“Wow.” Gabe uttered.
Zoe’s mouth was in the shape of an ‘O’ and the other kids were also clearly impressed.
Zach skipped down the stairs to the basketball court. There wasn’t much he could do to conceal his grin at their reaction. “Good huh?”
Binny grabbed Zach’s arm and said in a low voice, “How did you pay for all this?”
“Trust me. I got it all covered.” Zach whispered back.
“You didn’t do anything illegal did you?”
To Binny it looked like Zach was doing some mental calculations before he finally answered. “No. I mean, I’m pretty sure.”
Binny considered looking in Zach’s mind to find out for herself, but decided she wasn’t ready to know the source of their income.
“How did you do all that?” Gabe interrupted Zach and Binny’s side conversation.
“I didn’t do much. You guys did it by collecting all the missing animal information. I just entered the data into the software. But there’s more. Come with me.”
Once Zach had everyone gathered around the laptops up in the command center, he continued his explanation. “I’ve been thinking that if we can find a pattern in the locations of where the pets went missing, it might lead us to where the person taking them actually lives.”
The kids looked at each other, excited and speechless. Zoe looked only at Zach, hanging on his every word.
Zach continued, focused intently on the screens in front of him. “If we assume the perpetrator is a kid, and kids don’t have cars, then we’ve got to assume that they live in the neighborhood. My next assumption is that it is unlikely that they would want to grab a pet that’s too close to their own house for fear of getting found out.”
“Oh I remember the last time you did this. It was on your computer in your room. Remember?” Cassie was excited to find a way to participate in the explanation. “It was a couple of weeks ago.”
“Uh…” Zach looked flustered.
“Why were you doing this a couple of weeks ago? That was before all the animals went missing?” Zoe asked.
“I’m kind of a map nerd. I just like playing with them.” Zach’s statement sounded almost like a question.
Zach continued without waiting for more discussion on what he’d done a couple of weeks earlier. “Anyway, see how the pins form kind of a circle?”
“There’s an empty spot right in the middle of all of them.” Binny had been watching the screen intently.
“Exactly! We need to look where there are no pins. That’s where the person we’re looking for lives.” Zach pressed a button on his keyboard and a green pin dropped dead center on the map. “Right there.”
“How did you figure all this out?” Zoe asked.
Zach glanced over at the nearby pile of library books and smiled sheepishly. “I’ve been doing a bunch of reading.”
“Let’s go. Let’s go stop him now.” Penny said.
“What?” Binny sounded scared.
“We know where he lives. Let’s go there and end all this.” Penny was excited.
Zoe perked up at the suggestion. “I agree. Let’s go.”
“Hold on a second.” Zach interrupted.
“Why?” Penny asked.
“We can’t just march on over there. We need a plan. There are some things we need to do.” Zach explained.
“Like what?” Zoe said.
Zach looked nervous at her inquiry, but continued. “Well, for one, this is just a prediction. The computer doesn’t know that this is where the petnapper lives, it’s just making an educated guess. So the first thing we need to do is confirm who lives there.”
“Can’t we just look that up on the Internet?” Zoe asked.
“I already tried. The information for that house is unlisted.” Zach replied. “Secondly, it could be one of the houses nearby. There’s not a ton of data on the missing pets, so it’s not super exact.”
Zoe and Penny looked like they were going to protest more, but Zach continued before they could start. “But even once we find the right house, I think…” Zach took a deep breath before he finished his sentence. “I think once we identify the house, and confirm that the kid lives there, we should call the police and let them confront him.”
Even Binny looked surprised at Zach’s last sentence.
“What happened to doing things ourselves and not depending on adults?” Zoe asked, hands on her hips.
“I still believe in that. I definitely do. But if we can confirm that the same kid we saw in the park lives where the computer predicts, then I think we’ll have all the proof we need to let the police do their job. What are we going to do, arrest him?”
The kids all nodded their heads slowly in reluctant agreement. Even Zoe, who looked skeptical, but accepted Zach’s logic. Everyone except Cassie, who had a look of grim determination and sadness on her face. Nobody noticed that though.
§
“I miss Rembrandt!” Cassie said.
The kids had all gone to their respective homes for the night agreeing that it was too late to start their surveillance effort until the next day.
“Do we have time to walk Rembrandt before dinner?” Binny asked her parents.
Julie Jordan gave her ex-husband a glance as he was busy making dinner.
