Night Sky (20 page)

The sky opened up. And it started to pour.

“Huh. Well, maybe Dana heard what you said about making it rain,” Calvin replied, switching on the windshield wipers.

I knew that Milo was watching me, and I didn't have to turn around to prove it. I could feel his eyes on me. I glanced outside at the darkening sky and the houses—most of them much smaller than those in my immediate neighborhood. It wasn't Harrisburg, but the people living in this part of town were obviously in financial trouble. “I've never been down here before,” I pointed out, feeling a need to repeat, “Never.”

“That's okay. Where should we go now?” Milo's voice was calm.

“When you get to the end of the road, take a right. Diner.”

“Diner?” Cal asked.

I had no idea why I'd said that.

Until Calvin took that right and ended up smack dab in front of a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant with a neon sign out front blinking the letters
D
I
E
R
. The
N
had fizzled out long ago.

“Diner,” I verified with a shrug.

Milo smiled again and looked through the windshield.

I followed his gaze. Dana's motorcycle was parked out front.

“Marco!” Cal yelled out gleefully as he saw it too. He parked beside it.

“That's craziness,” I said to Milo. “I've seriously never been here before.” I turned to Calvin. “Do you believe me now?”

Calvin just shook his head.

“It's not craziness,” Milo corrected me. “It's psychic. Like I said before, it's something called homing. You homed in on Dana, and you led us to her.”

So this meant that I was psychic. I could see things that had already happened—or things that were happening at that moment. As opposed to being prescient, which would've meant I could see the future.

Which also meant that even though Sasha seemed to be alive in my dreams and visions, she was, in fact, already dead.

Unlike on the beach, this time I didn't burst into tears. But I wanted to. “Wait here,” I told Calvin and Milo. There was no point in us all getting wet. “I'll get Dana.”

But she must've been watching for us, because she was already coming out of the door and down the steps, heading swiftly for the car.

“Took you long enough,” Dana commented gruffly as she climbed in, shaking off water as she pulled her red bomber jacket from her shoulders and draped it across her lap.

“Sorry I couldn't
psychic
my way over here any faster,” I replied.

“I'm pretty sure
psychic
isn't a verb,” Cal pointed out.

“It is now.”

Dana's eyes widened slightly as she looked from me to Milo and asked, “Did she really…?”

“She did,” Milo said, smiling at me.

“Well, hot damn, Bubble Gum,” Dana said, slapping me congenially on the back. “Good job. Let's see you work that mojo again. If you can find me, you can find those places you've been dreaming about.”

“I'll try,” I said uncertainly.

“You'll do your best,” Dana said, locking eyes with mine.

I nodded intently. “I'll do my best.”

We hit the road, heading back to the main drag as Cal's car echoed with the rain's noisy drumming. I called out directions as I let myself be pulled again by that mental magnet.

“Take a right here,” I said to Calvin after we'd driven for a while.

“That's I-75,” Cal said. “You sure you want to get on the highway?”

“Just do what she says, Scoot,” Dana answered for me, her voice impatient.

Calvin sighed dramatically and pulled onto the ramp. I looked around as we merged onto the four-lane interstate, heading north. But this wasn't the highway from my dreams.

Still, we drove in silence for about fifteen minutes as the rain poured down.

“No,” I said finally. “The trees are all wrong. In my dream, there weren't any palm trees and…it was different. It felt different, it smelled different…” I searched for that same mental magnet that had led me to Dana, and oddly enough, I could still feel it faintly back there. “I mean, if I didn't have a curfew, I'd want to keep going in this direction, but…I really don't know for how long or how far.”

“You're sure?” Dana asked, her voice intensely calm. “Dreams can be weird.”

“I'm one hundred and fifty percent positive that this is not where my dreams have been taking place. This absolutely isn't it.” As I turned in my seat, I could see that Milo seemed frustrated, but he didn't say a word.

“I'm sorry,” I added. And I was. What was the point of being psychic if I couldn't use my dreams to lead us to the people who'd killed Sasha?

“It's not your fault,” Milo insisted quietly. “It's not a perfect science.”

“Whatever,” Dana added as Calvin took the exit and looped over the highway to head back south. “It was worth a try. We'll just have to wait for you to have another dream or vision, and hope we get some information—”

“I had another waking vision,” I told her. “It was right after our training session, after you left me at the school. I saw Calvin in real time.”

