Unravelling

I have a second chance to fix all this. To try harder.

My mother offers me a spoonful of batter, but I shake my head. The problem with days like this? They’re just enough to remind me what I’m missing. I don’t have a mother I can talk to. I will never be able to tell my mother about Ben Michaels, that he saved me somehow, that he’s denying it.

So after she finishes the raspberry batch, I grab the Clorox wipes and head to her bedroom. I throw the curtains wide, roll up the shade, and open the windows as far as I can. Once I’ve got some air in there and the ceiling fan is attempting to circulate it, I start picking up the clothes on the floor.

And when I’m rearranging the picture frames—putting the picture of Jared and me at Disneyland after we rode Space Mountain back on her nightstand—I see it.

My dad’s laptop, plugged in, still turned on, and resting on the bed, buried in her bedspread. He has his own room. My parents stopped sleeping together forever ago. She needed her own space for peace and quiet, and frankly, if they had to stay in the same room, he never would have come home from the office.

Which means he spent the morning in here—with her.

I sit down on the bed and pull the computer into my lap, open it up, and log in. His password would be complex. To anyone else—even someone who knows binary code. But I can hack anything my dad has passworded. I know him too well.

As it loads, I hear my mother’s singing underneath the thrum of the fan, and I can’t help wondering if this is why she’s awake and in a good mood. I know she’ll come down from this high— she always does. But could it be this easy to pick her back up again?

Scrolling through my father’s history, I open up the last files he viewed. One is a performance eval for Barclay, T. I don’t know the name, so he must be a new analyst. At first it appears to be anything but average. In fact, the first part is straight-up glowing. A hundred percent on handgun and rifle qualifications—it means he hit dead-center on all fifty shots. His computer skills are fantastic, and his actions directly led to closing a recent investigation. Only my dad is recommending he be moved to a different unit. Apparently T. Barclay doesn’t respond well to authority, and he blatantly disregarded an assignment my dad sent him on. That’ll probably ruin T. Barclay’s career. You can’t just not do what your boss tells you to when you’re in the FBI. Even when your instincts are good and you end up being right. The ends don’t justify the means in a bureaucracy.

The next file is paperwork on a gang case that goes to trial later this year. Normally I’d be all over that. But the third file is the autopsy report for Torrey Pines Doe 09022012. My John Doe.

Jackpot.

This is, of course, illegal. Just looking through my dad’s files could come with some pretty stiff penalties if the government found out—for me and for my dad. And even though I’ve been snooping through his files for a long time, my heart still races uncontrollably every time.

I glance at the bedroom door again and listen for anything out of the ordinary, but the only thing I hear—other than my own hammering heart—is my mother’s off-key version of an old Whitney Houston ballad.

Taking a deep breath, I turn back to the report.

My John Doe is still unidentified. They don’t even have an alleged identity next to his case file (which reduces him to the location and the date of his death). They’re putting him at approximately twenty-five to forty-five years, height and weight not applicable. That, I agree with. That I understand. What I don’t is what I read next. The physical examination.

FINDINGS:

01 Global burns consistent with radiation with extensive body

mutilation

02 Perimortal crush injury of right thorax

03 Head injury cannot be ruled out

What. The. Hell.

How can that even be possible? He wouldn’t have been exposed to radiation on the side of the highway—or in his car, for that matter. There’s no reason burns should have shown up on his skin postmortem. I’m not exactly up on medical science, but burns with extensive body mutilation are bad, and they tend to show up immediately. And if the crash killed him and not the burns . . . maybe that was why he was driving so fast. He could have been trying to get to a hospital. Or running from something.

Next page.

CAUSE OF DEATH:

01 Global burns

02 Perimortal crush injury, right chest

So far, the medical examiner is the only person who’s signed off on the autopsy. Maybe they’re getting another opinion. Not that I blame them—it seems more likely that someone switched up the bodies than that this is actually my John Doe.

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:

The body is presented to the county morgue in a blue body bag and wrapped in a white to tan sheet. The remains are those of a Caucasian male and consist primarily of a severely burned body. Burns are consistent with chemical burns or radiation. There is no charring, but there is complete burning of the fl esh from many sites, massive destruction of bony tissues, and resultant profound mutilation of the body. Soft tissues of the face, including nose, ears, and eyes, are absent, with exposure of partially destroyed underlying bony structures.

My stomach turns at the possible image—I get the idea— and I scroll down to try to see more.

And the smoke alarm screeches.

I jump to my feet, automatically sniffing the air for smoke. My skin itches at the possibility of burns. I shut the laptop and toss it back onto the bed before I run to the kitchen.

Thankfully, nothing is on fire.

But the muffins in the oven are burning—and smoking— and my mother is standing in the center of the room looking at a broken coffee mug, black eyeliner tears streaking down her face.

nd you’re sure it was the same guy?” Alex asks.

I shake my head and take a sip of the mocha frappe I grabbed from It’s a Grind, thankful I managed to get out of the house and away from my mom’s latest episode. I worry a little— or sometimes a lot—about leaving her alone, but every once in a while I also just have to get away. Since Alex’s house is next door, I tell myself I won’t be gone long, and I won’t be far in case she needs me.

Alex and I are sitting at the dining room table in his house with just about every textbook he owns spread out on the table, and he’s buried in a slew of physics problems.

I can’t talk to him about Ben Michaels, so I’m focusing on the accident.

“They could have mixed up the bodies . . .” There could be more than one John Doe who died in San Diego on Monday. It’s less likely than people would think, but it’s possible. And despite the eighty-seven different conclusions my brain latched on to the moment I started reading the autopsy, it has occurred to me that I’m supposed to be looking at evidence and letting the conclusions fall into place as a result, rather than speculating.

“But if it is him, it means he crashed because he was already dead.”

Alex doesn’t even glance up from his physics book. “And then you could stop being a moron and blaming yourself.”

I don’t want to get into that again. “Just listen to me,” I say. “Three still-unidentified victims in San Diego thirty years ago, COD severe radiation poisoning. Then nothing. Now suddenly there are at least three new cases, all in the span of less than two weeks. And one of them might have died while driving.” Driving the truck that killed me.

I don’t say that because Alex has made it clear he thinks the whole Ben Michaels thing is in my mind. Instead I say, “Think about it. My dad’s got all these case files, and now by some freak coincidence a truck hits me and the driver might be related to the same case.”

This time Alex closes the book and leans back in his chair. “What do you think’s causing the radiation?” he says, reaching for the espresso I brought him and lifting it to his lips. Only it’s empty because he downed it the second I got here, and caffeine isn’t going to magically appear just because he hopes it might.

“Sorry, I should have gotten you a double.”

He shakes his head and tosses me the empty cup. “No, it’s cool. Hide it before my mom comes in here and sees it.” I crumple it and stick it in my purse with a smile. “So the burns?” Alex prompts.

“Right. The burns are severe—hard-core severe.”

“So the obvious answer is some kind of nuclear radiation.”

I shrug. “Right, but from what?”

He’s chewing his lip, and I know my mission has been accomplished. Alex Trechter has completely abandoned his homework. A little contraband caffeine and something interesting to distract him is all he needs. “Could it be some kind of virus?” he asks. “Like an injection of something radioactive?”