46
ANSON
The Kid was sitting up in his bed, and some of the bandages were gone.
The one covering his right eye had been removed, replaced with a white patch held in place by thin strips of tape.
The surrounding skin was black, purple, and various shades of yellow, but it was clear the swelling had gone down and he was on the mend.
A laptop was resting on his legs. He was so invested in whatever was on the screen that he didn’t see me come in.
When he did notice me, he cocked his head, narrowed his visible eye, and twisted his swollen lips into a pirate snarl. “Arrrrggghh, me matey!”
Life had returned to his voice. A resilience you could only find in the young.
The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on me.
He was twelve, and I was only fifteen—both of us young, but somehow, I felt like I’d done some substantial growing up since the fire at my home in Simpsonville.
I suppose, in his own way, the Kid had grown up a bit, too. Twelve going on twenty-five.
Paul and Vincent came in behind me, deep in some hushed conversation. I couldn’t make it out, and when they saw me in the room, both went quiet. Vincent gave me a short glance and tossed a KitKat bar onto the bed next to the Kid. His favorite. “Stole that from a blind man downstairs.”
“You did not.”
“I told him the one-eyed man is king and the king needs to eat.”
“I’m pretty sure the saying is, ‘In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,’” I told him. “No mention of KitKats.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Paul took a quick look out into the hallway and closed the door, then he settled into one of the chairs and scratched his cheek. “So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
“Well, duh.” He pointed at the wall behind me.
When I turned, I realized Paul had been busy.
Not unlike the memorial wall in the cafeteria, the Kid’s wall was covered in sketches.
Libby, Tegan, and Kristina were up there.
There were also drawings of Ms. Finicky, and Detectives Welderman and Stocks.
Another drawing of Van Man was there, even more detailed than the one he gave me yesterday.
It was the last sketch on the right that drew my eyes, though, and made me step closer.
“Anson Bishop, meet Officer Sam Porter,” Paul said from behind me as I stared up at the sketch.
Until now, I’d only gotten glimpses of Sam Porter—from a distance back at Finicky’s, when he pulled up in the patrol car, and at the hospital, where nearly his entire face and head were covered in bandages.
Paul’s drawing made me feel like I was standing in the room with the man.
Like he was looking at me as I studied him.
“Stash gave the Kid a laptop so he could keep himself busy,” Vincent explained. “Turns out, he’s pretty good with the thing.”
“It wasn’t hard,” the Kid said. “Once Paul gave me Porter’s name, I just did a bunch of searches. He’s been in the paper from the shooting and all.”
The shooting where he killed Weasel in that alley.
Where he took a bullet but somehow managed to crawl away.
Just the thought of it made my blood boil.
Weasel had been a good kid. An innocent.
He didn’t deserve that. From the drawing on the wall, Porter’s eyes seemed to look down at me, follow me.
Part of me was glad the man didn’t die instantly.
That would have been too good for him. He deserved a slow death. A painful death.
“Once I found the stories on the shooting,” the Kid continued, “I worked my way back. It wasn’t much of anything.”
“The Kid’s being modest,” Vincent said. “He pieced together Porter’s entire career with Charleston PD.
From the moment he joined the force to the second he took that bullet.
He managed to pull his employee file, arrest reports, even got to his healthcare records over at Roper.
He’s improving, by the way. You wanna know when Porter pisses, the Kid’s got a spreadsheet. We know everything about him.”
I had no idea how the Kid could get to all that. “Aren’t those sorts of things secured?”
“Security at most bigger institutions is a joke,” the Kid said.
“Me and Weasel had a computer at our last foster home before Finicky’s, and we used to take turns hacking into networks, seeing who could get the furthest. We’d time each other.
Weasel was pretty good, but if he won, it was usually because I let him.
He’d get stuck on hex encryption, sometimes multilayer keys, too, but I breezed right through those. ”
I must have had a blank look on my face, because Vincent said, “I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about either, but the bottom line is he got us a ton of information on Porter. That’s not the best part, though.” He glanced at the Kid. “Show him.”
A smile crept across the Kid’s face as he turned the laptop around so I could see the screen. Van Man looked back at me. He was facing forward, a blue background behind him. I didn’t recognize it at first, but then I did. “Is that—”
“It’s his DMV record.” The Kid beamed. “That database was a little harder than the police department, but I cracked it. I think I could have gotten it faster if I wasn’t still on the painkillers. They’re making my brain a little mushy.”
“Derrick Hillburn,” Vincent said. “That’s Van Man’s real name. He’s Sam Porter’s partner. Well, at least he was. As of yesterday, he transferred to narcotics. The piece of shit somehow pulled a promotion based on some bullshit spin with Weasel.”
“Class A coverup,” Paul said. “According to the police report Van Man filed on the shooting, Weasel had a ton of drugs on him.”
“Weasel didn’t have any drugs . . .”
Paul rolled his eyes. “Well, duh. Van Man and Porter planted them. Had to. Probably right after they shot him. Made the whole thing look like a big drug bust gone wrong. Porter’s up for a commendation for taking that bullet, and Van Man—Hillburn—got his detective shield and reassignment to narcotics. ”
“Fuckers used Weasel to get ahead,” Vincent muttered. “Both of them. Crooked scumbag fuckers. No better than Welderman and Stocks.”
“Worse,” Paul said.
I found myself nodding as I listened, but I only half heard them. I was studying the text next to Van Man’s photograph—his address.