The Night Shift (26 page)

"So if he forgot about it, then that means he doesn't have it. Which means if he never had it, he never was able to hide it."

Lisa was silent for a little while before she looked like something just clicked in her mind. "Collin, are you saying?..."

"I sure am," he said, grinning wider than ever. "He never hid the letter because he never touched the letter again after Scott gave it to him. You know what that means: the letter is still in his desk!"

Lisa was surprised by this idea, but then shook her head and turned serious. "Collin, there's no way that happened. Even if he
did
forget entirely about the letter for every reason you mentioned it, there's no way the police would've missed it when they did their investigation."

"But if the letter was addressed personally to him, then the police wouldn't have a right to look at it unless he was a
prime
suspect, which he wasn't. So the police wouldn't have been able to look at it, either."

Lisa now looked incredibly uneasy. "So you're REALLY saying that you think the letter is still in the desk?"

"Yeah. Mind if I take a look?"

Lisa pushed her chair aside and crossed her arms. "Knock yourself out."

Collin smiled as he walked over to the desk and began opening up every single drawer. He pulled out several papers in every single drawer, and each was left a mess after he had searched it. After searching for only a minute or two, Collin froze up. "Well, well, well…what have we here?!"

Anxiously, he pulled out a crumpled envelope that had the words FOR RANDY written in it with a thin black pen.

"Am I good, or am I good?!" Collin yelled excitedly.

Lisa was in disbelief at Collin's success. "Collin, how did you…"

"I'm just that good," he said with a cocky tone that made itself present. Without even realizing he was doing it, he ripped open the top of the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper inside.

It only took him
a
moment to go from looking excited to horrified.

"Collin?...Can
I
read the letter?" Lisa asked hopefully.

"Lisa…this isn't a letter at all."

Chapter 15
 

Tying it All Together

Lisa sunk deep into her chair with her mouth hanging open. "What do you mean it isn't a letter?!"

Collin turned towards her, his face
a
mix of shock and excitement. "I mean it isn't a letter! Take a look at this!"

He anxiously handed the piece of paper to her, and as Lisa saw the picture, she was even more shocked than Collin was. "Oh, my goodness…" she lowly said.

The "letter" was actually
a
picture that was printed onto a piece of computer paper. The picture featured a bunch of teenaged kids in the background with beer cans in their hands. In the foreground of the photo was another teenager who was holding a beer in his hand, and he was giving the camera
a
sneer that almost seemed to be saying, "Hey, world! Look what
I've
got!"

"That can't be…is that Nick?!" Lisa gasped as she stared in horror at the picture in front of her.

"No, that's definitely Nick, all right."

Lisa was at a loss for words for several seconds before she finally said, "How the hell did Scott get a copy of this?"

"Simple. It was a picture on the internet. Scott found it and printed it out."

"But how'd he find this picture to begin with? Actually, how do you even know it's Scott who found this?"

"Okay, first let me explain something to you…" Collin answered.

As he entered his e-mail address and password, his profile page loaded, the first thing to catch the eye being a picture Collin took of himself about half a foot from his face while looking really serious at the camera and sharply dropping one eyebrow. In the upper right corner of the page was the same picture (except much smaller) and the words "Welcome, Collin" were written right next to it.

"I remember a while ago I was talking to Christine about Scott, and she said something kind of interesting about him…"

Christine laughed. "Hey, loosen up a little. You shouldn't worry about what other people think of you."

"
I don't. I just wouldn't want to make myself look or sound dumb, is all."

"
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, Scott was pretty laid back and cool. He even had a NetPub account."

"What's NetPub?" Lisa asked.

"NetPub is an online teen social forum," Collin nervously answered.

"Heh…I shoulda figured Scott would be the kind of middle-aged guy to have something like that."

"Yeah…anyway, whenever you're logged into NetPub, your main profile picture is at the side of the screen and it says WELCOME SO-AND-SO."

Lisa gasped and continued staring at the picture on the side of the paper. It was a picture of a middle-aged guy with heavy, but somewhat dirty blond hair; again, a face Collin knew all too well: the same man who was in the photo Collin saw on Lisa's desk the same day he first got hired to work at Arbur Winslow.

Collin looked quickly back at the photo on the side of the piece of paper, and then turned to the picture frame he saw his first day on the job. It was unmistakably the same man in both pictures. What was more, right beneath the picture on the piece of paper that was just discovered in the desk, there were the words "Welcome, Scott".

