Case File 13 #2 (8 page)

“Stop it,” Dana cried, waving the food wrapper like a white flag. “I'm gonna puke.”

“Right in the middle of Angelo's crime scene,” Angie gasped.

Angelo tapped the dial on his box and twisted the knobs. “It doesn't make sense. I'm sure I calibrated it for the scent of human decay.”

Nick wiped his eyes. He looked toward Dana, who was laughing so hard she'd started to hiccup, still waving the white wrapper. Something about the wrapper caught his attention. “Can I see that for a minute?”

“Sure.” Dana giggled. “Just tell me—
hic
—you're not going to—
hic
—lick off the sauce.”

Nick grinned. He turned the wrapper over and his laughter slowly faded to confusion. There was something written on the back. It wasn't exactly words. More like shapes. Triangles, circles, and
X
's, with strange squiggles connecting them.

Angelo looked over his shoulder. “Hieroglyphics?”

Angie joined them, her laughter drying up too. “It looks like some kind of code.”

The rest of the group circled around Nick to examine the strange shapes. Dana took one look and shook her head. “It's not a code. And it's not hieroglyphics.”

“How can you be sure?” Tiffany asked. She tilted her head as though the writing might make more sense sideways.

Dana took the paper and flattened it out. “My dad was a coach for ten years. This looks just like what he used to write on his whiteboard. It's not a code. It's football plays. Look.” She traced the lines with her finger. “This is the offensive line. The arrows show where they're supposed to block. This line shows the quarterback is going to roll out to his left and toss the ball to the halfback. Each of these patterns is a different play.”

“So what?” Carter said. “Some sports nut had dinner here and littered. What does it matter?”

“It probably doesn't,” Nick said. But something one of the ghosts had told him was nagging at the back of his mind. “What if Angelo's sensor
didn't
malfunction?”

“Of course it malfunctioned,” Tiffany said. “It led us to a pile of pork ribs.”

“Which would make sense,” Angelo said, “if whoever stole the bodies also ate the ribs.”

“It's too much of a coincidence.” Dana crumpled up the wrapper. “You're saying some guy stole a couple of bodies, then waited around in the hospital parking lot eating a snack?”

Angie snapped her fingers. “Or he sat around in the parking lot eating while he waited for his chance to steal the bodies. Eating and drawing football plays.”

Nick remembered what it was that had been bothering him. “Stenson called one of the men who stole the bodies from the cemetery
the pale one
.”

Angie's mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “The coach,” she said. “From the football game. I remember looking at Sumina Prep's coach at the end of the game and thinking how old he looked. Old and weird, with a white beard and—”

“Pale skin,” Nick finished.

“I don't know.” Tiffany shook her head. “Based on Angelo's device and some football plays on a wrapper, you think a football coach is stealing bodies? Seems like a stretch to me.”

“Maybe not as big of a stretch as you think,” Nick said. “Think about it. The team comes into town right after a pair of bodies is stolen from the cemetery. After the game we find a severed arm on the field. Late that night, somebody buys ribs from an all-night barbecue place, sketches out some football plays, and steals a pair of bodies from the hospital.”

“As much as I hate to say it, I have to agree with Tiffany,” Carter said. “Why would some private-school coach steal bodies?”

“The Skull and Bones Society,” Angelo said.

“Huh?” Nick looked around, wondering what he'd missed. Everyone else looked confused too, except for Dana, who was nodding her head.

“The Skull and Bones Society,” Angelo repeated. “It's an ultra-secret group at Princeton University. All kinds of high-powered people belong to it. Even some U.S. presidents. Part of the initiation is that you have to steal something to become a member. Rumor has it that some of the members stole actual body parts—skulls and stuff of some pretty famous people.”

Nick wasn't sure he was following. “So you think Sumina's football coach was a student at Princeton?”

“Maybe not,” Dana said. “But maybe Sumina has their own secret society. And maybe stealing bodies is part of their initiation. Maybe the football team is part of the society.” She opened the wrapper. “Some of these look pretty familiar. I can't swear it, but they look like plays Sumina was running against Pleasant Hill last night.”

Carter pulled another Tootsie Pop out of his pocket. “Or maybe they use the bodies for some kind of ritual to give them power over their enemies. That could explain how they won the game.”

“It's an interesting theory,” Nick said. “But how can we prove it? It's not like we have any real evidence.”

Angie grinned, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “Then we'll have to find some. The place to get it is Sumina Prep. And tomorrow night is the perfect time to go.”

Diablo Valley, where Sumina Preparatory Academy was located, was just over twenty miles from Pleasant Hill. Not a terribly long bike ride. But all the kids agreed they'd rather go by train. The nearest BART, or Bay Area Rapid Transit, station was only a few blocks from their school, and the train would drop them off just over a mile from their destination.

Since they would be going at night, it meant not having to ride more than twenty miles each way in the dark. “Besides,” Angelo pointed out, “if one of our bikes breaks down that far from home, we might end up having to call for a ride.” Not a good idea, since their parents had no idea what they were up to.

