The Death Catchers (13 page)

We were completely busted.

 

Brainstorming

“Let me do the talkin',” Bizzy said softly.

I looked up. Sheriff Schmidt was in front of us, whistling while skeptically shaking his head. He wore his cowboy hat, green and yellow uniform, and boots. This time, he was also wearing sunglasses. He smirked.

“Well, ladies,” he said, taking his time as he examined our bike-wheelchair contraption, “this is a first.”

“You ain't never seen a girl and her grandmamma out for a bicycle ride?” Bizzy snarled.

“Not when the girl in question is towing her grandmother like a rickshaw driver,” Sheriff Schmidt said, raising his voice to match Bizzy's.

“Dixie's in the shop, Sheriff. What else am I s'posed to do?”

“Where were you two coming from?” the sheriff asked, looking directly at me.

“I convinced Lizzy to take me out for a spin,” Bizzy said, not altering her tone one bit.

“That's funny … because I've been tailing you two since you left the cannery. Now why would a girl and her elderly grandma be at a place like that, do ya think?” Sheriff Schmidt said, mocking Bizzy's accent.

“I don't have to put up with your ageist slurs. The cannery's a Crabapple historical landmark. Sure, we stopped there.
S'pose
you never seen a grandma explainin' town history to her granddaughter, neither?”

Sheriff Schmidt squinted at Bizzy as he removed his hat.

“You haven't
taken
anything from the premises?”

“Stealin'? From the cannery? Are you plain outta your mind, Sheriff? What would we be stealin' from there?”

“These are routine questions,” Sheriff Schmidt said defensively.

“Aren't
routine
questions usually tied to reality?”

That's when Sheriff Schmidt got really furious. His left eyebrow crept clear up to the middle of his forehead. He leaned in closer. Then closer. He put his index finger inches from Bizzy's face.

“Listen, Beatrice. I could arrest you for trespassing if I wanted to. But how's it gonna look if I lock up a recuperating old lady? I get it. You're trying to incite me. But I'm not an idiot. People may think you're harmless, but I know better. There have been several reports of strange noises coming from within the cannery and now I
know
it's you,” he said, jabbing his finger in Bizzy's face. Bizzy's hard expression remained unchanged. “I'm not going to arrest you … THIS TIME. Instead I'm going to get back into my car and pretend I didn't see you. I don't know what you're up to, but I suggest you not go anywhere near the cannery again. Are we clear?”

The sheriff was nearly quaking with anger by the end of his speech. He lowered his hand and stared at Bizzy. Bizzy pursed her lips. Her jaw jutted out and for a moment I thought she might take a swing at the sheriff. Instead, she nodded her head once, slightly.

Sheriff Schmidt put on his hat and stormed back to his squad car. When he'd cleared the area, I looked at Bizzy, expecting her to say something.

“That man sure is unpleasant.” It was as if the whole incident amused her. “And I don't think he's playin' with a full deck. He cudda dragged us down to the station on account a' you not wearing a helmet and me endangerin' you with this makeshift rickyshaw. But he couldn't think a' that. Had to make up some dang theory about us stealin' from the cannery.”

“But we did steal from the cannery …,” I said, waving the
Hot Wheels
magazine in front of us.

“We only collected some trash. He was actin' like it was somethin' much bigger that he was concerned about. Tell you one thing, we know
someone
's been hangin' 'round the cannery.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You better step on it,” Bizzy said, making a mushlike movement with her hands. She gave me a smile that urged me on. I straightened up and pushed off the ground with my heels. Before long, we were chugging up the hill toward the house.

When I got home, I ran upstairs, telling Bizzy I had to use the bathroom. My face was flushed from the strain of the bike ride home. Bizzy said she would wait for me downstairs—anxious to reveal the next step of her plan.

To be completely honest, Mrs. Tweedy, I was concerned about Bizzy. At first, she'd wowed me with her supreme confidence in all things death-specter related, but I was visibly shaken after Sheriff Schmidt's sidewalk warning.

The sheriff had treated Bizzy as if she was a bad person—as if he was sure she was hiding something. Did he know something I didn't?

I turned on the faucet and splashed water on my face.

My confusion morphed into anger at Sheriff Schmidt. He'd made me doubt Bizzy, but she was only trying to do what she could to stop Drake's death. To accomplish that, I realized, she was going to need my help without me second-guessing her.

