Shatter Read online

  AddyDay’s face goes red. “Okay. Okay, I knew Bill didn’t want Carrie leading the pickers to a strike, but that doesn’t mean he like, physically harmed her.”

  I turn to her. “Wait, you knew he threatened Carrie?”

  “Salem. He talked to Carrie. Everyone was talking to her. She controlled the Students for Strike Club Twitter and Facebook accounts—the ones that were giving the union so much attention. Bill said she was better at media control than the union president himself. She was becoming a leader in a strike that might … you know, kill a whole industry or whatever. He wanted to give her a better way to lead. He invited Carrie to be his teen representative, but she had said no. That’s probably what he was talking to her about right then.”

  I fold my arms. “First he asked her to join his side and when she didn’t, he threatened her, and then someone killed her.” I turn to Cordero. “Tell her how suspicious that looks.”

  Cordero looks at the orchard with a long, ponderous stare—lips pressed together, the setting sun behind him.

  He shakes his head at me. “We need more evidence.”

  My shoulders slump. He’s right. I’ve got to stop condemning everyone on zero hard evidence. But Bill was having secret meetings. I snap my fingers in realization. AddyDay and Cordero don’t know that yet.

  “Listen, I overheard Bill, my dad, and Mr. White talking when they didn’t realize I could hear. They have secret meetings together. They said they’re planning a counterattack against the union next Saturday. Maybe we can catch them in the act. I don’t know what they’re up to or how far they’re willing to go to stop these strikes.”

  The question of how far the growers would take their counterattack Saturday hasn’t left my mind since I heard about the bomb threatened against the Laborer’s Rally, also planned for Saturday. At the time, it seemed so clear that the growers were the ones planting the bomb, but now I hesitate to suggest something that vilifies them so much. Not after I accused AddyDay’s stepdad. But I still want Cordero’s thought on the subject. I speak cautiously.

  “Also … you know, another thing we could look into is the taco shop bomb at Mission Plaza,” I say. “Whoever set it up is targeting the union and … well, that could be the same people who murdered Juan in the first place.”

  Cordero hesitates and then nods. “Tito and El Payaso were missing the night of the bomb until midnight.”

  My voice is heavy. “And then they came after you, possibly on orders from Juan and Carrie’s killer.” The potential connection is too tight. I can’t keep my suspicions quiet any longer. “That counterstrike the growers were talking about is on the same exact day as the bomb threatened against the Laborer’s Rally.”

  AddyDay stares at Cordero and then me. Her jaw drops. “You think growers are planting bombs?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t want to think it—my dad’s one of them. But someone killed Juan and probably Carrie. And someone’s planting bombs.”

  AddyDay puts a hand on her hip. “Okay, if these growers are all crazy murderers like you say, why would they warn the union about the bomb?”

  “The peach strike,” Cordero and I say together.

  “If the union gets scared enough, they’ll fold,” I continue. AddyDay makes a face because she knows it’s true. “For all we know, the killer wants to hurt as few people as possible. Also, maybe not all of the growers who are helping really know how violent things are getting. I’m not saying Bill personally is the killer.” Although, if I’m honest, I suspect Bill the most. It keeps Dad from being my primary suspect.

  “Salem, Bill would never kill someone.” AddyDay points at the recorder still in my hands, brown hair falling from behind her ears. “I understand you don’t know Bill, but I think you even suspected Jeremy a while back. And you do know Jeremy. He’d never hurt anyone.”

  “Jeremy?” I ask. “This is why people like him pick on you. Because you tell yourself people are good even when you’ve seen them do things that are bad.”

  She frowns, stubborn. “That doesn’t make them murderers. You didn’t have any evidence against him besides coincidences, and you don’t have anything but that against Bill. Look.”

  She gets out her phone and thumbs over it furiously.

  Cordero sends me a wild glance.

  I make her turn to me. “Are you calling your dad?” I cry out.

  “Bill Knockwurst, Brian Jefferson,” she says, sounding out the names as she types them.

  Cordero breathes in relief. “A list of suspects.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  Cordero leans over my shoulder to look at the list. His chin stubble brushes my hair. “Add Slate.”

