The Silence of Six (3 page)

The agent made eye contact with someone behind Max. He didn’t turn around.

He didn’t need the phone. Handing it over would be a sign of cooperation.

He offered it to her. She held out the baggie again. If she wouldn’t touch it, they were probably interested in lifting fingerprints, too. In Isaac’s words, this was getting freaky.

Max dropped his phone into the baggie.

“Thank you.” She smoothly sealed the bag and uncapped a blue Sharpie. “Student ID number?”

“Two-four-six-oh-one,” Max lied.

She raised an eyebrow, but then she scribbled the number on the bag and placed it in the box.

“Have a good night.” Her tone suggested he should consider himself lucky. “Go straight home. Don’t loiter on school grounds.”

Isaac and Walt were loitering on school grounds, waiting for Max at the end of the hall. Another Secret Service agent stationed there was giving them the stink eye.

Isaac raised his hand for a high-five. Max slapped it unenthusiastically.

“Isaac folded right away,” Walt said. “More like a lamb than a ram. That agent practically laughed at me when I mentioned a warrant.”

“Makes you wonder, don’t it?” Isaac said.

“What?” Max asked.

“If that guy in the video was legit. Would they go to this much trouble over nothing?” Isaac asked.

Max bit his tongue. In some ways, it bothered him that no one else knew it had been Evan. His own classmates, people who had been going to school with him since middle school, didn’t know him well enough to recognize his unfiltered voice at the end of the video.

They hurried toward the exit to the parking lot. There was a guard posted at every junction in the hallway, keeping a close eye on them.

When they got outside, Max gulped in the night air, cooler than it should be for October. He shivered, which had nothing to do with the cold.

Knots of tension loosened in his neck and shoulders, until he remembered his best friend was dead.

If he could figure out Evan’s last message, maybe he would know why. He just had to do it before he ended up in government custody.

3

Max didn’t hear the insistent
knock on the passenger side window of his car at first. He instinctively closed the screen of the laptop balanced on the steering wheel as he turned his head to see Courtney glaring at him through the glass. He unlocked the door and she climbed in, slamming the door.

“They took my computer!” she said.

Max curled his fingers protectively around his laptop. “Why?”

She was shaking so much it took her three tries to fasten her seat belt.

“I mentioned that I’d filmed the debate,” she said.

Max’s pulse quickened. “Including STOP’s message?”

“Yeah. I know. It was a rookie mistake. I thought I was being helpful.” She seemed to shrink into her black wool coat.

“The Feds would have taken it anyway.”

“The way Bennett Avery looked at me. Like I was an idiot. God! I
was
an idiot.” She pulled her hair out of her bun and ran both her hands through her hair in frustration. “He said they cut off the broadcast before the end of STOP’s video. I might have had the only copy.”

So that’s why no one was discussing the suicide online,
Max thought.

“Can we get out of here?” Courtney asked.

Max slid his laptop onto the center divider and started the engine.

“Where to?” Max asked.

“Home.” Her expression softened. “My home. I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood to celebrate after all.”

“Nothing to celebrate tonight,” he said.

Max drove east towards Courtney’s house on the other side of town, near Harbor Park. Not too far from Evan’s.

“Did you get all of that guy’s video?” Max asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you make a backup?”

“I tried to put it on the cloud, but the Wi-Fi went wonky in there.”

“Is ‘wonky’ a technical term?”

“It’s as technical as I get. That’s why I keep you around.”

Max’s eyes burned and the orange streetlights smeared across his vision. He slowed the car and blinked rapidly until he could see again.

“You okay?” Courtney asked.

“The . . .” He cleared his throat. “That ‘wonkiness’ only started after the debate ended. The Feds disabled the wireless network and jammed our phones.”

Courtney drew in a sharp breath. “That’s so illegal. Why would they go that far?”

“They don’t want this getting out. Only the people in that auditorium know that STOP killed himself,” Max said.

“I wish I hadn’t seen it.” Her voice caught. “That was awful.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Max asked.

“If the government doesn’t want his video getting out, maybe it’s important that it does,” Courtney said.

Evan had to have had a good reason to kill himself, especially so publicly. Max needed to find out why.

He noticed Sunset Lane was the next street up. He made the sudden decision to turn onto it.

Courtney grabbed the dashboard. “Whoa. You were supposed to go straight there.”

