I followed him back to the house, where he showed me into a bright room that had been set up as an office.
“They’re mostly on the computer.” He sat down in front of a new-looking laptop. I stared at a large color photograph pinned to a bulletin board on the wall.
I stepped closer for a good look. The photograph had been assembled from many shots that together captured a 360-degree view of the town. It was a perfect circle of the terrain around the central point where the photographer had been standing. I recognized some of the buildings.
“Did you take this?” I asked.
Mike didn’t look away from the computer screen. “It’s my contest entry.”
“It’s amazing!”
His head bobbed up. “You think so?”
“Yes. Everything lines up perfectly. I know from the angles that it’s not just one aerial shot. If it was, I’d be looking at the tops of things. But I’m not.” I studied it again. “You really took this from the water tower?”
“Yeah.”
“But how did you get it lined up so perfectly? This must be…” I paused and examined the picture again. “…maybe six pictures altogether?”
“Eleven.” He stood up and pointed out the different shots. “I tried to keep my feet in the exact same position every time I turned. I had to do the sequence maybe a dozen times before I got what I needed. Then I Photoshopped them like crazy. I think it worked out okay.”
“Okay? It worked out perfectly.” It really had. I was impressed.
“Well, with digital images, you can do just about anything. But you know what I think would be really cool? If I could have done it the old-fashioned way, with an old camera and real film. When you use actual film, you can’t check what you’ve done right away. You have to set it up perfectly and then wait until you’re in a darkroom to see how it turned out. I tried not to look at the shots I took until I finished each sequence. But it’s too easy, you know? Some of the early photographers came up with amazing stuff with none of the gadgets we have today. They were the real masters.”
I stared at him. I didn’t think I’d ever heard Mike Winters say so much on any topic at one time. For sure I never would have guessed he was the kind of person who would be seriously into photography. Or the kind of person who knew as much about it as he apparently did, or who wanted to delve deeper into it for artistic reasons. Jimmy always used to say that people were more than just one thing. They were multifaceted, and even if you didn’t see all the sides of a person right away, if you gave it enough time you’d be surprised more often than not. He was right—but I seemed to have forgotten that lately.
“Okay, you want to see all the pictures?” He waved me into the desk chair. “Be my guest.”
The first thing I noticed was the date-and-time stamp at the bottom of each frame. That made sense. The photographs all had to be taken on the same day, within the same two-hour time period, in order to qualify for the competition. Immediately my heart sank. Although the pictures were taken on the day that Ethan died, they were taken at the wrong time. According to Detective Martin, the cheerleaders had found Ethan at three forty-five that afternoon. Mike had taken a lot of pictures, most of them time-stamped between three thirty and three forty, with a few taken at three fifty. In other words, all of them had been taken immediately before and after Ethan went off the roof.
“Is the clock in your camera right? Did you ever reset it?” I asked.
“You accusing me of something?”
“No. No, it’s just that I ran into Ashleigh after school that day. She was getting ready to go out to take her pictures.”
“Yeah. So?”
“School doesn’t even let out until three twenty. How did you get up the water tower and start taking all these pictures in ten minutes.”
“I knew it.” Mike threw up his arms. “I knew you were going to find some way to involve me in this, even though I had nothing to do with it. I was up there for an hour, not twenty minutes. Look, you can’t just climb the water tower and start shooting, you know. It’s restricted. Off-limits. I had to get permission from the municipality. And I had to have someone go up with me—plus I had to wear a harness, which made it harder to do what I wanted to do. And my parents had to sign a waiver in case anything happened to me. They had to agree not to sue the town. And I had to do it on the department of public works’ schedule, which meant that I had to get out of school at three to meet the guy who was going to take me up there—after giving me a stupid safety lecture as if I was four years old or something and didn’t have a clue what I was doing. All the pictures had to be taken between three and five. Mine were taken in that time frame. If you don’t believe me, you can check with almost anyone—the town, my parents, the school principal, my English teacher. Be my guest.”
