The third degree, p.1
The Third Degree, page 1
What a way to go …
The tan pit bull was practically upon them. It leapt into the air just as the plane began to move. Sharp teeth caught the hem of Mollie’s jeans and tore off a piece of material. Then the dog fell.
Slowly the ultralight began to climb, one foot, then two feet.
Then the second pit bull hurled himself through the air. For a moment he appeared to be flying alongside the plane. “Go higher!” Mollie shouted as the dog disappeared from sight.
“I can’t!” Amel cried, his voice cracking. “I have to wait for an opening in the trees.”
The tan pit bull appeared again. This time his paws caught hold of the plane. Mollie couldn’t believe it. He was hanging on. She could see his beady black eyes and the powerful jaw of sharp teeth. Mollie knew that once a pit bull sunk its teeth into you, its jaws locked and there was no escape. What a way to go! Mollie thought.
The Third Degree
A Molly Fox Mystery
Peter Nelson
CHAPTER 1
“This is really scaring me, Mollie!”
Mollie knew that Roberta Baldwin didn’t scare easily. Cradling the phone between her cheek and shoulder, Mollie grabbed a pen from the desk in front of her. As Roberta spoke, Mollie jotted notes on the back of a crumpled receipt from the video-rental store.
Jaime … missing … diabetic … needs insulin … gone fishing with his grandfather … maybe??? Insulin! Insulin! Insulin! … Remember! Don’t tell Roberta.
“Okay, get a grip,” Mollie finally interrupted her friend. “I bet Jaime is fine. He’s probably just been delayed.”
“You’re right,” Roberta agreed, calming herself. “I’m sure he’s fine, too. It’s just that I finally get a boyfriend, and he goes and gets himself missing. But probably not missing. But maybe missing. What if he fell in the woods on his way back from fishing and broke his leg and can’t get up and … and …”
“Would you feel better if we went and looked for him ourselves?” Mollie asked.
“I know it’s silly … but would you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind. I’d feel better, too. You know me and waiting.”
“It makes you insane.”
“Totally.” Mollie did hate to wait, but she was anxious to find their friend Jaime Santos for another reason. Jaime was a diabetic. If he was stranded somewhere without his insulin, he could be in big trouble. She couldn’t tell Roberta this. Jaime had sworn Mollie to secrecy. “Sherman will be here in five minutes to run the line,” she told Roberta. “I’ll pick you up in about a half hour.”
“Thanks, Mol,” Roberta said, hanging up.
Mollie pushed back on the desk chair and absently gathered her shoulder-length red hair on top of her head. She sat for a moment, her hands resting on her head, and gazed around the basement room.
The room had a long history. It had been a bomb shelter in the fifties and had stayed that way, quiet and thankfully unbombed, until Nick Keverian rediscovered it several months back.
The forgotten bomb shelter was the perfect place to set up his Insurance Shoppe, a sham company specializing in worthless earthquake insurance. It was rent free. And it wasn’t included on the blueprint of the Old Bayside Mall, under which it was located. No one knew that it even existed.
At least not anyone who could get in Nick’s way. Or so he thought. Just a bunch of naive teenagers he hired to sell bogus insurance, unwittingly, over the phone.
Mollie Fox had been one of them. So had Roberta Baldwin, Meredith Hughes, Janet Tze, Johnny Chelios, Sherman Hermanson, and Jaime Santos. The seven very different teens might never have become close if it hadn’t been for one earthshaking event.
The insurance was fake, but the earthquake turned out to be quite real.
Since they were in Bayside, a suburb of San Francisco, the chances of an earthquake occurring weren’t entirely remote. Minor dishrattlers happened with some regularity. This earthquake was a bit more formidable. It wasn’t the cataclysmic California-into-the-ocean quake that people feared. But it definitely made its mark on the Richter scale.
It made its mark on Old Bayside Mall, too. Specifically, a good deal of the mall collapsed on top of the bomb shelter. The bomb shelter that everyone had forgotten about.
