Everett didn’t say anything as they walked along the dirt trail toward the distant trees. The police were back. Maybe the same cop who’d been calling his mom. Sweat prickled along his neck.
“Aren’t police records public?” Josephine asked.
“Um. I guess. Why?”
“Maybe we could find out more about those cases. Just send a request or something.”
“Maybe.”
The trail dipped into a small gully, then back up. Josephine opened her phone map, and their little blue dot was moving closer to the address she’d marked. “Keep your eyes open,” she said. “There could be bodies right here.”
“I doubt it. I’ve ridden all over this lot.” Still, she brought his attention back to the task at hand, and he began scanning the matted grasses for evidence. They walked only a few minutes more before they came to a barbed wire fence dotted with NO TRESPASSING signs.
“Shit,” Everett cursed.
“You brought the binoculars?”
He dropped his backpack and dug out the used binoculars his mom had bought at a pawnshop back when he was in Boy Scouts. He peered through the sights, focused the lenses, then handed them to Josephine.
“I don’t see the house.”
“I couldn’t find it either.” He looked around. “Let’s walk over to the trees. There’s a rise there. I bet we can see better.”
They followed the line of fencing along uneven ground, stepping around ruts and occasional piles of rocks that had been tossed out of the field. One of the fields had been tilled already, but not yet planted, though he remembered the way the wheat looked swaying green in the summer wind.
The cottonwoods were just starting to leaf, and they looked like they were misted with green fog that caught the sun every once in a while. When they stood beneath the closest tree, they could just make out a couple of roofs past the horizon.
“Want to climb?” Everett asked. Josephine tucked her foot into a V before he’d even finished. Ten feet up, they both reached a solid spot with a perfectly placed branch just in front of their chests and balanced there while Everett passed her the binoculars.
“I think that’s it,” she whispered, as if Alex Bennick might hear her. “The green roof. It had a green roof on satellite view.”
Everett took his turn and nodded. “That seems right. It’s just past that brown farmhouse.”
“Do you see anyone there?”
Everett watched for a long time but saw no movement, though there was a gray SUV in the driveway. They took turns watching for fifteen minutes, but no one ever appeared.
“If he’s dead we would have found that online, right?” he asked.
“I think so.” She turned back to stare at the house. “Do you think we’d feel it? If someone evil were right there?”
“I have no idea.”
She slapped her arm. “A spider! No way, I did not sign up for spiders, Everett Brown.” She reached for the tree trunk. “I don’t think anyone is there, anyway. Do you?”
“It’s pretty quiet.”
“I brought my Switch. Want to go back and play Mario Kart for a while?”
A little defeated now that the fear and excitement had settled down, Everett hesitated. “Tomorrow afternoon is teacher meetings. Can you come over again after our half day?”
“I have a dentist appointment at one, but I can bike over later. Do you think the teachers really have meetings, or do they just take a long weekend?” Josephine was already starting down.
Everett let her begin the climb by herself. She moved carefully, and while she was concentrating on the slow reach for each branch, Everett swung the binoculars around toward the storage center.
His strange and sprawling home sprang into view, closer than Bennick’s house. He stared at the crisp details for a long while, expecting his mom to sneak out of the office and slink her way toward some hidden secret as he watched.
He shifted his view to the road and the parked vehicle that Josephine had said was a cop car. Maybe it was only a security guard. Shadows swallowed all the driver’s features whole.
“You coming?” Josephine called up.
“Yeah.” But as he watched, the cop car suddenly blazed to life, blue and red lights strobing. Everett startled, one foot skimming off the bark he stood on, his elbow cracking hard into a taller branch. He dropped the binoculars to windmill his other hand out in desperation, and his fingers miraculously found a grip. The strap around his neck jerked as it caught the binoculars, scraping his skin. His elbow burned, and so did his pounding heart.