Code of Silence: Living a Lie Comes With a Price (27 page)

Cooper nodded. “Yeah, I feel good.”

Mom smiled and gave Gordy a hug, then walked back toward the door. “I’ll put fresh sheets on your bed. You’ll feel even better.”

Cooper waited until she disappeared inside. “Okay. What is it?”

“I’m not sure. Ken didn’t have any details, but it was pretty clear the police planned to try some other tactic this time. Something different.”

“Whatever it was, it didn’t work.”

“I dunno,” Gordy said. “Hiro wanted me to warn you that the police were setting some kind of trap. She said her brother used the word ‘bait.’ They were going to ‘bait’ you so you’d turn
yourself
in.”

“
Bait
me?” Cooper’s mind raced, filling in the blanks. He stood and paced the front porch. “Hammer said they had Mr. Lucky. That I needed to identify him, or bring in the security camera hard drive.”

“Think it’s true?”

“The part about Lunk’s dad—absolutely. But can I trust Hammer?
That’s
the question.”

Gordy nodded. “Think he’s using Lunk’s dad to bait you?”

“Oh, yeah.” Cooper plowed his hands through his hair. It made sense. Hiro’s conversation with her brother added even more doubts about trusting Hammer. “And I was ready to take the bait. Hook, line, and sinker.”

He wished Hiro was with them right now. He wished that wall between them wasn’t growing. The call to Ferrand and the conversation with Ken proved it was. But she did send Gordy to warn him. That was a plus.

“What if he never even hauled Lunk’s dad in?” Gordy said.

Cooper nodded. He could hear Hammer’s voice in his head.
You really want me to set him loose?
An icy chill crept up his back. Now the idea of marching in there with the hard drive didn’t sound like such a good idea, even if his parents came with him. How hard would it be for Hammer to destroy the evidence?

“We need to rethink our next step. I was ready to go in. I mean, I dug out the hard drive and everything. It’s sitting right out on my bed.”

Gordy’s eyes opened wide. “Didn’t your mom just go up to change your sheets?”

S
tupid, stupid, stupid.
Cooper bounded up the stairs two at a time. Fudge shouldered past him and pulled ahead, even though she couldn’t possibly be sure where he was going. He burst into his room just as his mom dropped a wad of sheets on the floor. For a second he stared at the bundle wondering if she had somehow rolled the hard drive up inside.

“Looking for this?” Mom held up the computer component.

“Yeah, thanks, Mom.” Cooper stepped forward and reached for it.

Mom pulled it back. “Not so fast. First I want to know what this is all about.”

Stupid mistake.
He’d have to wing it. “An auxiliary hard drive. You know, a backup.”

“
Whose
hard drive?”

“A friend from school. They got a new computer with tons more memory. They didn’t need the backup space anymore so he offered it to me.” He gave what he hoped looked like a casual shrug. “I figured we could always use the extra memory so I took it.”

She bounced it in her hand like she was testing the weight. More like testing the truth of his story. “And why hadn’t you told us about it?”

He had to turn this around. Get her to stop asking questions by asking some of his own. “He gave it to me Tuesday. I got sick and forgot all about it. I put it on the bed so I’d remember to tell you. That’s where it was, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“If I were trying to hide it, why would I leave it on the middle of my bed?”

She didn’t answer.

Cooper was getting good at this little diversionary tactic. But he knew this could still go either way. He had her playing defense now, which is where he wanted her. If he let up the pressure, she’d jump back on offense. But push too hard, and she’d likely push back. “Gordy is going to help me hook it up this weekend. Sound okay to you?”

“Maybe. What’s this boy’s name?”

Busted. “Jeff.” Where he came up with that name, he didn’t know. It was the first name that popped into his head.

She eyed him. “Jeff?”

“Uh-huh. Jeff Williams. His family just moved here from Canada.” Sometimes the more outrageous the lie, the more believable it was. Nobody would expect someone to lie that openly, so they figure it’s the truth. Politicians did it all the time. He reached for the hard drive.

She pulled back again and wagged a finger at him. “Not so fast, Cooper MacKinnon. I think I’ll hold onto this and see what Dad says tonight.” She tucked it under one arm, picked up the bundle of sheets, and started out of the room.