  “What?” I look up at Cordero to find him close, already watching me, like he was expecting my bias.

  “Um, let’s keep the list manageable.” AddyDay says, voice cheery.

  “Slate was … at track when Juan died,” I say in my calmest manner. “We had double practice for weight lifting that whole week.”

  “He never missed any?” Cordero asks. With a flicker of his lashes, his gaze sweeps the length of me, coming back to meet my eyes with more emotion than I expect. Cordero seems to think I know why he’s upset.

  I step back. Confusion and pleasure make my thoughts cloudy. “Why are you even asking about Slate?”

  I think back to what Slate said of his whereabouts. Slate wasn’t at every practice last spring. He missed at least one to celebrate a birthday with Carrie. Cordero must notice a change in my expression.

  “He did miss a practice,” Cordero says in triumph.

  “I’m not putting him down on the suspect list,” AddyDay says.

  “Don’t put him down,” I agree.

  Cordero looks at AddyDay. “You weren’t there the night he fought Tito. I broke up their fight. Slate was … not angry …”

  “Furious?” AddyDay suggest. “Fuming—totally out of control?”

  Cordero shakes his head. “Afraid.”

  My thoughts jump to the fear Slate showed when he got that call from his sister Anna after the mock trial meeting. What exactly is he so afraid of?

  “No matter what,” I say, “Slate has an alibi for Carrie’s murder. I was with him at the cross-country summer-conditioning. That I’m certain of.”

  So there, I tell Cordero with a look. He refuses to meet my eye and waves away a fly. It’s almost like he has an emotional reason for being at odds with Slate—a reason he now wants to hide from me.

  “Any other suspects?” AddyDay asks.

  I hesitate. “There are lots of other growers.”

  Cordero refocuses on the case. “We don’t have to worry about all of them. The suspects are the people Carrie feared. The ones who have no alibi. The ones who know we are investigating, and told Tito or El Payaso.”

  “Okay, right.” With a direction to go, my brain sifts through data. “I think we have to suspect Carrie might have feared the mayor, if she thought he was threatening her that day at Mission Plaza. And … well, and Dad. On the night of the murder, she was with you, Cordero, and you say she refused to go home. Granted, after she left you, she did eventually show up back home—with Slate. So maybe she wasn’t afraid of Dad,” I add quickly.

  “We’ll take your dad off,” AddyDay says.

  “Keep her father on,” Cordero insists.

  She frowns, biting her lip. I don’t protest. I’m upset, though.

  “Your father knew we were investigating,” Cordero points out.

  “So did Officer Haynes,” I counter.

  “Officer Haynes is a cop,” AddyDay says, confused.

  “Exactly,” I say. “He could be a bad cop.”

  AddyDay actually gets angry. “You have gone insane.”

  Cordero explains. “Haynes came to the house when Carrie called the police the morning she died, the very day she was trying to tell someone what happened to Juan. Maybe Haynes didn’t like her story. Maybe he was already paid off by the killer. Maybe he even kill
ed Carrie himself.”

  AddyDay bites her lip. “I don’t like that idea.”

  Frowning, I wave away a fly. “You know, I never thought about that. That Officer Haynes was at the scene of the crime.”

  “Well …” AddyDay says. “I still can’t imagine an officer being bad, but that is another thing the killer had to have. Access to Carrie’s house. You said the firemen who investigated the explosion at your house didn’t find anything to suggest it had been broken into.”

  My shoulders slump. “My dad had access to our house.” Supposedly he was driving to Reno for a business trip. What if he never left Verona?

  “Well, and the officer, if Carrie let him in,” AddyDay says, trying to reassure me, but keeping her frown. Neither of us likes the idea of a cop murdering Carrie.

  “Well, other people can go to a house, right?” I say. “Push the door open if Carrie didn’t lock it or something. Rick and Elena live super close to us. We’re looking for someone who figured out last Saturday that Cordero was involved. Well, both of them heard Dad accuse me of working with Cordero.”

  AddyDay lights up her phone, and then pauses. “Add Rick and Elena as suspects? Really? Rick works for the union. Elena supports the strike all the way. They’re no enemy to Carrie.”

