In Too Deep (21 page)

One of the ambulance attendants asked me to stand back, and they whisked Nick away down the hall. I started after him, but Detective Goyer grabbed my arm.

“He was shot,” he said.

“Shot?” Derek had fired at Nick just before he went into the water with Bruno.

“It's a flesh wound. In and out on his left arm. He's going to be okay, but he needs medical attention,” Goyer said. “How's your friend?”

“She's fine,” I said. “Her parents are on their way up here.”

  .    .    .

While Nick was being taken care of, Morgan and I went over our story again for Detective Goyer.

“Nick is the one who figured out that something wasn't right out there,” I said. “He tipped me off that there was a police officer involved.”

“But how did he know that?” Morgan asked.

“He overheard Wilson and Bruno talking,” Detective Goyer said. “Apparently Wilson had been hinting around that he could help Nick make money. Bruno wasn't sure about Nick—he kept pressing Wilson. He said Wilson's cop friend should use his contacts to check up on him.”

“I'm glad he didn't get around to it,” I said. “He might have found out that Nick knew me. And my dad.” I thought about Phil Varton. “I was so sure Officer Varton was the cop who was involved. He seemed to be watching Larry's guys all the time.”

“He was,” Goyer said. “He said he had a feeling there was something wrong out there. Every now and then he'd see lights on in the area, in the middle of nowhere. When that happened, he said, he would swing by the next day and ask Wilson about it, but Wilson always said he had no idea what Varton was talking about. Varton offered to check it out for him, but Wilson never took him up on it.” Goyer shook his head. “He also reported it to Lafayette, but all he ever said was that Wilson was doing good work out there and that the police should be supporting him. He never let Varton do an inspection. You did good work, Robyn, figuring out what was going on and Lafayette's part in it.”

“And all over a stain on a glove,” Morgan said. “I'm impressed.”

“Well, Colleen helped,” I admitted.

“Right. She saw Lafayette break into your car at the marina,” Morgan said.

“Not exactly. She saw him near my car while I was on the phone, and I kind of assumed the rest. Those pictures were there when I left my camera in the glove compartment—and I was watching Lafayette when he looked at my camera and said they were gone. They must have been deleted before then. When I came out of the station after talking to him, I saw those gloves in the police car—the ones with the stain on them. I'd been sure they were Officer Varton's. But I talked to Colleen and found out that the chief, not Varton, had been poking around my car. Then I realized that not only had I lost the VIN plate from the sawmill, I had also lost my notebook. I'd put them both into the same pocket of my backpack. But I had my backpack with me the whole time, which meant I must have dropped them out by the sawmill.

“A few minutes after I talked to Colleen, Varton approached me in the marina parking lot. He was wearing gloves, but they weren't the ones I'd seen out at the sawmill—no stain on them. Then I saw Lafayette come out of the police station and get into the same car where I'd seen the gloves. That's when it all came together. It was Lafayette who had been near my car. The gloves I had seen were his. I thought, what if he'd found the VIN plate and the notebook that I dropped out at the sawmill?”

“He did,” Detective Goyer said. “We found the notebook partially burned in a fire pit out behind his house. He knew you'd been out there before you went to talk to him.”

“That's what I was thinking,” I said. “And Officer Varton told him when he radioed in that he'd found me taking pictures out there. While I was talking to Morgan out on the dock, Lafayette broke into my car and deleted all the pictures.”

“I still don't understand why he didn't just steal the camera,” Morgan said.

“Maybe he thought that would look more suspicious,” I said.

“Well it's a good thing that Morgan knew that those images could be restored,” Goyer said. Morgan and I exchanged glances. The truth was that Morgan didn't know anyone who could restore images on the memory card of a digital camera. Neither of us had a clue whether it was even possible to restore images in the first place. It was a bluff.

“We made sure Lafayette overheard us saying that someone was coming up the next day to restore the pictures so that we'd have proof. Colleen had told us he always came into her family's restaurant on Tuesdays for the fried chicken, so we got her to seat him near a window.” I said. “We knew he or someone else would want to get that camera before Morgan's friend got here. And we knew if we could catch them, we'd have proof that something was going on.”

“And it really was a car-theft ring?” Morgan said.

Goyer nodded.

“Chopping and stripping mostly,” he said.

Morgan frowned. “Chopping and stripping?”

“Chopping is when thieves dismantle a car so they can sell the parts to legitimate and illegitimate body shops,” he explained. “Stripping's similar. Some car-theft rings ship parts overseas, where the cars are reassembled and sold. Or they strip a car and then abandon it. The owner, of course, calls the police and reports the car abandoned. When the police eventually find the stripped car, the theft record is canceled. The car's useless to the owner, who claims insurance. Then the car is sold at an insurance auction. The thieves purchase the frame, supposedly for salvage, reattach the stolen parts, and sell the car, which is no longer listed as stolen. They put fake or stolen VINs in them so that they can be registered.”

“And he was recruiting kids to get involved,” I said grimly.

