Attack of the Tagger Read Online Free PDF Page B

phone book, and sneaked back to my room.
    Shhhhhh!
    I started looking up names. And pretty soon I figured out that I couldn’t figure out a thing! I didn’t know any of the sixth graders’ parents’names. Except for Dr. Voss—hers was Ivana— but there weren’t even any Vosses in the book!
    So now what?
    Maybe I could hack into the school’s computer database and find out where they lived that way.
    Or hey! Why didn’t I just call my sidekick? He’d had all four of them in class before.…
    I dug through the Greens. There were lots of Greens living in Cedar Valley, but only one “E. Green.”
    I checked the clock. 10:45—way too late to call.
    Unless, of course, you’re a superhero, and then it’s never too late to call your sidekick, right?
    But how was I going to call without being heard? The phone on Mom’s desk is a corded one. The portable one is in Mom and Dad’s bedroom.
    Then I remembered—I still had Mom’s cell phone in my backpack!
    I dug it up!
    I flicked it open!
    I punched in Mr. Green’s number!
    On the third ring, I realized what I was doing. Aaaargh! I was calling my teacher! At 10:49 at night! He was going to kill me!
    Before I could hang up, someone answered, “Hello?” The voice didn’t sound sleepy. It sounded jumpy.
    “Uh…Elmo?” I said, just in case there was another “E. Green" living in Cedar Valley.
    “What’s that?” Then I guess it registered because he said, “Yeah. Who’s this?”
    “Shredderman,” I whispered. “Sorry it’s so late.”
    There was a moment of silence, then, “What’s the square root of twenty-two thousand eight hundred one?”
    “One fifty-one,” I shot back.
    “Well, hello, Shredderman,” he said. “You take this pretty seriously, don’t you?”
    “Truth and justice are not to be taken lightly.”My voice sounded older. Deeper. Like it wasn’t even me talking.

    “True. So what’s going on? Is everything all right?”
    “I need some information.” I buried my head under the comforter and whispered, “Don’t ask a lot of questions— just help me if you can, okay? This has to do with your van.” “Go for it, Shredderman.” “I need addresses for Carl Blanco, Manny Davis, A. J. Penne, and Ryan Voss. They were all in your class last year.” “Ryan Voss?” “Uh-huh.”
    “Hmmm,” he said, and I could tell he was thinking about a dozen things at once. “Hold the line, okay? I’ve got last year’s records in my file cabinet.”
    It took about five minutes, but when he finally picked up the phone again, he said, “Got ‘em. Ready?”
    “Yes!” I grabbed a pencil and scribbled down the addresses, then said, “Thanks!”
    “I trust you’ll use the information with respect. Giving it out puts me in touchy territory, you understand?”
    “I understand.” I hung up and got to work. One by one, I found the sixth graders’ addresses on the Internet. One by one, I marked them on my map. When I was done, I could see that A. J. Penne and Manny Davis lived quite a ways away fromthe places the graffiti had been sprayed. Especially from the purple dumb-babies that had shown up that night.

    But Ryan Voss and Carl Blanco both lived nearby.
    Could Ryan or Carl really be the Tagger?
    I thought for a minute, then decided.
    Helping the police hadn’t done any good.
    It was time to try it my way.

CHAPTER 10
Spraying Cyberspace!
    I sat in front of my computer with dumb-baby images galore and some pretty good shots of Bubba, Carl, Manny, A.J., and Ryan giving high’ fives in Old Town. But what should I
do
with them? I needed proof.
    I needed to catch the Tagger in the act.
    I scrolled through the pictures again and again. Then I noticed something. Something I’d been too nervous to pay attention to when I’d taken the shots.
    I double-checked the pictures.
    Sure enough, one boy was in all the high-five, low-five shots.
    Four of the boys were
giving
high-fives.
    Only one was taking.
    Ryan Voss.
    Then I remembered what Bubba had