The girl in the wind, p.2
The Girl in the Wind, page 2
part #2 of Iron on Iron Series
“Leave it,” Auggie whispered.
“Oh, hey, before I forget.” John-Henry dropped the remote on the sofa. “A girl named Shaniyah came to the station. She dropped your names, wanted to interview me about a boy who’d gone missing.”
“Wait, really? Is it—do you think it’s related?”
The question brought a stillness broken only by the buzz of the TV. A week ago, the eight of them had found themselves drawn into the hunt for a killer. In the process, they discovered a criminal organization operating in the region. One branch of their operation seemed to include theft or robbery, and they had found, among the stolen jewelry and IDs, a class ring from Wahredua High School.
“I don’t know,” John-Henry said. “That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
Auggie glanced at Theo.
“She’s one of my students,” Theo said. “Shaniyah. She’s going into her senior year, and she’s been working with Auggie on a digital media project for her college applications.”
“And she needs to interview the chief of police about a missing boy?” Tean asked, his book now forgotten in his lap.
“I don’t know about that,” Auggie said. “The project is a collection of videos, but they’re about social media use among teens—you know, TikTok challenges, BookTok, lip synching, cringey fails, the whole range.”
“What are cringey fails?” Emery asked.
At the same time, Theo began, “What are—”
“Pops,” Colt groaned from upstairs before roaring again like a monster. “I’ve told you like a million times!”
“She hasn’t said anything to me about a missing boy,” Auggie continued. “What boy?”
“I don’t know,” John-Henry said. “I was in a meeting, and by the time I got out, she was gone.”
A question hung at the end of the sentence, and John-Henry was looking at Auggie in a way that reminded him that, even with the buddy-next-door smile, John-Henry was still a cop—and an extremely good one.
“I swear,” Auggie said. “Shaniyah hasn’t said anything to me about anything like that. Not even remotely. She was down the other day, you know, upset. But that was because she didn’t get a big scholarship she’d applied for. She didn’t tell me she was going to change her project, though.”
“Because if she had,” Emery said, “and you two were planning on playing Lone Ranger—”
“How could the two of them play Lone Ranger?” North asked. “Isn’t there just one Lone Ranger?”
“One of them is clearly Tonto—”
“We’re not doing anything of the sort,” Theo said. “Neither of us knows what Shaniyah is asking about, and we certainly didn’t have anything to do with it.”
The second floor rumbled with heavy steps and mock growls.
“Have you—” Auggie restarted, but he didn’t know how to ask about what they had found at the Cottonmouth Club. “It’s been a week.”
“Nothing,” John-Henry said.
“We have jobs, remember?” Emery said. “We’ve been working on it, but it’s going to take time.”
Theo looked at Jem and Tean.
“We’re still trying to run something down,” Jem said. “Anything, really, but we’ve been trying to work the wildlife trafficking side.”
“We haven’t made much progress,” Tean said.
“We haven’t made any progress. But we’re not giving up. And we’ve still got some time. Tean’s working remotely, and my job is flexible.”
“Ours isn’t,” North said. “Some of us actually have to go to work.”
“I’m sure watching dentists get blown by their mistresses is an incredibly demanding calling,” Emery said.
“Look who’s talking,” North said. “Same job, bozo.”
“And it is hard, Emery,” Shaw said. “Sometimes they pull the curtains. And sometimes the dentists cry a little bit. And one time, one of them was—” Shaw mouthed, Getting a hummer. “—and his wig fell off. Oh my God, and one time my wig fell off! That was right after I fell on one of the mistresses.”
“How did you fall on a mistress?” John-Henry asked.
“Sure,” North said. “Great. Let’s all give him exactly what he wants.”
“I was wearing these polar bear feet—imitation!” The last part was a rushed assurance to Tean, whose eyes were huge. “And they were in this English basement—”
“What the fuck is an English basement?” Emery asked.
“I’ll pop popcorn,” North said. “We’ll be here all day.”
