Yet a Stranger (The First Quarto #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,131

“My car.”

“Did you crash it into City Hall?”

“No, but I flipped it, and it’s in a field somewhere.”

“I know, Auggie. I was the one getting your cow-shit-covered clothes off of you. I was making a joke.”

“Oh.”

“A bad one. There’s nothing you need to do about it right now. Let’s see if you still remember how to mix Krusteaz.”

So they went to the kitchen, and Auggie got down the blue bag of pancake mix, and Theo was surprised to learn that he had a carton of eggs in the fridge. The kitchen wasn’t really big enough for both of them to work at the same time, but they did it anyway, with a few excuse me’s, but mostly working without talking: Theo putting his hand between Auggie’s shoulder blades to keep him from stepping back at the wrong moment, Auggie accidentally elbowing him in the ribs when Theo stretched to toss eggshells in the trash.

They ate. It turned out that Auggie did still remember how to mix Krusteaz, and Theo still couldn’t figure out why the pancakes tasted so much better when Auggie made them. Then they went back to the couch. Theo worked on his thesis; Auggie did a lot of tapping and swiping, which Theo assumed meant he was busy handling his online platforms. Then Auggie made a sad noise.

When Theo glanced over, Auggie said, “There’s another demonstration for Deja tonight. Their likes and comments are way down; I think they’re losing momentum, which is a horrible thing to say because momentum shouldn’t matter in something important like this.”

“People have short memories,” Theo said. “And the world has new tragedies every day.”

Auggie sat up, studying his phone. A video was playing on loop, and by the third time, Theo gave it his full attention: footage recorded by a bystander of the shooting that had taken Deja Corey’s life. Deja was already on the ground. The officer who had murdered her was shouting something unintelligible.

“What is that?” Auggie murmured to himself.

“Why are you watching that?”

“Because I don’t understand it. He shot this girl for no reason.”

“Not quite. For a bad reason. He thought she was carrying a weapon.”

“But what was it? Something that looked like a gun? This is the best angle, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

“It was a piece of paper,” Theo said absently, already turning back to his computer.

“What?”

“Paper. She was carrying a letter or something. The officer claimed he thought it was a knife.”

“How can you tell? It’s just a shape.”

“It was in some of the in-depth reporting that came out the first day or two after the shooting. You probably weren’t even back in Wahredua by then.”

And then Theo froze, his hands locked on the keyboard. Fragmented images came together: Genesis on the massage table in a dark room, Nia and Deja arguing, the dark BMW parked at Wayne and Cal’s apartment, Wayne at a basketball expo, the cash hidden under Orlando’s bed. Friar John’s undelivered message.

“Holy shit,” Theo said. “I know who killed Cal.”

23

First, they went to Genesis Evans’s home. It was the middle of the day, and the house looked empty. They searched the yard and the tree line at the edge of the property. Then they searched around the outside of the house. Auggie found the rifle; it was covered by a tarp, buried under pale, round stones that lined one side of the house. A corner of the tarp was sticking out.

“Sloppy,” Auggie said.

“It’s a Savage 110,” Theo said. “That’s got to be the gun.” Looking up at the house, he asked, “Whose bedroom window do you think that is?”

“Genesis or Wise.”

“Wise,” Theo said. “No question.”

They took pictures and covered the gun up again.

Auggie made a burner email account, sent a message, and then had to wait almost a week. He heard nothing from Dylan. Once, looking out from his bedroom window on the third floor of the Sigma Sigma house, he thought he saw him on the sidewalk: a guy with his nose taped, one arm in a sling. Auggie pulled up Theo’s contact information and sat there, finger hovering over the call icon, watching the guy who might be Dylan talk to a couple of other bros. Then maybe-Dylan left, and when Auggie stopped shaking, he had to take a shower to get rid of the smell of flop sweat.

When Orlando slipped up, though, Auggie was ready.

From where he sat on his bed, studying for finals, Auggie had a perfect view out into the hallway. The noise