Shatter Read online

  “That’ll be amusing,” she deadpanned. “You’re going to grab a guy and plant one on him?”

  The memory rolls on with me powerless. I can’t yell for her to understand the danger she’s in. I can’t shake her or drag her from her death. I can only imagine. Does she turn on the coffee pot? The hallway light? Does she pause for a moment to joke with me, her fingers on the switch that will kill her?

  Or maybe I’ve pictured the scene wrong from the beginning.

  Maybe the gas never leaked by accident. Maybe the same person who cut the line also threw a switch outside.

  “So,” she asked. “Have you picked your f—?”

  I never saw the flash that ignited the natural gas, killing her and taking away everything that mattered.

  I had suspected the wrong thing. I didn’t know Carrie was in danger—not that kind of danger. It was all there, though, right in front of me. She wasn’t fearful about a plan she was hatching to attack the growers. She had a secret that someone didn’t want her to spill—a secret she didn’t tell me in order to protect me. All summer she had that secret. I should have run to Dad, to the police, to her union friends, and demanded that they help her.

  Instead, I did nothing.

  ...

  The memories of Carrie fade, but not the anguish.

  “What are you stalling for?” Slate calls across the lanes of track separating us. His good-natured words carry a trace of an accent, just enough to be intriguing. “Trying to psych me out?”

  At his questions, I’m back in the stifling summer air. My teammates have lined up along the edge of the track to get better views.

  Without answering, I plant my foot at the starting line.

  “Ready?” Coach Johnny asks.

  “Yup,” I say.

  I tense for the start of the race. I think about it—what Slate knows of Carrie’s secret. Nothing, maybe. Everything. More than me.

  I want to beat him for knowing more than me.

  “Set?” Coach Johnny raises his hand. “Go!”

  He brings his hand down.

  I sprint into the first curve, making sure Slate stays behind me.

  I settle in, kicking up dry dust on the well-trod track. Slate nods as he comes level with me during the straightaway. He doesn’t push me to go faster, comfortable with his pace. I don’t dare accelerate to make him work. I look at my watch. I’m winded at a heart rate of 106.

  “I’m at 84,” he calls. “I’m going to maintain for this stretch and see how much it climbs.”

  I nod. Sweat pours down my face. We hit the second curve and Slate stays with me, running faster since his distance is greater than mine. My heart pounds and my lungs burn.

  “138,” I call.

  “110,” he answers.

  We get to the straightaway and he goes all out. Or maybe it’s not all out for him, but it is for me. I won’t let him take the lead, though I’ll hit a wall soon.

  At the end of the first lap we pass our teammates in a blur of faces. They’re shouting.

  “Get him, Salem!” Coach Johnny calls.

  I explode into the curve of lap two, staying on my toes. I’ll mess up the stress test I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t care. Slate pulls ahead of me. Halfway down the next straightaway, my monitor beeps. My heart rate has climbed to 180 too early.

  This is it. My max. I’m going to die right here on the track and Slate’s keeping a reserve. His feet don’t touch the ground for yards at a time. We enter the final curve and I gain on him, going so much less distance than him. We come out of the curve at the same time.

  The final straightaway. My vision tunnels. Dust, sunlight, track, blue sky.

  I lift my knees. I drive my feet into the dirt. A quarter of the way to the finish, he’s three feet ahead of me. Halfway there, he’s five feet ahead.

  Three-quarters of the way there, his strides slow. I can’t breathe. I can’t control my thoughts. Why is he slowing? What did Officer Haynes mean yesterday that Carrie may have had information about a murder?

  I shoot past the finish line, stumbling. I’m surrounded by teammates who cheer for me, telling me I’ve won.

  “Way to go, Salem!” Coach Johnny yells. “Everyone, take a practice lap and then we’ll head off-campus.”

  I catch my breath, trembling all over. Officer Haynes asked yesterday if Carrie had information about a murder. Did she? The students clear out, heading around the track. I try to follow.

  Slate comes up beside me, out of breath. “I think … that … was our practice lap.”

