Fourteen: The Blackwell Ninjas
Though the AV and camera equipment had been locked up for safekeeping, Jefferson's classroom was much as it had always been. Photos were still pinned to the wall at the front and back of the class. Many of them were Jefferson's. Max had thought about tearing them down and ripping them up. But what would the point be when his photos were in magazines and art books? Destroying a few copies wouldn't accomplish anything. It was his reputation they had to tear down.
Max sighed and tried to focus on the laptop in front of her and the mockups Juliet had asked her to review. The broken shell of the lighthouse loomed in the centre of the screen, golden in the early morning sunlight. She clicked, and on the next page wooden wreckage floated on the frothy waves where before there had been a harbour and a dozen moored fishing boats. "The world is what an artist makes it," Jefferson had said. And this was the world she had made.
How could everything in this room be the same when everything outside was so different?
She sat in her usual seat at the back of the class. To her right, sunlight poured through the windows. It could have been a regular day back in October, when things had been normal. Before that batshit crazy week that had so altered her life. The classroom was just as they'd left it, and Mark Jefferson's words still echoed at the jagged edges of her thoughts.
I could frame any one of you in a dark corner, and catch you in a moment of desperation.
He'd been toying with them. He'd probably gotten off on it, spilling his secret out without anyone realizing it. His confession had been there in his lectures all the time. Little clues, hints that none of them could recognise.
Had he dropped hints in the dark room too? About Nathan Prescott? About the body? Jefferson wouldn't have had much time to do the deed and dump the body and he would have had to dig the grave himself. It had to be somewhere in or around town, somewhere that wouldn't have taken too much time and effort. The police had canvassed the area and hadn't found anything. Of course they hadn't found Rachel so Max's confidence levels weren't exactly at an all time high. "Critical fail on your Perception Check. You notice nothing." That was the Bay PD in a nutshell.
The classroom door swung open, banging against the wall and putting an abrupt end to Gloom and Doom 101 as Max jumped out of her skin. "School's out forever," Chloe announced as she stood grinning in the doorway. "You miss the memo, Max Attack?"
"I needed to charge," Max said, gesturing to the laptop's power cord that snaked into the wall outlet.
Chloe strode down the classroom's centre aisle like it was a catwalk. Max envied the strut in her step, and her eyes lingered on the swing of her hips. She was decked out in a snap back today, brim backwards of course, and T-shirt that proclaimed that she was "Cute AF". Max's gaze followed her as she moved to join her and then perched on the edge of the table. Arms crossed, she peered at Max's laptop screen. Max watched as Chloe's blue eyes flicked around the screen, as her lips pursed as she considered the photo. Her blue hair was starting to get a bit shaggy and Max couldn't help herself; she reached up to brush a long strand away from Chloe's face, her fingers tracing the line of Chloe's jaw before falling away. She just wanted so badly to touch her–all the time–and to know she was really here, really hers.
Chloe's lips quirked and she shot Max a sideways glance before returning her attention to the screen. "So how is the big project coming along? You ready to win your Pulitzer–or whatever it is they give photographers?"
Max groaned. "It's official. Warren finished the Kickstarter page this morning. It's even got the official approval from Habitat for Humanity so that they get the funding . Now we have to finish this thing."
"You've been snapping shots for weeks. What's left to do?"
"Juliet is still finishing the page layouts but I want something for the last page. I just can't figure out what." Chloe opened her mouth, but Max jumped in with, "And don't say, 'a selfie'."
Chloe's mouth snapped shut and she huffed even as she reached for Max's laptop and began paging through the photo layouts. "For reals, Max, there should be a picture of you in here. It was your idea."
"And my storm," Max whispered.
Chloe stopped, fists balled, spine stiff. "Jefferson's the one who started this whole clusterfuck. He's been doping up girls for years. Fucker." She pushed off from the table and stalked up and down the rows of desks before finally ripping a poster off the board at the back of the class, the one that was a copy of the front page of a magazine featuring Jefferson's work.
Max took in a long breath. "Let's just... review for a sec, okay? We know Susan and Michelle had some sort of accident and ended up with a lot of medical bills. They needed cash and someone set them up to model for Jefferson."
Chloe crumped up the paper and tossed it on the floor. "And he doped them up and took his patented creepy-ass photos."
"But what does that have to do with what's happening now? I feel like we're missing something."
"There's this." Chloe rifled through her jacket pockets for several seconds before producing the memento box. She held it up and rattled it.
"I'd forgotten about it. We should try to get it open tonight."
"Better be right after dinner. I've got other plans for tonight."
Eyebrows raised, Max peered at Chloe. "Anything I should know about?"
Chloe grinned. "Up for some MaxGyvering tonight?"
"Chloe..." Max said, warningly.
"Hear me out. I've been Googling Susan Baker to try to get more info, but there are like dozens of them in Oregon. We need to track down Michelle's last name. Hopefully it's something really weird. Like... Clutterbuck."
Max could feel a tingle of anxiety prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. "Is this going to involve breaking and entering?"
"Just entering, I swear." Groaning, Max held her face in her hands. "We know Michelle went to Blackwell, right, and she graduated in 1990. We just need to take a peek at her student file."
"I don't think they keep records from that far back. Wouldn't it all have been in DOS back then anyway?"
"The computer files sure. But they had paper copies. We just need to take a look at the archives. And," Chloe continued, adjusting the angle of her cap and looking very pleased with herself, "I just happen to know where that is."
Max gave her a suspicious once-over. "And you know about this because you did a history project, right?"
"The files are all stored in this one room in the basement. Hardly anyone goes down there. I used to sneak down there to chill."
"Of course you did." She could just see it now, Chloe at the bottom of a rarely-used set of stairs, lighting up a joint and taking a long drag in the flickering fluorescent light.
"It's supposed to be locked up, but the bolt's old. You can just slide it open and ninja your way in."
"Why do we need to wait until tonight then?"
Chloe shrugged. "The door's right near the cafeteria." Max nodded. With all the volunteers and displaced residents around, the hallways around the cafeteria were rarely empty. Going during the day would be too risky. They'd have to do another nighttime raid.
"Blackwell ninjas, back in business," Chloe said, holding out her hand for a fistbump.
In spite of herself, Max smiled. She bumped her knuckles against Chloe's. "Back in business. And as she looked up at the wild glee on Chloe's features, Max found her own smile had turned to wide grin.