Uncaged (7 page)

The men were brought in by a Child Protection worker named Cheryl Oates, who had, Shay believed, burned out on the job.

Oates was a ruddy-faced woman with tight-cut, dead-black hair and black, suspicious eyes. Her main focus in life, since she’d burned out, was to punish troublemakers—anyone who squealed, or complained, or said much of anything negative about their lives.

They were all lucky, Oates said, to have a roof over their heads. They should go to school and shut up and keep their noses clean and maybe someday they could get jobs and become useful human beings instead of the rabble and castoffs that they were.

Oates showed up while Shay and two other foster kids were cleaning up after the usual boxed macaroni dinner. She took Shay into a bedroom and said, “That idiot brother of yours is in deep trouble. Two investigators are coming to talk to you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll tell them what they want to know.”

Her eyes went to the laptop on Shay’s bed. “They’ll want to take a look at your laptop. I gave them permission.”

Shay had played the humble game before. With eyes cast down, she said, “I’ll help if I can. I don’t know where Odin went, but whatever I can tell them …”

“You better,” Oates snarled. “You sit here. I’m going to talk with Clarence and Mary. The investigators will be here in the next half hour.”

Clarence and Mary Peters were the foster parents: two slender blond dopers looking for an easy way to get through life. They were not bad people, but not particularly good, either. Just a couple of
lazy outdoor jocks whose idea of a good time was hanging off a cliff at the end of a rope.

With their house’s two extra bedrooms, they could take in four foster kids, all girls, and make enough money from the arrangement to not have to work, beyond what they called their “climbing school.”

The idea of foster parents who were climbers appealed to the child-welfare workers: Get the kids out in the fresh air. Teach them self-reliance. Shay learned to climb whether she wanted to or not. Somewhat to her surprise, she found that she liked it, and was good at it.

She also learned about corruption. The Peterses didn’t necessarily want to drag a bunch of kids everywhere, so they all sat down and made an arrangement. They wouldn’t mess with the girls any more than was necessary to maintain order, and the girls wouldn’t talk about them to the Child Protection people—about their fondness for marijuana; about their occasional weeklong vacations, when they left the girls alone; about the relentless regimen of peanut butter toast and boxed noodles.

The deal was right out in the open: the kids didn’t cause trouble for Clarence and Mary and gave the two foster parents good evaluations. In return, Clarence and Mary gave the girls good reports and pretty much allowed them to do as they pleased—and provided five fake sick-day excuses to the school. They were willing to stretch the curfew to midnight.

If the system worked, and it had to that point, the girls got a roof and food, and Clarence and Mary got the money. Live and let live.

As a bonus, the kids learned how to hang off a cliff on a rope, camp in a pile of thornbush, and survive on Skippy.

When Oates left to talk to Clarence and Mary, Shay grabbed her laptop and went to the Facebook page. “The police are here to ask about you. I’m worried. I’ll leave another note when they’re gone.”

She didn’t worry about leaving notes in the open. Odin might be brilliant at computers, but Shay was great at math, and she knew some simple facts: Facebook had a billion users, who sent billions of messages a day. The chances of finding any one message without knowing addresses in advance were virtually nil.

“It’s not like finding a needle in a haystack,” she’d told a friend. “It’s like finding a needle in all the haystacks in the world.”

She’d barely finished sending the message when she heard unfamiliar men’s voices down the hall. She shut the MacBook down, put it back on the bed where it had been. Went to the wobbly desk she shared with her roommate, opened her calculus book, took out the problem sheet folded there, and started working on it.

A minute later, Oates knocked and then stuck her face into the room. “Shay?”

She went back into humble mode and stood up.

The investigators came in, two youngish men, tough-looking, in expensive suits. Oates introduced them as Mr. West and Mr. Cherry.

They asked about Odin, where he might be, who he might be with. She didn’t know. They asked about the raid on the lab, and she told them the truth: she hadn’t been involved in any of that. She supposed she didn’t believe in animal testing if it was for cosmetics or something, but if it was for medicine, that was more complicated.…

At some point during the interview, Shay sensed that they weren’t police officers. She asked Oates, “Are these investigators with the Eugene police?”

“Just cooperate,” Oates said, and left the room to take a call.

“Are you with the FBI or something?” Shay persisted.

West said, “There are several agencies working on this situation. There was a shooting, and important research was destroyed.”

He hadn’t answered the question, Shay noticed. When they got to the computer, Cherry said, “I need to look through this.”

She shrugged and said, “Okay, but all my calculus work is on it. I’m going to need it for summer school, for my college prep class. Don’t mess it up. Please.”

Cherry picked up the computer and walked out of the room.

West was twenty-nine years old, with broad shoulders, buzzed black hair, and soft brown eyes. Pretty cute, Shay thought, though he had muscles even in his face.

“Sit,” he said, and Shay took a seat on the edge of her bed. West pulled out a desk chair and sat opposite.

“How much contact did you have with Storm?” he asked.

“Storm?” She was genuinely confused, and it showed.

“Storm, the animal rights group,” he said. “Robert Overbeek, Janice Loftus, Rachel Wharton, Ethan Enquist.” Shay recognized Ethan Enquist’s and Rachel Wharton’s names, but didn’t let on; as for Storm, why hadn’t her brother said something?

She said, “I … I … none. I never heard of any of those people. Who are they?”