I thundered down the stairs and hallway into Bizzy's room. She was in her wheelchair with the Crabapple yearbook in her lap.

“What I can't figure,” Bizzy said, without looking up as she studied my notes in the back of the yearbook, “is what's gonna be the cause of the cannery burnin' up. Unless someone torches it on purpose.”

“What do you mean?” I sunk down on Bizzy's bed. For the first time since I'd entered her room, I faced the photo-covered wall opposite her bed.

“Holy …,” I said, trailing off. The duct-taped wall of photos had been peeled away completely, resting in a roll in the corner. Behind the rolled-up mural of pictures and notes was an erasable white wall with Bizzy's writing all over it. In the corner where the wall of photos had once begun, I noticed a strip of Velcro. It must have held the pictures in place and allowed Bizzy to roll them back whenever she pleased.

“It ain't permanent marker or anythin'—I just like to sketch out ideas and such,” Bizzy said matter-of-factly.

“It's a brainstorm,” I said, scanning a few of the interconnected phrases. In almost every language arts class, we'd had to brainstorm before we wrote. You called it prewriting, Mrs. Tweedy. No offense, but whatever it's called, I don't like it.

This brainstorm was different.

On one side, there was a numbered list printed in large purple letters with a box drawn around it:

Accidental Causes of Death

 
1. Motor vehicle crashes

 
2. Falls

 
3. Poisoning (solids/liquids)

 
4. Drowning

 
5. Fires and burns

 
6. Suffocation

 
7. Firearms

 
8. Poisoning by gases

 
9. Medical and surgical complications

10. Misadventures and machinery

Next to the numbered list, more malevolent causes of death had been scribbled in—like murder and various diseases.

Bizzy saw me studying the list.

“Helps me visualize so I don't overlook anythin',” Bizzy said. “Almost fifteen thousand people in the US die from accidental falls a year. Only thing that trumps it is, a' course, auto accidents. A car's nothin' more than a two-ton killin' machine.”

Bewildered, I nodded my head.

“You'd probably also be fascinated to know that plenty more people die after an earthquake due to structural uncertainties and explosions from gas leaks than from the quake itself.”

I moved to the other side of the uncovered section of wall. It was blank except for two words and a few numbers written at the top in purple marker: “Jodi Sanchez” and yesterday's date—the date I'd seen my first death-specter. There were dozens of purple smudges on that half of the wall, evidence of many names and facts that had been written and erased.

“Be a doll and get a wet cloth to wipe the wall.”

“When did you write Jodi up there?”

“As soon as you had your first specter. In fact, I was staring at it when I realized you might try to look for her right then and there. When you weren't in the livin' room, I knew that's where you'd gone. So I got there as fast as I could.”

I had to hand it to Bizzy … her system may have seemed unorthodox, but her instincts were pretty impressive.

She picked up a small red book from her lap and handed it to me. I opened it. All the pages were blank.

“What's this?”

“A notebook. I want you to write down every single thing you learn about Drake. We'll chart everythin' here eventually.” She handed me a marker.

I stood on my tiptoes and wrote Drake's name on the top of the wall, then a dash, then December 15. I stepped back and Bizzy grabbed the marker from my hand and wheeled herself to the wall. About halfway up, she wrote “The Cannery” in large letters and “Who's living there?” beneath it. The marker squeaked as she moved it against the wall. “Connection to Drake?” she wrote, then wheeled backward so that she was next to me.

We both stared at the wall. I turned to Bizzy, who looked lost in her own thoughts.

“Hmmm,” she said aloud.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“I'm thinkin' we need a whole lot of information if we're gonna solve this before our deadline,” she said. Her choice of words forced me to think about what would happen if we failed—if Drake actually, well … if he actually ended up all alone, in that warehouse, crying out for help.

“Sweet Pea, are you cryin'?”

I put my open palms over my face. I could feel the hot tears streaming from my eyes. I was embarrassed, but once the tears started falling, I was incapable of stopping them. I was getting to know Drake. Drake was nice. As far as I could tell, he was perfect. I thought about how close Jodi had come to fulfilling the death-specter. It scared the living daylights out of me. Drake didn't deserve what fate had planned for him.

“What is it?” Bizzy questioned, pushing her chair back so that she could get a better look at me.

“What if all this doesn't work?” I asked.

“All what doesn't work?”

