It’s amazing how fast a person can forget that his legs are in pain. You should have seen Joe take off after the intruder.
I was right on his heels. It took us about thirty seconds to reach the far end of the yard. When we got there, our quarry was nowhere in sight.
I turned around and saw that the adults were only about halfway to us. If Joe and I didn’t catch the trespasser, no way were they going to.
“He’s in one of these buses, probably,” Reilly said.
“We’d better search ’em, one by one,” said Chief Collig. “Joe, you and Frank start on the front end. We’ll go from here.”
I know he just wanted us to travel the farthest. He, Reilly, and even my dad were still breathing pretty hard.
Joe and I headed back, past rows of parked buses. We split up, working each row from the ends toward the center.
As it turned out, it was me who got lucky—if you want to call it that.
I stepped onto a bus and was halfway to the rear when a wild-eyed, scruffy- looking guy jumped out from behind a row of seats and lunged at me! I dodged him, falling back onto a pair of seats. Before I could recover, he was past me and headed out the front door.
“Joe!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me. “Over here!”
I ran out of the bus after the intruder and caught a quick glimpse of him darting behind another bus. When I got there, though, he’d vanished.
Where could he have gone to so quickly, I wondered?
Suddenly, I heard something moving near my feet. I lay down—carefully, to avoid being cut by broken glass—and looked underneath the bus.
There he was!
“Joe!” I cried as the guy backed away from my grasp.
He was just about to get away again when Joe showed up on the other side of the bus, blocking his way.
“Nice going!” I said.
We had him trapped between us under the bus. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he knew it.
“Wait!” he whispered, his eyes darting every which way. “Don’t beat me up—I’ll give you anything you want—I’ve got money... not on me, but buried near here. You can have it—all of it—just let me be.”
“Hey!” I said. “Calm down, will you?”
“You’re gonna set me on fire, aren’t you.”
It was a statement, not a question. He was sure we were going to do it. I could see the naked fear in his bloodshot eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Joe said. “Set you on fire? Are you crazy?”
“Ha! That’s what they told me at the shelter! Said I was crazy and couldn’t stay there—had to go to the hospital for treatment. I ain’t getting no treatments—they’ll put a computer chip in my head or something.”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” I told him.
“You’re here with the cops, aren’t you? I saw you with them.”
“We’re not cops,” I assured him, but he didn’t seem convinced.
“Who are you, anyway?” Joe asked.
“Name’s Guthrie. George Guthrie.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Did you do all this to the buses?”
“No!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I didn’t do none of it! I was just sleeping... sleeping in one of the buses... I’ve been doing that all summer. Found a place where the fence is bent back, and a bus with a broken window lock, and I had it good the last two months. And where’s the harm in it, I ask you? It’s a lot safer than sleeping out on the streets!”
I guessed he was right about that. But it was still breaking the law, and I told him so.
“I know, I know,” he moaned, “but can’t you give me a break? I sure could use one, fellas. Think about it—the only breaks I’ve ever had in my life have been bad ones. And the cops will lock me up for sure! They’ll think I did it!”
George Guthrie and Peter Nutt—that made it two weirdos Joe and I had chased down in less than a week.
As I lay there under the bus, taking in the rank smell wafting off Guthrie’s clothes, I wondered if there was some weird new virus going around, turning normal people into raving maniacs.
“Listen, George,” I said, using his first name to try and calm him down, “you’ve got to trust us. We won’t hurt you, and neither will the police. They just want to know who did all this damage.”
SUSPECT PROFILE
Name: George Guthrie
Hometown: Bayport
Physical description: Age—somewhere in his forties or fifties (hard to tell), 5’7”, 150 lbs., long, greasy, uncombed hair (can’t tell what Color). Wild eyes that keep shifting everywhere in terror. Clothes stink to high heaven-you sure wouldn’t want to be wearing them.
Occupation: None
Background: Grew up in foster homes, spent time in reform school for stealing a banana—claimed he was hungry. Never married.
Suspicious behavior: Trespassing, fleeing from the police. His presence at the crime scene doesn’t look good for him.
Suspected of: Wave of vandalism against Bayport School system
Possible motives: A mystery—maybe to get even with kids who got better breaks in life than he did.
“It wasn’t me! I swear it!”
“I believe you, George,” I said. The truth was, I didn’t know what to believe, but I wanted him to feel safe. “So does my brother here. Don’t you, Joe?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you, Joe?” I said again. (He’s a little thick sometimes.)
“Oh. Yeah. I believe you, too, George.”
“Why don’t we just get out from under here,” I suggested, “and you can show us where you’ve been living. We won’t turn you over to the police until you’ve had a chance to tell your side of the story, okay?”
“I... I guess so,” he said.
He led us silently to an undamaged bus, with a concrete block positioned under an open window. We climbed inside one by one. Looking back out the windows, I could see our dad and the two police officers searching other buses and taking notes.
Inside our bus, George Guthrie’s summer home was laid out before us. Old, filthy clothes, a large ratty blanket, empty soda bottles.
You get the idea. Yuckyville.