“You what?” Dana's mouth dropped open. Milo stared at me too, looking surprised.

I explained what had happened earlier as Calvin nodded his agreement.

“Bubble Gum.
Please
. You gotta tell me things like that. Right away. Even if it doesn't seem that substantial to you.”

“Oh, it was substantial, all right,” Cal said fervently. “She could
see
me. If that ever happens again, Bubble Gum, like while I'm in the bathroom or—”

I shut him up with a hard look. That was all I needed—Calvin calling me
Bubble
Gum
too. “I meant to tell you as soon as I saw you,” I told Dana, “but the homing thing was, well, it took more energy than…” I gave up and just apologized, afraid if I kept trying to explain, I'd start to cry again. “I'm sorry,” I said miserably. “There's just so much going on.”

Dana sighed and ran a hand through her rain-dampened hair. “It's all right. Just please mention these things to me from now on, okay? Remember. I can do a lot of things, but reading your mind isn't one of them.”

Cal shot me a knowing look. “You should also tell her dot dot dot…”

I nodded. “I smelled sewage again.”

Dana looked like she couldn't decide whether to look extremely excited or gravely pissed. She tried for an expression that combined the two.

It worked.

I went on to explain our suspicions about Garrett's dad. Then I explained how Cal and I had driven to Mr. Hathaway's beach house to sniff out more clues.

“But I didn't think it would be a good idea to keep investigating without you there,” Cal added. Way to suck up to Dana.

“So,” Dana said, folding her arms over her chest and sitting back in the seat. “Obviously we need to get ourselves over to Garrett's beach house for a little sneak-and-peek. And soon. But tomorrow Milo and I have something more pressing on our schedule.”

Milo spoke up. “That can wait.”

She looked at him, annoyed. “No, it can't.”

“Dana wants to break into the police evidence locker,” Milo told us.

She rolled her eyes at him. “You make it sound both harder and more dangerous than it is. All I have to do is mind-control some weak-willed cop and get him to give me a private tour.”

“Merely walking into a police station is dangerous for you,” Milo said as he reached into his pocket for a piece of gum. He looked at me and his face was grim. “We don't have NID cards.”

I didn't think my eyes could get any wider, but I'm pretty sure they did. NID stood for National ID. Everyone over age twelve was required, by law, to carry their card at all times, and parents were required to carry cards for their kids. Just venturing out of your house without your NID card was dangerous—let alone walking into a police station.

“What's in the evidence locker?” Calvin asked, glancing at Dana in the rearview mirror, and I turned to look at her too.

She'd pushed her arms into the sleeves of her jacket, backward, so that most of the leather material was covering her front like a blanket. It made her look younger and kind of vulnerable. Then she leaned back again, and the moment was gone. Dana was back to being a bad-ass chick.

“That's exactly what I want to find out,” she shot back.

Cal smiled and tried again. “What do you
think
is in the evidence locker?”

Dana hesitated. But then she said, “Back in Alabama, when they found Lacey's blood in the bed of
her
dad's truck, they also found a kid-sized dog collar. The kind with metal spikes that you put on your pit bull before a dogfight. Or something you might use as an S-and-M sex costume. It was covered in her blood too.”

“God,” Calvin uttered.

“God had nothing to do with what happened to those girls,” Dana replied darkly.

“You think…” I started.

“I think there's a serious possibility that the cops found a collar in the bed of Mr. Rodriguez's truck as well. And I also think that it was planted there.”

Milo sighed a little. I could tell, even from that small noise, that he was profoundly saddened by all of this.

“I remember hearing on the news, when the story about Sasha first came out, that the crimes were possibly of a
sexual
nature
. Remember that?” Cal asked, glancing at me as he drove.

I nodded and waited to speak, because the lump in my throat was humongous. I couldn't help but think about both my dreams and my visions, and the utter fear that I'd seen in Sasha's eyes. I didn't know what awfulness Sasha had endured before her death. But I did know one thing: Her father hadn't been the one who'd hurt her.

“Does it really matter if a similar collar was found in the back of Edmund Rodriguez's truck?” Milo asked Dana quietly.