That was how Mollie and the others got trapped together. Keverian and his sidekick, Benny Musante, had left early that evening, leaving them behind. And they stayed there—hungry and terrified—for sixty hours. Keverian didn’t want anyone snooping in his illegal business, so he “forgot” to mention the trapped teens to the authorities. Their families knew they were missing, but they weren’t sure where to tell the rescue teams to look.
It was during those days and nights of fear and darkness that Mollie discovered her natural leadership ability. She also discovered the tunnels. Tunnels that led from the bunker to various outlets. They followed one of them to freedom, light—and food.
End of story? Not by a long shot.
Only a short while after they escaped, each of them was inexplicably drawn back to the shelter. It should have been the last place they’d want to revisit.
But it wasn’t.
It was a place where they’d survived near-certain death. A bond had formed between them—a bond that still existed and that none of them wanted to break. They began calling themselves the “Mall Rats,” referring to the fact that they had been trapped underground like vermin.
This room—the Rats’ Nest—became their clubhouse. It had everything: phones, illegally rigged by Keverian; furniture, now supplemented with homey touches of their own; a refrigerator, now amply stocked; Keverian’s computer. And best of all, privacy. No one knew it was there.
A cursor blinked on the computer switchboard in front of Mollie. “Truth Line,” she said into the receiver.
“I want to talk about drugs,” said an anonymous male voice. “My brother is definitely a cokehead. I’ll feel guilty if I tell my parents, and guilty if I don’t.”
“Which makes you feel worse?” Mollie asked. The Truth Line was a service the Mall Rats had decided to offer their schoolmates. During certain hours the phones in the shelter were open for confessions, discussions, anything-goes talk—as long as it was true. It wasn’t a counseling line, just a place to vent feelings and opinions. The Mall Rats took turns monitoring the line.
The cursor blinked again, signaling a second call. “Hold on,” Mollie told the first caller. “Truth Line,” she said, picking up the second phone.
“My boyfriend wants me to smoke crack with him,” came a nameless female voice. “I don’t want to, but I’m thinking about doing it anyway. I don’t want to lose him.”
Just then a wiry guy with sandy-brown hair and glasses hurried into the room. Mollie wiggled her fingers at him in greeting. “I’m going to patch you into a conference call,” Mollie told the girl on the second line. “I think you two will have a lot to talk about.” She returned to the first caller. “I’m patching you into another call. Maybe you guys can come up with some answers.”
Mollie muted the voices on the speaker-phones. “Hey, Sherman,” she said, smiling. Then her gray eyes narrowed as she looked Sherman over. His glasses were fogged, and he was sweating and panting. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t believe what just happened. I almost had to beat the Play-Doh out of Chucky Duva,” he said, referring to the worst bully at Bayside High.
“Where’d you run into him?” Mollie asked, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
Sherman began pulling pens from the pocket of his white shirt. “Even my pens are leaking,” he complained. “It seems that the Chuckster has suddenly discovered Aladdin Land!” Aladdin Land was a video arcade that was still open in the partially restored mall. After the quake the Mall Rats had discovered that one of the thirteen tunnels led to a doorway behind the pinball machines.
“I was trying to get down here when Duva spotted me. He had the brilliant idea that I was the perfect guy to do his chemistry homework for him.”
Mollie no longer thought of Sherman as a nerd, but she could see how others might view him that way. Especially Neanderthal jerks like Chucky Duva.
“I told him I was in a hurry, but he stood in front of me and wouldn’t let me go,” Sherman told her.
“What did you do?”
Sherman raised one finger. “I was suddenly reminded of international politics. I swiftly discerned a parallel between my potentially explosive predicament and the historically volatile situation in the Middle East.”
“You negotiated?” Mollie suggested.
“Uh … no.”
“You waged war?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I told Chucky his homework Ku-wait and then I-ran!”
“Oh, geez!” Mollie laughed. She wasn’t sure if she loved or hated Sherman’s constant punning.
“You have to admit, I was between I-raq and a hard place,” Sherman continued. “I ran all the way out of the mall and then slipped back in through the employees-only door. That Chucky is one mean dude.”