“Sorry, my mind wandered and I went on autopilot. Evan lives on this street.” He squeezed the steering wheel.

“I didn’t see him at the debate.” Courtney turned and gave Max a searching look. “Max, is there something you want to tell me?”

The end of the street was flashing with red and blue lights.

“Uh-oh,” Max said.

He pulled up behind a police car near the corner of Hillcrest Avenue. He turned off the engine and studied the white two-level house. All the lights inside were on. His eyes went to the window in the attic bedroom. Silhouettes moved back and forth on the drawn shade.

“That’s Evan’s house,” Courtney said.

Max nodded.

“Max, tell me what’s going on.”

Mrs. Baxter was standing on the sidewalk in front of the yard, with Mr. Baxter’s arm around her. They looked back at their house. Evan, of course, was not with them.

Is this where it had happened?

As torn up as Max was by Evan’s death, he knew it would destroy his parents. Had they been home when he did it? They had probably been watching the debate downstairs, not realizing that their son was the masked hacker, broadcasting two floors above them. He wondered if Evan had left a note, something more direct than what he said in the cryptic video message.

Max opened his car door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To find out what’s going on,” he said.

“Max, think about this. Are you sure you want to get involved?” Courtney asked sharply.

Cold air seeped inside the car. Max unbuckled his seat belt. “He’s my best friend.”

Max closed the door softly behind him and walked briskly up the sidewalk. In addition to the police car on the street, there was another in the driveway. Its headlights were turned all the way up, casting bright spotlights on the front of the house. He didn’t see an ambulance or a coroner’s van.

Could they have already removed the body?

“Max?” Allie Baxter wiped her eyes and managed a shaky smile. She was a computer graphics teacher at ITT Tech, and one of the sweetest people Max knew. She’d been like a mother to Max.

Tony Baxter nodded in greeting. Max didn’t know the man very well. He did something with stocks, and he was away from home a lot of the time. When he was around he kept to himself.

“Hey, Mrs. B. Is everything all right?” Max asked.

“Oh, sweetie. We’re all right. But the house . . . .” She looked at their home. “We were robbed.”

“Oh,” Max said.

They didn’t know.

He put his hands in his pockets. “I can’t believe that. Did they get anything?” he asked.

“We haven’t had a chance to look around yet,” Mr. Baxter said. “We called the police as soon as we saw the broken door.”

“Of course.” Max licked his lips.

He couldn’t tell them about Evan, and not just because he didn’t want to tip off the Feds. Max didn’t want to be the one to tell them their only son was gone.

“Are you looking for Evan?” Mrs. Baxter said.

“No, I was just . . . I was just driving Courtney home from the debate and I saw the commotion. I was worried.”

Mrs. Baxter smiled. “Thank you. I’m glad Evan wasn’t home. When he’s on his computer, he doesn’t pay attention to anything else. As long as we’re all okay, none of this matters.”

Oh, God.

“It’s just stuff,” Mr. Baxter said gruffly, as if he were trying to convince himself. The Baxters had
nice
stuff, and a lot of it.

“Where is Evan?” Max asked. It was unusual for Evan
not
to be home on his computer. In fact, a robbery in this part of town on the night that Evan killed himself had to be more than a coincidence.

“He had to work tonight. He’s been spending all of his free time at the office.”

“Work,” Max said. He nodded, pretending he knew what she was talking about. It was perfectly natural that Evan would be working, except that as far as Max knew, Evan didn’t have a job.

“At first I was happy he was getting out of the house, but he’s really just spending more time behind another computer, isn’t he? I wish he was more like you, Max,” Mrs. Baxter said. “But don’t tell him I said so.”

Max’s mouth went dry. “I won’t,” he rasped.

“They’re ready for us,” Mr. Baxter said. A cop came down the walkway toward them.

Mrs. Baxter pressed closer to her husband. “I can’t bear going in there right now. I want to go stay in a hotel tonight.”

Mr. Baxter sighed.

Max took a couple of steps backward. “Sorry again. I’ve got to get going.” He didn’t want the cop to see him and possibly remember him later.

“I’ll tell Evan you came by,” Mrs. Baxter said.

“Oh, sure,” Max said.

“You should visit more often, Max. I feel like we haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Will do.” Max turned away as the cop looked at him, and walked back to his car.