"Unless I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure that's the same Scott who got killed here about a year ago."

Lisa was almost horrified at what the discovery was revealing. "Okay, so Nick has
a
NetPub profile, too?"

"Yup. One of
my
friends on it is friends with him. Nick posted that picture of himself and Scott found it and printed it out."

Lisa was speechless for a moment before she said, "Well, why would Scott want to print out the picture anyway?"

Geez, have you forgotten about Randy?!
Collin angrily thought to himself. "Christine told me something kind of funny about something else…about Randy…"

"
Yeah. They thought he was
a
great park manager after a couple years, and I guess he wanted to live up to that reputation. So he was pretty careful when getting those kids to work here. He wanted to make sure only the 'best' teenagers got jobs here."

"
Oookaaaay…and what exactly are the 'best' teenagers?" Collin asked, slightly unclear on where this was going.

"
Ones with a clean record. Kids who didn't have any police chargers, or didn't get suspended or expelled from school, and all that other good stuff. He didn't like kids smoking or drinking or doing drugs, either. Actually, I'm pretty sure that if he caught them doing any of those things anywhere, he'd automatically fire them."

"…Scott printed that picture of Nick off of NetPub and probably planned on giving it to Randy."

"What makes you think that?"

"Lisa…Scott
had it in an envelope and gave it Randy
!"

Lisa looked shocked from Collin's rudeness, but she shrugged it off. "Okay, fine. But what's the big deal? Nick would've only gotten fired."

"I don't think Randy would have just 'fired' him. Knowing him, don't you also think he would have reported Nick to the police?"

"I…guess so."

"You know what I'm getting at now, right? Here's the deal: Nick wasn't really a good coworker to anyone, right? The only reason Randy kept him was because he was such a good worker, right?"

"I think so."

"Well, Nick was probably being a jerk to Scott and to everyone else. Then Scott happened to find out Nick was also a NetPub
user
and looked at some of the photos he posted. When Scott found photos of Nick getting hammered, he printed them out and threatened to show Randy if he didn't start acting like a better person."

"And…"

"Well, obviously that didn't happen, because Scott ended up showing the picture to Randy, anyway. Well, at least he
tried
to show Randy. But it doesn't sound like Randy ever saw the picture. If he did, I don't think Nick would still be working here."

"I guess, but…you're saying Scott was pretty much blackmailing Nick to smarten up, or else he's show Randy the picture of him getting wasted, and he thought Randy would call the police or something?"

"That's what I'm saying," Collin proudly concluded. "That's why I'm willing to bet it was Nick who killed Scott!"

Lisa now looked even more confused and amazed than ever. Just from finding a simple picture that had been forgotten, Collin had managed to come up with a completely new theory; she simply couldn't believe how much she had underestimated him at the start.

"This is what happened…" Collin started, now trying to piece his theory together bit by bit. He knew what he wanted to say; he just hoped he could find the right words. "After Nick realized Scott was planning on showing the picture to Randy, he realized he had to do something to make sure Randy never saw it. And just because he's Nick, he apparently resorted to the worst choice possible…murder. So…he decided to go to Jess."

"
Jess
?! What does
she
have to do with anything?"

"Hey, are you forgetting that it was
her
knife that I found under the lifeguard tower a few days ago?!"

"Ohh!"

"Nick probably told her he lost his knife and asked to borrow hers. And since Nick always needed his knife and Jess never needed hers, she probably didn't have much of a problem with lending it to him. Then Nick probably used that knife to stab Scott, and then hid it! That way, if the knife was ever found, people would see from the name on the blade that it was
Jess's
knife and
she'd
get blamed for it."

Lisa was in total shock, but she was even more taken aback when she saw Collin wasn't finished.

"And let's not forget that the body was found on the hiking trail, right?"

"Right…"

"And what time did they estimate Scott died at?"

"Uh…wasn't it at, like, one or two in the morning?"

"Exactly! But the doors to the park are closed at nine, right?!"

"Yes…"

"So that means no one can get in…
except for employees!"

Again, Lisa was at a loss for words. She let out a small gasp as she started going through Collin's theory in her head. It was all beginning to make sense to her now. The scariest part of it all: she couldn't find any flaws in Collin's theory at all.

"Collin…I…"