Shatter Page 10

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe …” I can’t think of any maybes.

  “Salem, just let the police handle it.”

  “Great idea. They’ll arrest you. Seriously, who buries a body in their own orchard when they can walk a quarter mile in any direction and put it in someone else’s? What do the police think they have on you?”

  I mean the question to be rhetorical.

  Dad won’t meet my gaze. As I watch him drive, I realize that he knows exactly what information the police have. I get goose bumps.

  “I talked to Juan,” Dad says finally. “His cell number was listed on the union website.”

  “When?” I whisper.

  “Six days before he died. We only spoke a few minutes. I told him I wanted to chat with him about the strike and he said he’d stop by the house sometime. I guess he made a note to himself to visit me. The police have known about it since May. But he never came.”

  Neither of us says anything. No wonder the police suspect Dad.

  Dad’s phone rings from inside his shirt pocket. He checks the display and looks at me. It’s Elena calling him, I bet, and he’s not smiling. We’re two miles from home, where he could answer without having to talk to her in front of me.

  “I knew you were nervous,” I say.

  “I’ll text her back.”

  “No—Dad!” I motion for him to answer. Doesn’t he know to at least take her calls? “I’ll … plug my ears.”

  Elena’s voice is so loud I can hear her despite my half-hearted attempt to block my hearing. I’m curious.

  “You are so lucky you get to spend time with me tonight,” she says, her voice displaying a touch of accent. She’s Puerto Rican, if I remember right.

  “You’ve mentioned that,” Dad answers, holding the phone at an angle so her voice doesn’t blow his eardrum.

  Elena has a snappy way of talking—not angry, but fiery. She’s got attitude and confidence. All of a sudden I’m worried. She’s smart and pretty and twelve years younger than him—of course he should make sure his hair isn’t sticking up in the back.

  I check Dad’s appearance as he listens. Fortunately his hair is not sticking up. We pull in the driveway.

  Elena continues. “Did you tell Salem about how I can help with her mock trial research?”

  “Not yet.” Dad motions me to go to the house.

  I climb out of the Prius. I remember something and reopen the car door.

  “One second, Elena.” Dad fists his phone, annoyed.

  “The police aren’t going to arrest you now,” I say. “I—I’m glad, that’s all.”

  He shakes his head and leans to hug me.

  I inhale the familiar smell of pencil lead on him and let myself realize how frightened he was. How frightened I was. This morning he was facing murder charges, and today he’s going on a date with Elena.

  And me? I go inside the house, steam some vegetables and rice, and dig into my plan to attend the required Festival Hispánico this Saturday. Who knows if Cordero will be there, but Jeremy and McCoy come to everything, carrying with them all they know about Carrie. I haven’t found a way to talk to them in private at school, but with any luck, soon I’ll know as much as they do.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  On Saturday morning I opt for a ponytail, light make-up, and white capris. Casual. Classic. The perfect outfit to be wearing when I meet Dad’s non-girlfriend.

  Their non-date went so well it’s getting a repeat performance. Elena invited Dad to the Festival Hispánico and, since I needed a ride there anyway, we’ll all be going together. Oh, and then we’re having dinner to “get to know each other.”

  Elena is not shy. Last night she told me through Dad that my mock trial group could meet at her house and use her Wi-Fi to get UC Berkeley library access—every FBI file ever released. The idea was tempting enough that I floated it on Facebook, but the team decided to continue meeting at Jeremy’s.

  After breakfast, Dad and I go pick up Elena together.

  “Hi, Salem.” She gets in the car and talks the whole trip. She’s sort of interesting, like when she tells us about an interview she did with a family who donated their dead daughter’s organs as transplants.

  “Oh, that was hard,” she says. “I cried four times.”

  Dad glances at her.

  “What? I’m Hispanic and female. I can cry four times whenever I want.”

  He laughs.

  I ditch Dad and Elena the second we park because I don’t know what to do around them.

  Under bright sunlight, I walk past teens in team jerseys and middle-aged women carting signs that read, “Pro-strike is Pro-gressive”—people who have never seen Verona on a map, let alone in person. They’re here to support the peach strike. The pavilion is packed. I find Envy and Kimi shouting, “Viva la strike!”