It smelled awful, but other than that, this bus hadn’t been damaged. If Guthrie had wrecked all those other buses, he’d certainly spared his own.
“George,” I said, taking a seat (they didn’t look too skeevy) while Joe stood at the front door, “we don’t have much time. You’ve got to come clean.”
“You sure you’re not with them?” he asked, meaning the police.
How was I supposed to answer that one?
Easy. I didn’t.
“George, tell us the truth—did you damage all these buses?”
“I already told you, it wasn’t me!”
“Then you’ve got to tell us who it was!”
“How should I know? I was dead asleep the whole time!” He grabbed my shirt in his two hands and shook me. “You’ve got to believe me!” he shouted.
That shout must have gotten the others’ attention, because suddenly Joe said, “Here they come.”
“NOW, George!” I yelled right in his face. “Tell us what you saw!”
“I didn’t see nothing, I tell you! I was drunk! Dead drunk—I only woke up when I heard the glass shattering!”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, I tried to see what was going on, but by the time I got up, they were on the other side of the lot. I was just glad they didn’t hurt me.”
“They? You think it was more than one person?”
“How should I know? I couldn’t see a thing, it was so dark—and besides, I need glasses bad. My eyes ain’t what they used to be.”
“Did you hear anything unusual—besides the breaking glass?” I asked.
“I don’t hear so good, neither,” he said sadly. “And the cigarettes is killing my lungs—I tried to quit, but with all them butts lying around, it’s too tempting.”
He coughed to show us how bad his lungs were. His breath nearly knocked me over.
“Okay, George,” I said. “I believe you.”
And I did. This guy seemed more pathetic than dangerous.
The police forced open the door of the bus and climbed on board, followed by our dad.
“Good work, boys!” Chief Collig said, fishing out a pair of handcuffs.
Bad move.
“You are with the cops!” George screamed, jumping to his feet and pointing at me in fury. “I knew it! You kids set me up! I’ve been framed! Framed, I tell you! Help! HELP!”
“Take him downtown to headquarters, Con,” the chief said.
“Wait!” I held out a hand. “Hold on a second, Chief. This man didn’t vandalize any buses. Joe and I will vouch for him—won’t we, Joe?”
Joe gave me a look that said, “Are you insane?” But he went ahead and agreed. “Yeah, he’s harmless.”
“You boys talked to him?” Chief Collig asked.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything. He was drunk and passed out.”
The Chief looked at Dad. “Fenton?”
“Well, if the boys feel that strongly about it, I’d go with their instincts, Ezra.”
Good old Dad—I’ve got to hand it to him, he always sticks up for us.
“Well, it’s against my better judgment,” the chief said. “But if he turns out to be our man, I guess we can still book him later—for trespassing, if nothing else.”
“He needs help more than he needs prison,” I said.
“Yeah, how about the town shelter?” Joe asked.
“NO!” George shrieked, trying to leap out the window and escape. “No shelters!”
“Hey, fella,” Con Reilly said. “Where do you think you’re going?” He grabbed hold of George like he was a stuffed doll, dragged him back into the bus, and snapped a pair of cuffs on him. “If the chief says you’re going to the shelter, you’re going to the shelter.”
“You’ll be sorry!” George shouted. “You’ll all be sorry! I’m done for! They’ll poison me there! I’d rather go to jail, I tell you!”
They had to drag him out of the bus and into the backseat of the cruiser.
When they were gone, the yard was quiet. Dad turned to us and said, “Well, it’s been a long day. You boys must be tired.”
Tired? Try exhausted. Settling into the plush seats of our dad’s Crown Vic, I was fast asleep long before we got home. I’m pretty sure Joe was too.
Tomorrow would be another day. Tomorrow we would start hunting whoever had declared war on Bayport’s schools.
No matter what wacko cases ATAC and Captain Creamy gave us, we were not leaving town again till this case was solved.
***
“You really think George was innocent?” Joe asked me over breakfast.
It was already ten in the morning. Mom, Dad, and Aunt Trudy had let us sleep late. Mom was already off at the library, and Aunt Trudy was out in the backyard, gardening. Playback sat on her shoulder, squawking loudly every time she pulled a weed.
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know what to think, Frank. I mean, the guy’s totally gonzo, so who’s to say?”
“True. But even the most gonzo of gonzos has a reason for what they’re doing. It may be a crazy reason, but it’s still a reason.”
“Okay, how’s this, then?” Joe said. “Suppose George figured that if he managed to put off the start of school, he could live in his bus a while longer.”
“That is crazy.”
“So is George.”
“Fair enough. But what you said is really intriguing.”
“Intriguing? Wow. You don’t usually compliment my ideas that much.”
“Don’t I?”
“Not too often.”
I smiled at him. “Oh, well. I like this one.”
“Which one?”
“The one you just had. Forgot it already?”
“How do I know unless you tell me which one it is?”
“You said George might want to prevent the start of school. But you could also say that about other people. As a motive, it ties together both Bayport crime sprees. Pretty neatly too.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
“Notice something else, Joe—the crimes have only taken place during the summer, when schools are empty and buses are idle.”