“Crazies,” West said. “We’ve talked to a couple of kids who took part in the raid, and they say your brother was there.”

She scrambled. “He was? Are you sure? Do you know where he is now? He never even told me that he was going away.”

“Then why did he call you the night he disappeared?” West asked.

They knew about the phone call.

Shay covered again. “To talk. We did that all the time.” True enough. “We had a time that we called, when everybody would be asleep. If you check, you’ll see we always talk at three a.m. I’d leave my phone on vibrate, so nobody else would hear it.”

West peered at her, assessing her, and she realized that they knew about the other 3:00 a.m. calls too. She’d said the right thing, told the right lie. Lies, she’d learned, should always be as close as possible to the truth.

She added, “All he said that night was that he was having trouble with a bully at his foster house, and that he talked to a man from Caltech about scholarship stuff. He was trying to figure out living expenses. That’s why I’m so worried. He was making plans for the future, and the next thing I know, people say he ran away.”

She
was
worried, and felt tears start. She’d normally never cry in front of a stranger—or in front of anyone—but now it seemed like a good idea, so she let them come.

West said, “You ran away a couple of times—it’s in your file. Why?”

She wiped the tears away. “I didn’t go far. I never went farther than Portland.”

“But why’d you take off?”

Shay dropped her eyes, recalling the episode. “I have trouble with people telling me what to do. Some foster parents try to
control everything you do. And the second time, my foster parent then, Richard, said some things that made me uncomfortable. About us being better friends. I thought he didn’t exactly want to be friends.”

West gave her a quick nod and asked, “This was the guy you … forked?”

She had to laugh. Richard had gotten more than a little friendly one night as Shay was making scrambled eggs, and she’d stuck a fork in his hand.

“That’s the guy,” she said, but got serious again when she realized just how deep inside her files West had been. “You talked to him?”

“We’ve done numerous interviews,” he said, and they both knew it was another dodge. “Did you tell Oates about what he was doing?”

Shay shrugged. “She doesn’t want the details. They don’t have enough foster parents. But she moved me here. Clarence, I’m happy to say, is too lazy to molest anybody.”

“So that’s not so bad.”

“No, it’s not. Clarence and Mary aren’t exactly high achievers, but the thing is, I’ve actually learned stuff from them. About living outdoors, about climbing.”

“That’s cool.” The man showed a thin smile, hesitated, then said, “My little sister had a college professor. He suggested that she could get an A for sleeping with him, or an F for not sleeping with him.”

“That’s awful,” Shay said. She meant it.

“Some friends and I spoke to him. He changed his position,” West said.

“He left her alone?”

“He changed his position on the planet,” West said. “He moved
back to England. His USA privileges have been permanently revoked.”

She smiled—he’d made her like him. “Maybe you should talk to Richard,” she said. “The next girl who lives with him, well …”

“She might not know how to use a fork?”

“That’s right.” Shay smiled again.

“I could do that, if you help us out.” He stood up and turned away from her to look around the room, at the corkboard with its reminder notes and absence of family photos, and something about his legs … He moved like an athlete, a good one, but he seemed not awkward, but not quite natural.

He glanced back at her and saw her looking at his legs. “I lost my legs in Afghanistan,” he said.

“Wow … you move like a jock,” she said.

“Lost them up above the knees,” he said. He hiked up one of his pant legs, above the sock, to reveal a smooth, fleshlike leg, but too smooth, and too Caucasian. “They’re still working on the look of black skin. It wasn’t the highest priority. The next editions may even have hair—for the men, anyway.”

“Still, amazing,” Shay said, and the amazement showed on her face.

“It came out of the med lab those nutsos trashed,” West said, letting his pant leg slide back down. “They’re now working on nerve bypasses that could help spine-damaged people. Quadriplegics and paraplegics. Give them their lives back.…”

Before Shay could respond, Cherry came back into the room with the laptop and handed it back to her. He said to his partner, “Nothing. If they’re talking, they’re doing it on Facebook or something.
She’s turned off the browser history, so there’s no way to tell. And she’s smart. She’s already finished AP Calculus BC, and she’s not a senior yet.”

“Well, technically I am, since the semester ended,” Shay said.

West asked, “About the laptops and the cell phones. Not all foster care kids can afford them. I’m just kind of curious how you two could …”

“Our mom left us some money,” Shay said. “We can get a few things, as long as they’re educational or safety related. Phones count.”

They both looked at her for a moment, then West said, “Look, Shay … if you see or hear from your brother, tell him to get in touch with us. We might be able to help him.”

“How would he get in touch? Do you have a card?”

“My Facebook name is BlackWallpaper, from San Francisco,” West said. “That’s a very safe, private contact. Can you remember that?”

“Sure,” she said. “He should look up BlackWallpaper, from San Francisco.”

“It might save his life. The people he’s moving with, they’re crazy. I mean that literally. They’re unbalanced. One of them has already spent time in prison. This poor little girl who got shot at the lab—they threw her away like she was a piece of toilet paper. They’ll do the same to your brother when they don’t need him. They could do worse, if he knows too much,” West said.

“If Odin calls, I’ll tell him,” she said.

West followed Cherry to the door, then turned. “You are,” he said with a smile, “an exceptionally good liar. Exceptionally good.”

“I’m a foster kid,” she said. It sounded like an admission, and he nodded.