I moved to Eli's desk as Kins searched for dirty magazines under his mattress. His computer was password protected. After a few attempts at logging on, I knew I wouldn't be able to figure it out. Honestly, I barely knew anything about him other than where his family was from and that he was generally nice. Except for when his fingers dug into my skin. I shook away the thought and pulled open the top drawer of his desk.
His iPod was sitting in it. I lifted it up and turned it on. The screen lit up, showing that Eli truly had fixed it. I shouldn't have been concerned about what music he liked to listen to, but there was something drawing me to it. I placed one of the earbuds into my ear. Nothing. I scrolled through the songs, looking for one I recognized, but I hadn't heard of any of them. I clicked on one. Static blasted into my ear. What the hell? I picked another song. Static. Every song was static.
I pulled the earbud out of my ear. "That's weird."
"The fact that neither of them have any hidden pictures of naked women?" Kins said. "It's all too perfect if you ask me. Or maybe they've just discovered internet pornography and aren't stuck in the early 90s..."
"No." I laughed. "His iPod. I don't recognize any of the songs, and if you try to play them, static bursts through the earbuds."
"Weird." Kins walked over and picked it up. "Maybe they're like super old songs." She scrolled through his playlist. "All I can think of is that I recognize a few of the titles as street names." She shrugged her shoulders.
"Streets in New York?"
"Yeah." She pointed to one of the songs named Sussex. "Sussex street is really close to the Corner Diner actually. It's probably pretty old, maybe someone wrote a song about it."
"Which other ones do you recognize as street names?"
"Umm...Canal, Bowery, Broadway..."
"I feel like that's not a coincidence." I pulled my phone out and snapped pictures of his playlist.
"You think he like channels the radio frequencies on those streets in order to see what calls the cops are getting?"
"Maybe." I didn't know enough about technology to know the answer. But I knew someone who would. I needed to text Liza as soon as I was out of this room. I put the iPod back exactly where I had found it.
Kins was already rummaging through the other drawers.
"Do you think you know his computer password?" I asked.
She shrugged. "You probably have a better guess than I do."
"Maybe it's some kind of phallic symbol."
"I thought you might have felt weirded out by that. It's just this thing we do when we're hungry."
"I got that." I opened Eli's closet. I didn't want to talk about the fact that Kins was closer to
Eli than I was. "Don't you find it weird that he doesn't having any boxing gear?"
"That is a little odd. But maybe he rents it or borrows it from the gym or something."
"Yeah, maybe." I took a deep breath. Nothing smelled like the expensive cologne of the vigilante. And there weren't any Converses anywhere that I could see. "I looked up the gym he said he goes to and it didn't even have boxing listed."
"Well, maybe it's just not a popular draw so they don't advertise it. Do you want a drink? It might help you relax a bit. They're going to be back any second and you look frantic." She pulled a bottle of vodka off of Eli's dresser. For some reason I hadn't noticed that both Eli and Patrick's dressers were covered in alcohol bottles.
"How do they have so much alcohol?"
"Eli has a fake ID. He knows a guy who makes awesome ones."
A fake identity. What if his real identity was on that fake ID? "Do you know where he keeps it?"
"His wallet, I assume."
Just then the door opened.
Shit. Eli's closet door was open. The bottom drawer of his desk was still ajar. Shit!
"What are you two doing?" There was hint of anger in his tone, but no one else seemed to notice. I shrunk at his words.