  I lean over, chest heaving. I straighten to look at him, his black hair and his olive skin, touched red at his cheeks.

  “You let me win,” I accuse. My throat is raw from sucking in oxygen.

  He shakes his head. “You were … just faster, yeah?”

  “It’s cheating.” I hold my side, too angry to make sense. “Letting someone win.”

  He holds my gaze until I look away, flushing.

  “Well, just … please just don’t do it again,” I demand finally.

  A smile slowly spreads across his face. “Do what?”

  I step away, too embarrassed to laugh with him. I want to ask what he knows about Carrie’s secret, but can’t think how to start the subject. Do you think Carrie was murdered? seems a little blunt.

  “Hey, Salem? Let’s call that a day,” Coach Johnny yells to me.

  Confused, I turn, catching the glare of sunlight off silver buttons—the snap-kind that ornament the pockets of a police officer’s uniform. Officer Haynes stands near the bleachers with Coach Johnny and Dad, who motions for me to come.

  I gasp, startled into moving forward. I need my bag, though. I hesitate, muscles shaking.

  “You okay?” Slate asks in a serious tone. He looks at the policeman. “That’s Officer Haynes, isn’t it?”

  I nod. “He has questions about Carrie.”

  Slate’s expression shifts, once, twice. It can’t settle. Horror, fear, guilt, shock. It cycles through them all. Our teammates finish their lap, arriving in a surge around us.

  Sorrow. His face settles on sorrow.

  Nodding good-bye, I grab my bag and run on exhausted legs toward Dad.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A YEAR PRIOR

  When authority figures betray good morals, we have no choice but to strip them of their powers,” Carrie declared.

  We were at a Students for Strike club activity. Somehow Carrie had convinced me and forty other Verona High students to pay twenty dollars each to bus up to wine country and clip grapes. You know, get the real experience of field labor.

  Sunrays pounded into my hair and made my eyes squint as we walked along a country road. It was the summer before my sophomore year. In every direction, enormous mounds of purple grapes cascaded over full, dark leaves that came up to shoulder height.

  “Carrie, quit lecturing,” I whined.

  “That wasn’t my lecture voice.” Carrie swiped her face to keep her curls out of her mouth.

  “We’ve walked too far,” I said. “This is the neighbor’s field.”

  Carrie and I were trying to locate the remaining club members so we could go home early because we’d run out of water. The grower said he hadn’t expected so many students.

  “This is why safety laws need to be enforced,” Carrie repeated for the tenth time. “I don’t care if I’m lecturing again. No water?”

  “Let’s go back,” I said, just as I spotted a girl and two other teens up the road and a few yards into the grape rows. “Wait, is that Envy?”

  “Where? Oh, I think she’s yelling at us.”

  Envy motioned for us to hurry, shouting, “… a girl all by herself.”

  “What?” Carrie yelled back.

  “A kid! Alone in the orchard!” Envy shouted.

  “What?” Carrie exchanged glances with me. “Salem, make sure the kid’s okay,” she instructed as I passed her.

  We both knew I would get there first. I was faster.

/>   I arrived to find Envy, Kimi, and a guy I didn’t know all smiling at a Hispanic girl. She had braids and a small crate of grapes attached to her front via wide straps that went over her shoulders. The teens wore similar crates.

  “She doesn’t speak English,” Envy told me.

  “Look.” Kimi pointed down the row.

  A tiny Hispanic lady walked toward us with her own crate secured in front of her waist. She was barely taller than the grape leaves.

  “Mi mamá,” the girl said proudly.

  Carrie arrived beside me, out of breath.

  “The girl’s okay,” I said, dutifully reporting my now unnecessary info.

  The girl spoke in Spanish, pointing at a pair of shears she held. I recognized one of the words.

  “She’s working,” I translated. “But not for the grower we worked for.”

  “A five-year-old working in these conditions?” Carrie straightened her shoulders, looking around as well. The forecast had called for 103-degree weather. “Where are the shade pavilions? The water?”

