Shatter Page 4

  I resist him and address Officer Haynes. “Was Carrie doing something with that guy? Juan Herrera?”

  “I don’t know. Was she?” The officer’s expression is unreadable.

  “What’s going on?” I demand again.

  The officer looks away, his gaze landing on a manila folder labeled Victim—Juan Herrera. Under it is a second folder labeled Victim—Carrie Jefferson. I point at them. “Juan was a murder victim. Was Carrie?”

  Dad goes white. “The explosion was an accident.”

  The officer separates the folders like he wishes he’d never placed them together. “That’s correct. Verona firemen ruled the explosion an accident. However, the V symbol being on her car after it was on a murder victim’s shoe is troubling. We’ve considered hiring a forensic expert to check for signs the explosion at your house was rigged.”

  “It was an accident,” Dad says louder this time.

  The officer turns to him. “We—”

  Dad stands, yelling, pointing his finger even. “Don’t you do this. Don’t you drag my dead daughter into this. I should have had a carbon monoxide warning in the house. I should have checked the maintenance. It’s my fault. It’s—” His voice hitches. He drags me up by the elbow. I’ve never seen him so upset in public. “Salem, we’re leaving.”

  Scared and still confused, I grab my track bag. Dad pulls open the police station door for me, and I go outside into a wave of heat.

  Dad thinks Carrie’s death was his fault.

  Tears run down my face. I can’t see where I’m going. The sunlight is vicious.

  Dad walks me to our Prius. I don’t get in. I fight for control on my breathing. “What’s—what’s going on? Officer Haynes was mad at you. Why?”

  Dad glances to make sure no one in the parking lot is looking. He presses his lips together. “The victim, Juan Herrera—well, you know he worked for the union before he went missing.”

  I nod, swallowing hard.

  “There’s a peach strike going on. Some people—among them Officer Haynes, I suspect—think peach growers have reason to kill union officials and stop the strike that’s losing them money. One peach grower owns the property the body was buried in, making him a prime suspect.”

  My tears stop flowing, leaving moisture to dry at the corner of my eyes. I stare at the rays of sunlight twisting through Dad’s round spectacles.

  “Officer Haynes thinks you killed Juan,” I say.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THREE MONTHS PRIOR

  Dad and Carrie enjoyed arguing and offering different viewpoints. But their debates about the peach strike had become bitter. I remember one time while we were in the car, Carrie watched Dad withdraw a bundle of cash from an ATM.

  “Whoa, what’s that for?” I asked from the backseat.

  “The labor company I hired to plant the trees,” Dad replied.

  Carrie put her feet on the dash, suddenly angry. “Take out twice that much and pay them an honest amount. You at least hired within the union, right?”

  I couldn’t see Dad’s face because he was in the driver’s seat in front of me, but I knew he was rolling his eyes.

  “I’m under contract. I have to hire within the union,” he said. “If you want laborers to earn more money, don’t allow the union to take so much of their wages.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She swung her feet down so she could face Dad. “The union saves that money for disability and early death caused by poor working conditions.”

  Dad drove away from the bank. “The union saves part of it, sure. What they’re given is never what actually shows up on the books. I’ve given to the union myself, and not all of the money was reported.”

  Carrie and I glanced at each other. We’d both seen him slip extra money to pregnant women, but give to the union? Dad hated the union.

  “You’re serious?” Carrie asked. “You actually gave to the Farm Workers Union?”

  “Back when they tracked every donation,” Dad said dismissively. “My donation never showed up. Carrie, you need to face what your beloved union is really like.”

  “If the funds aren’t showing up, write a check next time. A union worker might forget who gives him cash.”

  “A check can be traced.”

  “Exactly,” Carrie said, confused.

  Dad glanced at her. “So has it ever occurred to you that things might go better for a grower if he sometimes gives to the union in cash?”

  Carrie’s jaw dropped. “That’s bribery! You’re knowingly bribing them!”

  “Carrie, wake up. Unions are shady.”