“So?”
“So whoever it is, they don’t seem to want to hurt anybody.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Yeah, but they’re still willing to do an incredible amount of damage to property just to keep the schools closed.”
“You have to admit, George does fit the profile,” Joe said, going back to eating his cereal.
“Yeah, but I’m sure we can come up with other suspects who have the same motive.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Let’s think on it for a while.”
Just as I was lifting a spoonful of cereal to my mouth, Joe jumped up and pounded the table—so hard he made me spill the cereal all over myself.
“Hey!” I complained.
“Frank, I’ve got it! Who do we know who hates school worse than poison?”
I dropped the spoon and rose to my feet, as the light bulb went on inside my brain.
“Of course!” I said. “Brian Conrad!”
THE BAD SEED
Let me tell you a little something about Brian Conrad, okay?
He is just possibly the worst human being in Bayport.
Certainly and without question, he is the single worst human being in the entire history of Bayport High.
And just to highlight his sheer awfulness, he has the most gorgeous, sweet, good-natured—oh, and did I say cute?—sister you could ever imagine. That would be Belinda Conrad.
But more about her in a minute...
First, a little more about our newest—and likeliest—suspect.
It was a beautiful morning. Frank and I were having breakfast. Just a normal late- summer day with a normal family (well, almost). Dad was nowhere to be seen.
SUSPECT PROFILE
Name: Brian Conrad aka Slimebag, Dirtball, Scuzzbucket, etc.
Hometown: Bayport
Physical description: Age 17, 6’2”, 210 lbs., short blond hair. Dresses like a jock, because that’s what he is.
Occupation: Being the worst human being in Bayport.
Background: Grew up in Bayport. Somehow became a total jerk, and still is one. Hobbies rumored to include pumping iron; setting minor fires; and torturing small animals, high school freshmen, and anyone smaller or weaker than he is.
Suspicious behavior: A history of vandalism, including triggering false alarms at school, slashing book bags, and breaking into lockers. He’s been suspended more times than anybody can count.
Possible motives: Who knows what makes a punk like Brian do the things he does? But he sure hates school with a passion (it’s amazing they haven’t expelled him yet), and he might go to great lengths to delay the new school year. Also, he might like the idea of getting even with school authorities.
Suspected of: Wave of vandalism against Bayport School system.
For a few minutes I totally forgot about crime fighting.
But only for a few minutes. When you’re a Hardy, and there’s an unsolved case, there’s no way you can think about anything else for long.
As soon as we were done washing the dishes, Frank and I took a pitcher of OJ, a couple of glasses, and a pad and paper out to the backyard. We sat down at the round glass table, shaded by its umbrella, and started to sort things out.
“Joe, do you think it’s possible Brian Conrad was the one who sent us out of town on those wild goose chases?”
“Huh? No way,” I said. “How could he do that? He’s not in ATAC.”
We both froze for a second.
“No.”
“Get out.”
“There’s no way he’s an ATAC agent.”
Okay, so we agreed on that one.
“What about that Captain Creamy guy?” I asked. “Isn’t Dad supposed to be checking him out?”
“Dude, it’s only the next morning. Dad’s not Superman. Give him at least a few hours.”
“Okay. And what about George Guthrie?”
“What about him?”
“Well,” I said, “if the police were going to make an arrest right now, it would be him. That’s the way the evidence points.”
“Right. But then there’s Brian. I don’t think we can afford to ignore him.”
“This morning would be a good time to catch him at home,” I said. “He’s a late sleeper, right?”
“True—he’s always missing first period.”
“So when there’s no school, he probably sleeps till at least ten.”
“Oh, till noon, man.”
“Right. Probably. So we should go over there, right?”
“Um, well...” Frank hesitated, and I knew right then what he was going to say next.
“I think you’d better go over there and handle it yourself,” he said. “You know how much Brian hates my guts.”
It was true. Brian Conrad hates basically everyone, but he reserves a special place in his sick, shriveled heart for Frank.
Why Frank? Could be because Brian’s sister, Belinda, likes Frank so much.
Yes, that’s right—the superfine Belinda has a monster crush on my brother. Has for years.
It kills me, to be honest with you. I can’t understand what it is about Frank. It’s insane! Girls pay a lot of attention to me, normally. But the minute he walks into the room, it’s like I don’t exist anymore.
Lucky for me Frank has no clue how to handle it. He turns into a raging geek so fast, it’s hilarious.
Especially around Belinda. Which was why he was now asking me to go over there and tackle Brian Conrad all by myself.
“Okay, dude,” I said with a laugh and a shake of the head. “If you’re chicken, you’re chicken.”
“It’s not that I’m chicken.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s just that if I went over there, it could get ugly. There’s bound to be a scene.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
“It has nothing to do with Belinda.”
“I’m sure.”
“Shut up!”
“Buck-buckaw!” I said, flapping my elbows chicken-style.
Frank punched me in the arm. Just in fun, mind you, but it still hurt. For someone who doesn’t spend much time lifting weights, that dude is strong.
