He immediately felt guilty for the thought. He knew his mom had been the one to take care of him all these years. He loved her; she was just always so there.
When Shadow finished her food and climbed into his lap, Everett cuddled her close and absorbed her purring into his body as he imagined an article starting with his newfound love for robotics above a picture of him in his Green Gardening Club T-shirt. He managed a laugh at that.
Then he imagined his mom looking for him like Maria Cotti had looked for her kid. What would his mom even do with her time if Everett wasn’t around? More online classes? Or maybe she’d get married or something.
He froze when he heard the office door open. When his mom’s footsteps creaked closer, he carefully lifted Shadow and set her outside before yanking the blinds down.
“Ev?” she called through his door. “I’m heading out to snip a lock for an auction. You doing okay?”
“I’m fine!” he yelled back.
She’d be gone for a good while. She had to document the belongings removed from a locker, so she couldn’t just snap off a lock and leave.
Everett tiptoed to the apartment door and listened as his mom left. Then he listened harder before he dared to crack open the door to the office. He glanced toward the security camera mounted above the front desk to confirm it was still pointed straight at the door, and then he crept over to the computer.
It was password protected, but he’d sat at this desk next to his mom often enough, smelling the bitter coffee smell that always wafted from the mug next to the keyboard. He knew she used the same password they used on their personal computer.
“Yes,” he whispered when it fired up. But his victory quickly deflated into cold defeat. He’d expected a helpful app with the storage company logo, but at first all he could find were spreadsheets. He finally found an icon for something called Star Logistics, but it only opened a primitive program asking for codes and IDs he couldn’t puzzle out.
“Shit.”
Everett turned to the metal filing cabinets instead. The top drawer seemed filled with mostly blank forms, but the second yielded better results. He immediately grabbed the file labeled B Building Leases—Current and slapped it open on the desk.
“B8,” he muttered as he flipped through the dozens of sheets. “B8, come on.” And there it was, finally. The last page in the file.
Lease Application was typed across the top of the form. The lessee name was filled out in blocky blue ink: Alex Bennick. He recognized his mom’s handwriting below that, naming the unit as B8 and listing the monthly and annual rent charges. That application was stapled to a signed one-page contract. The third sheet was a photocopy of a driver’s license.
An old man.
Everett stared at the unsmiling face for a long time, hoping for a hint. The guy did look like he could be a murderer. And he was right here among them. He’d stood in this room a few feet from their home; he’d spoken to Everett’s mom. Everett shuddered as he looked at the man’s pale skin and narrowed eyes. His flat, hard mouth and short white buzzcut. The copy was grayscale, so Everett couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but the license said blue.
Were they in danger?
Everett blew out a hard breath. Probably not. He could be a bad guy. But he could also just be one of the grumpy old men who got coffee at McDonald’s on school mornings. A grizzled farmer. A bitter retired cop. The guy they brought in to drive the school bus when the regular driver got sick.
Then again, he supposed any of those men could be murderers too. That was the point, wasn’t it? They were always neighbors and fathers and coworkers.
Everett winced when a distant bang of hollow metal chimed from somewhere deep in the complex. He darted to the window to look through the blinds, but the only movement was the nub of a stray dandelion bobbing from a crack in the sidewalk.
He quickly slipped the page into the copier and waited for the flash before stuffing it right back into the folder. One second later, he’d slammed the file drawer, grabbed the copy, and strode straight back to safety. When he got to the desk in their apartment, he hurriedly jotted down the date of the lease agreement before he forgot. It had been rented only two years before.
With his mom out of the office, he could check absolutely anything online, because he’d have plenty of time to close windows and delete history before she made it all the way inside the apartment. Hunching over the keyboard, he began his search.
Alex Bennick was still alive as far as Everett could tell, and he’d been in the Herriman paper multiple times. Not for anything criminal, but he’d been an associate superintendent for the school district. That was incredibly creepy because instead of a cop investigating disappearances, he was a school employee obsessed with missing girls. Yikes.