  “We’re doing everything we can to expose corruption and you’re supporting it!”

  “I don’t support the union—you support the union.”

  “You support corruption.”

  “I don’t strong-arm my own members. I don’t skim off the top, like a crook. I provide wages. What does the union provide? Promises that reality cannot support.”

  I tried to think of a response to Dad’s argument. I always sided with Carrie even though Dad seemed to win more often.

  “At least the union’s goals are good,” Carrie said. “Your Peach Growers Association pays low wages for greed—even you.”

  “We pay the going rate.”

  “The going rate is robbery! Plus, some growers are hiring people to intimidate workers into voting against the strike.” She was referencing a media story about three men who said they’d been attacked for carting pro-strike signs.

  “Police never found evidence linking any growers to that incident,” Dad said.

  “The union president himself—oh, like the police-hand that keeps people down can be trusted,” Carrie interrupted herself to snap at dad. “Anyway, President Benicio said—”

  “Exactly what you want to hear?”

  “—that he was at Kelly farm personally,” she continued louder. “He saw them. Dad, he saw them. Hired gang members with pocketknives. There were injuries—you know that. And fires start fires. Growers had better pray that the violence doesn’t start happening to them.”

  PRESENT DAY

  “Officer Haynes can’t prove anything against you,” I tell Dad in the sunlight outside the police station. I’m still in shock that he might be a murder suspect. Carrie talked about growers getting hurt, but she never seemed to consider the idea of a grower being falsely accused. “You’re smarter than him.”

  Dad’s face softens. “I’ve trained you so badly. I’m not smarter than everyone.”

  “Well, they can’t arrest you without evidence.” I take a breath. I pause, trying to broach the subject of Carrie gently. “If they investigate Carrie’s death, they might find out she was killed and then they’ll know the killer isn’t you.”

  Dad’s face darkens, reverting back to the mask of guilt it was inside the station. “Carrie died in an accident.”

  I shut up. I don’t share his confidence, but I’m not cruel.

  Once home, I settle into grandma’s couch. With our real house uninhabitable from fire damage, we moved into my grandma’s. Dad had held onto her old farmhouse next door to keep the acreage. Grandma had died of leukemia when I was seven. Dad pulled the plug on her, according to Mom. After she said that I was afraid of Dad for a few months. Now, settled on the couch, I can’t help but think of Officer Haynes’ accusation. He thinks Dad is a murderer. Mom thought he was a euthanizer. For years, I’ve suspected stray kittens didn’t make it to the animal shelter unless Carrie or I found them before Dad did.

  I become aware of my thoughts. A muddy litter of kittens under the barn floorboards, and Dad takes care of the problem. A union official determined to strike for wages growers can’t afford and Dad—

  I’m ashamed of myself. Dad raised Carrie and me alone when Mom left and I’ve never heard him complain once. Officer Haynes is wrong.

  I get out my homework. The coffee table in front of me is cluttered with old photographs. Carrie’s first grade class picture. Dad holding me as an infant. That
picture is interesting because half of Mom’s face is in it. People say I look like Mom, that I have her blond hair and dark eyelashes.

  When I was little, Mom talked to everyone from Dad to my pediatrician about me. How Salem threw her brown rice on the floor. How Salem wrote on the walls. The conversations always ended with her asking how she was going to get to the important causes in life when I resisted her every step of the way.

  Mom left when I was nine because she was unhappy. She left because one day she couldn’t find the ground flaxseed and so she dumped a bucket of oats on the kitchen tile, shouting that flaxseed had healthy oil and that listening to kids whine while she made granola wasn’t what she’d asked for in life. She was gone by nightfall.

  I cried myself to sleep at night, thinking Mom wouldn’t come home because of me. Eventually Carrie caught on to my guilt. Mom was an authority figure, she said. She had let us down. Carrie told me to stop thinking of Mom, and that’s what I did.