Jay checked the time. “Yeah, okay. But not crazy long. Dinner’s going to be ready soon. So a quick walk, okay?”
“Uh-huh.” Cassie was nodding vigorously even as she was walking towards the front door. “I’ll see if Penny wants to go too.”
“Are you coming Mom?” Binny asked. Her mother hadn’t been accompanying them on their dog-walking outings lately.
“Uh, no thanks honey. I’ll stay and help your father with dinner.” Julie gave her daughter a strained smile.
Binny wasn’t sure why her mother suddenly seemed less interested in Dr. Huitre. But Binny was thankful either way as she was still uncomfortable with any connection between the two. Binny headed out of the house to find Cassie and Penny waiting on the sidewalk.
“Your Mom’s not coming?” Penny asked.
The trio had started the short trek down the hill to Huitre’s house.
“Nope.” Binny responded.
Penny thought better of digging any further.
“I could do this alone you know.” Cassie interrupted the silence.
“Do what?” Binny asked.
“This. Go to Dr. Huitre’s house. Walk Rembrandt. The whole thing.”
Binny rolled her eyes.
“I’m getting older you know. I know the way. I can cross the street.”
“Whatever.” Binny dismissed her sister.
Cassie, annoyed with her sister’s reaction, sped up her pace and walked a ways ahead of the other two, muttering under her breath, “See. I can do it.”
“You alright?” Penny asked her brooding friend. “I can’t read your mind you know.”
Binny laughed. “Yeah. I guess. It’s just every time we head over there, I get stressed. I don’t like the thought of…” Binny’s voice trailed off.
“I get it. Believe me, I get it.” Penny said wistfully.
“Oh, yeah. Is your Dad still around?”
“Yeah. He’s around. I guess it’s just confusing.”
Binny wasn’t entirely sure what was confusing Penny but Penny didn’t seem to want to elaborate so Binny left it alone. Clearly though, Penny had been wrestling with something. Binny’s thoughts immediately returned to her own predicament and the thing she was most afraid of.
“We’re here!” Cassie announced as Huitre opened his front door. “Were you worried that we weren’t coming Rembie?” Cassie rubbed the dog’s head and brought her face close getting slobbery kisses in the bargain.
Penny laughed.
Binny rolled her eyes.
“Is your mom busy at work I guess?” Huitre tried to sound casual.
“No. She’s at home helping my Dad make dinner.” Binny responded.
“Oh.”
Binny’s stomach clenched. Why was he even asking about where her mother was? The whole thought of Huitre’s interest in her mother just made Binny feel so weird. Binny followed Cassie and Penny for the next twenty minutes, not really listening to Cassie’s pronouncements of how she could walk the dog on her own, and just what a dog-walking expert she now was.
Binny was still lost in her own thoughts when they returned Rembrandt to Huitre’s. And then an idea occurred to her. “You guys go ahead. I’ll be right there.” Binny bent down as if to tie her shoe, but her shoelaces were already in order.
Binny let her mind float a bit until she found Huitre, just twenty feet away in his living room. But she wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at his thoughts. Huitre was looking at Rembrandt. He was remembering him as a puppy. It was hard for Binny to imagine that the enormous animal was ever that small.
There was pink, but it was a light pink. Thinking of Rembrandt as a puppy made Huitre happy. Binny felt sad for Huitre for a moment, because she knew he must be thinking of Rembrandt’s age. He had said that Rembrandt was already much older than the age at which most dogs of his breed died.
But then a face appeared in Huitre’s mind. It took Binny a moment to adjust, as the face was familiar but not. And then it hit her, the smiling woman Huitre was thinking of looked just like Binny’s mother – but much much younger. Her hair was longer too. The color of the imagery in Huitre’s mind had taken on a dull brown tinge. The color looked like sadness.
While Binny hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, somewhere in her own mind she knew that some sort of connection was brewing between her mother and Dr. Huitre. And even though she hadn’t seen evidence of it for a few days, she knew it was still there. She’d seen it with her eyes and even with her mind.
Binny had assumed that this was a relatively new development. But here was Huitre feeling all dull brown about Julie’s mother from years ago? How many could it be? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Certainly from before Zach was born.
The wheels in Binny’s mind were turning furiously trying to understand this new information. And then it struck her, like a bolt through her heart. Huitre had been in love with her mother since before Binny and her siblings were born.
