Attack of the Tagger (6 page)

He eyed me. “I understand. YouVe got enough troubles at school without being labeled a rat, am I right?”

It seemed like a really good excuse, anyway. So I nodded and said, “Can you just say that you got an anonymous tip?”

“Sure. So who are they?”

“Carl Blanco, Manny Davis, A. J. Penne, and Ryan Voss.”

He was writing like mad on his dashboard paper pad but stopped when I said Ryan’s name. “Ryan
Voss
Your principal’s son?”

“Uh-huh.”

He sort of frowned at me.

“I know, but he was with them.”

He took a deep breath, held it, then wrote down Ryan’s name as he let it out. “Anonymous tip, huh?”

“Yeah. Maybe say it was on your voice mail at work?”

“Okay—” He snapped open his cell phone and punched in a number.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

He had one eye on the road, the other on me. “Sarge. Might as well get this ball rolling tonight.”

That night Dad came in after I was already in bed. He whispered, “You awake, Nolan?”

I sat up. “Did they catch him?”

“No.…” He sat on the edge of my bed. “I’m afraid those names you gave me didn’t turn up much.”

“Nothing?”

He sighed. “Just some indignant parents.”

“They were mad?”

He nodded. “Especially the Vosses.”

I lay back down and hooked my big stuffed gecko in the crook of my arm. “Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He ruffled my hair. “Good night,
champ.” He ruffled my gecko. “Good night, gecko monster.”

“His name’s Sticky, Dad, and he’s not a monster!”

“I know that,” he laughed. “Now get some sleep.”

Sleep. Ha. He’d just riled my brain all up. Was I wrong about the sixth graders? I tried to remember everything Bubba had said in the bathroom. Had he just been talking big to show off to Max and Kevin? Or did he really know who had tagged Mr. Green’s van?

Call it superhero sonar, I don’t know. But by now I was clicked into Bubba and his evil ways. And I was pretty sure he
hadn’t
just been talking big to Kevin and Max.

And so what if none of the sixth graders had helped the police—since when did villains volunteer information to the law? No, I still thought one of them was the Tagger.

But which one?

I started picturing all the places dumb-baby faces had shown up. I tried to put them together in a mental map, but I kept getting lost in my own head.

So I crept out of bed, turned on my computer, and dialed up the Internet.

Maps, click!

Enter address—I typed in our zip code—click!

A map of half the state appeared on the screen.

I zoomed in until it was just Cedar Valley.

I covered my printer with my comforter.

Shhh!

I clicked on Print and
wraaaaang, wraaaaang, wraaaaaang, wraaaaaang!

It was still louder than anything!

I flipped off the monitor, grabbed the printout and my comforter, and jumped back in bed.

Nobody showed up.

So I got out of bed again, flicked on my flashlight,
and started putting X’s on the map. One where the school was, one on the bridge, one at Old Town Square, and one at the toddler park. Then I went back to the computer and typed in the address of the latest tagging that had come in on Sarge’s radio—512 Highland. And when I knew where 512 Highland was, I added the last X to my printed map.

Hmmmmm.

If only I knew where those four sixth graders lived.

I cracked open my door and listened for noise from my parents’ room.

Not a peep.

I tiptoed down to my mother’s desk, found the phone book, and sneaked back to my room.

Shhhhhh!

I started looking up names. And pretty soon I figured out that I couldn’t figure out a thing! I didn’t know any of the sixth graders’ parents’
names. Except for Dr. Voss—hers was Ivana— but there weren’t even any Vosses in the book!

So now what?

Maybe I could hack into the school’s computer database and find out where they lived that way.

Or hey! Why didn’t I just call my sidekick? He’d had all four of them in class before.…

I dug through the Greens. There were lots of Greens living in Cedar Valley, but only one “E. Green.”

I checked the clock. 10:45—way too late to call.

Unless, of course, you’re a superhero, and then it’s never too late to call your sidekick, right?

But how was I going to call without being heard? The phone on Mom’s desk is a corded one. The portable one is in Mom and Dad’s bedroom.

Then I remembered—I still had Mom’s cell phone in my backpack!

I dug it up!

I flicked it open!

I punched in Mr. Green’s number!

On the third ring, I realized what I was doing. Aaaargh! I was calling my teacher! At 10:49 at night! He was going to kill me!

Before I could hang up, someone answered, “Hello?” The voice didn’t sound sleepy. It sounded jumpy.

“Uh…Elmo?” I said, just in case there was another “E. Green" living in Cedar Valley.