“Yeah, it matters,” she said. “It's proof we're on the right track and not wasting our time again. If the bastards who killed Sasha are the same ones who killed Lacey, they should've already leaked the news about the dog collar to the press. That detail should be all over the news—drive the public into a frenzy so that there's no sympathy when Edmund reappears. If the killers are lucky, he'll be found by a mob who strings him up—no need for a messy trial.”

I cleared my throat. “How about if I go to the police and pretend I have more information for that detective who interviewed me at school? Detective Hughes? While I'm talking to him, I can ask him what the awful thing was that they found in the back of the truck.”

Dana was already shaking her head. “I don't want you anywhere near the police.”

“I have a NID,” I pointed out. “Plus Detective Hughes gave me his card.” I looked from her to Milo to Calvin. “Everyone knows how much I love Sasha.” I cleared my throat and corrected myself. “Loved her.” I pushed, feeling more confident. This
was
something I could do to help. “I'll keep my abilities on lockdown.”

Dana was wavering, I could tell, especially when she exchanged a glance with Milo.

“At least let me try,” I said as Calvin pulled up to the diner where Dana had left her bike, “before you risk getting shipped off to wherever they ship people without NID cards.”

“I'll think about it,” Dana said, and climbed out of the car without so much as a good-bye.

Milo made up for it. “Cal,” he said with a nod before giving me a smile that didn't erase the sadness in his eyes. “Night, Sky.”

We watched Milo and Dana as they trudged back to the motorcycle. The rain had begun to let up a bit. My eyes hurt from crying earlier, and my brain hurt from all of the
training
Dana had put me through for the day.

“Home?” Cal asked, looking at me.

“Home,” I said with a sigh.

I had never been inside a police station before, but the image I'd conjured up in my head was far more glamorous than the reality.

Tuesday after school, Dana and Milo showed up as Calvin was pulling out of the Coconut Key Academy parking lot. They waved us over to the side of the road.

Dana hopped in like she owned the car. “I'm gonna let you try this,” she told me, before turning to Cal. “You know where you're going, Scooter?” she asked, apparently deciding to completely skip “Hello” or “How are you?”

“Downtown?” Cal asked uncertainly. I knew he was just as clueless about the police station's location as I was.

Milo edged in next to Dana in the backseat. “Hi, Skylar,” he said, and smiled at me.

I blushed for no reason. Then I blushed because I was embarrassed about blushing. Sighing, I turned to face the front before offering a “Hey.”

“Downtown…sort of,” Dana replied, crossing one leg over the other. Today, in the especially hot weather, she'd succumbed to wearing jean shorts for the first time since we'd met. Of course, she still had on her knee-high boots. “Take a right up here. I'll direct you.”

Calvin nodded. “Your wish is my command.”

“Okay. Let's review,” Dana addressed me, all business. “You're going into the station, and you're going to find the cop who interviewed you. You're not going to speak to any other person about any details of anything. Do I have to state the obvious? I guess I better: you're not going to reveal
anything
about yourself or your gifts.” Dana chewed at a cuticle. “You got that so far?”

I nodded.

“Go straight here,” Dana mentioned to Cal. She was still looking at me. “Let's role-play. What are you going to say to the detective?”

I paused. And then I laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“I'm nervous,” I said. “I feel like I'm about to audition for the school play.”

“Um, yeah. Get over it. If you're nervous practicing with me, you're gonna be super nervous when you have to do it for real.”

Milo leaned forward. He was wearing shorts too—cargo shorts, with a really cool pair of sandals on his extremely nice-looking feet. He had a tank top on, with a short-sleeved plaid shirt open over it. “It's okay. I know it probably feels silly, but if you just go through it a couple of times, you'll feel more confident when you speak directly to the police officer.”

“Thanks, Milo, 'cause it really looks like little Miss Princess needs another good sugarcoating,” Dana remarked.

Milo didn't respond, but her sarcasm didn't seem to particularly bother or surprise him.

“All right,” I said nervously. “I'm ready.”

“Okay, go,” Dana said. “You start.”

“Hi, Detective Hughes,” I said in a ridiculously pleasant voice. I wasn't much of an actress.

Calvin giggled.