  Carrie’s posture meant we were about to be hit with the full measure of her lecturing capabilities. I didn’t care right then, but where was the shade and water? Didn’t anyone here speak Spanish? Half the Students for Strike club was Hispanic.

  I glanced at the dark-haired guy next to Envy with his new-in-town charm. More Eastern European than Hispanic, though.

  The girl’s mother began beckoning frantically.

  “Adiós.” The girl’s hat bounced on her back as she ran. When she reached the mother, both of them ran away from us. Literally ran.

  “They’re afraid,” the new guy said with a slight accent. He nodded.

  I looked behind me. A policewoman in a wide hat had pulled off the road to the shoulder. She was getting out of her car.

  “Do you have permission to be here?” she called, walking toward us.

  “Say nothing. They’re probably illegal,” Carrie cautioned us in a low voice.

  “That’s why there was no water,” I said.

  Undocumented workers got the worst treatment—everyone knew that. The grower who owned this property would have to pay a fine if he was caught having hired the woman, but her situation was much worse. Deportation was on the line for her. That was why some growers cheated undocumented workers out of their wages—because the workers couldn’t go to the police.

  Envy and Kimi looked at each other with wide, serious eyes. The new guy nodded.

  If we moved, the policewoman would see the fleeing figures. The rows were dead straight. The Hispanic lady hadn’t ditched her crate of grapes, which meant she probably desperately needed the cash they’d bring.

  “I asked if you had permission to be in this vineyard,” the cop said, advancing into our row.

  “Be nice,” I warned Carrie quietly.

  “Yes,” Carrie answered the lady.

  “From who?”

  “God.”

  The policewoman’s face went red. Carrie stared her down from the lofty height of moral certainty. The new guy grinned at her.

  The policewoman folded her arms. “Leave or I’ll arrest you.”

  “Do you enforce all the laws?” Carrie demanded. “The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act? Those whom you fail to protect will one day rise to tear down your authority.”

  Cuffs appeared in the woman’s hands.

  “Carrie, don’t,” I begged.

  I wasn’t so frightened of a ridiculous threat of arrest, but for Carrie herself. Who would save her when she did something that got her in trouble for real?

  Carrie caught my eye and sighed. She turned to the officer. “Fine, Thomas Richetta gave us permission to be in his field. All of us.”

  The policewoman lectured as well as Carrie ever had. When she paused for air, the new guy made eye contact with Carrie.

  “I’m Slate, by the way,” he said.

  “Carrie Jefferson.”

  His eyes crinkled with a grin. “Oh, I know who you are.”

  At his appreciative glance, my sister blushed.

  “Also, you win.” Winking, he looked significantly toward the rows of grapes. Carrie and I followed his gaze.

  The grape rows were empty. The Hispanic girl and her mother had escaped.

  PRESENT DAY

  Twenty minutes after leaving cross-country practice, I sit down at a desk inside Verona’s police station.

  “Can you see the computer screen?” Officer Haynes asks.

  Nervous, I nod.

  “I’d like to see the monitor too.” Dad props a hand on the back of my chair.

  The screen blinks. The image of an open file folder is replaced by a picture. A brown hand with double-jointed fingers is flashing a gang sign, taking up nearly the entire photo. The profile of a face shows up out-of-focus in the background.

  “I don’t recognize him.” Dad’s voice is efficient.

  I shake my head at my own lack of familiarity with the face.

  “I’ve got three more.” Officer Haynes leans over to navigate with the mouse.

  The files load slowly. We’re looking at new pictures. The police still hope we’ll recognize any gang-members who might have tagged Carrie’s car.

  “How about this one?” he asks.

  Dad answers for us. “No.”

  Two more photos. Two more faces we don’t recognize.

  The officer opens a new folder on the computer. “I want you to see this. It’s from the corpse we found in your orchard, a man we’ve now identified. He went missing on May 24.”

  “When school was ending,” I whisper. Carrie died on August 10, but I think she acquired her secret around late May.

  No one answers as an image opens on the screen. It’s a picture of a shoe. The decaying sole is blackened with earth and something darker. Blood. I make out cuts on the shoes—not a pattern inherent to the manufacturer’s design, but a carving in the shape of letters. XII crossed by an upside down V.