The train rumbled along its elevated tracks, shaking and groaning. The kids had an entire car to themselves except for a man in a scruffy gray overcoat who'd entered, dropped into the far back seat, and started snoring immediately. Carter listened to his MP3 player, drumming on his knees to the music and sucking on the straw of a Gargantuan Gulp. Tiffany was busy checking her latest friend updates on her phone. Angelo and Dana were debating the merits of different vampire movies.

Nick was staring out the window, wondering if sneaking into the school was really such a good idea, when Angie dropped into the seat across from him. “Thinking about chickening out?” she asked.

“Not likely,” he shot back. “But if we get arrested for breaking in, I'll make sure and remind the police it was your idea.”

“Who said anything about breaking in? I just want to check things out. Maybe peek in a few windows.”

Nick didn't believe that for a minute. They weren't going all this way to walk around and look through the blinds.

Angie twisted a strand of her red hair and Nick wondered what she was going to harass him about now. Instead, she asked, “Did you really turn into a zombie? Or was that just a trick to make us take you into the hospital?”

Nick considered lying to her, but he decided it wasn't such a good idea, since they were all going to be working together tonight. “Yep, I was a zombie. I thought you had it figured out that night you came with your aunt and uncle to dinner.”

“I nearly did. Between your stunt at the pool, your visit to the cemetery, and you smelling like the city dump. I was so close. Then I decided you'd just quit showering.” Angie sighed. “What was it like?”

Nick shrugged. After years of viewing Angie as the enemy, it felt weird to tell her anything. Like giving away state secrets. “Cool at first. I didn't have to sleep. I could hold my breath almost forever. And the trick we played on Frankenstein . . .”

“Is
that
what you did?” Angie laughed. “I knew you guys had something to do with his sudden turnaround.” In the back of the train, the sleeping man snorted and rolled to his other side.

“It wasn't all great, though,” Nick said. “My joints started getting all wobbly, I ate this disgusting brain substitute, and I nearly got caught when my little finger fell off at dinner.”

Angie clapped her hands. “That's why you threw the mashed potatoes on my aunt and uncle!”

Now it was Nick's turn to laugh. “What else could I do? You would have busted me for sure if you'd spotted my pinky sticking up out of the bowl.”

“I wish I could turn into a zombie.” Angie frowned.

Nick almost felt sorry for her. “Trust me. You wouldn't if you knew what it took to get turned back.”

Dana and Angelo crossed the train car to join them. Nick couldn't help grinning at his friend's outfit. Unlike the rest of them, who were all dressed in normal clothes, Angelo was wearing a long black leather overcoat, black gloves, and a high-tech watch that displayed the time in three different zones and a stopwatch at once.

“Love the getup.” Nick snickered. “Did you bring your secret decoder ring too?”

“I'm just trying to be prepared,” Angelo mumbled.

“I think it's awesome,” Dana said. “I wish I'd brought gloves.”

Angelo's eyes glowed at the compliment. “So, what's the plan?” he asked, opening his notebook. “Did you look up the school blueprints?”

Nick glanced at Angie, hoping she'd thought of that. “Umm . . .”

“Tell me you at least used Google Earth to get the layout,” Dana said.

Angie studied the back of the seat in front of her. “It's not like we had a lot of time to prepare,” she said. It was a pretty lame excuse, Nick thought. But then, he hadn't done any better.

“I guess we'll just play it by ear,” he said.

Carter pulled out his earphones and joined the group. “I'm ready,” he said, balancing his massive soda and MP3 player in one hand while he reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper clip, a pair of tweezers, a rock, and a rusty pocketknife.

“Ready to what?” Angie asked skeptically. “Remove a sliver or give yourself tetanus?”

“Amateurs,” Carter huffed. “This happens to be my world-class lock-picking kit. I slide the knife between the door and the jamb, put the paper clip into the lock, and jiggle it with the tweezers.”

“What's the rock for?” Dana asked.

Carter grinned. “If everything else fails, I throw it through the window.”

“We're not breaking any windows. And we're not picking any locks. That's breaking and entering. You can get arrested for it,” Nick said.

The train rocked as it rounded a turn and Angelo frowned. “What's the point of going then?”

“To see if we can find anything weird,” Angie said. “If people there really are stealing bodies, it can't exactly be an ordinary school.”

“I'll tell you one thing strange about it,” Tiffany said, tapping on her phone screen.

“Let me guess, their clothes are out of style,” Carter sneered.

Tiffany gave him a look that could freeze lava. “That would be you, Mr. I-wear-the-same-chocolate-milk-stained-shirt-for-a-week. But you're not that far off. While the rest of you have been talking—or drumming completely out of rhythm—I did an internet search for kids who attend Sumina Prep. Believe it or not, not one student has a Facebook account, Twitter profile, or blog that I could find. In fact I couldn't find a single internet presence for any of them.”

Nick rubbed his chin. Almost every kid he knew had at least one online profile and many had several. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Tiffany said, “that either the students there are really, really, strange. Or that someone is intentionally keeping them from communicating with other kids.”

Twenty minutes later, the train squealed to a halt outside the Diablo Valley train station. A slow drizzle of rain fell from the dark sky and Nick zipped up his wind-breaker. He couldn't help envying Angelo's long leather coat that he'd mocked earlier.

Carter looked around the empty platform and shivered. “Does anyone else think it's more than a coincidence that the school is located in a city called the devil's valley?”