***
After looking up the address in the Bayport High Student Directory, I left Frank behind and headed over to Casa Conrad on my bike. I was still sore from all the riding we’d been doing, but it was a fairly short trip—just the other side of the tracks, in fact.
The Conrad family lives, it turns out, in a not-too-shabby part of town. Most of the houses on their street are well cared for, even if they are kind of small.
But not the Conrad house. I spotted it from way down the block, and knew it had to be the place.
The junked car in the front yard was my first clue. The laundry flapping on the clothesline, the peeling paint, the taped-over windows, the garbage strewn all over the lawn, were all proof that Brian lived here.
“The bad seed,” as I like to call him.
I took a deep breath of fresh air—the last I was likely to inhale for some time— and knocked on the front door (there was just a hole where the doorbell used to be).
The door swung open, and there stood a fire-breathing dragon. No, not really. It was only Brian and Belinda’s mom—but she had a smelly cigar in her hand, and her eyes and face were red and swollen. She’d either been drinking or crying, or else she was just plain poisoned by the cigar smoke.
Whatever.
She took in the sight of me as if I were a six-foot-tall cockroach and said, “Yeah? Whaddaya want?”
“Um, I was looking for Brian?” I said, trying not to use too much breath. Other- wise, I might have to inhale.
“Oh, yeah? And who are you?”
Only now did I notice that she had a toilet plunger in her free hand—the one that wasn’t holding the cigar. I knew instantly what it was for: bopping unwelcome visitors (like me) over the head.
“I’m Joe Hardy—a classmate of Brian’s.”
Obviously, no classmate of Brian’s had ever come to his house before, and I could see why not. The place looked like a bomb hit it, his mother was a repulsive witch... and that was just the beginning.
Mrs. Conrad moved aside to let me in. Just as I stepped past her into the hallway, she yelled right in my ear: “HEY, BRIAN! SOMEONE’S HERE TO SEE YOU!”
I saw Brian’s head poking out of a doorway at the top of the stairs. “Shut up!” he yelled at his mother before spotting me.
My presence seemed to throw him off balance, but only for a second. “Well, well, well,” he said as an evil grin spread over his mean, ugly face. “Joe Hardy. What do you want?”
“Just to talk. I have a few questions I want to ask you.”
“Me? You sure you aren’t here looking for my sister?”
“No,” I assured him. “But tell her I said hi.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right. I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Hey,” Brian’s mother said to him, “I wasn’t expecting visitors. You wanna have visitors, you better clean up this dump.”
Brian sneered at her, then back at me. “Come on up, Hardy,” he said. “We can talk in my room.”
“It’s your mess—you clean it!” his mom screamed at him as I went up the stairs.
Ugh. If I say pigsty, you won’t get how truly disgusting Brian’s room was. I didn’t dare sit down, either on the chairs or the bed. Old food was everywhere, with flies dive-bombing it... you get the picture.
Dead things were pinned to all the walls. Insects, sure, but also mice, small birds, and some larger things that were hard to identify, but might have been squirrels.
Oh, boy. This kid was truly demented.
“So where’s your brother? Where’s Mr. Lover Boy?” he asked, shutting the door behind us.
“He couldn’t make it.”
Brian laughed. “Oh, yeah, sure—he’s just afraid I’ll ram his nose into his skull, that’s all.” Then he looked me up and down. “So he sends you to fight his battles for him, huh? I guess you’ve got more guts than he does.”
“I’m not afraid of you, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, maybe you should be.”
He cracked his knuckles menacingly.
“I didn’t come here to fight you, Conrad,” I said.
“I came to ask you a few questions about stuff that’s been going down.”
That caught him by surprise. “What stuff is that?”
“I thought you’d know all about it.”
“I haven’t got a clue. Why don’t you tell me?”
I folded my arms on my chest and waited.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I did hear something about school buses and some other stuff. Is that it?”
“You heard about it?”
“That’s right.”
“From who?”
“Like I would ever tell you.” He laughed and shook his head. “Listen, Hardy, if you think I did something naughty, why don’t you tell your friends the cops, so they can come arrest me?”
No, Brian doesn’t know about ATAC—of course he doesn’t. But everyone at Bayport High knows Frank and I are amateur detectives. Our relationship with the local police is an open secret.
“It’s because you’ve got no evidence against me. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Am I right?”
He had me, and he knew it. Luckily, just at that moment, the door to his room popped open and Belinda poked her gorgeous blond head in. “Joe! Hi! I thought I heard your voice!”
“Hi, Belinda,” I said, a dreamy smile coming over my face.
She is so hot. Not even the presence of Brian could ruin that moment for me.
“Where’s Frank? Did he come with you?” she asked hopefully, looking around the room for him.
“Um, not this time,” I said, and watched the light go out of her eyes.
“Oh. Well, tell him I said hi, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Bye. I’ve got to go to my voice lesson.”
Yeah, she sings, too. Like a bird. Amazing, isn’t it, how such an awful house can contain someone like Belinda? It’s like they stole her from some other family and brought her home to brighten their dismal lives.
