“You don’t believe me?” Theo asked, wounded.
“Look, Theo, I don’t know if you’re lying, and I don’t know if you’re telling the truth. It’s too early for me, as the detective handling the case, to make that decision. We don’t have much evidence in this case, so far, but what we do have points to you. Do you understand this?”
Theo nodded slightly, but it was obvious he wasn’t pleased with it.
Hamilton looked at his watch, closed a file, and said, “Now, I thank you folks for stopping by, and, as I said, we’ll be in touch.”
The Boones walked out of the police building in a small group. No one was smiling.
Theo tried to study in his office at Boone & Boone, but he was too distracted. A new window had been installed, and the shattered glass had been removed. There was no sign of the damage from yesterday afternoon, but Theo could still hear the crash of the breaking glass, the sharp thud of the rock hitting the bookshelf, the splattering of debris, the shriek of panic from Judge, followed quickly by a furious round of barking in the frantic seconds afterward. Theo could almost hear something else. He thought he had heard it in a dream. He thought he had heard it once that morning at school during first period, before the police showed up and ruined his day. He could almost close his eyes, place himself at his desk when the rock came crashing through, and then, in the seconds that followed, he could almost hear footsteps. Someone was running away. The person who threw the rock was making his escape from close by. Theo wished a dozen times he had been able to catch a glimpse of the person running away.
Who was this mysterious person? Was it an adult? Another student? Male or female? A lone gunman or a member of a gang?
Even Judge seemed a bit jumpy. The first return visit to the scene of the crime brings back bad memories, and Theo found it impossible to do his homework. He finally locked the door, took a peek through the new window, saw no one, and left the building on his bike, with Judge in hot pursuit.
Chapter 10
The photo was sent from an anonymous GashMail account, and initially sent to the in-boxes of a dozen or so students at Strattenburg Middle School. From there it rapidly picked up steam, and by 7:30 Wednesday evening hundreds, if not thousands, of people in town had seen it and knew what it was all about.
It was taken by a person who was determined to remain nameless and faceless, and, evidently, he or she was hiding somewhere across the street when Theo, his parents, and Ike left the police station. The photo clearly showed all four, frowning and worried, and just behind and above them, on the front of the building, in bold letters were the words:
S
tr
a
ttenburg
P
olice
S
t
a
tion
.
With the photo was a description: “Theo Boone, age thirteen, of 886 Mallard Lane, leaves the Strattenburg Police Station with his parents after being arrested for the Tuesday night break-in and burglary of the well-known downtown computer store, Big Mac’s Systems. Sources say the police found stolen merchandise Wednesday morning in Boone’s locker at the middle school. He is expected to appear in Juvenile Court next week.”
As always on Wednesday evenings, the Boones were having Chinese takeout. They were in the den, dining on folding TV trays while watching television. Judge, who considered himself at least half human, was sitting next to Theo, getting an occasional bite of sweet-and-sour shrimp, his favorite. There was almost no conversation over dinner. Theo was burdened by recent events, which seemed to be snowballing. His parents were preoccupied with thoughts of protecting their son. Mrs. Boone hardly nibbled at her chicken chow mein. Mr. Boone chewed with a vengeance, as if he were off in court somewhere slugging it out with the bad guys and proving that Theo had done nothing wrong.
Theo’s cell phone vibrated—a text message was arriving. He glanced at it. April Finnemore, his close friend, said:
TB, check email now. Urgent.
Interrupting dinner was frowned on by his parents, so Theo, between bites, texted back:
What is it?
April replied:
Terrible. Urgent! Go now.
Theo replied:
OK.
He took a few more bites, chewed, and swallowed quickly, then announced, “I’m stuffed.” He stood with his plate and glass and headed for the kitchen.
“That was fast,” his mother said. His father was in another world.
Theo rinsed his plate and went straight for his backpack on the kitchen counter. A few seconds later he was online, then he opened his mailbox. He clicked on “Urgent Message from GashMail,” and saw the photo. Bright, clear, no doubt about who was leaving the police station. His first reaction when reading the description was disbelief. His jaw dropped, his mouth fell open wide, and for several seconds he stared at the image of himself leaving the police station. The shock was quickly replaced by anger. Anger at the lies, the fiction. He had not been arrested. He was not due in court. Then the questions—Who took the photo? Where had they been hiding? Why would anyone tell such outright lies? How many people have seen this? “Guys!” Theo yelled.
His parents crowded behind him and gawked at the monitor sitting on the kitchen counter. A photo taken secretly by some punk and then broadcast to the world with a bunch of lies to describe it. As lawyers, their first reaction was—what could be done legally to stop it, to fix it, to bring the guilty party to justice?
“I’m assuming this is everywhere,” Mrs. Boone said.
“Probably so.” Theo replied.
“What is GashMail?” Mr. Boone asked.
“It’s kind of a shady server you use when you don’t want to get caught. A lot of unknown e-mails start there, and it’s really hard to track them down.”
“So we can’t track this?”
“Anything is possible with the Internet, but it would be complicated and expensive.”
“The Internet,” Mr. Boone said in disgust, and walked to the window above the sink and stared into the darkness of the backyard.
Theo sat down at the table and rubbed his temples. “I guess my life is ruined,” he said, and for a moment was near tears.
“This can be explained, Theo,” his father said. “Your friends will know the truth. What strangers think doesn’t matter.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Dad. You don’t have to face all those kids at school tomorrow. And you don’t know how fast rumors fly on the Internet. Half the town is looking at the photo right now and deciding that I’m guilty.”
