We pull up beside him and get out.
A short heavy-set guy wearing jeans, a black t-shirt, and faded black baseball cap gets out of the pickup. He looks old for a high school guy but it could be the beard. He has a thick black beard.
"Hey, Mick," Jackson says, handing him the money. "Thanks for doing this."
Mick stuffs the money in his back pocket. "Where's the phone?"
"Right here." I hand it to him.
"Looking for anything in particular?" he asks as he inspects the phone. "An email? A file?"
"No," I say. "I just want to see what's on it."
"The guy left it behind," Jackson says. "It's possible he wiped everything before tossing it."
"I'll see what I can find." Mick opens the door of his truck and I see a laptop sitting on the seat. He connects the phone to his laptop and starts typing. "What do you want the new password to be?"
I give it to him, then watch as he types some more. He unhooks the phone and hands it to me. "Take a look through it and let me know if there's anything on there I need to unlock." He looks at Jackson. "So I hear you're doing the homeschool thing."
"For now, yeah."
"I don't know how you do it. If it were me, school would be the last thing I'd care about with all the shit you got going on."
"Studying keeps my mind off the case. And it makes me feel hopeful. Like I might have a future."
"How's the case? Or are you not allowed to say?"
"Everything I know you've already heard on the news."
While they've been talking I opened Devon's email but nothing was there. His texts were erased too. Music files. Social media apps. They're all empty. I open his photos and feel a lump in my throat. There's one picture. A photo of my mom and me.
"You okay?" Jackson asks as I wipe my eyes.
"Yeah." I show him the phone. "It's me and my mom."
He leans down to get a closer look. "How old were you?"
"Ten. He came to New York for my birthday."
"Does he have other photos?"
"No. Just this one."
"Anything else on there?"
I shake my head. "I can't find anything. He either closed his email account or it's not connected, and he's wiped his texts."
"Let me see it," Mick says. "I might be able to get the texts back." He takes the phone and types something in it. "Looks like he wiped them clean. They've been overwritten. The guy either knows what he's doing or just happened to permanently erase them without knowing he did it."
"I'm guessing it's the latter," I say. "He's not good with tech stuff."
"Did you watch the video?" Mick says. "Looks like it's the only one on here."
"What video?"
He hands me the phone. "So anyway," he says to Jackson, "Mr. Detmeir, the gym teacher, got fired for watching porn at school."
"No shit?" Jackson laughs. "When was this?"