“—and it looked like she was doing something, you know, interesting, like, um, her technique, so I thought I should probably see with my spiritual eye—”
“He forgot the telephoto lens and humped his way right over the rail,” North said.
“While North was getting his banger mashed,” Shaw said with what might have been a note of vicarious pride.
“I was not—”
“He said this guy had hands that could crush walnuts.”
North’s face was turning a startling shade of purple.
“He couldn’t sit down for a week. Well, he couldn’t sit down front ways. That was before we were dating.”
“What does—” Emery began.
At the same time, North shouted, “What the fuck does ‘sit down front ways’ even mean? I could sit down just fine, and Rodrigo didn’t mash anything, since my sex life is now public fucking record.” He snapped a look around the room, seized Shaw’s arm, and said, “We’re leaving. We’ll be back when we can.”
“John-Henry, my Pepsi—” Shaw tried.
But North dragged him toward the front of the house. Shaw’s giggles came back to them for a moment, and then the door shut them off.
Emery rubbed his face. “God fucking damn it.”
Laughing, John-Henry rubbed his shoulder. “Don’t worry; they’ll be back when they can.”
Emery dropped his hands to give him a betrayed look.
“We need to get going too,” Auggie said. “Listen, I’ll ask Shaniyah why she wanted to talk to you, but in the meantime, is there something we can do? I mean, the class ring?”
John-Henry shook his head, but Emery was the one who answered. “We’re working on the Cottonmouth Club, trying to figure out who’s operating out of there. Tean and Jem are taking the animal angle, and North and Shaw are going to see if they can get a line on anything moving through St. Louis. There’s nothing you can do right now without getting in the way.”
“We didn’t get in the way last week—” Auggie began.
“That’s fine,” Theo said. “We’ll let the professionals handle it.”
When they were in the Audi, driving away from the house, Auggie had to wrestle with the argument he wanted to start. Finally, he managed to swallow it, and as they drove toward Moulin Vert, he managed to say, instead, “Lana’s going to have so much fun.”
Theo nodded. He was staring straight out the windshield.
“She’s going to be fine, Theo. Evie adores her, and she’s got a house full of people who are going to make sure nothing happens to her. Colt and Ashley might need a three-day weekend to recover after this, but everyone’s going to be fine.”
“I know.” Then Theo’s mouth softened, and he said again, “I know. I’m sorry; it’s hard to turn it off sometimes.”
Auggie nodded and rubbed Theo’s knee.
“They’re going to have fun,” Theo said.
“She loves other kids,” Auggie said. “And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her run like that.”
“She has to be careful—” Theo stopped.
Auggie rubbed his knee some more while they drove.
He didn’t mean anything by it, not really. It just came out. “It’s cute, isn’t it? The—I don’t know, the dynamic, I guess. At Emery and John-Henry’s house.”
“Cute like an insane asylum.”
Auggie slapped his knee lightly. “It’s busy, sure. But it’s…warm. It’s—” Full, he wanted to say, although that sounded like he was pitching a ’90s sitcom. But it was the right word, that sense of fullness, of a house brimming with life. “It’s happy.”
Theo made a noise that could have meant anything.
“Didn’t you think it was cute, watching Evie and Lana together? Or, God, Colt with his little sister?”
It was the wrong thing to say; Auggie felt it as soon as it left him. Theo pushed his hair back with both hands and looked out the windshield. He didn’t knock Auggie’s hand off his knee. He didn’t do anything dramatic. He didn’t need to.
“That’s not what I meant,” Auggie said.
Theo nodded.
“I was just saying.”
“I know what you were saying,” Theo said. The sunset caught his eyes and turned them into hard little mirrors. “I thought we weren’t having this conversation again.”