  I stand with them. They hug me, loving that I’m hanging out with them instead of pushing them away.

  “This peach strike is about fairness!” United States Senator Debbie Lethco yells from the podium at the start of her speech. Her highlighted curves of hair shake. “This strike is about middle class creation! Opportunity! The American dream!”

  The crowd in the pavilion comes to its feet with a stadium-worthy roar.

  For the next hour, the senator is an aerobics instructor, leading everyone up, down, up, down. The temperature is the only thing that rises without falling. I map my route to shade during her every word.

  “The union and I are proud to end this speech by announcing there will be a farm worker’s march! Next Saturday, pickers will march through peach country and then bus sixty miles to the Laborer’s Rally in Sacramento!” Senator Lethco shakes a fist above her head, yelling over the growing noise.

  The senator’s announcement reanimates my overheated brain. A union event planned for next Saturday. That’s what Mr. White was talking about. And the growers’ counterstrike to it.

  “We will march,” Senator Lethco shouts. “We will start at the edge of peach country and will march with you to Sacramento. We will march with you right now. March with us! March! Workers of the world, we are united!”

  The clamor is deafening. Senator Lethco continues yelling, continues throwing her fist forward rhythmically as she leads the march, snaking south. Envy, Kimi, and other club members dance on their way to follow her.

  “Viva la march!” they shout.

  The tide surges, sweeping me with it into the carnival area. There’s an emotion to it—a frenzy. Someone may have gotten caught up by this emotion, the way Carrie had been, even hiring a gang member. Was this the emotion that killed her?

  “Come on, Addy. You know you like me,” someone behind me says as we walk. I turn to see Jeremy Novo a few groups of people away, holding AddyDay’s arm.

  “It’s AddyDay,” she answers.

  “Aw, come on, Addy.”

  Doesn’t he ever take a snack break? Tormenting people can’t be as easy as it looks.

  “Marissa, Katelyn, wait,” AddyDay calls. Her friends from the mock trial slip farther ahead, not appearing to hear.

  “A trip down memory lane,” Jeremy says. The crowd has shifted so that they’re closer to me. Only a pair of old women separates us. “You were my first, you know.”

  “Let me go!” Panic threatens to overcome the hate in AddyDay’s voice as she struggles. She sounds like Carrie did the morning she died.

  Furious, I sling my backpack in front of Jeremy’s feet. A dude full of piercings runs into him from behind, and he trips to his knees, freeing AddyDay. The crowd splits around us and continues flowing forward.

  “Stop picking on her,” I say.

  Jeremy gets up, checking his ironed shorts for grass stains. Satisfied, he faces me. “Salem Jefferson? What are you doing? Going to accuse me of being a Primero?”

  AddyDay glances at me and bites her lip in pity. “Everyone heard you ask Cordero if he was in the gang that tagged Carrie’s car.”

  I flush.


  Jeremy laughs. “Oh, I bet now you think I hurt Carrie.”

  I’m embarrassed he thinks I suspect everyone, but I pull myself together. I stop glaring and try to act conversational. He brought up the subject, after all. “So, what makes you think Carrie was hurt?”

  He smirks. “Uh, because she died and now you’re going around accusing people of going after her?”

  “I thought … I thought it was strange that the union guy Juan Herrera had been buried so close to where she died. McCoy mentioned you and he ran into Cordero in May. That’s around the time Juan died—did you know that?”

  He gasps, mocking me. “Well, and here I was, wanting to tell you all about that night at Mission Plaza, but no. You’re not nice. You tripped me.”

  “Jeremy, stop being mean,” AddyDay says.

  He rolls his eyes. “I’m not your friend, Salem. See ya later, Addy.” He puckers his lips at her before disappearing into the stream of people.

  I grab my backpack, and AddyDay and I make our way over to the ferris wheel. The fence around it makes a wide oval, lined with observers we can see on the other side. To our left, the thoroughfare is thinning. Senator Lethco’s impromptu march is taking it to the streets, literally.

  “He is the worst!” I lean against the chain link. “Why does he have it out for you?”