Actually, that’s not so far-fetched. Not once you’ve been to their house.
Belinda’s brief visit seemed to put Brian in a bad mood. As soon as she was gone, his phony smile vanished.
“You know, Hardy, you’ve got some nerve coming over to my house like this.” He started advancing on me. His hands were balled into fists, and I expected to see them fly at me any second. “I want you to know, I don’t like being accused of stuff.” He pounded his fist down on an end table, sending stuff crashing to the floor. “I’m always being accused of stuff! Always! Even when I didn’t do anything. It’s totally unfair!”
I didn’t back down. “It just seems to me and Frank that whoever is trashing school property doesn’t want school to open on time. And we figured you fit the bill.”
He grabbed me by my shirt and slammed me into the door. “It’s you and your brother’s fault I’m always getting blamed for everything! Because of you, I’ve got a bad reputation at school!”
“Oh, I see. You had nothing to do with it.”
I knew I was risking a punch in the face, but I just had to say it.
“Shut up!” he screamed.
I did. He was mad enough already.
“Sure, I hate school,” he said, his face inches from mine. “But you know what? Staying at home is even worse! It’s dead boring, and it’s depressing the heck out of me! I can’t wait to go back and start annoying the teachers and kids again.”
Guess what? I believed him.
Being in the Conrad house was the most depressing ten minutes I’d spent in years. I couldn’t imagine how Belinda put up with it. No wonder she joined every club at school and was always taking lessons outside the house!
The poor kid...
“Now you get out of here,” Brian whispered in my ear, “before I—”
“HEY, BRIAN!!”
His mother’s voice shook the whole house.
“WHAT?!”
“GET DOWN HERE AND HELP ME PLUNGE THE TOILET!”
Oh. So that’s why she was holding the plunger!
“DO IT YOURSELF!”
“I SAID GET DOWN HERE! NOW!!!”
Brian’s frustration boiled over. As he left the room, he gave me a shove and released my shirt. I slammed into the doorway, but at least I was free now.
Free to go.
Free to get out of there and breathe again.
“Thanks for your time,” I told him as I followed him down the stairs.
“Yeah, and don’t come back!” he said. “You’re lucky I let you off so easy. Next time you won’t be so lucky. Now run along home before I change my mind and make you pay.”
I took my time getting to the front door. Nobody was going to make me hurry.
I was going to show him I wasn’t scared of him. I let myself out the door to the sound of a toilet flushing.
Out on the front lawn I took a deep breath of fresh air. You know, you never really appreciate air until you’re forced to breathe something else—like whatever was perfuming the inside of the Conrad house.
I turned and walked toward the curb, where my bike was still parked.
“Hey, Hardy!”
It was Brian’s voice, calling to me from behind. I turned and saw him positioned at the front door—with a gun in his hands!
This is it! I thought. I’m going to die. Right now.
I was hit before I heard the shot. Smack in the center of my chest. The impact sent me rocking backward, and I tumbled to the ground!
I looked down at my shirt. It was splattered and soaked in red.
But why wasn’t I dead? Why didn’t it even hurt?
And then I realized—it was a paintball gun!
I shook my fist at Brian, who was cackling with glee, laughing his fool head off.
I felt like strangling him. But I could hear my father’s voice in my ear, telling me to be smart. And my mother’s, telling me not to let my feelings get the better of me.
Yeah, I felt like killing him. And I could have too.
But instead, I got on my bike and rode away, with Brian’s laughter echoing in my ears.
DEEP FREEZE
When Joe walked in the door, I thought he’d been shot. All that red paint sure looked like blood—at least until you looked at it closely.
But Joe wasn’t hurt, he was just angry. And when he told me what Brian had done, I was even angrier.
“We could have him hauled in by the police for that. Let’s do it, Joe. Let’s call Con Reilly and have him put the cuffs on Brian, take him down to headquarters, and grill him for an hour or so.”
For once, it was Joe calming me down, instead of the other way around. “Come on, Frank, what good would that do? You think it’s going to teach Brian not to be such a dillweed?”
“It would serve him right, anyway.”
“Sure, but he’d only come back worse than before.”
“True. I guess you’re right. What would be the use?”
“There you go.” Joe took off his paint-soaked shirt and threw it in a plastic bag for neat disposal.
“You know, Joe, if he’s the one behind all the vandalism, it would mean reform school for him.”
“You think Brian can be reformed?”
“Mmmm... maybe not. Anyway, now that you’ve talked to him, do you think he did it?”
“He sure got insulted when I suggested it,” Joe said, taking a washcloth to himself.
“Truth hurts.”
“He actually said he couldn’t wait to go back to school.”
“And you believe that?”
To my total surprise, Joe said, “Yeah, I think I do. Spending the whole summer at his house would be pretty depressing.”
I had never been to the Conrad house. But I found it hard to believe Brian would rather go to school than be there.
“You know,” Joe said, pulling a fresh T-shirt over his head, “we should go back to Bayport High and have another look around. We never did go inside the other day.”