Not good. Time for the trump card. “Don’t you trust me?” He tried to paste a surprised, hurt look on his face.

Mom turned. “I’ve always trusted you, Cooper. But that doesn’t mean that sometimes I shouldn’t check to be sure I can
keep
trusting you.” She smiled and left the room.

Cooper stood there for a second. Fudge looked at him with eyes that seemed to know everything. She looked disappointed in him. Or worried for him. She had good reason to be.

He followed his mom down the stairs to the laundry room. She put the hard drive on the counter and started feeding the sheets into the machine. It was crazy. Every cop in Rolling Meadows would love to get their hands on that little thing. So would the men that sent Frank into some kind of twilight zone between life and death. And here it was, just sitting out where anyone could see it.

“Did Gordy go home?”

How was he going to get the hard drive hidden again? What would he tell his dad?

“Cooper?”

He snapped his attention back to his mom. Too late. Her eyes flicked to the hard drive.
Stupid.
Cooper wanted to kick himself. She’d followed his gaze and caught him looking at it. That would only fuel her suspicions.

She cocked her head and looked at him. “Is Gordy still here?”

“I think so, but I’ll check.” He trudged to the front porch, relieved to dodge any questioning about the hard drive. Gordy must have read the situation just by looking at his face.

“She saw it?”

Cooper nodded. “Confiscated it too. Wants to talk to my dad about it.”

“We’re dead.” Gordy jammed his hands in his pockets and turned away. “Now what?”

“I’ll figure out something.” Cooper hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. But if his dad plugged the auxiliary drive into the computer, and he would, he’d figure out Cooper was the mystery witness. Goodbye Code of Silence.

“Hiro wanted me to tell you one more thing.”

Cooper groaned. “There’s more?”

“Ken wondered if somehow organized crime was involved.”

“Now there’s a comforting thought.” This whole thing was getting insane. Organized crime? He wanted to think through that possibility. What it would mean. But right now, at this moment he had to figure out if he should turn himself in or not.

He glanced over his shoulder at the house. The last thing he needed was for his mom to overhear. He stepped off the porch and headed for the driveway, motioning Gordy to follow. “The real question is this. Do the police really have Lunk’s dad in custody or not?”

“And how are we going to find out?”

Cooper thought for a minute. “We could see if Hiro could ask her brother.”

“What if
he
gets suspicious?”

Gordy was right. Asking questions like that would be risky. “Why do you think Hiro warned me?”

“She’s your friend.”

“You sure about that?”

“Definitely. She may be steamed at you, but deep down we stick together. Right?”

Cooper felt a twinge of guilt. He should have set his alarm so he could have warned Gordy before school this morning. In a way he really
had
ditched Gordy today. And things with Hiro were pretty shaky. Still, it was a good sign that Hiro warned him. Maybe their friendship hadn’t taken quite the hit that he thought it did.

“Isn’t that right, Coop? We stick together.”

“Yeah, always. And I’m sorry about ditching you today. Really sorry.”

Gordy nodded. “It kind of hurt, you know?” He gave Cooper a sideways glance. “But I’m okay now.”

Neither of them said a word for a minute or two.

“Okay. Let’s figure this out. If they really have Lunk’s dad, also known as Mr. Lucky, somehow I need to go in or he’ll be back on the streets,” Cooper said. “But if they don’t have Mr. Lucky, and I show up at the police station …”

“You’re toast,” Gordy said.

“Or worse,” Cooper said. “I turn myself right in to Detective Hammer, and he just happens to have an Elvis mask in his trunk …”

“In which case,” Gordy made a fake gun with his hand and put it to his head, “he’ll be giving
you
a ride in the trunk too.”

“Thanks, Gordy.” Cooper wrestled with his thoughts. Turning himself in seemed more and more risky. If he could be sure they really had Lunk’s dad in jail it was a pretty safe bet that Hammer was clean. Then he’d tell his parents everything. Maybe they’d call a lawyer. Or give an exclusive interview to the Daily Herald. The more people he told the better.

And if Hammer was involved in the robbery somehow, with enough people knowing, Hammer couldn’t touch them. What would be the point? It would be too late to stop Cooper’s eyewitness testimony, and the surveillance hard drive would be turned in as evidence. In a sense, Cooper would handcuff the cop.