“What if we fail and Drake dies?”

“Come now! What's brought all this on? We ain't gonna fail!”

“It seems like all Emily Dickinson writes about is dying … she was obsessed with it and sad and it's probably because once she found out about us, she couldn't make sense of any of it or get over how quickly a life can disappear.”

Even now, I don't know what possessed me to blurt out my theories about the cause of Emily Dickinson's depression. But ever since I'd bought the volume of her poems at Mickey's bookstore, I'd become fixated on her, staying up late into the night reading her poems. I think I was secretly hoping that I'd find a way to escape my fate as a Death Catcher. Instead, I found grim depictions like “
Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me; / The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality
.” The idea of riding anywhere in a carriage with death made me want to vomit.

“You just ain't been readin' the
right
ones of Emily's poems,” Bizzy said, interrupting my thoughts. “
If I can stop one heart from breakin', / I shall not live in vain; / If I can ease one life the achin', / Or cool one pain, / Or help one fainting robin / Unto his nest again, / I shall not live in vain
.”

“You've read Emily Dickinson?”

“A' course I have, Sweet Pea. Your great-great-great-grandmother saved her life and Emily, who was smart as a whip, caught wind of our talents. Emily became your great-great-great-grandmother's confidante. And in return, Emily was like our own poet laureate—I think it changed the way she thought 'bout the world. Since then, every Death Catcher has known 'bout Emily. I had to find out for myself what all the fuss was over.”

I can't exactly explain it, but the revelation made me feel closer to Bizzy. She, too, had also looked up Emily Dickinson, hoping to unlock some of the mysteries of the Death Catchers.

“Now, I know dear ole Emily had a habit a' writin' a depressin' rhymin' couplet or two, but it ain't all bad,” Bizzy said, craning her neck toward me. “No mistakin' it, the job we got handed is no easy task.” Emotion was gathering in Bizzy's voice. Her eyes misted over. “What you must realize, honeychile, is that death is a part of life … and sometimes there ain't nothin' we can do about it. No use lyin' to you: I've lost a couple a' tough ones in my day.” Bizzy paused for a few seconds. “But there ain't no way I'm gonna let one of your first specters slip through our fingers.” She clamped her jaw shut and sniffed. The sentiment in her voice had all but drained away. She blinked many times in a row until her eyes returned to normal. “You hear me?”

I heard her, and I wanted desperately to believe her. My grandma was a force, a dynamo, a woman not to be trifled with. But she was also newly out of the hospital, wheelchair bound, a public menace, and over seven decades old. I turned back to the wall.

“What now?” I asked.

“Well, first thing we gotta do is gather more information,” she said. “The cannery was a start, but I'm talkin' some ole-fashion observation. A person's death is most often intimately tied to his life. Which means, for a spell at least, you're gonna have to be on Drake like white on rice.”

I nodded. I clutched the small journal Bizzy had given me.

“Things aren't as clear when they're inside your head as they are when you write 'em on a piece of paper. So, when you learn somethin' 'bout Drake, it's real important that you write it down right away.”

That I could do. As long as it didn't mean I'd have to talk to him.

 

The Analysis

Mrs. Tweedy, you know how you told us that with any good story, there's always more going on than just the words on the page? How if we take the time to analyze and question what the author means and how it affects us, we'll begin to understand on a deeper level? “Our impression of the words matters more than the words themselves,” was how you put it.

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure all that applies to people, too.

Watching what someone does or says is the first step to knowing a person. When you start thinking about why someone says or does something—that's when things really get interesting.

The first few weeks Jodi and I tailed Drake Westfall, we only observed him. We learned that Drake always parked in the same spot in the lot. He had a postcard of a Salvador Dali painting hanging in his locker. He liked graphic novels and had a different one in his backpack every week. As part of Jodi's plan, after school we went to her apartment and we would play her mom's punk and ska albums, as Jodi carefully instructed me on the details.

After a week of careful monitoring, Jodi decided that I was ready for some “forced serendipity.” Basically, I was supposed to purposefully bump into Drake when he was alone and pretend it was an accident.

We decided my best chance was recess. Drake's recess behavior was very unusual. As soon as the dismissal bell rang, Drake would get in the cafeteria line and buy a Dr Pepper. Then he would walk out to the edge of the grass, beyond the soccer fields, and stand near the fence of the high school. He'd check to make sure no one else was around. He would take out a small slim notebook and write in it, sipping his Dr Pepper. Sometimes, he'd stare off into space and not write anything at all.

