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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Keller’s calls to Zoe Carpenter go to voicemail. Understandable. No one answers an unfamiliar number. She leaves a message. Says the magic words that ensure a quick response. “I’m with the FBI. It’s about your son.”

Meanwhile, Jay McCray has confirmed that Cody isn’t a student at Santa Clara University. And he’s determined that the boy attends UC Santa Cruz, about forty-five minutes from SCU. The chief knows the head of Santa Cruz’s campus police and has already reached out. McCray will meet Keller at the campus.

On the drive, Keller catalogues what the investigation has yielded so far. CCTV footage showing Blane Roosevelt’s crash on his skateboard, his father appearing in the frame. Seven minutes later, Mark Wong pushing out of the dorm. Shaggy placing Blane and Mark at the frat house shortly thereafter. The boys borrowing the Mystery Machine.

Keller flashes to the footage of the other students—Stella, then Libby—rushing out of the dorm separately, around the same time. Were they all going somewhere together? Is that why Blane and Mark needed the van? And where was Felix Goffman? Do any of them know Cody Carpenter? Or is he a red herring?

She reaches Santa Cruz forty minutes later. The campus is nestled in the mountains and has a bohemian vibe. Meadows and sprawling trees line the drive to the main campus, as do signs for a nature preserve. Girls wearing braids and looking like characters from a sixties hippie movie sit under the immense eucalyptus trees.

She’s met by Jay McCray and his Santa Cruz police chief counterpart in the parking area. They all make their way to the dormitories. Keller isn’t dialed in to campus procedures and protocols, but it’s clear they plan to enter Cody Carpenter’s dorm room without a warrant. Just like they did at Santa Clara. She assumes the university requires consent to searches as a condition to living in the dorms.

On the walk, Santa Cruz’s chief says, “I checked our databases and talked to my squad. We’ve had no issues with Cody Carpenter. Last we have him is swiping in on Thursday night.”

“It only swipes when they go into the dorms, not out, right?” Keller says. It might be a stupid question, but she doesn’t like to assume.

“That’s right.”

“Witnesses place him at SCU’s campus Friday afternoon,” Keller says. The Maldonados thought they saw him when they arrived. “So, unless he found a way to enter the dorm without his security card, he hasn’t been back to his room since yesterday.”

“Sometimes the kids hold the door for each other,” McCray observes, which elicits a nod from Santa Cruz’s chief.

They get some looks coming into the dormitory. Keller’s in plainclothes, but they’re met in the entryway by two uniformed campus officers. The students pretend not to be watching, but they are.

They find Cody’s room. Unlike the doors to the other rooms, which are decorated with stickers and mini erasable whiteboards and photos hanging from strings, Cody’s door is plain.

The chief of Santa Cruz bangs on the door hard three times. Announces that they will enter.

When no one answers, he uses a key card to open the door.

It’s quickly apparent no one is in there. Keller examines the room. Two beds, one stripped down to the bare mattress. Laundry day, perhaps. But then she notices that the storage containers under the stripped bed are empty. The desk on this side of the room has nothing on it.

The other side appears lived in, the bed unmade, a tangle of sheets. On the desk there’s a stack of books, nothing out of the ordinary.

The uniformed officers are peering inside the closet, the bathroom.

Keller slides open the desk drawer. Inside is a sketch pad.

She extracts it, cracking the spine. A jolt runs through her. The artist is talented but the images are disturbing. On one page, a monster looms over a boy who is walking alone on a street at night. In another, a man is falling to the ground, what appears to be blood and brain matter projecting out of the top of his skull.

She flips through the pages. Chief McCray looks over her shoulder and whistles when he sees the drawings.

“Violent,” is all he says.

Keller doesn’t respond. They are indeed violent.

“We may have found a future mass shooter,” the Santa Cruz chief chimes in, peering at the sketches.

“I don’t think so,” Keller says, still flipping through the drawings. “They’re mostly of self-harm.” She points to one of a figure hanging from a noose with a chair kicked over at the feet. Another of a faceless person standing on the edge of what looks like the Golden Gate Bridge.

“This kid’s hurting.” The sketches alone reveal this. But Keller also knows what the boy saw. His father killing himself after discovering the boy’s mother with another man.

One of the uniforms reports they’ve found nothing. Not even alcohol or gummies, a rarity in any dorm search.

“We need to talk to the roommate and the RA,” Santa Cruz’s chief says. The officer nods, scurries out of the dorm. Keller wonders if there is a roommate given that one side of the room appears uninhabited.

Keller continues examining the sketch pad. The picture on the last page grabs her by the collar.

It’s a familiar face. The handsome mug of Dr. David Maldonado. But the sketch artist has drawn devil horns on his forehead and there’s a slash through his face.

Like the rip of a knife.