I socked him in the shoulder and continued. “Remember me? I'm here because I wanted to follow up on that interview you conducted with me last week. I just…wanted to know if there was any news about Sasha or Edmu—”

“Okay. Stop right there,” Dana demanded. “First of all, you cannot walk in and start asking questions. Nobody cares if you want to know what happened to Sasha. They're not a news station. They're working crazy hours for pathetic pay so that they can hopefully
gather
information—not
divulge
it.”

I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I said. “Do over.”

“Take two,” Calvin agreed.

Dana slammed her hands down on the tops of her legs. “There will be no take two when you walk in there!” she exclaimed. “So let's get this right!”

Milo started to say something, but I cut him off. “Hey!” I said to Dana, my tone sharp. “I'm trying my best here! Isn't that what you asked me to do? So sue me if I don't know what to say to a detective in a murder case! It's not exactly par for the teenage-suburban-girl course!”

Dana cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I apologize, Bubble Gum. I just really want this to work.”

“Me too,” I said a little softer.

“Okay,” Milo intervened. “Why don't we figure out exactly what information Skylar is providing that gives her a legitimate reason to talk to the detective again.”

“Good call,” Calvin said, and followed Dana's lead as she continued pointing out directions to the station.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I'm going to do better if I have at least a rough-draft script to work from.”

Dana nodded. “Why don't you tell the detective that you saw a white van driving around your neighborhood on the evening of Sasha's disappearance?”

I stared blankly at her. “But I didn't,” I said.

Dana threw her hands exasperatedly into the air. “I
know
that, Princess. But that little boy from Harrisburg saw Edmund getting
medicine
from an old lady in a white van. So we know there's a white van involved. And there very well may have been a white van driving down your street at some point that night. We don't know. But I'd bet my ass whoever took Sasha didn't walk out of your neighborhood carrying her in their arms. There must've been
some
kind of vehicle and
white
van
is as good as any.”

“So I'm going to walk into a police station and lie, bold-faced, to a detective who is conducting a homicide investigation.”

It was Dana's turn to stare blankly. Apparently that was
exactly
what she wanted me to do.

Calvin kept driving. “I have an idea. What if Skylar says something like,
I
remembered
that
I
saw
a
really
creepy
old
lady
near
Sasha's house on the night she was kidnapped, and then I was talking to a little boy who said he saw the same lady in a very suspicious-looking white van
”—he pitched his voice higher in a terrible imitation of me—“and that way you won't be lying, and then you could say,
I
thought
it
might
be
important
information
. And then, once you've got the detective's attention, you sneak in the question about the dog collar.”

“How would I ask that?” I wondered out loud.

“Just say,
I
heard
there
was
a
dog
collar
found
in
the
back
of
Edmund's truck. I was wondering if you found any leads connected to that evidence
.”

I looked at him in exasperation. “That's not what I sound like.”

He glanced back at me. “Yeah, it kinda is.”

“Is
not
—”

“Wow,” Dana's voice was monotone, and we both looked back at her. “Way to sound completely incriminating. Ask the detective about evidence that hasn't been announced to the public. That's genius, Boy Wonder.”

“What?” Cal said defensively. “I don't see you offering suggestions.”

“Well, if we want Sky to walk out of the station without handcuffs on, she'd better avoid asking any specific questions about dog collars.”

If this little
practice
session
was supposed to make me feel more confident, it had served to do the exact opposite in record time. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead.

“Everything is going to go just fine,” Milo reassured me, as if reading my thoughts.

“Unless there
wasn't
a dog collar in the back of the truck,” Calvin countered. “And frankly, I really don't see the problem in
asking
. I mean, wouldn't they be more likely to think there's a leak somewhere in the department? All we really have to do is make an anonymous online post to some crime-stoppers' message board, say we heard a rumor about a dog collar in the back of Mr. Rodriguez's truck, and Sky can say—honestly—that she read about it online.”

Milo looked at Dana. “That could work,” he said. “Leak the news ourselves.”

She looked back at him. “Can you make it happen?”

“I can,” he said, then held out his hand, looking at me. “May I borrow your cell phone?”

Dana caught his arm. “Better not use hers.”

“It won't be traceable,” Milo assured her. “Not even by the police.”

“My phone's still turned off,” I said apologetically. “I've been turning it off while I'm in class—and whoops, I keep forgetting to turn it back on when school gets out.”

