Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Author:Scott Westerfeld
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon Pulse

CHAPTER 24

IT WAS A FEW NIGHTS later that I called Special Agent Reyes. It was kind of late, but he didn’t sound sleepy, only a little surprised when I asked him, “What if I knew someone who’d committed a crime?”

“That depends on what kind.” He hesitated a moment. “And how well you know them.”

“How well I know them?”

“Are you going to report your best friend for underage drinking? A good talking-to might work better.”

I laughed. “Jamie doesn’t drink, and I mean a stranger. And let’s say it was a serious crime, like, say, murder. How would I get the FBI to look into it?”

“Oh.” He sounded relieved, certain now that this was hypothetical. “You’d start with your local police. The FBI focuses on federal crimes.”

“Murder’s not a federal crime?”

“Not usually. Maybe if the victim were a federal official.”

“Right. But in the movies, you guys are always looking for serial killers.”

“We do.” I thought I heard a sigh in the words. “What’s this about, exactly?”

I looked at my bed, which was covered with printouts of my research on the bad man. A list of young girls who’d disappeared while their families were traveling, research on the habits of psychopaths, unsolved crimes in Palo Alto. Basically, a whole lot of nothing.

Knowing the bad man’s name hadn’t helped much. He wasn’t in any news stories I could find, and searching online had only led to a hundred other men with the same name, all the wrong age or in the wrong city. It was as if he barely existed, or maybe his little bungalow didn’t have an internet connection.

All I really had was his name, his phone number, and my own righteous anger, which seemed to be fading every day. So I told Agent Reyes the same thing I’d told my mom:

“It’s, um, for a school project.”

“You’re a high school senior, Miss Scofield. Shouldn’t your school projects be a little more . . . specific?”

“Right. I’m just getting to the specific part.” I tried to collect my thoughts, but it had been more than a week since I’d managed to sleep. My body didn’t seem to want it anymore, but my mind did. “Like, how many victims does it take to be a serial killer? Is there an FBI rule about that?”

“There are always rules, Miss Scofield. It takes three killings, at least one on US soil, to count as serial murder.”

“Three? Great. I mean . . . this is more specific, right?”

“A little,” he said. “Is there anything else you need to know?”

I hesitated. Agent Reyes was never going to believe me. Not about a quintet of little girls buried in an old man’s front yard. So there was no point in hedging my words now. “Let’s say no one had actually witnessed these murders, but I knew where the bodies were buried. What kind of evidence would I need to get the police to dig up someone’s yard?”

There was a pause, but then he spoke with certainty. “The kind that convinces a judge to spend taxpayers’ money to destroy private property.

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