“Hey, aya-tollah you so,” Mollie quipped. “He’s a real Koh-meanie-ac.”
“Good one,” Sherman approved.
“Listen,” Mollie said, growing serious. “We might have a problem. About ten minutes ago Jaime’s grandmother called and said he was supposed to be at her house for dinner, but he never showed. She was frantic. I told Roberta and now she’s frantic, too. She and I are going to go look for him.”
Sherman pressed his lips together pensively. “He’s probably okay,” he said after a moment. “You females worry too much. Us real-men need to be free, unfettered by clucking womenfolk.”
Mollie got up and grabbed her denim jacket. “I didn’t know you had changed your name to Sherman Schwarzenegger.”
“Not Schwarzenegger,” Sherman scoffed. “I changed it to Stormin’ Sherman Schwartzkopf. Schwarzenegger. Schwartzkopf. Who’d ever have guessed that Schwarz would be the root of all macho names in the nineties? Sherman Schwarzmanson. What do you think?”
Mollie laughed. “Sounds lean and mean. But I’d be careful about the first name. Squirmin’ Sherman. Vermin Sherman. Could be risky.”
At that moment another phone rang. “Let me know when you find Jaime,” Sherman said just before picking up the receiver.
“I will,” Mollie assured him.
“You like to do what with avocados?” she heard Sherman shriek into the phone as she hurried out the door.
Mollie dashed down the tunnel and quickly climbed a ladder that led to the back room of Aladdin Land. Not wanting to be delayed by Chucky Duva, she slipped out the employee entrance into the parking lot. Her Jeep, affectionately dubbed Fathead, sat in the lot waiting for her. Soon she was driving toward a working-class section of Bayside known as the Wharves.
No sooner had she pulled up in front of Roberta’s small, neat house than her friend came bounding out the door. Roberta scrambled into the front seat of the Jeep. “Let’s go to Jaime’s,” she suggested immediately.
“Hi to you, too,” Mollie said with a smile. “Let’s go.”
Jaime also lived in the Wharves, so it didn’t take long to get to his house. “That’s it,” Roberta said, pointing to a pale-blue house on the corner of a block of narrow, attached homes. In front of the house was a small, mostly cement front yard. Off to the right of the yard, a dark-haired woman stood watering a narrow strip of garden.
“His mother doesn’t look too worried,” Mollie observed as she pulled to the curb.
“That’s not his mom,” Roberta told her.
Mollie looked at Roberta. “You mean he’s taken you home to meet his parents? This is more serious than I thought.”
Roberta gave Mollie a playful shove. “I’ve only met his mother. His father follows the rodeo. He used to ride broncos or something, but he’s been hurt so many times that he just handles the animals now.”
“Has he met your folks?” Mollie asked.
“Not yet.” Roberta sighed. “I haven’t worked up the guts. I’m sure my father will find something not to like about Jaime. Don’t ask me what, but he’ll find it.”
“He’s pretty particular, huh?”
“Not really—he hates all boys!” Roberta joked. “He wants me to be thirty before I start dating. He says, ‘I know boys!’ I say, ‘Well, that’s great, but I don’t because you won’t let me!’ Then he says, ‘Damn right!’ The man watches way too much Cosby.”
Mollie laughed, then looked back at the woman in Jaime’s front yard. “If that’s not his mom, then who is she?”
“Beats me,” Roberta said with a shrug. The girls got out of the Jeep and approached the woman.
“Hi,” Mollie said. “We’re friends of Jaime Santos. Do you know if he’s around?”
The woman looked at them blankly.
“Donde esta Jaime, por favor?” Roberta ventured, using her high-school Spanish. “Esta aquí?”
“Ah, Jaime!” the woman cried, brightening. She spoke to Roberta rapidly in Spanish.
“I think I got it,” Roberta said, turning to Mollie. “She said that his father is with the rodeo. His mother has gone out to Tulare to visit his father, and Jaime has gone to visit his grandmother. She’s a neighbor and is just watering the garden while they’re gone.”
“El fue a buscar un kangaroo,” the woman added.