  I shake my head, disappointed. “Don’t add them.”

  “No one else knew I was at Elena’s house with you?” Cordero verifies.

  “Well …” I think of the text I sent Slate. “I guess … I guess Slate could have suspected something.”

  Cordero’s glare is a gunshot straight at me.

  “He thought I was joking,” I say.

  AddyDay pauses with her thumbs suspended above her phone “Oh, Salem. We can’t write down his name. You were with him when Carrie died.”

  “Keep his name off.” I sigh. “So that’s it then. Your stepfather, my father, or a policeman. Great choice. Or a pair of them—or all of them. And that’s not to mention the person Carrie wanted to talk to the day she died. That’s not someone she feared, it’s someone she trusted. That could be anyone—an officer, a teacher, some city official besides the mayor threatening her. Is there anything else we haven’t covered?”

  Each of us ponders as flies swarm around our ankles. All I can think about is how Carrie would have trusted Slate and Dad.

  “Oh my gosh, fine,” AddyDay says. “Bill’s having meetings, but they’re not secret. They’re just … private. I don’t know what they’re about. Anyway, he’s not having any more until this really big one in Sacramento, right after the mock trial. A whole bunch of growers are coming to the trial too. Some of them have children in our class, and the rest of them want to check out the judge they’ll be facing—Judge Steele … but, anyway on TV, investigators concentrate on the victim too, and try to learn why a victim was killed … I mean, there are dozens of union officials … do either of you know why Juan Herrera was even the one targeted?”

  I look at Cordero.

  The surprise in his eyes shifts quickly to calculation. “I have friends. Laborers. I’ll talk to them.”

  AddyDay nudges my arm. “You and I can go to the Laborer’s March when it gets to Verona this Saturday. We could ask club members about Juan there. Or even officials from the union—like super subtle, though. Just kind of bring up how sad it is that he died.”

  “Good idea,” I say. “I’m going to make a timeline. Everyone around Carrie or Juan, every place they were the week he died and the day she did.”

  She nods at the recorder next to her laptop. “What about the growers’ tape?”

  “Slate?” Cordero demands of me. “He knows about the tape too, doesn’t he?”

  “But he—” I lower my eyes and think of what AddyDay and I told Slate during class. I nod.

  Cordero shakes his head.

  Slate didn’t want me to listen to the tape because he was worried about my safety. The way Dad is nervous about me spending time with Cordero. All that safety, all for me. Right? Or is one of them just covering his own tracks?

  AddyDay picks up the tape recorder and hugs it to herself. “We had planned to give the recording to the police, but we can’t now. It kills your dad’s alibi.” She won’t look at me. “Plus, it either makes our dads liars or it makes them very forgetful.”

  “You could test the police, yes?” Cordero asks. “See if they use the tape or not.”

  “I want to keep it. For now.” I glance at Cordero like he’s going to protest, but he doesn’t. I get to make the decision. I feel another notch of gratitude for him. “The most important thing is following the growers to that meeting Saturday after the mock trial. It should end around five, right when the Laborer’s Rally starts.”

  Cordero nods. “I’ll be there.”

  “And me.” AddyDay shrugs. “What? I’m going to prove Bill isn’t doing anything wrong.”

  “Will you be in class tomorrow?” I ask Cordero, hoping to coordinate with him then.

  “Too dangerous.” He turns like he’s about to leave. “I will find you if I need to talk.”

  “No way. Where and when are we meeting? And give me your phone.” I open my palm.

  He glares at me.

  I drop my hand, amazed I could forget how intimidating he can be. “So I can charge it for you? Someone’s got to have a cord that matches yours.”

  With a cautious expression, he reaches around and hitches his shirt up over his back pocket. He meets my gaze.

  I look away, flustered that he’s caught me looking at him again. It seems like that happens so often. “Then you can text me, and I won’t worry that you’re dead.”

  I can feel his focus. He’s not angry anymore, but his eyes are intense with something else. He brings his phone in front of him so I have to step toward him to reach it. His fingernails are creased with dirt. I take it quickly.