Getting Binny’s mom into the Luce Labs study had been Huitre’s idea. Probably some part of his plan to get her to fall in love with him. And he’d probably been plotting all these years to break up her parents. And it had finally worked. Binny’s thoughts were coming into sharp focus. Who was it who had come into their lives, skulking around the neighborhood, right at the same time her parents had announced they were splitting up? Henry Huitre.
Binny stood up and started walking fast to catch up with Penny and Cassie. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but she was going to make sure her mother never talked to Henry Huitre again.
§
“Mom, before you go, can we talk?”
Binny had been near silent throughout dinner and the post-dinner cleanup. Zach was in his room, Binny’s father was reading a book to Cassie upstairs, and Binny’s mother was getting ready to head back to her apartment for the night.
“Of course honey. You’ve been so quiet tonight. What’s up?”
“I have something to tell you.” Binny said.
“OK. I’m here.” Julie took her eldest daughter’s hand in her own.
“I know you like Dr. Huitre.”
Julie was taken aback. “I…”
“It’s okay Mom. I understand.” Binny had thought long and hard on the walk back and through dinner on exactly how to approach her mother on this topic. “I just think there’s something you should know about him.”
“We’re just friends honey.” Julie said the words, knowing that they weren’t true but hoping Binny couldn’t tell the difference.
“I know, but I don’t think a friend would get you involved with that Luce Labs study.”
“Honey, we weren’t friends back then. He was my doctor. Your father and I wanted children very badly, but it wasn’t easy for us. And besides, you said yourself I was in the control group, so whatever it was they were dispensing I didn’t even get.”
Binny thought back to the previous summer, and why she’d kept the truth from her mother. Julie had looked so scared that her participation had endangered her children that Binny would have done anything to make her feel better. Including lie.
So why was she willing to tell the truth now? Just to make sure that her mother didn’t fall in love with Dr. Huitre? Wasn’t that selfish? Wasn’t Binny hoping against hope that her mother would fall in love with her father again?
No! Binny told herself. It’s not that. Binny told herself that Huitre was clearly not trustworthy. Not as a doctor, not as a friend, not as whatever it was she was scared he would turn into with her mother. It was never selfish to protect someone you love from someone untrustworthy.
“I lied a little bit then.” Binny admitted to her mother.
“You what?”
“You were feeling so bad about Cassie, I didn’t want you to feel like you’d done anything wrong by participating in that study.”
Julie Jordan gasped, since when had her eleven-year-old daughter acquired such incredible empathy, as well as what appeared to be mind-reading skills. “Honey, it’s not your job to protect me. It’s my job to protect you.”
“I know Mom. And you do a great job of that. It’s just that now that you know that nothing bad happened as a result of that study, I don’t think you were there by accident.”
“Of course I wasn’t there by accident honey. Your father and I agreed to it.”
“Yeah. I know. But the thing you didn’t agree to was being the only participant in the study.”
“What?!” Julie gasped.
“There was no control group. I didn’t want you to worry. But I knew that the Luce Labs lady wouldn’t want anyone to know that you were the only participant and that she would let us go rather than have you find that out.”
“You’re kidding with me right?” Julie’s mind was reeling.
“No. I’m not kidding. I just think that Dr. Huitre must have known you were the only participant. I mean, he convinced you to participate. He must have known at the very least that you were his only patient to participate.”
Julie stared ahead trying to process all the information. Everything started to fit together. It wasn’t just that Huitre had betrayed her romantically with that woman from Luce Labs. From what Julie could now tell, Huitre’s interest in her had been feigned. Just something to get close to her and get her involved in the study, and now get her involved in who knows what else. Henry Huitre had been playing her for over a decade. Julie’s chest was filling up with hurt and anger.
But despite the new wounds, Julie’s analytical mind couldn’t help but divine conclusions from Binny’s news. If she had been the only participant in the study, there clearly was no control group. And that meant, that she had participated in the study. Aside from the scare the previous summer, the kids seemed healthy. She seemed healthy. But now she had something new to worry about.
Binny saw the worry lines forming on her mother’s face. “I’m sorry Mom.”
Julie collected herself and turned back to her daughter. “It’s okay honey. It’s okay. Just promise me you won’t do that again.”
“What?”
“Lie to me to protect me. It’s my job to keep you and your brother and sister safe – not the other way around.”
Binny let out a muffled “OK.” from inside the vise-like hug her mother was now giving her.