Jodi named the red journal that Bizzy had given me the DWOR, which stood for Drake Westfall Observational Research. In it, we'd sketched out Drake's exact location during recess and the path for my approach. We considered it an airtight plan.

There was a cluster of trees in the corner of the field near where Drake liked to stand. There was a bench in front of the cluster. If I arrived there and hid behind the trees while Drake was waiting in line to buy his Dr Pepper, I'd have the perfect lookout point. Once Drake was standing near the fence, I would slip out of the trees and sit on the bench. I could then start a conversation and pretend I'd been there the whole time and he hadn't noticed me.

Once the bell rang, Jodi wished me luck and I sprinted toward the trees. I thought about Bizzy's latest advice.

“No one finds anythin' out by bein' shy,” she'd said one morning, trying to encourage me. “Ain't nothin' wrong with bein' bold and brazen.”

I arrived at the cluster of trees and I stood behind one, testing how much I could see of Drake's usual spot. I had a perfect view, about ten feet away. I didn't have to wait long until Drake came striding up. The crack of the Dr Pepper can opening echoed through the field. Everything was still, though I could feel my pulse quicken. I tried to breathe quietly. Drake rustled through his backpack ten feet in front of me. I was sure he was pulling out his notebook. I closed my eyes. Swallowing hard, I resolved that in four seconds, I would take my first glimpse from behind the tree. Four … three … two …

“Lizzy?”

Startled, I let out a little yelp and jumped to my feet.

I was standing eye to eye with Drake. He was in front of the bench and I was behind it.

He scrunched his eyebrows together and looked at me curiously. “Are you hiding out?”

“Maybe,” I said. My stomach burned, an inferno of ignited nerves. It felt like someone was holding a hot poker to my left hand. Drake's name was on fire. I slid the new wide-band watch I had bought down my wrist, making sure it covered my brightly glowing palm. Then I looked down at Drake's hands—he was clutching the slim notebook in one and a pencil in the other.

He sat down and motioned for me to sit next to him. I walked around the bench and sat, leaving less than a foot between us. I couldn't believe I was so close to Drake Westfall.

“What are you hiding from?” he asked. His eyes gleamed even though it wasn't sunny out. He tightened his grip on the notebook.

“Everything, I guess,” I finally answered. “If I sit in the middle of the trees, I can pretend I'm somewhere else, put my headphones in, and zone out to Operation Ivy.”

“
You
listen to Op Ivy?” Drake questioned.

“Is that so shocking?” I asked.

“Well, it's not exactly normal for someone like you …”

“Someone like
me
?”

“I just mean that I'd never expect law-abiding Lizzy Mortimer to listen to Op Ivy.”

“Well, if we're talking about the East Bay ska scene, the Dance Hall Crashers are a little more my style. I like the female vocals and they don't scream as much.”

As soon as I brought my eyes up to Drake's, he looked down and dug one foot into the ground, as if he were trying to make a small hole. His tan skin and gold-flecked hair were as perfect as I remembered them. He looked at me again. This time he smiled widely. At me. I could hardly believe it.

“Apparently, you're just full of surprises,” he said.

“If you say so,” I said. I still couldn't believe I was talking to Drake alone like this. “Hey, why are
you
out here?”

“I'm always here at this time,” he said.

“That's not answering the question,” I said, emboldened by Drake's teasing. “What's in the notebook?”

“Nothing,” he responded, clutching the journal to his chest.

“If it's nothing, then can I look at it?”

“No,” he said, laughing as he held the notebook closer to his chest.

We stared at each other. It was one of those stares where you start wondering if the other person is thinking the same things you are. As I was thinking how completely handsome Drake was when he smiled, his dimples and turquoise eyes flashed all at once. Without saying anything, Drake held the journal out in front of him. The gesture confused me at first. I soon realized that he was holding it there for me.

I carefully took it from him as he watched, his eyes wide like an owl's. Our index fingers touched as I grabbed it. I felt something less than a shock but more than a tingle pass from his finger through mine. The red letters of Drake's name began to throb on my palm. I looked down, almost ashamed, though I knew Drake couldn't see them.