  AddyDay leans next to me. “You don’t know? Everyone knows. I lost my virginity to Jeremy in seventh grade. He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone and when he did, they made fun of him for sleeping with garbage.”

  Horrified, I watch AddyDay finger her neck, now featuring a narrow white scar, blaming herself rather than the popular kids she wants so badly to please.

  AddyDay misinterprets my look of disgust.

  “I didn’t have a lot of self-esteem back then,” she says defensively. Her shoulders slump. “My only time. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

  “Just stand up to him, like you did at the mock trial practice,” I say, wishing I were skilled enough to convey my sympathy correctly.

  “I don’t know. I just …” She shrugs. We stand in the hot sun for a minute, and she turns to me. “But what did you want to know about the night at Mission Plaza?”

  I push off from the chain link. “Wait … you were there? You saw Cordero?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I smile. “Well, forget Jeremy. Was Slate there? Carrie?”

  She smiles. “Carrie. And Slate, but only for a minute because Carrie called him for a ride. Anna came with him—you know, his little sister? So what happened was, Carrie got there when we were having dessert and we—”

  “Who’s we?”

  “My best friends, Marissa and Katelyn … some kids from the drama club … McCoy and Jeremy.”

  “You were hanging out with Jeremy on purpose?”

  She shrugs, embarrassed. “Marissa and Katelyn really like him. He’s not mean all the time. He’s just mad now because he wanted to leave the festival early and no one else wanted to. He was fine at Mission Plaza, just ignoring me was all.”

  I frown at AddyDay’s definition of fine.

  “All of us had been at the restaurant for hours, just hanging out, you know?” she continues. “It was probably eleven by the time Carrie came. Right after that, out of nowhere these two guys showed up. I’m sure now Cordero was one of them. He kept shouting his name and pointing to himself. Weird, huh? He would go in English for a bit, then Spanish. He introduced the other guy too. Tito. He and McCoy got into it, shoving and all. McCoy hates gang guys.”

  “Tito,” I say, pouncing on the name. Slate mentioned Tito. That’s who he duked it out with two days before Juan died at Mission Plaza. “Did Tito look like he’d been in a fight?”

  “Oh, yeah. Swollen eye. Everything. He’s got this gold tooth. He’s freaky.”

  If he had a swollen eye, it’s possible he’d already fought with Slate. “Did Cordero say what he and Tito wanted?”

  “No, they barely stayed ten minutes before they left. Right after that, Carrie called Slate for a ride home.”

  My shoulders slump. I’ve learned nothing, and it sounds like Jeremy and McCoy won’t have any more information than AddyDay. I picture Cordero and Tito, at Mission Plaza, fighting Slate one night and then returning another night. Why?

  “We offered to take Carrie home ourselves, but she wouldn’t come,” AddyDay continues. “She was acting kind of funny. Sort of … spacey.”

  Spacey. “She wouldn’t answer for several seconds and then she’d say something totally normal.”

  “Exactly! Yes!”

  “Do you know the date? Because it may have been May 23. She was acting that way with me over the phone that day. I was at a track practice.”

  “Ooh, I’ll look.” She gets out her phone.

  “You put it on Instagram or something?”

  “And Snapchat.” She scrolls down her screen. “Oh, look.” She shows me a picture of puppy dogs with bow ties. “I just love that one. Wait, here. It wasn’t May 23. It was May 24.”

  I lean to see a selfie of AddyDay with a restaurant napkin tied around her forehead like a headband. Carrie’s profile is in the dim background. The time-stamp is 11:38 p.m., May 24. “And you’re sure you posted this the day you took it?”

  She takes her phone back. “Posted it the minute I took it.”

  “May 24 is the night Juan Herrera went missing.”

  “Oh, wow.” She’s obviously heard of the man buried in my orchard.

  I tap my lips. “11:38 is pretty late. Police say the murder happened around 8:00 p.m. Sounds like Cordero doesn’t have an alibi that early.”

  AddyDay nods. Then she frowns. Her eyes are serious and disappointed. “Wait, you don’t seriously suspect Cordero, do you? He saved us. All of us. At the gang house during the drive-by.”

