Code Orange (15 page)

“Derek, these gentlemen are from the FBI,” said the headmaster.

It was all Derek could do not to hoot with laughter. Mitty would love this.

“We need to find Mitty now,” said Dr. Larkin.“He's missing.”

“He's not missing,” said Derek. “He just isn't here.” Derek pictured Mitty and Olivia having fun somewhere in New York—presumably inside; it was pretty chilly for outdoor activity—and the FBI walking in on them.

Mitty would laugh for years, but Olivia was not a big laugher in the best of circumstances. In fact, now that Derek thought about it, far from having a wild and crazy adventure, Mitty and Olivia were probably holed up in a library somewhere, while Olivia was correcting Mitty's spelling.

“Do you know where he is, Derek?” asked Dr. Larkin.

“Nope.”

“It's urgent,” said the guy in the darker suit. His tie gleamed with a blue and silver iridescence, like spilled oil. Derek couldn't decide if he liked the tie or wanted to burn it.

“Since when is cutting class a national emergency?” Derek asked.

“This is not about school,” said a woman behind Derek. Derek spun around, expecting Mitty's mother. Mrs. Blake was just the type who would call in the FBI if her son missed a grand total of one hour of class.

It wasn't Mrs. Blake. It was a much younger woman, quite hefty, wearing wool pants and a heavy blazer that did not become her. She was the exact shape of his own mother. This did not endear her to Derek. He scowled at her.

The guy in the darker suit said to the headmaster, “Thank you, Dr. Larkin. We'll let you know when we're done.”

Dr. Larkin turned red. Derek expected him to argue, but instead, the headmaster obediently walked out of his own office, shut his own door and left his student alone with the three strangers. What was up with this?

The second FBI agent, whose suit was charcoal gray with red pinstripes, said, “Derek, I'm Agent Anthony Finelli and this is Agent McKay. We need your help. Mitty may be in trouble.”

Trouble with the FBI? What did they think Mitty had been doing? Was Mitty doing it? How was Derek supposed to protect him?

“Mitty didn't come home last night,” Finelli told Derek. “His parents usually talk to him on his cell phone every day after school. Yesterday afternoon, he never answered his phone. They called the NYPD around seven p.m.”

Seven o'clock seemed pretty early to panic. Who would call the police because their sixteen-year-old was late for dinner? Well, actually, Mrs. Blake. But Mitty hadn't gone home at all? He'd been gone overnight? That was some serious hookup with Olivia. In fact, it didn't sound like either of them. “Mitty's parents didn't call me,” Derek protested. “They would have called me if they got worried.”

Finelli shook his head. He was very spiffy. The triangular tips of a silk handkerchief poked up out of his jacket pocket. He had the lean, tight look of a runner. “There were other circumstances,” he told Derek.

“Like what?”

Nobody answered. But Derek had a sense that they
were not being difficult; they were just not willing to say out loud what needed to be said.

The woman spoke up. “I am not with the FBI, Derek. I am with the CDC. What do you know about your friend Mitty's biology paper?”

The FBI and the CDC wanted Mitty because of his term paper?

The paper Mitty was writing only so he could tag along with Olivia to her library of the week?

Derek dropped into a chair, beaten. He had failed in his mission. He had not found the murderer of Ottilie Lundgren. Mitty must have pulled it off! Mitty must have written to the FBI. That was so massively not fair. “Okay, who did it?” said Derek tiredly“Who killed her?”

When the phone rang, Olivia knew it was St. Raphael's attendance secretary. She really was sick. She had a headache from crying all night about Mitty Blake.

She, most sensible of girls, had stupidly become romantic. She had flung herself on Mitty, bringing him little gifts she shuddered to remember. Books on viruses? Books on epidemics? He's probably been laughing at me the whole time, she thought. He and Derek are probably sitting together right now, laughing themselves sick.

Olivia had had Valentine's Day fantasies.

In class a few days before when people like Emma had been asking silly questions, Olivia Clark had been writing a love limerick. The first four lines had been easy. It was the punchline she couldn't get right.

She knew she'd come up with the perfect ending for her Valentine's poem, and she'd present it to Mitty Maybe in a frame. For his gift, Mitty would bring roses and a box of chocolates with soft centers. They would go to the Metropolitan Museum, which made a big deal about Valentine's Day, where he would have reserved a balcony table for two.

But yesterday afternoon, she had dragged him to the park when it was perfectly clear he had other plans; cuddled dogs when it was Mitty she wanted. She had taken his hand, which just lay in hers like an old newspaper. He didn't want her hand; he had peeled her off. He hadn't answered when she mentioned Valentine's Day. Olivia had turned away to hide an explosion of tears and found herself walking off. Surely he would follow her, grab her hand again, swing her in circles like in the library.

But Mitty had not caught up.

She could have turned around, gone back, called to him. But instead, she went silently home. He didn't call. He didn't IM or e-mail either, and those were easy and impersonal.

She woke up knowing she could not attend school. Nobody but Olivia would be surprised that Mitty had lost interest. All the girls had been sure she was not Mitty's type, and she couldn't face them with their I-told-you-so smirks. Worse, she would have to face Mitty.