Dana snorted. “Laudably sneaky, BG. Milo told me about your mom being insanely overprotective.” She looked at Milo. “One would think that any prospective boyfriends might want to ponder long and hard before signing on for that BS.”

“Calvin, may I use your phone?” Milo asked.

“But of course,” Calvin said, passing his phone over his shoulder and into the backseat as he continued to drive.

“I don't want a boyfriend,” I told Dana as Milo used Cal's phone to access the Internet. But as I said the words, they seemed to ring with a touch of desperation, kind of the way, when my mom was trying to eat healthy, she would say,
I
don't want that donut
. I turned back to face the front, away from Milo's dimples. He was Dana's boyfriend, anyway. “I don't need that kind of complication right now.”

“Pull in here, Scoot.” Dana pointed to an ugly, poop-colored building with yellowed, rusty-looking front doors. “This is the police station,” she said. “Park around the side, where we won't be as conspicuous.”

“Nice digs,” Cal said.

I swallowed and my heart started to pound.

“Now that you know what you're saying, you want to run through it?” Milo glanced up from Cal's phone to ask. He didn't wait for me to respond. “I'll be the lady at the desk.” He cleared his throat and spoke in a very silly falsetto. “May I help you?”

It was so ridiculous that I had to laugh. And as he glanced up at me again, his eyes smiling, I knew he'd done it to get me breathing again. “Yes, please,” I said. “I need to talk to Detective Hughes. I have some information about the Sasha Rodriguez case.”

“I'm Detective Hughes,” Calvin contributed in a very stupid-sounding, deep, booming voice. “Have you come to tell me all of the many places where Edmund Rodriguez touched you inappropriately?”

I laughed again, and because Milo was looking at me questioningly—even as his thumbs raced across Calvin's phone's keyboard, I said, “When he interviewed me, almost all of the detective's questions were about inappropriate touching—”

“Stay in character,” Dana barked.

So I said, “Actually, no, Detective, but I do have information that I thought was important. I remember seeing an, um, older woman with gray hair near Sasha's house. And a…friend—a little boy I know—said he saw the same woman in a white van—”

“He's probably walking away from you right about now,” Dana interjected. “Because he's got four million other, more important things to do.”

“I'm sorry, Detective,” I said quickly, “but can you tell me if it's true…? The news I heard online at…” I looked at Milo.

“Citizen Detective dot com,” he provided.

I repeated the website URL, adding, “There was an anonymous post that said an S-and-M dog collar—in Sasha's size—was found in the truck, covered in her blood.” Just saying that out loud made me feel sick to my stomach.

“You'll have to watch him closely for his reaction,” Dana advised. “And don't be afraid to add the violins. Tell him how much you loved the girl, how important it is that you know the truth, how you've been having nightmares—”

“I will,” I said.

“You're going to be great,” Milo said quietly as he handed Calvin back his phone.

“You want me to go in with you?” Calvin asked me.

“You can't,” Dana said. “Really, Scoot, I know you want to, and God knows I want you to go in there with her too, but…” She looked at me somberly. “You have a better shot of getting real information if you go in on your own. Trust me on that.”

I did trust her, and with a deep breath, I reached for the door handle.

“Dammit,” Dana hissed, and I turned around quickly to look back at her. She was making a face, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. “
Dammit!
”

“What's the problem?” Calvin also glanced at Dana in his rearview mirror.

Now Dana was shaking her head and breathing hard. “Something's wrong.”

Milo looked curious too, but he didn't ask Dana what she meant. He waited patiently for her to elaborate. While he did that, he also turned to gaze at me.

“Something's really wrong. Everyone be quiet!” Dana demanded, even though none of us had spoken again. She scrunched up her face and leaned forward, rocking a little in her seat. Finally, she opened her eyes. “Shit! This isn't going to work.”

“How do you know that?” Cal asked.

“I just…it's like back in Harrisburg when I knew that little boy had information. I can't do this on cue,” she said, clutching her forehead, “but when it happens, it's always accurate. We're wasting our time.”

“If Skylar goes inside, will she be in danger?” Milo asked as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his packet of gum.

Dana didn't hesitate. “No. There's no danger. Just…I don't really know what I'm feeling here—it's very strange. I think…the detective isn't here. Or something.” She shook her head again.