Max slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. He crossed his arms on the steering wheel and rested his head for a moment.

“What happened? Max?” Courtney asked.

“The Baxters were robbed,” Max said.

“Max, did Evan have something to do with that video?”

Max looked up. He waited until the cop and the Baxters had returned to the house before starting the car. He drove past slowly and turned the corner in the other direction.

“Headlights,” she said.

“I know.”

He waited until he was half a block away before he switched the low beams on.

Courtney was typing on his laptop with what he called her “thinky look”—the distant expression that told him she was far away from him, lost in the words flowing from her fingers.

“What the hell, Courtney?” he said.

“Relax. I’m using the guest profile, okay?”

“Still, you have to ask first,” Max said. “What are you working on?”

“My blog post about the debate.”

“The one the Feds told you not to write about for a few days?”

“They said not to say anything on
social media
. Besides, I’m a reporter; I have a responsibility to the truth. They won’t be able to keep this out of the news for long anyway.” She looked at him. “Your computer connected automatically to the Baxters’ Wi-Fi. I just checked Panjea, and there’s nothing about what happened. It’s weird that it isn’t all over Panjea by now, right?”

“Maybe the Feds are forcing Panjea to censor posts.” Max laughed.

“Don’t joke. If they can do that, we’re all screwed,” Courtney said. “That’s what oppressive governments do.”

“Considering what happened tonight, I’m ready to believe anything.” Max glanced in the rearview mirror. Was that car following them? No, it was pulling into a driveway. Wow, he had really spooked himself.

“This is a big deal. If I break the story, the rest of the media will get it from
Full Cort Press
. I bet we could even get
Fawkes Rising
to blog about it,” Courtney said.

“I guess some poor guy killing himself live makes a great story.” Max pulled off his tie and tossed it into the back seat. He loosened his collar.

“It would be even better if we knew the identity of STOP,” Courtney said.

Max hunched over the steering wheel.

“Max?” Courtney asked.

“What?”

“It was Evan, wasn’t it?”

The car veered to the right. Max yanked it back onto the road.

“I thought that was his voice at the end,” she went on. “It makes sense. He’s a computer genius. He has the video equipment and experience. He obviously knows everything about how to get into the school’s systems. You said you used to be a hacker, and I assume he still is . . . was.”

“You’re a great reporter, Cort,” Max said.

“Thanks.” At least she didn’t sound happy about it.

“But you’re not a great friend.”

“Max!”

Max pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and switched on the emergency blinkers. He stared straight ahead at the dark road for a moment before turning to her.

“What do you expect?” Max asked.

“Talk to me.” She closed the screen and folded her hands over it in her lap.

“Yes, it was Evan. Do you know what that means?” he asked.

“He’s dead.”

“Cort, my friend died tonight.”

“Evan made a choice. And so did you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You have to tell them who he was,” she said.

“You volunteered information and you lost your laptop.”

“This is different.”

“They’ll figure it out soon enough,” he said.

“All the more reason not to keep it to yourself. How is it going to look when they find out you were friends?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Not good,” she said. “Really not good.”

“It looks pretty bad from here already,” he said. “Did you say anything to them about Evan?”

“I didn’t know before. Do you know what he was talking about?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t talked to him in a while. You’re the reporter. What do you think?”

“I think you knew him better than anyone,” Courtney said.

“Until he pulled the trigger, I never thought he was capable of something like that. What’s going to happen when they do identify him?” Max asked.

“They’ll interview kids at school, anyone who knew him. Our classmates will say he was a quiet boy, that they don’t know why he did this. They’ll dredge up some meaningless interaction they had with him once that makes them feel better about the way they treated him or that gives them some insight into his character. Some kids will say they always thought there was something ‘off’ about him and that they aren’t surprised. He was obviously very troubled, and they wish he’d only talked to someone, or gotten the help he needed.” Courtney tapped her fingernails against the lid of his laptop. “They’ll learn you were his only friend. What will you say about him?”

“Nothing. Evan’s a private person, and so am I.”

“You’re the only person who can speak for him. Set the record straight, so people know he didn’t do this because he was bullied or depressed.”

“I can’t even do that much. I don’t know why he did it. If I had been a good friend, I would have seen this coming.”

“Oh, Max.” She placed a hand on his knee.

“I could have stopped him.”