  I turn on my laptop. I hit up a website about John F. Kennedy and ditch it for an image-search of the phrase “upside down V tattoo.” I find hundreds. In the 1950s, Hispanics created groups to support and protect victims of racism. Some of those groups still use the V symbol. Some are still peaceful. Some transformed into violent gangs. It’s strange to think about—violence sprouting from the idea of trying to protect victims. Carrie would never have supported violence.

  Finding nothing that ties the V to Carrie, I start an essay on potential JFK conspiracies. Homework is like running—a way to keep my thoughts at bay. It’s dark when I finish, shower, and crawl into bed without saying goodnight to Dad.

  Hours later, I’m awoken by the sound of my bedroom door opening.

  Confused, I raise my head from the pillow. “Dad?”

  “If I’m arrested, I doubt I’ll have the money to post bail.” Dad is lit from below by a nightlight he set up for me last week to stop my bad dreams.

  “What?” I sit up, pushing aside a quilt made by my grandmother. I’m half-asleep and sore from my race against Slate.

  Dad’s hair is mussed like he’s been trying unsuccessfully to sleep. “I went to talk to Officer Haynes again. I got back an hour ago. If I’m arrested, you’ll move in with your aunt.”

  “What do the police have on you?”

  “That … is the question.”

  Terror hits me. For the first time, I believe it. They might arrest him.

  He walks to my bed and sits down. He taps his fingers on his lap. “I spoke with Officer Haynes about hiring a forensic expert so you can get past this idea that was Carrie murdered. I’m one hundred percent sure she wasn’t.”

  His certainty confuses me, almost like him insisting it was an accident makes me suspect that it was his accident—that something he did caused Carrie to die. That something he did caused the police to think he killed Juan. And that something he did really did kill Juan.

  I rub my forehead. It’s stupid, but I’m angry at Dad. Furious. Like it’s his fault he’s made me think such awful, crazy things.

  Dad takes a breath. “There’s something I should have told you after Carrie died. Carrie used her college fund to hire a gang member. It was a joint account. She must have forged my signature. From what the police have gathered, she wanted him to protect workers from any agitators hired by the growers.”

  “Gangs.” I whisper.

  My chest constricts. She was involved with gangs. She was hurt. She was killed. I shake my head. I shake it faster and faster. How could she have hired gang members? She couldn’t have done that—even to protect someone. Hiring violent people is what the growers were doing. It’s what she hated about the growers. How could she have done that?

  I’m so upset I punch my lap.

  Dad sighs. “I don’t know what she was thinking, trying to—”

  I punch my lap again for Dad saying what I felt, because I feel the opposite too. Carrie could do anything she wanted—she was Carrie.

  Dad tries again. “Officer Haynes found out about the plot last week. Twelve hundred in her bank account is gone. I guess I thought you’d be happier not knowing.”

  I try to talk. “The gang member—” I catch my breath, hugging my knees. I will not cry. “Did … did he hurt anyone?” Everyone knows gang members. She wanted them to protect people, but they’re not going to stop at just shoving.

  “Apparently there was a bonus involved—some condition that there never be any violence. That’s Carrie. Trusting a gang member to play by her rules just because she wants him to. But it appears her plan worked.”

  “Who was it?” I ask.

  “The guy she hired? Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Dad—”

  “Salem, I don’t know who it was.”

  “Well … if Carrie hired a gang member to protect workers, who’s to say another gang member wasn’t hired to kill her? Apparently gangs can be hired for anything.”

  “Maybe. But to me, it seems like Carrie died accidentally.”

  I explode in rage. “After what you just told me?” Rage feels wonderful. It feels directed and controlled.

  “We’ll know more if Haynes calls in a forensic expert.”

  “If?”

  “Officer Haynes was willing to consider the idea, but not willing to give me a certain yes. There’s something else.”

  Dad takes a breath. I find I’m bracing myself.

  “When Carrie originally called 911, it was right after she dropped you off at cross-country. She told the police that someone was trying to kill her and then hung up.”

  I stare at the gray hair at his temples. I bury my face into my knees.

  Dad rubs my back while I sob. The last thing Carrie did before someone came after her was drive me to a meet—always taking care of me.

  “Just listen,” Dad says quietly. “She changed her story when the police arrived. She said no one had tried to kill her, but instead, that her car had been vandalized. Haynes told me at the time that he knew she was lying about something. Maybe she was trying to manipulate the gang with made-up stories against them. I hope that’s what happened. For me … for me, I hope she died in an accidental gas explosion. Until there’s more evidence, I want you to remember it’s possible the explosion was an accident.”

  The entire conversation has exhausted me.

  He pats my back. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  He leaves, shutting the door behind him and calling, “I love you,” from the hallway.

  “Love you too,” I whisper voicelessly. I don’t know who started our estrangement, me or Dad.

  I lie down. I’m numb. Dad might be a suspect in a murder. A forensic expert could come, but isn’t. I know part of Carrie’s secret. She hired gang members. But what other secrets was she hiding?

  My thoughts swirl in dizzy, looping patterns. Maybe Carrie was murdered. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe I’ll never know. How can I live like that? My thought pattern loops tighter and tighter. I can’t live like that. She was my sister. I can’t wait forever, hoping the police or Dad will do something.

  I have to investigate.

  I have to find out for myself if Carrie’s death was more than just an accident.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When the going gets tough, will you give up?” Mr. White’s voice whines the next day.

  Humidity rises from thirty bodies in the room, the way it does when sweat hits air conditioning. I finger the graffiti etched on my desk. In the front of the room, Kimi and Envy pass notes to each other. Cordero is seated behind me, breathing slow and even. I wish I knew where his gaze was focused. I wish I knew every shred of data about Carrie stored in his brain. I’m going to learn it all, whatever it is. Whatever it takes.

  “Confidence,” Mr. White declares. “You’ll never win without confidence.”

  Doubt erupts at the teacher’s mention of confidence. I’m unable to picture actually cornering Cordero.

  “First you need to know how a mock trial
works,” Mr. White continues. “Let me introduce you to our class TA. He’s a veteran of last year, Qorkhmaz Panakhov, a fantastic Azerbaijani name. Don’t worry. His nickname is Slate.”

  Slate comes to the front of the classroom from within Mr. White’s office. Carrie should have been with him. I drop my gaze to my desk. I swallow. I think of confidence and force myself to look up.

  “This year, things are a little different,” Slate announces to the class. “We aren’t going to put a murderer on trial. History accepts that a young man named Lee Oswald shot President Kennedy. But did he act alone? That’s where the mock trial comes in. The trial is made of two teams. Each team will have help from a community leader who has volunteered their time to help with the mock trial. The prosecution’s job is to attack the idea that Oswald was part of a larger plan to—”

  “Conspiracy! A larger con-spir-acy!” Mr. White shouts from behind his desk. He’s grading yesterday’s homework essay.

  Slate grins at the class. “Mr. White really likes conspiracies.”

  The class laughs and Mr. White goes back to grading.

  Slate continues. “I want to make sure all of you know the basics of the JFK case.”

  He sets up a projector that displays best to the left side of the room, motioning for those of us on the right to stand and watch. I rise from my chair, staying far away from Cordero. He catches my eye and I feel myself go red with uncertainty.

  “Come closer,” Slate instructs.

  I obey. Cordero doesn’t, staying at the back of the room. Slate gestures at him to come and then frowns, as if recognizing him. He turns back to the projector without saying more. I glance between the two, wondering how they know each other.

  On the projector screen, President John F. Kennedy’s avatar is next to his wife in a convertible driving in slow motion. The governor of Texas and his wife are in the front seat.

  “Notice the top right window of the building,” a man’s voice narrates from the computer.

  A man holding a rifle appears in the window of a brick building behind the president. At the sound of a digital blast, a bullet leaves the rifle in slow motion and lands in the street—a poor shot. A second bullet hits the president in the back of the neck and continues on, hitting the governor as well.