But if Lunk’s dad wasn’t in jail, Hammer was dirty. What else could it mean? He’d probably have to talk to his parents anyway, but at least he’d know who the enemy really was. An idea started forming.

“We need to know if Lunk’s dad is in jail.”

Gordy grinned. “Sure. We just go to Lunk’s house and ask if his dad can come out and play. Sounds easy.”

Cooper shook his head. “We check Lunk’s shed. See if he’s inside.”

“Great idea,” Gordy said. “We just bang on the shed door. He’ll come out and pound both of us.”

“Not if we don’t get close to the shed.”

Gordy looked confused. “How you going to do that?”

Cooper checked over his shoulder. “With the potato gun.”

G
ordy’s eyes brightened. “We could shoot from far enough away where he’d never see us.”

“And if he did, we’d have such a lead on him that he’d never catch us,” Cooper said.

“After dinner?”

Cooper nodded. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was something. The best part was that Gordy seemed to have forgotten all about being mad at him. If only it would be that simple with Hiro.

“I’ll bring the potatoes,” Gordy said. “Think you can meet at seven?”

“I’ll have the Spud-zooka ready.”

Gordy met him at exactly seven wearing a dark hoodie. The side pockets sagged under the weight of a pair of the biggest Idaho potatoes Cooper had ever seen.

“Where did your mom get
those
?”

Gordy handed one to Cooper. “The farm must be near some nuclear energy plant or something. Maybe they’re radioactive.”

Cooper tested the weight and handed it back. “Let’s go.” He grabbed the homemade potato gun, hairspray, and ramrod. “Good news about the hard drive,” he said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

They stuck with the shadows, weaving their way from tree to tree. He waited until they were several houses away. “My dad called. The photo shoot he’s on is running long. He told us to eat without him. He won’t be home until late.”

“Which means,” Gordy said, “you’re off the hook for tonight.”

Cooper checked both ways and hustled across the street. “Tomorrow too.”

“How do you figure?”

“My parents and Mattie are going to the circus tomorrow night. So I don’t think it will come up until Friday.”

“Which will give you another day to figure out how to explain things.”

Cooper didn’t answer. He knew he didn’t stand a chance if his dad got the least bit suspicious. His only hope was that the police find the robbers before that happened. Which brought him back to tonight. He intended to find out if the police
had
hauled Lunk’s dad in, or if the police cooked up the story as bait.

Brittle leaves huddled along the edges of the street as high as the curbs. Cooper and Gordy shuffled through them, every step crunching as they went. Cooper held the Spud-zooka low at his side. To someone passing in a car it might look like he was carrying a five foot length of PVC pipe, with one end a little bigger than the other. To someone who had ever used a potato gun, they’d recognize it right off. In the darkness of the night, Cooper figured nobody would even notice.

“I called Hiro,” Gordy said. “Asked if she wanted to come with us.”

“I bet that went over big.”

“Yeah. She pretty much said we were crazy. If it was up to her, the Spud-zooka should have been permanently retired after the last time.”

Cooper smiled, picturing her giving a lecture on the topic. “I wish …” He couldn’t finish the thought. How would he say he wished things weren’t messed up between them?

Gordy eyed him. “Wish what?”

“Nothing,” Cooper said. “We’re getting close.”

The single story house Lunk’s mom rented was almost perfectly square. One of blocks and blocks of tiny two-bedroom homes that put Rolling Meadows on the map over fifty years ago. A narrow asphalt drive ran along one side of the house.

Cooper and Gordy circled around the back of a home several doors down. They hunkered down for several minutes to allow their eyes to adjust to the darkness of the backyard. A shallow strip of trees bordered the back end of the lot and continued well past Lunk’s. It would have been better in the summer when the trees still had their leaves, but the trees would still give them some cover.

Sticking to the tree line, they worked their way through the next couple of yards and stopped a lot and a half away. The metal shed was easily visible in the moonlight.

“Looks like somebody is home.” Gordy pointed toward the light streaming out from under the sliding door.

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Cooper jammed a potato into the open end of the PVC pipe. The sharpened edges of the pipe peeled off the excess potato, leaving a solid two-inch spud-slug in the pipe.