“What?” Mollie asked Roberta.
Roberta wrinkled her brow into a puzzled expression. “I think she said, ‘He went to find a kangaroo’!”
“Sí! Sí!” the woman said. “Un kangaroo!”
CHAPTER 2
“This is definitely your basic clue,” Mollie observed, flattening a crumpled newspaper article on her knee. The Santoses’ neighbor had taken the clipped article from her pocket and handed it to Roberta. Apparently, Jaime had shown her the article early that morning when he came over to give her the keys to his house.
“Mira! Un kangaroo,” the woman said, pointing to the black-and-white photo of the small kangaroolike creature.
“Well, kind of,” Mollie agreed. The picture showed a wallaby, a much smaller Australian animal. “It’s kind of the compact model of kangaroos,” she added.
“Un wallaby,” Roberta told the neighbor.
The woman shrugged as she turned off the water spigot. “Buenos tardes,” she said, disappearing into the house next door.
Mollie and Roberta returned to the Jeep, where Mollie began to read the article aloud: “Jocko the wallaby was reported missing from the Lima Brothers Carnival at five A.M. Thursday. The carnival is currently situated in the small town of Lost Camp near the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Jocko’s trainer, Mr. William Brighton, admitted that the lock on the cage was rusted and that Jocko might simply have pushed the door open. At this time thievery or foul play is not suspected. Mr. Brighton is offering a five-hundred-dollar reward for the return of Jocko. This offer has set off a massive search in Lost Camp.”
“Lost Camp, huh?” Roberta said.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Mollie questioned.
“I have this vague memory of Jaime mentioning Lost Camp,” she said. Mollie had seen this absent look on her friend’s face before. It was as if Roberta were trying to recall stored data in the same way computers retrieved back files. Mollie half expected a blinking message to appear on Roberta’s forehead that read: WAIT. ACCESSING FILE.
Roberta snapped her fingers. “Jaime’s grandparents live in Lost Camp.” The file had been accessed.
“That’s four hours away,” Mollie noted. “I thought his grandmother was calling me from around here.”
Roberta’s face suddenly fell. “Oh, no,” she said. “I think I know what’s going on. Jaime asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told him I wanted a mountain bike.”
“What!” Mollie cried. “They cost at least three hundred dollars.”
“I wasn’t serious,” Roberta said defensively. “That’s what I want. I didn’t mean he should get it for me.”
“Well, he’d have five hundred dollars if he found that wallaby,” Mollie said. “And his grandparents do live there, so—”
“You mean that numskull is out in the woods looking for a wallaby?” Roberta cut in. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. He’s probably so caught up in the search that he’s forgotten all about time.”
Mollie was glad Roberta felt better. But she was still concerned. Since Jaime hadn’t taken his insulin with him to work at The Insurance Shoppe, it didn’t seem likely to Mollie that Jaime would have bothered taking it into the woods. He would have to return for his injection. The fact that he hadn’t told Mollie something was wrong. “Let’s go back to your house and call Jaime’s grandmother,” she suggested. “Maybe he’s back there by now.”
They drove back to Roberta’s house and went in. It was the first day of fall break at Berkeley, and Roberta’s mother, who was a professor there, was home.
“Mollie, dear, how are you?” Alicia Baldwin greeted them.
“I’m okay, Mrs. Baldwin.”
“Mollie has to make a quick long-distance call,” Roberta said. “Is that okay? It’s in state.”
“Certainly,” Alicia replied. “Go right ahead.”
Mollie followed Roberta into the kitchen. “Why did you say I wanted to call?” Mollie hissed.
Roberta arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you know that my mother thinks you’re Mother Teresa’s kid sister? She’d do anything for you. Now, if I asked to make the call, she’d want to know why, and to whom, and ‘Who is this grandmother of this person I’ve never met?’ And why hasn’t she met him and—”
Mollie laughed. “Okay. I get the picture.”
She dialed directory assistance for the town of Lost Camp. “Mrs. Santos, please,” she requested. The operator gave her the number, but when Mollie dialed it, there was no answer.
