committed nondairy, nonsugar, nonanything-vegan most of the year. Deva, I presume, doesn't like junk food because it starts with the word
junk
.

“Can I use your dad's computer again to look something up?” Nat asks, abruptly changing the topic.

Soon, her hands are flying across the keyboard, and the next thing I know she's in the case management system again. “Uh, I don't think you should stay on the computer much longer,” I caution.

Nat keeps her eyes trained on the screen. “Oh, don't worry—I was just looking,” she brushes me off. “There was something there that caught my eye earlier. Just want to make sure I saw it right.”

“Umm, guys, look at this. Now this is cool,” Cissy whispers, pointing at the screen where a series of photos have magically popped up.

Some of them are old pictures that look like drivers' license mug shots showing all kinds of people: girls with long straight hair; black women with wild Afros; guys with a distant gaze in their eyes. Sprinkled in are some line drawings of what people might have looked like. Under each photo was a tag: last name first, first name last.

“Who are those people?” Cissy whispers.

“Uh, I don't know—guys, we better close that screen down,” I caution.

“Oh I know what this is—they're crime victims,” Nat answers authoritatively and with wild joy in her voice at the same time. “I've seen these pictures before on the Cold Case website the police department keeps on its home page.”

Nat's hand is flashing across the mouse and clicking on the picture of a woman who looks to be in her early twenties with a ring through her nose and wild, unkempt hair.

“Let's see here. Rhonda Cruz. Homicide victim. Dec. 4, 2003. Found dead in her apartment. Upper-body trauma,” Nat reads aloud as she skims the words on the screen.

“Oh lovely,” Deva yawns. “Fashion victim, too. Look at that polyester top she's wearing.”

Nat quickly clicks on the back button and the field of victim photos flashes on the screen again. I decide to try again and semi-plead with her to close out the program, but I have to admit that this is kind of interesting.

Nat clicks and scans the next victim profile. “Hit-and-run victim.”

“Next,” Deva barks.

Click. “Bar brawl.”

“Next.”

“Wait a second, now we're talking,” Nat interrupts in a low, slow voice that catches everyone's attention.

“Looky here … it's Patty Matthews,” she says slowly, as if she's savoring every single syllable in those few words.

There's an audible gasp in the room and the girls are now staring intently at the screen with big, wide eyes.

Patty Matthews.

They scoot their chairs closer to the computer.

“Oh, Patty Matthews,” Cissy says in a soft whisper. “Poor, poor Patty Matthews.”

Suddenly, my memory coughs up what I'm searching for—that thing that was buried a long time ago because it was just too hard to think about too much.

Patty Matthews. No ordinary crime victim. Patty Matthews was the reason my parents broke up.

My eyes meet her long-gone baby blues.

Patty Matthews, I'm sorry … but rot in hell.

“We blame all kinds of people for creating monsters. Why not ourselves?”

—Olivia Benson,
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

One night in New Jersey when I was in seventh grade, my mom caught me Googling Patty Matthews's name and yelled at me to stop it or I'd be grounded. My mom never grounds me, so I knew this was serious. I was thirteen and couldn't tell her that I was just curious to see if anything had ever happened in the case because it was such a big deal for my dad. In fact, it was the only deal for him back in those days.

“Stop it, Jessica,” Mom scolded me. “That girl isn't missing. She's dead. Let her rest in peace.”

My mom would so kill me if she knew what I was doing now. Dad would kill me, too, come to think about it. It's like ripping a scab off a very deep and old wound that would never heal.

Okay, okay, okay … Think!