2
The end of the first day of school always found Theo exhausted. The transition from the peace and quiet—relatively speaking, anyway—of summer to the demands of performing for a live audience for seven and a half hours every day wasn’t an easy one. His throat had that mild burn that would last for the first week, and his body ached in new places from being on his feet. Even the classroom smells of whiteboard markers and Axe body spray and Clorox wipes were threatening to turn that little pinprick of discomfort into a full-on headache. On top of all that, the beginning of the school year had been unusually stressful—a few months before, on the last day of school, an active shooter had entered the building. Which meant this year began with extra nerves, extra wariness, and extra assemblies.
By the time Theo made it to his final class period—which was, by some twist of fate, also his plan period—all he could do was sit and read The Cardinal Nation and Bleacher Report and pretend he was going to get back to work in a couple of minutes.
Not that there was much to do; he’d planned out the first few weeks of school, and he had plenty of time to print off the reading packets for Much Ado about Nothing. It wasn’t a play the tenth-graders normally read, but this year, the community theater was putting on a production. Many of the students—maybe even all of them—would never have seen live theater before, and so the plan was to read the play, watch the movie, and then take them to see it performed. By then, Theo thought, maybe they’d understand the overall plot.
He was toying with the idea of getting tickets to a Cardinals game. He could offer Auggie a weekend in the city as a kind of apology for last night. Not that it had been an argument. They never had arguments anymore, not really. Not that it had been anything except a tense moment, an uncomfortable few seconds, and then they had both moved on from it. Without talking about it. The way they always did.
The door opened, and Principal Wieberdink stepped into the classroom. She had one of those milky complexions that might have been good genes and that definitely involved good makeup, and she wore her dark hair in layers. Auggie said her clothes were expensive, and Theo could testify that she certainly dressed, well, more professionally than a lot of the staff. He hadn’t once, for example, seen her come to work in a sports bra like Danika Greer, the health teacher slash water polo coach.
Theo waited for the usual check-in—how was the first day, all that stuff. Instead, though, Wieberdink said, “Dr. Stratford, I need your help.”
“Sure.” Theo straightened in his seat. “Is something—”
“Do you know Shaniyah Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“Great. I need you to help us look for her.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Did something happen?”
“What happened is that Shaniyah’s first- and second-hour teachers apparently did not think taking attendance was an important part of their jobs.” Wieberdink’s usual glacial reserve had melted a little. “A point about which I will be happy to remind them. In the meantime, we don’t know if Shaniyah is in the building, or if she’s playing hooky, or if she even came to school at all today. Her aunt and uncle insist that she’s here, and they want her found.”
“Uh—” Wieberdink shifted her weight, and Theo locked on to the reality of the moment. “Right, I’ll start looking. Are you—”
“I’ve got to get Bobby Porter out of the Gator, which he is currently trying to drag race on the track. Find Shaniyah, Dr. Stratford, and bring her to my office.”
Then she was gone, and from the clip of her heels, she was just shy of running.
It wasn’t exactly unusual for a first day—there was always some kind of minor disaster. And students did love to steal the four-wheeler, which was kept in the athletics shed with minimal security. But it did strike Theo, like the echo of an off-key note, that it was Shaniyah who happened to be unaccounted for. And they’d been talking about Shaniyah the night before.
He locked the classroom behind him and started moving through the building. He worked his way down the hall, checking the electrical closet—the door was still locked—and then the staff bathroom—also locked. Wahredua High School was one of those buildings that had grown in stages, which meant it was, speaking politely, a maddening fuck-up of a maze, even if you’d been working there for years. And with those stages of construction had come odd nooks and crannies, unused corridors, forgotten architectural irregularities.
A giggle came from nearby, and Theo changed direction, heading for an alcove tucked off the main hallway, where the custodial staff often stored unused desks and chairs, and where every year they caught kids vaping (and before vaping, smoking). Maybe not so forgotten, Theo thought as the giggle came again, louder.
“Yeah, I work out.” That was a boy’s voice. He wasn’t speaking loudly, but he wasn’t whispering either. Someone else said something that Theo couldn’t hear, and the boy laughed—a low, even sound. “A couple of hours every day,” he answered. “Go on. Here. Yeah.”