“The whole place is probably all cleaned up by now,” I pointed out. “We should have gone in before the trail went cold. We had our chance.”
“Yeah, but all our friends were there. It would have been very uncool to break in with them there.”
“We trespassed on school grounds and didn’t think anything of it.”
“Yeah, but there’s breaking the law, and then there’s breaking the law.”
“Why, Joe. I’m surprised at you,” I said with a laugh.
“Come on, you dweeb,” he said, giving me a little shove. “Let’s get over there. Maybe there are still some clues left to find.”
***
The yellow crime scene tape was gone from the cafeteria entrance. A new lock had been installed, and a new coat of paint slapped on to cover the scratches the crowbar had made. “Whoever broke in here,” I said, “sure didn’t know how to pick a lock—otherwise they wouldn’t have needed a crowbar.”
“So you’re saying...?”
“Seems like an amateur thief—or anyway, someone who isn’t that experienced.”
The new lock was digital. “Joe, where’s that gizmo Dad gave you?”
He handed me the microwave flashlight, and I turned it on the lock, frying its settings. The door popped open, and we were inside.
“That’s vandalism, you know,” Joe told me.
“I’ll be sure to pay them back,” I said.
I meant it too. I mean, I still had money from ATAC. And I hated to ruin the new lock—but this was important.
The school was empty and silent. Creepy, in fact. It was a weird feeling, being here when there were no kids, no teachers, and absolutely no noise.
Everything looked strangely normal, though. Lockers lined the halls, the floors looked mopped and swept—no sign of broken glass like in the elementary schools, where, according to Iola, lots of windows had been broken.
Nothing looked out of place here.
Except the whole huge room looked like a bomb had hit it!
There were tables overturned, chairs smashed and scattered everywhere—and a wide variety of rotting foods all over the floor.
And the smell was not to be believed.
“Yuck!” Joe said, covering his nose and mouth. “I can’t breathe!”
Neither could I. But we had to check the crime scene out. Obviously, the police must have been over it with a fine-tooth comb. Still, in a mess like this, it would be easy to miss a clue. Even an important one.
We used our flashlights—the regular ones we always carry—and scoped out the place. Joe put a napkin over his face, but I doubt if it helped much.
As for me, I was feeling a strong urge to puke. If I had, it would have blended right in with the mess, I promise you.
“Chet said a lot of food was stolen,” Joe said, between gasps for air. “They sure left a lot behind.”
“You’d think someone would be in here to clean it all up.”
“Yeah—some industrial-strength cleaning service.”
“They must have stripped the shelves clean,” I said. “Because they’re empty now.”
“Didn’t Chet say something about them delivering a big load of food and supplies for the start of school?”
“That’s right. But unless they had a big truck of their own, whoever broke in here couldn’t have taken it all with them.”
“Maybe they just threw it all on the floor,” Joe said, “and didn’t take anything with them.”
“They probably hit the freezer, too.”
“Let’s check and see.”
The door to the walk-in freezer was locked, but unlike the outside door to the cafeteria, this lock wasn’t anything special. I had the door open in less than thirty seconds.
We pointed our flashlights inside. There were metal shelves lining each side of the long, dark room. The shelves were mostly empty, but there were quite a few boxes of frozen food scattered on the floor—most of them broken open and ruined.
“Hey, Frank. You know, the rain washed away all the footprints from outside— but there might be some in here, preserved in the frost!”
A long shot, true, but still, it was a shot.
We moved on into the pitch-dark freezer room, playing our flashlights on the floor.
We were almost to the back wall when I heard the creaking of the heavy metal door behind us.
It slammed shut with a sickening thud. Then I heard the lock click into place.
And something else— laughter.
COLD, COLD HEART
If you’ve never been locked inside a walk-in freezer before, let me save you some time and a lot of discomfort— don’t try it.
These walk-in babies are deep-freezes, with the emphasis on deep. Food stored in them can last for a year or more. As for human life, well, Frank and I would be lucky if we lasted an hour.
It was COLD in there! COLDCOLDCOLD-COLD!!!!!
In less than a minute, I was shivering so hard, with my whole body, that you would have thought I was having a seizure.
I’m sure Frank was feeling the same way. He was busy playing his flashlight all over the walls, looking for an escape switch that would trigger the freezer door to open.
You’d think a school system, of all places, would build in a safety escape switch. But if there was one, we sure couldn’t find it.
“Um, Joe? I think we might be in trouble here,” Frank finally said.
I tried ramming the door, but it didn’t give, and I knew it wasn’t going to, no matter how many times I tried.
Ow. The pain. The cold. Brrrrrr...
And on top of everything, the total humiliation of it! After all the times we’d cheated death, to go down in such a lame way…
Just think—when school finally started, the cafeteria workers would open the freezer door and find us with icicles hanging from our noses, frozen solid like a pair of gigantic popsicles! Not to mention dead. Talk about embarrassing!
“Heeellllp!!!” I screamed. “HEEELLLLP!!!”
Frank joined in, and we made one heck of a chorus—but who exactly did we think was going to help us? The fiend who’d locked us in?