I flipped to a random page. It was a sketch of Breeze in the Trees, my favorite house in Crabapple. Breeze in the Trees is a giant tree house, complete with rope ladders and circular windows. The wood shingles blend in with the knotted trees that grow out of every corner of the lawn. It looks as if elves live there. The penciled-in detail of Drake's sketch was astonishing. I flipped to another page. It was a sketch of Mrs. Bowman. Mrs. Bowman taught European History and had tormented Jodi for much of the year. (Maybe since she's a coworker of yours, Mrs. Tweedy, you think she's nice. But you should know that most of her students can't stand her.) Drake had made Mrs. Bowman's head too big and her eyes too small—but entirely realistic. I began flipping faster. It seemed Drake had sketched almost every noteworthy location in town, along with a few of Crabapple's best-known teachers. I was astonished by both the number of drawings and their quality. The drawings had an exaggerated character that brought them to life.

“What is all this, Drake?”

Drake shrugged his shoulders. “I'm out here because it's the only time I have a couple of minutes to myself to draw,” he said.

He slid toward me on the bench and gently took the journal out of my hands. He lowered his head and began tracing the spine with his finger. When he spoke again, it was in a lower tone.

“I read that when Michelangelo was young,” Drake said, looking out at the ocean beyond the school yard's fence, “his dad was a banker and then worked for the government. He sent Michelangelo to school where it was assumed he would learn to do something practical. But he was constantly sneaking into churches—he didn't seem that interested in his school classes. He would plant himself in the pews and sit there for hours, trying to create exact copies of the masterworks that hung on the walls. I like to think church was the one place he could practice without anyone bothering him.”

“Have you read
The Agony and the Ecstasy
?” I asked. Mickey had told us the Michelangelo book was Drake's most recent book purchase. I remembered it because Jodi had written it down in the DWOR and quizzed me on it at lunch.

Drake was astonished. “You listen to Op Ivy and you've read
The Agony and the Ecstasy
?”

“No, no … I haven't read it,” I said, thinking quickly. “My mom's talked about it, though. She's kind of a book nut.”

“Oh yeah, I knew that,” Drake said, sticking one of his long arms out behind me, resting it on the top of the bench. I pretended not to notice. “The last time I ran into her outside my house, she pulled a book called
Fever Pitch
out of this huge bag and handed it to me. She said I would like it because it's about sports.”

I put my hand over my face to indicate my mortification. “Did she also tell you that the solution to every one of life's problems can be found within the pages of a good book?”

“Yeah, I think she did,” Drake said.

“I'm so sorry. It's like her personal mantra. She's obsessed. It's her goal in life to find every person in Crabapple a book they love.”

“It's fine,” Drake said, his arm hovering above my shoulders. “The book's actually really funny. I liked it.”

“That would probably make her month.”

“I'll have to let her know the next time I see her, then,” Drake said.

“Please don't. She doesn't need any encouragement. It's not healthy, trust me.”

Drake let out a laugh.

I knew it was stupid, but I wished that the tardy bells would stop working. I wanted to stay out there, talking with Drake. I looked through the chain-link fence and saw the ocean, a strip of dark blue against the light blue sky.

“So, this is your church?” I asked, motioning to the area around the benches and then the notebook.

“Something like that,” he said.

“Your sketches are really good.” I knew I should have said something deeper or more meaningful, but it was all I could think of. They were.

“Not really,” he said. “But I think it'd be cool to be an artist for graphic novels.”

“They really
are
good. In fact,” I said, letting out a small laugh, “the one of Mrs. Bowman looks so real, when I first saw it, I honestly thought the drawing was going to start yelling at me.”

“You're a good liar,” Drake said, smiling at me again, without any restraint.

“If by ‘liar' you mean ‘truth teller,' then yes,” I said, mocking him. Without thinking, I reached out and pushed Drake's shoulder playfully. Our eyes locked.

Drake was still smiling. He let his arm slip off the top of the bench. It was warm against the bare skin of my neck.

I was so lost in my own pool of nervous thoughts that I didn't notice when she appeared.

Her dark black robe swished as she stalked across the grass soccer field with her hood up. She marched right for us. I squeezed my eyes as tightly as I could. I opened them once more.

She was closer still. Vivienne le Mort was so close, in fact, I could make out the bloody color of her eyes.

“Drake,” I said, the fear embedded in my voice. “Do you see that woman?”

I tried to turn toward him. But I couldn't.

I was frozen and so was he.