“We talked to some of the other kids out there,” Detective Goyer said. “Some of them refused to say a word. But some seemed relieved to be able to talk about it. Every single one of those kids is on his own, just like your friend Nick. They have nowhere else to turn, nowhere they really belong.”

“Just like Steven,” Morgan said.

“And Lucas,” I said. “He told Nick he was glad when the cops showed up in town, that he wanted to get arrested and sent back to the city. He said he didn't want to get involved in anything illegal, but Wilson was pressuring him. It got so bad that he decided he would rather end up doing time for year or two if it meant he could get away from Larry.”

“What about Alex Richmond?” Morgan said. “Was he really a suicide?”

“We don't know yet,” Detective Goyer said. “Lafayette denies any involvement. Wilson isn't talking and, so far, Derek is in no shape to tell us anything.”

W

hen Morgan's parents arrived they engulfed her in hugs. They embraced me, too, and wanted to take us back to the city immediately.

“Robyn can't go until Nick is released,” Morgan said.

I told them it was okay, they should leave without me, but they wouldn't hear of it. Morgan's father got coffee for everyone, and we sat in the waiting room until a doctor finally told us that they were going to discharge Nick. They brought him out in a wheelchair. His arm was in a sling. The doctor explained to him that he would have to either see his own doctor as soon as possible or come back to the hospital to get his dressing changed and have someone look at the wound. Morgan's mom, who had never met Nick, stepped forward to listen to the instructions from the doctor.

We drove back to the city with Morgan's parents. Morgan had taken some painkillers and fell asleep almost immediately. Nick put his good arm around me and held me close. We didn't say anything, not with Morgan's parents right there. We were halfway home when Morgan's father's phone rang. It was my dad, sounding anxious and wanting to know if Morgan's parents had talked to Morgan recently. Morgan's mom handed me the phone.

“Robbie, thank God,” my dad said. “I've been trying to get you for more than twenty-four hours. You can't imagine what I was thinking.”

“Where are you, Dad?”

“At the airport. I'll be home tomorrow. Are you two having a good time?”

I glanced at Nick.

“We're on our way back to the city, Dad. I'll see you tomorrow.”

  .    .    .

Morgan's parents wanted me to go home with them, but I didn't want to leave Nick, and I knew that Nick wouldn't be comfortable with strangers. Morgan argued with them, and they finally, reluctantly, dropped Nick and me at my dad's building. We went up to my dad's place, and I got Nick settled in my dad's bed.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Guys in movies take a bullet and all they do is grimace. But it hurts way more than that.”

“I thought you drowned.”

“I thought I would. I knew I was shot, but I didn't know how bad. And Bruno kept holding onto me. I don't think he knew how to swim. I tried, Robyn—”

“He tried to kill you.”

He looked at me with his purple eyes. “I'm not like him, Robyn. I couldn't just let him drown. But ...” He shook his head, and I saw real regret on his face.

I laid down on the bed beside him and put my head on his chest.

  .    .    .

Someone shook me gently.

“Robbie?”

I opened my eyes and looked around. Nick was sound asleep beside me, and my dad was standing over me, looking fatherly and concerned. I slipped off the bed and tiptoed to the door. Dad followed me. I closed the door quietly behind me.

“You want to explain?” my dad said.

My father made coffee and toast, and we sat in the living room, where I told him everything that had happened over the past few weeks.

“You should have told me,” he said.

“This was important to Nick, Dad.”

My dad sat back in his chair and looked at me. “What are you going to tell your mother? She'll be back in a couple of days.”

“I don't know.”

  .    .    .

Two days later we were in my dad's car, headed north. Nick sat in the back. His arm was still in a sling and he was still taking painkillers, but the color had come back into his face. We'd heard from Goyer—Alex Richmond had drowned, but it hadn't been an accident. He had been murdered. Derek had made a deal. He'd told the police everything. Nick had broken the news to Seth.

Steven, it turned out, had really died of exposure.

Dean Lafayette had confessed his part in the car-theft ring—he made sure that Larry Wilson and his gang were never hassled. But he claimed that he didn't know anything about the deaths of Larry's kids and told the police that he drew the line at murder.

“Do you think that's true?” I asked my dad.

He couldn't answer.

We were going back because Nick wanted to help make the case against Wilson. He intended to give the police as much information as he could to make sure that Alex's murderers paid for what they had done. I was going back to my job.

As we passed the sign that welcomed us to town, Dad put a hand on mine. He glanced at Nick.

“Are you two sure this is what you want to do?”
he said.

I looked over my shoulder at Nick. “Yes,” I said.
“We are.”

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AT THE

EDGE

I arrived in the kitchen just in time to see James, soaking wet, dash back into the house. He peeled off his sodden T-shirt. A huge scar ran diagonally across his back, deep reddish-purple. Then I heard his father's voice, hard and sharp. “I told you I never wanted to see that thing again,” he snarled. “It's bad enough that he's dead and that it's your fault . . .”

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