  Memories and waves of nausea rush at me. Twelve days ago, Officer Haynes told us a Roman numeral twelve crossed by an upside down V had been painted on the hood of Carrie’s car.

  “You okay?” the officer asks. My hands are over my stomach. “We think the killer carved this symbol into the victim’s shoe after he died. The workers who discovered the body in your orchard saw the symbol or else we’d have kept it confidential.”

  “Close that image,” Dad snaps at him.

  The officer doesn’t comply. “The identical symbol was on Carrie’s car. Do you recognize it? Do you remember anything more about what was bothering her in the weeks leading up to her death?”

  I can’t answer. Did Carrie know the symbol left on her car had been carved into the shoe of a murder victim? Why would a gang even be after her?

  “Carrie was very upset when we got to the house,” the officer continues. “She didn’t seem to want to identify any suspects—”

  “What are you really after?” Dad interrupts, suspicious.

  “—or prosecute anyone for the crime. Do you know why?”

  “You could’ve copied this symbol on a piece of paper for Salem to see,” Dad says. “It’s not difficult to reproduce.”

  “What about the victim’s name, Juan Herrera?” the officer asks me, ignoring Dad. “Ring a bell? Salem?”

  I gasp, and Dad stiffens. I feel it through his hand on my shoulder.

  “Juan Herrera, the missing union guy?” I ask. “Carrie helped the union.”

  “Did Carrie ever mention Juan?”

  “We watched the news of him, that he was missing. Carrie cried. I don’t know.” I can’t think. Carrie sobbed on the couch, curled in a ball without letting me hug her. It scared me sometimes, how much she loved the union.

  The officer nods. “Any reason why Juan Herrera would be on your property?”

  Does he mean while Juan was alive or after he was dead? Everything feels surreal, impossible.

  “No,” I say.

  “The
n I’m taking you home.” Dad nudges my shoulder as if to get me to stand. “I’m not putting you through any more of this.”

  My mental picture of the symbol on the decaying shoe morphs into a single upside down V, black and bold. The way it looked inked onto the cheekbone of the guy seated behind me in class. That’s why it looked familiar. Half of the marking left on Carrie’s car is printed on his face. But that’s not all. He’s a Primero. The other part of the marking—the XII part—is the symbol claimed by his gang.

  “Cordero,” I whisper.

  The noises in the police station lower, as if the name itself has power. The officer nods. Dad watches me, worried.

  “He’s a senior, I heard.” I force the words through a throat that keeps tightening. “He has an upside down V tattoo. I’ve never seen him before, but he knew me, so maybe he knew Carrie. He wore a blue cap.”

  “We’re looking into that,” Officer Haynes says. “Cordero Vasquez lives across town. An upside down V tattoo is actually somewhat common, though—lots of Hispanics get them, even ones not in gangs. It’s a community solidarity thing.”

  Cordero Vasquez. I file away a goal to talk to him about Carrie somehow. Maybe Slate’s not the only one who knows something about her secret.

  Dad turns to the officer. “Salem has had a hard time with her sister’s death. If you have more questions, they’ll have to wait.” Dad fists his thumb, lets it go, and then fists it again. It’s strange to see. Dad never gets nervous. But he’s never dealt with the death of his own daughter before either. Maybe he fidgets when he’s trying not to cry, the way I do.

  “I’ll see you at school,” the officer tells me. He’s Verona High’s campus officer. “Talk to me any time if you remember anything.”

  Frowning, Dad glances at me. “No. If you talk to an officer, I want to be there.”

  The officer looks only at me, boring a hole into my head. “But your dad doesn’t have to be there.”

  I glance between the two of them. In the orchard yesterday, they were allies. Now they seem like enemies.

  “You guys are arguing? What’s really going on?” I demand.

  Dad and the officer exchange a look.

  The officer turns away grimly. “The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, does it?”

  “She has her moments,” Dad responds, pushing me toward the door by the small of my back.