When Theo came around the corner, the boys didn’t notice him, not at first. One of them sat on one of the spare desks, his legs spread, an arm curled to show off his biceps. The gray gym shorts didn’t leave any doubt about how much he liked the attention. He had olive-colored skin under a deep tan, hair worn long on top with a hint of curl, the sides tapering to a skin fade. Probably, Theo thought, so nobody got the wrong idea.
The other boy Theo recognized, although he didn’t know his name—black motorcycle pants, a tight black tee, a quiff of mousey hair. He was ultra skinny, which Theo thought was partially a choice, and he was running his hand over the first boy’s arm.
“What’s going on here?” Theo asked.
The skinny boy about jumped out of his motorcycle pants, whirling around to face Theo, red blotches moving into his cheeks. The boy with the biceps showed a flash of surprise, but he recovered quickly. He changed his posture on the desk and adjusted himself, but that was all—more like he was being polite than like he’d been busted.
“What’s going on?” Theo asked again.
“Nothing,” Biceps Boy said.
Theo looked at the skinny boy.
“Nothing,” he mumbled.
“Names,” Theo said.
“What were we doing wrong?” Biceps Boy asked.
“You’re not in class. How’s that for starters? What’s your name, please?”
“My teacher doesn’t care.”
“Your name.”
The boy smiled. It was a good smile, with straight, white teeth, and none of the usual adolescent uncertainty. “Keelan Vasquez-Mendoza. It’s got a hyphen.”
Theo glanced at the skinny kid.
“Trevor Cohen.” He looked like he was about to cry. “Please don’t tell my dad.”
And the worst part was that he looked genuinely terrified. After a moment of silent deliberation, Theo jerked his head toward the hallway. “Next time, it’s a phone call.”
Trevor sprinted away, but Keelan was slower, sliding off the desk, adjusting himself again, straightening his t-shirt. None of it was anything Theo could point to as insubordination or disrespect, but none of it was accidental either. All the alpha bro arsenal of movements telescoped onto a teenage boy. He’d learned it from his father, Theo guessed. Maybe an older brother. Keelan made eye contact as he passed Theo on his way to the hall. Not a challenge, not exactly. A statement. It was a surprisingly adult move, as though this were his decision, and he were still in the process of assessing Theo. It was the kind of thing, in Theo’s opinion, that made people wonder why teachers didn’t murder students more often.
Theo trailed Keelan until the boy stepped into a classroom, and Theo made a note of the number; he planned on talking to Ms. Singleton about her wandering student after school.
And still no sign of Shaniyah. He continued his search. He couldn’t check the girls’ bathrooms—he wasn’t dumb enough to try that without a female staff member accompanying him—but he did call through each doorway, asking if Shaniyah Johnson was in there. His next stop was the theater, which had a separate exit from the building where students often came and went—went was the more popular choice—without being noticed. In theory, the exit was fire-alarmed, but the school was old, and the alarm on the door had a mysterious way of not working as it should.
When he reached the vestibule, Theo stopped and listened—it was another favorite place for kids wanting to sneak a moment together, and the memory of stumbling onto Trevor and Keelan was fresh in Theo’s mind. But he heard nothing, and after a moment, he tried the doors. Locked. His key let him inside.
The theater itself was cool and dark, with only the footlights and LED strips on the aisles to keep him from total blindness. He listened again, but still nothing. When he turned on his flashlight, he waited for movement, the sounds of escape. Nothing came. He made his way across the theater and checked the fire door, which appeared to have made it through the first day of school intact. Then he hopped up onto the stage and headed behind the curtains. The backstage hallway—with the dressing rooms, the prop storage, the access to the catwalk, the stairs to the orchestra pit—was another favorite of wanderers and skulkers. Nominally, it was supervised by the theater teacher, whose classroom had a door onto the backstage hall, but—