Theo’s mother sat next to him and patted his arm. “You’re not guilty of anything, Theo, and the truth will come out.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Mom. You saw Detective Hamilton today. He thinks I’m guilty. What if they don’t find the real thieves? What if they finish their investigation with nothing but me, just me and those three stolen tablets in my locker? At some point, they have to charge somebody with the crime, and it could easily be me. I saw the owner of the store today, they call him Big Mac, and, believe me, he’s convinced I’m guilty and he’s out for blood. He’ll see this photo. The police will see it, too. It makes it easier to believe I’m guilty.”
There was a long, heavy pause as Theo’s words settled in the kitchen. Was reality gradually seeping in? Was it possible that Theo could actually be charged with the crime? And once the wheels of justice began moving, could the Boones do anything to prevent a terrible outcome?
Each tablet had a value of approximately four hundred dollars, for a total of twelve hundred dollars. When the combined value of stolen goods was in excess of five hundred dollars, then the crime was deemed a felony, a more serious crime than a misdemeanor. Theo knew the law; he’d been pondering it for hours now. He had even double-checked the codes and statutes at the office when he was supposed to be doing his homework. If he were eighteen or older, he would be staring at a felony charge. However, because he was only thirteen, the case would be handled in Juvenile Court where the rules were different. Things were more private there. The files were not made public, nor were the hearings. There were no juries; all matters were decided by a Juvenile Court judge. Jail sentences were rare, and seldom for long periods of time.
If this train wreck continued and Theo somehow got convicted, he could possibly be sentenced to a few months in a detention center for kids.
Jail? Theodore Boone sentenced to serve time?
Outrageous. Crazy. An overreaction. All of the above, but Theo’s hyperactive mind was out of control.
His mother was speaking to him. “Theo, the first thing you do is fight back. Attack. When you’re right, you never back down. Post a message on your page and tell the truth. E-mail all your friends and tell them this photo and its caption are misleading. Get April, Chase, and Woody and those you trust the most to flood the Internet with the truth. Spread the word that we, your family, are considering legal action.”
“We are?” Theo asked.
“Of course we are. We are considering it. It might not work, but we are at least considering it.”
“Mom’s right, Theo,” Mr. Boone said. “The least you can do at this point is put up a fight.”
Theo liked it. He had been paralyzed for the past ten minutes, and now it was time for action.
An hour later, the Boones were still at the kitchen table, all three hammering away at their laptops as they tried to chase the rumors while containing them at the same time. It was a losing battle. The photo and its caption were too juicy to ignore, and Theo was proving to be a good target. The only child of two well-known lawyers arrested for breaking and entering, and burglary. Caught red-handed with the stolen goods in his school locker. Like every false rumor, it gained credibility while being repeated, and before long it was practically a fact.
Mr. Boone closed his laptop and began taking notes on his standard yellow pad. At any given moment in Theo’s young life, he could walk through the house and lay eyes on at least five yellow legal pads.
“Let’s do some detective work,” Mr. Boone said. Mrs. Boone removed her reading glasses and closed her laptop, too. She took a sip of herbal tea and said, “Okay, Sherlock Holmes, let’s go.”
“First, who could break into your locker without being seen?” Mr. Boone asked. “I can’t imagine a stranger, an adult, entering the school, going straight to the locker, somehow knowing the code, and breaking in.”
“Agreed,” said Mrs. Boone. “Theo, do you ever see teachers, or coaches, or janitors or any other adult opening the lockers?”
“Never. You never see them around the lockers. The teachers hang out in the faculty lounge. The janitors have a locker room in the basement, but it’s off-limits for students. The coaches use the locker rooms at the gym.”
“So an adult would be noticed?”
Theo thought for a moment, then said, “If we knew the adult, and she was opening one of our lockers, then, sure, we would make a note of it. That would be unusual. If it were a stranger, we would probably say something to the person. I don’t know for sure because it’s never happened.”
“But this is between classes when the halls are busy, right?” asked Mr. Boone.
“Yes.”
“What about while you’re in class and the halls are empty?”
Theo thought some more. “The halls are rarely empty. During class there’s usually someone going somewhere—a student with a hall pass, a janitor, a teacher’s assistant.”
“What about security cameras in the halls?” Mr. Boone asked.
“They took them down a few weeks ago to install a new system.”
Mrs. Boone said, “Sounds to me like it would be too risky for an adult to open a student’s locker.”
“I agree,” Theo said. “But every crime has some risk, right?”
“Sure, but isn’t the risk much greater for someone who does not normally use a locker?”
“Yes,” Mr. Boone said with certainty. “And even riskier for someone from outside the school. I say we eliminate that person. Can we agree that this is an inside job, someone from inside the school?”
Theo shrugged but did not disagree, nor did his mother.
Mr. Boone continued, “Someone who knows how to open the locker. Someone who could steal the code. And, someone with easy access to the bike racks where it takes about two seconds to poke a hole in a tire. Someone who knows Theo’s bike, knows where he parks it. Someone who knows his schedule and movements. Someone who knows Theo well and can watch him without getting caught.”
“Another student?” Theo asked.
“Exactly.”
Mrs. Boone was skeptical. “I find it hard to believe that a thirteen-year-old could break into the computer store, avoid the security cameras, and make a clean getaway.”
“That’s more believable than a janitor or a teacher’s assistant,” Mr. Boone replied.
There was a long pause as the three detectives took a deep breath and considered this. Theo spoke first. “He had a partner, right? Remember the anonymous call from the pay phone near the hospital. Plus, it would take at least two people to haul away all the stolen goods from the computer store.”