“What’s that?” Then I guess it registered because he said, “Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Shredderman,” I whispered. “Sorry it’s so late.”

There was a moment of silence, then, “What’s the square root of twenty-two thousand eight hundred one?”

“One fifty-one,” I shot back.

“Well, hello, Shredderman,” he said. “You take this pretty seriously, don’t you?”

“Truth and justice are not to be taken lightly.”
My voice sounded older. Deeper. Like it wasn’t even me talking.

“True. So what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“I need some information.” I buried my head under the comforter and whispered, “Don’t ask a lot of questions— just help me if you can, okay? This has to do with your van.” “Go for it, Shredderman.” “I need addresses for Carl Blanco, Manny Davis, A. J. Penne, and Ryan Voss. They were all in your class last year.” “Ryan Voss?” “Uh-huh.”

“Hmmm,” he said, and I could tell he was thinking about a dozen things at once. “Hold the line, okay? I’ve got last year’s records in my file cabinet.”

It took about five minutes, but when he finally picked up the phone again, he said, “Got ‘em. Ready?”

“Yes!” I grabbed a pencil and scribbled down the addresses, then said, “Thanks!”

“I trust you’ll use the information with respect. Giving it out puts me in touchy territory, you understand?”

“I understand.” I hung up and got to work. One by one, I found the sixth graders’ addresses on the Internet. One by one, I marked them on my map. When I was done, I could see that A. J. Penne and Manny Davis lived quite a ways away from
the places the graffiti had been sprayed. Especially from the purple dumb-babies that had shown up that night.

But Ryan Voss and Carl Blanco both lived nearby.

Could Ryan or Carl really be the Tagger?

I thought for a minute, then decided.

Helping the police hadn’t done any good.

It was time to try it my way.

I sat in front of my computer with dumb-baby images galore and some pretty good shots of Bubba, Carl, Manny, A.J., and Ryan giving high’ fives in Old Town. But what should I
do
with them? I needed proof.

I needed to catch the Tagger in the act.

I scrolled through the pictures again and again. Then I noticed something. Something I’d been too nervous to pay attention to when I’d taken the shots.

I double-checked the pictures.

Sure enough, one boy was in all the high-five, low-five shots.

Four of the boys were
giving
high-fives.

Only one was taking.

Ryan Voss.

Then I remembered what Bubba had said to Max and Kevin in the bathroom: “The dude is, like, invincible.”

Plus, from my map I knew that Ryan’s was the house nearest the toddler park.

Evidence was mounting!

I blinked at the picture of him on my computer screen. Could it be? And if it was, how much trouble did I want to get into trying to trap the principal’s son?

Nolan Byrd was nervous, but Shredderman was mad! Who cared about trouble! We needed truth! We needed justice!

Justice? All of a sudden, my brain had a dangerous thought.

And Shredderman loved it!

Oh, yeah! That’d be justice, all right! Poetic
justice! But I had to set it up just right. I had to
time
it just right. And if I messed up or if I was wrong… boy! I’d be in big trouble.

Colossal trouble!

No time to think about that! Time to put the plan into motion.

Step one: Make the Tagger mad!

I found a picture of a chicken on the Internet. I imported it and started chopping it up. I put the chicken’s head on Bubba’s body. That would make the Tagger think I thought he
was
Bubba! I enlarged the chicken’s feet. I pasted them where Bubba’s shoes used to be. Now I had Bubba’s body with a chicken’s head and big ol chicken feet!

It still needed something.…

I enlarged the chicken’s tail and pasted it onto Bubba’s butt.

Ha ha! It looked bigger than ever!

And fluffy yellow!

Then I took a purple
Du-uh
talkie bubble from
one of the graffiti pictures and pasted it next to the Bubba-chicken’s beak. And under the
Du-uh,
I added,
I’m the Tagged.

I sat back and checked it over.

Looking good!

On my home page I built a link to the chicken page that said:

I made another link called
Tagger Damage
that went to a page of graffiti pictures. It wasn’t fancy or even that much—just a grid of pictures with labels—but at least it was a start.

I activated the updates.

It was time to spread the word!

Anybody that’s ever written to [email protected] is in my Shredderman address book. By now I’ve got
hundreds
of e-mail addresses saved up!

And one golden one: [email protected].

I get nasty e-mails from Bubba almost every morning. He hates that his butt is on the World
Wide Web, and I think he checks my site first thing every day.

But now this was good, because even if the Tagger didn’t see the site on his own, Bubba would tell him all about it.

So I clicked on Compose and made a new e-mail that said TAGGER ALERT! in the subject line and typed: