I’ll probably find her anyway. But I was hoping we could, you know, collaborate.”
“Is that so?”
I realized I was folding my arms against my chest like a kid challenging detention. I unfolded them and put my hands in my lap instead. “It is, as a matter of fact.”
She looked at me for a long moment before standing up from her desk and marching into the outer office. I heard her conferring with the no-nonsense secretary. I looked around Paulus’s office. Where one might expect framed diplomas hung a couple of George Bellows prints I recognized from the art museum. A nice touch. Interspersed with the plants on the office bookshelves were plaques and photographs and several representations of people on rearing horses, from plastic statuettes to yellow-and-white pennants. It came to me after a second: I was sitting in the home of the Maple Ridge Riders. Some framed photos of grown-up looking kids I took to be hers sat next to the mascot displays—no husband in the pictures, I noticed. I’m observant that way.
“I left a voicemail,” Paulus said, reentering the office. “I explained it was important. I can let you know when she gets back to me.”
“Thank you. One other thing.”
A sigh. “Yes?”
“Did Abdi have a lot of friends?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. Was he popular?”
“Very, as a matter of fact. It was part of his charm. A joker, but not obnoxious. He had an easygoing way about him that naturally attracted people.”
Like Islamic State recruiters? I thought. “Any particular students I should talk to?”
“There might be a couple.” She sighed again. “I could get you some names.”
“And numbers?”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“I’m thinking you can do anything you want. You’re the principal, right? We’re not talking missed homework here, Helene. It’s life or death.”
“It’s Ms. Paulus, and thank you for that insight. It hadn’t occurred to me. Is there anything else you want from us, as long as you’ve barged in here like this? Or is that just how private detectives operate?”
“I’m a private investigator,” I corrected her. “And under normal circumstances I would have waited for you under a streetlamp while the mist curled around my iron jaw and the dark night fell like a blanket over a grave. I figured I’d mix it up a bit.”
“I think we’re done here,” she said, rising again. This time she waited for me to do the same. I walked into the main office and bided my time examining the other inspirational posters on the walls while she gave the secretary instructions in a curt voice to pull the files of a couple students. The secretary handed me the names on a piece of Maple Ridge stationery, glaring as if I was the one who’d personally talked Abdi into joining a terrorist front.
“Thank you,” I said, folding the paper in thirds and tucking it into my pocket. “You’ll get back to me about the counselor?”
“I said I would,” Ms. Paulus said.
As I headed for the front door I saw the custodian at the far end of the hall, eyes locked on my wax floor–defiling shoes. I tried another wave. This time, as if a tremor had gripped his arm, he waved once in return.
9
I DROVE DOWN MCCUTCHEON TO STELZER Road, glanced in my rearview mirror, and headed back toward the highway. I figured I’d give Ms. Paulus-not-Helene a few hours, no more, to persuade the counselor to talk to me before tracking her down myself. It probably wouldn’t earn me any extra credit points with the principal, whose Christmas card list I was assuredly off of after our encounter. Not that I blamed her for her reaction to my visit, or my insistent manner. The fact was, I could imagine how rattled the school community was. The thought of a homegrown extremist in my town was rattling me, too.
Right before the entrance to 270 I glanced in my mirror again and changed my mind and decided to take the scenic route home instead. I took Stelzer back to McCutcheon and turned right, heading west. A quarter mile down I put on my signal, braked, and turned into a newish-looking subdivision. I slowed to the residential street’s posted limit of twenty-five miles per hour and for the next several minutes drove up and down the lanes of the small suburban neighborhood, taking in the scenery and trying to guess the median age of the houses. Best guess was late nineties, early aughts. Calling them cookie cutter would be implying too much diversity. At last, I ended up back on the street where I’d entered this little slice of real estate heaven. I pulled up to the intersection with McCutcheon. Instead of putting on my turn signal, I placed the van in park, activated my flashers, turned off the engine, and pulled out the keys. I pocketed them as I got out of the van. I walked back to the black Ford Explorer stopped behind me and gestured to the driver to roll down the window. I did that sideways stirring motion, as if using a spatula to scrape out batter from a mixing bowl. One of those anachronisms that everyone still understands, like saying tinfoil or calling a band’s latest release an album. After all, practically no cars have hand-cranked windows anymore. Kind of funny, if you think about it—
“There a problem?” the Explorer’s driver said. If he had eyes, you couldn’t tell through his mirrored aviators.
“Not really. Just that you need a buffer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Like a decoy. A car in between.” I took a step back and used my hands to illustrate. “It gives you cover but not so much you lose visual contact.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Could you just—”
“OK. How about this? Why don’t you cut the crap and explain why you’re following me?”
I HAVE TO GIVE the other guy credit. Or gal, as it turned out. Unlike the driver frowning at me from the front seat of the Explorer—who might as well have turned a siren on from the moment he followed me away from the school—I hadn’t spotted the second car at all, a fact I determined as it pulled up a moment later right on cue. Doors on both cars opened simultaneously and four people in dark suits surrounded me. I felt like the first customer on a slow day at a Brooks Brothers outlet.
I looked at the woman, whom I knew. I said, “I didn’t bring my bathing suit, in case this is the part where you waterboard me. But I am wearing Scooby-Doo underpants, if that counts for anything.”
“Don’t be an ass,” Cindy Morris said. “Sorry: more of an ass. What the hell happened to your eye?” She took off her own sunglasses. Her expression indicated she’d had one of those days just since breakfast. Her short, dark hair had come down with a mild case of snow flurries since the last time she’d flashed her FBI badge at me.
I gave her the cue-ball line, which earned me a look several degrees below Kelvin. “You have a funny way of asking me out to coffee,” I soldiered on. “Did you lose my number?”
“Maybe we could take this someplace less public,” said the driver of the Explorer I’d busted, standing next to Morris. Flushed from his lair, he stood tall and broad-shouldered. I was guessing two parts basketball,