  “How will I get it back to you?” I tuck it into my left pocket without looking at him.

  “Moffatt Bridge,” he says, naming a freeway overpass.

  “After school tomorrow? Six o’clock?” I ask.

  Cordero steps closer to me, the black of his upside-down V tattoo inches from my face. “If the killer is sending El Payaso and Tito to find me …” he says quietly.

  “Then he might be on to me too,” I say, emotions shifting. The thought has been close to surfacing for a while.

  AddyDay puts a hand to her chest. “Oh, Salem.”

  “I’ll stop talking about Carrie every second,” I say.

  “Be careful,” he warns over his shoulder. With a final glance at me, he leaves, heading south.

  “Oh my gosh, wait,” AddyDay calls after him. “I forgot. You have to be in time-period clothes to get into the mock trial Saturday.”

  Cordero turns back to us. He has a particular glare on hand for just this moment, one that says, go ahead and try to make me wear dress-up clothes from the 1960s.

  “No, Mr. White can’t have an excuse to kick you out,” AddyDay insists.

  He rolls his eyes and leaves without responding.

  AddyDay and I watch Cordero’s tall figure weave between the rows of trees. He’s capable in so many ways, but he’s surrounded by people like Tito and El Payaso. Maybe that’s why he’s conflicted. One minute he hates the idea of violence, the next minute, he’s a bullet already shot, hot from ignition and ready to act. What kind of person will he become?

  No one can stay undecided forever. In or out. With his gang or against it—for real, forever. What kind of choice would that be?

  AddyDay turns to me. “I have to get home or my parents will worry.”

  “So will my dad,” I say.

  We look at each other. Our whole conversation has centered on how her stepdad or my dad might be a murderer. We don’t have to say it. We’re in this together now.

  AddyDay rubs her hands together. “What do you think? Should we go like West Side Story with Cordero’s mock trial outfit? It’s like the High School Musical of the 1960s. Turned up collars �
� gold chains … sideburns?”

  “I think he will choose who he’s going to be,” I say.

  When Cordero least expects it, the knife blade he’s balancing on will tip, sending him to one side or the other.

  ...

  After saying goodbye to AddyDay, I jog into the orchard in the opposite direction Cordero took.

  Surrounded by the heavy smell of peaches, I think of what Rick Thornton said about gang members. He said they had to learn to accept that the things they were taught growing up—and the people who taught them—were wrong. Cordero sure seems affected by some gang mentality that’s wrong. Like the idea that he has no choice about being a gang member even when he’s running for his life from them.

  I think of me running for my life from someone I trust. Would I figure out I was in danger soon enough, or would it be over before I took the first step?

  I stop in the orchard and search Officer Haynes’s address on my phone. The destination is only a mile away, and the day’s heat is finally wearing down. I know I should turn in the tape.

  Still undecided, though, I walk in the direction of his house while I play the entire grower’s tape. It gets dark as I spend nearly two hours pacing through the trees, listening. AddyDay already played everything significant. Halfway through the recording, my phone vibrates. Dad is calling me. I text that I’m at a mock trial practice. He texts me to come home. He calls again. I don’t answer. I can’t imagine talking to him. He’d know right away something was up. What if he’s refusing to see the dark side of people he’s helping?

  I can barely see my hand in front of my face when the tape finally ends. Using my flashlight app, I head for a road with streetlights.

  I step out of the trees.

  Despite the streetlights, I’m freaked out by the darkness and the solitude of the neighborhood.

  Maybe AddyDay is right. Maybe a series of coincidences tying you to a crime doesn’t make you a murderer. Maybe there’s a reason Dad met with the victim at the scene.

  But maybe AddyDay is wrong.

  My teeth chatter from nerves as I navigate to Officer Haynes’s blue split-level in the middle of suburbia. Cordero suspects the police, but I just can’t seem to match his suspicion. I can’t. I’ll test them the way Cordero suggested, but I can’t believe Officer Haynes is murdering or covering for murders—not because I know the officer well, but because when I see a crisp police uniform, I trust it. I’ve been trained that way since birth. Like how Cordero trusts gangs. Because you trust what you know.