I could hear him now, on the other side of the heavy steel door, laughing his head off.
The laughter was high-pitched, I noticed. So high-pitched you’d have thought it was a woman out there...
“Ha-ha! I’ve got you now!”
It was a woman!
“Let us out of here!” Frank yelled. “You don’t want to be facing murder charges, do you?”
More laughter. Then, “Yeah, right. I’m not worried about it.”
There was something familiar about that voice. Where had I heard it before?
“You’re not getting out until the cops get here,” said the voice. “I’m gonna go call them right now, and you’re gonna get what’s coming to you.”
The cops?
“Hey... who is that?” Frank asked me.
“So what did you think, you could get away with breaking in here twice in one week?”
So she thought we were the bad guys!
Finally, I recognized the voice. “Loretta? Is that you?”
Silence from our school custodian. Then, “Who is that in there?”
“It’s us, Loretta—Frank and Joe Hardy!”
“Huh? What are you two doing here?”
The door was thrown open, and Frank and I tumbled out into the hallway, twitching from the cold. We hopped up and down and rubbed ourselves to get warm, while Loretta stared at us like we were a pair of Martians.
“I thought you were... you know...”
“Yeah, it’s okay, Loretta,” Frank assured her.
“An honest mistake,” I agreed.
“You boys were playing detective again, weren’t you?”
Loretta Rivera has been a friend of ours for a few years now. Once or twice she’s covered for us when we had to leave school in a hurry, hot on the trail of some criminal. But she’s always thought of us as amateurs—and this latest escapade wasn’t going to do our reputation any good.
“You boys ought to let the cops do their thing,” she said, wagging a finger at us.
“Come on, Loretta,” I said. “If the person behind this is a student here, we’re the perfect ones to break the case.”
She sighed. “Kids—you can’t talk sense to them. They think they already know everything.” She shook her head. “You could have died in there. I was gonna call the cops, but what if I wasn’t such a nice person? What if I’d just left you to freeze?”
“We thought the school was deserted,” Frank explained. “We didn’t expect anyone to be around.”
“Oh, well, you know me,” she said with a little smile. “I was just tidying up—you know, with all the mess here, I couldn’t just leave it to rot and stink. I came in here, and it was dark, and then I saw something moving, and two shadows going into the freezer... I just put two and two together, you know?”
“That’s okay, Loretta,” Frank said. “You did the right thing.”
“No harm done,” I said. “Don’t feel bad. You were just trying to do the same thing we were—catch a criminal.”
“I’m glad you understand,” she said, relieved. “So we’re still friends?”
“Totally,” I said.
“Hey,” Frank added, “if you see anything suspicious, could you call us?”
“Okay— after I call the cops.”
We had just said good-bye to Loretta and stepped outside into the warm evening air when Frank’s cell phone started playing its tune. He fished it out and flipped it open.
“Hello? Oh, hi, Dad. What’s up?”
There was a long silence as Frank listened. “Oh... uh-huh... I see...”
At first he seemed relaxed, but then I saw his whole body stiffen, and I knew that this was something important.
“Okay, we’ll be right there.” Frank snapped the phone shut.
“Well?”
“You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Start with the good.”
“Okay. Dad checked out Captain Creamy, and he really is with ATAC.”
“Uh-huh. And... what’s the bad news?”
“Remember George Guthrie?”
I nodded. Who could forget our homeless friend?
“Apparently, he walked out of the shelter last night, took all his stuff with him, didn’t tell anyone where he was going, and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Okay... but lots of homeless people do things like that. It doesn’t mean—”
Frank cut me off with a wave of his hand.
“And now there’s a school bus on fire at the yard!”
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
When we got to the Board of Education complex, the fire department was already there in force. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once as they hosed down the buses next to the one that was in flames.
Other firefighters were trying to get to these buses and drive them away before they exploded from the heat. It wasn’t going to be easy—and it was definitely dangerous work.
Black smoke poured from the inside of the stricken bus, billowing through its shattered windows and from its engine. There wasn’t much left of the bus—just a charred frame.
Dozens of bystanders were gathered around the outside of the chain-link fence, looking into the bus yard.
At the gate, Chief Collig stood with Officer Reilly and a few others. He was talking to the fire chief, who seemed distracted. Every now and then he barked orders into his walkie-talkie.
Then I saw Dad. He was out at the curb, obviously looking for someone— probably us. “Come on, Joe,” I said, and we went over to him.
“Well,” he said when he saw us, “so much for your instincts about George Guthrie.” He looked as unhappy as I felt.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said. “I guess you were right about him. We should have listened to you.”
I still had trouble picturing George Guthrie as a dangerously psycho criminal. But Dad was obviously convinced, and at this point, who was I to argue with him?
“Well, the police have an all-points bulletin out on him,” Dad said. “I imagine they’ll catch him before too long, and that will be the end of this rash of incidents. Too bad we didn’t arrest him when we had the chance.”
I felt lousy. Because of me and Joe, another school bus had been destroyed, and brave men and women were now risking their lives to move other buses out of harm’s way.