Now the phone rang a second time. If she let the
answering system respond, the school would call her parents at work. Olivia had never mentioned Mitty to them. They had no idea that their daughter had flipped upside down and inside out over some boy. They were physicians who liked to be at the hospital by seven. She could not stand to think of interrupting them in the midst of patient care.

Olivia answered.

But it was not the secretary. It was the headmaster.

Derek was explaining his obsession with the murder of Ottilie Lundgren. It turned out the FBI guys were just as obsessed; they too had tracked recipients of anthrax mail and were frustrated by failure.

“Can I read your files?” asked Derek excitedly.“Can I get at classified stuff?”

They were sympathetic but not that sympathetic.“How were you thinking you could solve it?” asked McKay.

“I believe the answer to everything is on the Internet,” said Derek. “You just have to know where to look.”

“Did Mitty think that too?”

Derek had practically forgotten Mitty in his excitement about anthrax murders.

“I think Mitty was bored when I talked about anthrax,” he said cautiously.

“This isn't about anthrax. It's about Mitty's topic. Smallpox. What do you know about the smallpox scabs Mitty has?”

“I don't even know what a smallpox scab is.”

“Did you ever touch them? They would have been scabs like from a bad cut that he had in an old envelope.”

Derek shook his head. “He never showed me anything like that.”

“Mitty was offering them on the Internet,” said Finelli.

It was a lousy day when the FBI cared what you advertised on the Internet.

The headmaster's door was flung open. Olivia Clark stood there, breathless and windblown, her velvet jacket buttoned wrong, her hair unbrushed, her eyes red rimmed.

Mitty wasn't with Olivia? Olivia
had
been home sick?

Derek felt a shiver of anxiety.

Where was Mitty? In fact, Mitty rarely skipped or cut. He was the kind of boy who thought anyplace was better than school, but at the same time he didn't want to miss anything, so he was always here.

“Ms. Clark?” the agents asked her, shutting the door carefully behind her.

“What did Dr. Larkin mean, you're from the FBI? What did he mean, Mitty's missing?” Olivia cried. “He's cut school before. He's been late before. Missing seems like a very strong conclusion. What is your basis?”

For the first time, Derek found Olivia attractive.

Finelli said,“You're Mitty's girlfriend?”

Olivia was belligerent.“Who says?”

Go, Olivia! thought Derek. Talk back to the FBI.

“According to your headmaster, Olivia, the whole school says so.” Finelli was smiling in a nice way, as if he remembered being sixteen and in love. Or had lots of practice setting hostile witnesses at ease. “When did you last see Mitty, Olivia?”

Olivia folded her arms. “Prior to a discussion, I want to know what the discussion is about.” Her arms and chin
were trembling. She looked to Derek for help. He had none to give.

“How do you do, Ms. Clark?” said the woman. “I'm Dr. Barb Graham. I'm an epidemiologist with the CDC. This has to do with your biology papers. Your biology teacher and your headmaster believe that the three of you have been inseparable during your research and that Mitty did most of his research, Ms. Clark, with your help.”

Olivia stared at her blankly.

“Did you do the smallpox research together?” asked Dr. Graham.

Olivia was puzzled. “My project was typhoid fever, but I did do some work on smallpox. I was worried Mitty wouldn't bother, so I sort of preread books for him.”

It struck Derek forcibly how polite Mitty had been about this. Derek would have been mental.

“Did you preread any hundred-year-old medical texts?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you do any online research with Mitty?”

Olivia shook her head. “We used books. Current books. Useful books.”

“Did you see or touch any hundred-year-old medical textbooks that Mitty's mother purchased for her decorating business? There were four all together.”

“I don't even know about them.”

“In one of those books, Mitty found an old envelope that was filled with scabs of smallpox from a 1902 epidemic. Did he discuss these scabs with you?”

Olivia shook her head.

“Did he show them to you?”

“No.”

“The scabs are infectious, aren't they?” said Derek, figuring it out.“Mitty's going to get smallpox, isn't he?”

Olivia backed against the wall, pressing her spine to the plaster as if it would keep her upright.“That's impossible,” she whispered.

“That's impossible,” agreed Dr. Graham calmly.

The FBI agents were watching Dr. Graham as if they too wanted reassurance that it was impossible.“What are the odds that Mitty could get smallpox from those scabs?” Derek asked her.

“Virtually one hundred percent impossible,” said Dr. Graham.

“But not
actually
one hundred percent impossible? There's a chance?”

Dr. Graham brushed away the thought with a hand gesture. “Infinitesimally small.”

Then why were they here? Derek wanted to know. If the scabs were infectious, and Mitty could get sick, of course they'd round up anybody who had touched the scabs. But if the scabs were not infectious, and nobody could get sick, who cared? It was pretty heavy-duty to bring not one but two FBI agents into this—agents who had already coordinated their efforts with the CDC.

“We need to find Mitty,” said McKay. “I'm going to let you read a letter he left on his laptop. It's written to his parents. His laptop was in his bedroom, not turned off, but sleeping, so when his mother touched a key, this material came up. We printed it out.”

Olivia and Derek read together:

So—Mom, Dad—this is a letter.