  Gang house. 147 Benjamin Road.

  A wave of fear hits me.

  “How do you know about that?” I say in disbelief.

  “I was there. I tried—well, I did try to tell you. That’s why I went up to you the next day in class. To see if you were okay.”

  I notice the bandages on her neck and touch my own neck. “You were shot?”

  Her fingers shake as she touches her own neck, tracing the injury. “No, I followed you in my car. I saw you running down Main Street, and I’ve been to Cordero’s house before with my stepdad—you know, with outreach programs? I didn’t want you to start the mock trial research without me. I parked in the driveway and got out. This low-rider pulled up and this guy started shooting. I stared right at him. He shot out my driver’s side window. And right then Cordero came out of the house. He scared the guys. They drove away. I didn’t even know the glass cut my neck until they were gone. Cordero ran back into the house.”

  “Did any of the people inside the house come out later?” I’m so shocked I can’t stop my questions. “Did El Payaso come out? Did anyone mention Carrie’s name? There was a girl who got shot, Jimena.”

  “Cordero’s little sister, yes.” AddyDay is eager to provide whatever information she can. “Cordero was with her and he was so calm. And there were all these people screaming and crying. Neighbors …”

  Nothing makes any sense. How can AddyDay talk about Cordero like she’s not afraid of him? How could I have considered not being afraid of him?

  “Cordero is dangerous,” I warn her, reconverted to the idea by my memories of the drive-by. “He had a gun. He shot at the enemy guys in the car.”

  “He saved my life.” She lifts her chin, casting a shadow on the faint scab on her neck. She’s become the AddyDay of the mock trial video, the AddyDay who will stand up for something. But I haven’t told her what she needs to hear. She needs to dislike him and suspect him without proof, the way I do. Because I’m frightened of him. Because I need someone to blame for Carrie’s death.

  “Look, there she is,” Elena Thornton’s voice calls from several yards away.

  I turn to see Dad and Elena walking toward me. Dad doesn’t see
me yet as he smiles down at Elena. His goofy, carefree expression clashes with his professor spectacles.

  I wish I could talk to AddyDay longer—to convince her or be convinced by her, I guess. How can she trust Cordero?

  “Hey, Salem,” Dad says as he arrives.

  “Hi, girl!” Elena says to me. She’s happy. She’s really happy. I want to feel relaxed around her, but I don’t.

  She turns to AddyDay. “I’m Elena.”

  “AddyDay,” she answers. “I’m your neighbor actually.”

  Elena puts her hands on her hips. “Well, of course. You should come to my house for dinner with Salem. Unless she wants to ask Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome, maybe?”

  “You’ve got an admirer,” Dad explains in a quiet voice, nodding across the ferris wheel enclosure and looking for my reaction with interest.

  What? I look across the chain link fence.

  My heart stops.

  There, his gaze dark and fixed not thirty feet across the enclosure from me, is Cordero.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Even from across the Ferris wheel enclosure, I can see Cordero’s right shoulder is drooping. He’s got a bandage covering where his upside down V tattoo is.

  The instant my gaze reaches him, he pushes away from the fence and heads right toward me.

  I stumble backward, even though this is the perfect place to question him. That’s what I wanted, right? He must know something.

  “Cordero’s going to say hi to you?” AddyDay asks in awe. “He never chats with anyone.”

  “How cute! You’re blushing.” Elena says. “Just focus on something else. Then, right when he walks by, smile at him.”

  Sunlight glints off his gold necklace as he steps in front of me. He’s got a cap on, black, facing forward. “Salem, do you have a minute?”

  Though his body language is as open and friendly as I’ve ever seen it—maybe more—I don’t answer. I don’t know which Cordero I’m dealing with—the AP student always one step ahead of the curve or the gang member who keeps a handgun and isn’t afraid to use it.

  “What’s your name?” Dad asks Cordero.

  I tense. Cordero turns to face Dad. Half my school wears more gang paraphernalia than Cordero is currently showing, all in the name of fashion. Dad doesn’t seem to recognize him as anyone tied to Carrie. More than anything, Dad seems curious.