Attack of the Tagger Read Online Free PDF Page A

faces. They were sprayed on a tall fence that was between the park and some houses.
    The police had some big floodlights lighting up the night. And all those dumb-baby faces looked kind of creepy. The paint went from one to the other to the other. It looked like a string of big purple ghosts with buckteeth!
    “What a moron,” one of the policemen wassaying. He was shaking his head good. “What’s the deal with the ‘du-uh’? Is he saying
he’s
dumb?”
    Dad shook his head, too. “I think he’s saying he thinks whatever he’s spraying is dumb.”
    The policeman snorted. “Well, he’s sure got that backward.”
    Another policeman came over and shook hands with my dad. “Glad you could make it, Steven.”
    “Thanks for the call.” Dad pulled me in by the shoulder and said, “This is my son, Nolan. Nolan, this is Sergeant Klubb.” He looked at me and added, “You’ve heard me talk about my friend Sarge, right? Well, this is him.”
    Sergeant Klubb gave me a crooked smile andsaid, “So you’re Nolan.…I’ve heard tales about you, too. Can you really count by nine and a halfs?”

    “Da-ad!” I said, and turned redder than the dumb-baby on Mr. Green’s van.
    Dad ruffled my hair and said, “Sorry, champ.” Then he nodded at the purple dumb-babies andsaid to Sarge, “It’s too late to make the morning paper, but we’ll get it in Wednesday’s. Any leads?”
    “No witnesses so far. No help from the stores yet, either. We’ll catch him, though. I’m not putting up with this junk in Cedar Valley. They want to tag? Let ‘em go to the city, where they call it art.”
    “Hey, Sarge!” a policeman called from inside the tube slide. “There’s a slew of them in here!”
    We followed him over and looked inside the slide. There were rolling eyes and buckteeth all over the place! And at the bottom a great big
Du-uh!
    Sarge was mad. “What a punk! Like he paid for this equipment?” The radio on his belt crackled. He pushed a button and said, “Klubb here.”
    A voice on the radio said, “We’ve got a five-ninety-four at five-twelve Highland.”
    “Copy that,” he said. “In progress?”
    “Negative,” the voice on the radio answered.
    “On my way,” Sarge said, then turned to Dad. “Another tagging about five blocks away. Since it’s too late for tomorrow’s paper, how about I leave whatever turns up tonight on your voice mail?”
    “Sounds good,” Dad said. “I’ll help out any way I can.”
    Sarge nodded. “See if you can’t rally a community watch. That would really help nail this guy!”
    When we got back in the car, Dad said, “So, what do you think?”
    I scooted my backpack between my feet. I hadn’t had the chance to take any pictures. Hadn’t really had the chance to do anything. And what was the point in trying to help when the police were doing a fine job without me? They’d figure out who the Tagger was
way
before I could.
    I felt kind of stupid. I’d thought I was a superhero.
    Ha.
    “Nolan?” Dad was driving but looking more at me than the road.
    I shrugged. “I didn’t know there were so many police in Cedar Valley.”
    He nodded.
    “I also didn’t know you were a policeman’s helper.” I looked at him. “It’s pretty cool that you do that, Dad.”
    He smiled real big at me, and right then I wanted to tell him how I was trying to help, too. How I wasn’t just a boy who fumbled and stumbled and tried to toast peanut butter. I was a cyber-superhero! And I’d been working the whole day on figuring out a way to trap the Tagger.
    But I couldn’t tell him. Mom and Dad were the last people who could know! They wouldn’t understand why Bubba’s Big Butt had to be on the World Wide Web. They would start worrying. Start making me
change
things.
    It would be the end of Shredderman.
    But
… maybe I could help my dad and the police without giving away my secret identity.
    “Dad?”
    “Yes?”
    “Off the record?”
    “Sure….”
    “There are four sixth graders