Bad Guys by Linwood Barclay Page A

you can get cars for like nothing at those. Get a Beemer.”
    Paul had his learner’s permit. I didn’t even want to think of the damage he could do to an expensive German sports car. “And get a standard. Only pussies drive automatics.”
    I didn’t see any need to get dragged into a debate over transmissions for a car that I was not even going to buy. I put my nose back into the paper, my eye catching a headline next to the car ad. It was an Associated Press item, out of California, about a teenage boy who’d shot several of his classmates, supposedly his friends, at a neighborhood park.
    “Color’s not important,” Paul said. “Unless it’s like some bright yellow or something, but I don’t think BMW makes cars in bright yellow. Their little convertibles, maybe, but not the 5 series or 3 series. You get something too bright, the cops are just going to pull you over all the time for speeding tickets. If they’re auctioning off cars that belonged to drug dealers, there should be lots of Beemers. Drug dealers love Beemers.”
    It said in the story that this boy, who was seventeen, spent most of his time parked in front of a computer in his bedroom, hacking into places he shouldn’t be sticking his nose into, checking out websites that told you how to make your own bomb, how to kill people with nothing but a pencil, that kind of thing.
    “We’re not getting a Beemer,” Sarah said. “We’re not even getting a car. We can’t afford another car.”
    “What if Dad’s last book gets made into a movie?” Paul asked.
    Sarah made a dismissive noise. “Your father’s book did not do well enough to get made into a movie, Paul.”
    I glanced up from my paper, decided to let it go. Angie wandered into the kitchen, dressed, but her hair wrapped in a towel.
    “What’s this about a car?” she asked.
    Paul brought her up to speed.
    “Get a Hummer,” Angie advised. In my head, I could see the headlights of the Annihilator, like eyes on a dragon, filling the Buick with cold, cold light.
    “If there’s one thing I won’t be getting, ever,” I said, “it’s a Hummer, or a Suburban, or an Annihilator. They run over other people’s cars, pollute the atmosphere, get a mile to the gallon, you can’t see around the damn things, they—”
    “Okay, Dad, we hear ya,” said Paul. “SUVs, bad. Little cars, good.”
    According to the AP story, this boy in California was pretty reclusive. A loner. Obsessed with counterculture, not particularly good at making friends. Liked to take pictures of people without their knowing it, post them on a website. He’d had a crush on some girl, but she’d rebuffed him, and something snapped. He finds his dad’s revolver in a drawer, takes it to the park one night where he knew his classmates went to make out, drink underage, and smoke a few joints, and shoots three kids from his class.
    Everyone interviewed had said that yeah, he was kind of weird, they weren’t totally surprised by what he’d done, but no one had reported his behavior to anyone. No one thought it worth mentioning. Not until after he’d killed three of them.
    I said, interrupting the conversation at whatever point it happened to be in, “Has this Trevor guy called you anymore?”
    Angie glanced over at me, deciding, I guess, whether she was speaking to me these days, other than to tell me not to answer the phone. The Pool Boy incident was several weeks old now.
    “A couple times. Five times last night my cell rang in one hour. I was hanging out at Deb’s? And it’s going off in my purse every ten minutes. And I have to check it every time, because it might be—”
    She stopped herself.
    “Might be who?” Sarah asked.
    “Just anybody. It could be somebody I actually want to talk to, and not him. But he’s got this thing, so his number doesn’t show, so I don’t answer any calls unless I see an actual number. So I guess he figures this out, and he goes to a pay phone, I don’t know, and calls me, and