“Well, come on,” Dad said, motioning to us. “Let’s go try and find out how this happened.”
We went in through the gates and tried to get as close as we could to the fire without getting in the way. It wasn’t easy.
We had been there for a minute or so, just watching them douse the flames, when one of the firefighters nearest to the bus shouted, “Hey! There’s someone inside!”
An instant megajolt of adrenaline went through me—but I didn’t move. Not right away.
Whoever was inside the bus, I knew there was no safe way of getting him or her out. Not yet—not while flames were still blocking the doorway. I may be brave, but I’m not stupid.
Joe, on the other hand...
Well, let’s just say it wasn’t two seconds before he was climbing the rear bumper of the bus and diving in through the broken back window.
What did I do, you ask?
What else could I do? I followed Joe through the window, ignoring the shouts of alarm from the firefighters and police (Dad, too, I’m sure, although I couldn’t pick out his voice).
Instantly, thick black smoke blotted out my vision, and I started coughing my guts up.
The fire was mostly out, but that didn’t make it any safer. Inhaling smoke can kill you just as easily.
Assuming someone was really in here, we were going to have to get him or her out in a hurry.
I could hear Joe coughing and gagging nearby, but I couldn’t see him at all. My eyes burned something fierce every time I opened them. I kept feeling around with my hands instead, hoping to run across something human.
“Frank!” I heard Joe shout between coughs. “I’ve got him! Help me... get...”
The rest was lost in a cascade of coughing. But following the sound, I soon found Joe, and together we dragged the dead weight of the victim to the rear of the bus, hoisted him out the window, then tumbled out ourselves.
I fell straight to the ground, about to pass out. If a firefighter hadn’t shown up with an oxygen mask just then, I might not have made it.
After a minute or so, I felt much better. That’s when I saw Joe. Dad was bent over him, looking upset—but I could see that Joe was basically going to be okay.
Then I looked around to see what had happened to the guy we dragged out of the bus.
There was a knot of paramedics kneeling down in a circle. I walked over there, still woozy, and saw them giving CPR to the unconscious man.
I froze in my tracks.
It was George Guthrie!
Even a crazy man wouldn’t set himself on fire, would he?
And how did he get in? I guess where there’s a will, there’s a way...
I wished I could talk with him, ask him face-to-face. But it was too late now.
Or was it?
“Hey, he’s coming around!” one of the paramedics yelled.
Sure enough, good old George started coughing and wheezing, coming back to life.
I edged closer, listening to the paramedics talking.
“Is he going to make it?” I asked one of them, a young guy with a mustache.
He looked at me and sighed. “Not likely,” he said. “Burns over most of his body. Plus the lung damage. He’s barely hanging on.”
“I have to talk to him!”
“No way, man.”
“Listen, it’s really, really, REALLY important!”
“Sorry. He’s on his way to the emergency room as soon as we can get the ambulance over here.”
Sure enough, here came the ambulance, sirens and flashers going full blast.
With it came Joe, now walking and breathing on his own.
“What the—? Hey, it’s George!”
“No kidding,” I said.
Then I turned and saw that the paramedic had gone off to speak to the ambulance crew.
There wasn’t a second to lose. I eased my way through the people surrounding George and knelt down beside him. Joe was right behind me.
“Hi, George,” I said. “Hang in there, big guy, you’re gonna make it.”
It was hard to lie to him like that, but I didn’t know what else to say.
He looked right through me for a second. Then he seemed to focus on my face, because his eyes opened wider. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he recognized me.
His lips started moving, but I couldn’t hear anything.
“What’s that you’re saying, George?” Joe asked.
Again, the moving lips, but no sound. I bent over closer to listen.
“Sleeping... in bus...” he whispered in my ear, in between gasps and wheezes.
I remembered George had said he had asthma. All that smoke could only have made things worse.
“George, you didn’t do this, did you?” Joe asked.
He shook his head weakly. “Never... hurt anyone... just... couldn’t stand... living in the shelter anymore...”
He winced and stopped talking.
I reached for an oxygen mask and placed it on his face so he could breathe. I didn’t hold it there long, though. There was no time to lose. The paramedics were setting up the stretcher and the IV tubes. In about thirty seconds, they were going to take George Guthrie away. In his condition, I knew this might be our last chance to talk to him.
“Do you know who did it?” I asked him, getting right to the point.
His eyes drifted away, and I was afraid we were going to lose him before he could say another word. But then he seemed to recover and refocus.
“I... missed living on the bus... so I went back...” he said. “I was just minding... my own business...”
More wheezing and coughing. Our time with him was running out fast.
“George—who did this to you?” I asked again.
“Somebody... threw something... through the window... explosion... fire...”
“Did you see who it was, George?”
He shook his head, and my heart sank. But then he said, “Heard it, though...”
I came instantly to attention. “Heard what?”
“Just before the explosion... strange sound...”
“Yes?”
“Song...”
“Song? What song?”
He took a deep, painful breath—and then he started to sing.
“I’ve... been working on... the railroad...”
Then a deep, rattling sound came from George Guthrie’s throat—and he was gone.