“I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Mike. I was just asking.” I turned back to the pictures. Okay, so they weren’t going to show Ethan falling or jumping or being pushed off the roof. But maybe they would show someone else on the roof waiting for him, the person Charlie said Ethan was waiting for. Maybe that person had been hiding on the roof when Charlie was there. Maybe that’s why Ethan wouldn’t let Charlie on the roof. And maybe Charlie’s sudden appearance had made him nervous. Maybe that’s why he kept looking at the door.
I clicked through photo after photo. Only one out of every nine or ten pictures showed the roof of the recreation center—and at quite a distance. Right away I saw another problem. Part of the roof was obscured. From above and at the angle that Mike had taken the picture, it was impossible to see what, if anything, was behind the structure that housed the top of the stairwell and the door opening onto the roof. There was also a large square—I guessed and Mike confirmed that it was the heating and cooling system—near the middle of the roof. I couldn’t see what was behind it either. These pictures weren’t going to help me.
“Nothing, huh?” Mike said. “Can’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
“It was worth a try.” I clicked through the last set of pictures, focusing on the time stamp, which had suddenly changed to just after three forty-five.
“Why did you stop taking pictures for a few minutes and then start again?”
“Taylor texted me,” Mike said. “She told me what she had heard, so I took a few more pictures. You know, just in case there was something going on.”
I stared at one of the photographs. At the parking lot full of kids and parents. And at the figure walking away from one side of the rec center, carrying something in his hand. Something yellow.
“Did you show this to the cops?”
“What for? There’s nothing to see. Besides, by the time I took those, the cops were already on it.”
I stared at the tiny figure clutching the yellow garment.
“Can you make this bigger?” I asked. He clicked to enlarge the image, but it broke into blurry pixels.
“What are you looking for?”
I went through all of the photos again, looking for another one with the same person in it, maybe one that showed his face.
There were none.
But I already had Charlie’s jacket—most of it—for Aunt Ginny. And the security guard’s description of the jacket he had seen, which clearly was not Charlie’s.
And now this, someone carrying something yellow, something that could be a jacket, leaving the rec center after Ethan went off the roof, long after Charlie had been and gone. Put those two facts together, and at the very least it had to be enough to get Charlie off the suspect list.
“Can you print me a copy?” I asked. “Can you print copies of all the ones you took after Taylor texted you?”
He gave me a quizzical look but clicked on a printer icon. A few moments later the printer spit out all the copies I’d asked for.
“What are you going to do with them?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Is it going to help Charlie?”
Charlie. Not Lightbulb.
“
I think so. I hope so.”
He clicked out of his photo file.
“I have to get back to work,” he said. “My dad is a real stickler for chores.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Whatever.”
“Mike? I’m sorry for what happened in the summer. I thought…” What had I thought?
“You thought I was the bad guy.”
“Yeah. And I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
He straightened up. “It hit me pretty hard, that whole thing with my grandfather. I was a real jerk.”
“And I judged you too quickly. Jimmy—my grandfather—always said it was wrong to judge someone on first impressions. They’re almost always wrong.”
“Yeah? Then why are people always telling you that you have to make a good first impression?” He smiled. It suited him.
“Good question,” I said.
FOURTEEN
I thought about that picture all the way back to town.
Charlie admitted he’d been on the roof that afternoon. But he’d been there right after school, not right before Ethan went off the roof. He’d disposed of his yellow jacket by then too. Eldridge had raided the charity box Monday morning and taken the jacket well before Ethan fell—or was pushed—off the roof.
Lloyd McKenna, the rec-center security guard, had seen someone with a bright-yellow jacket, but the one he described was different from Charlie’s. Charlie’s jacket didn’t have black trim.
So if the jacket Lloyd had seen wasn’t Charlie’s, whose was it?
Mike’s photo showed someone carrying something bright yellow through the rec-center parking lot no more than a couple of minutes after Ethan fell off the roof. I couldn’t see the person’s face, but I knew it wasn’t Charlie.
It wasn’t Andes either. He never got close to Ethan that afternoon, and he had the witnesses to back him up—first Mr. Cavendish and then Tonka and his girlfriend.
If not Andes, then who? And why?
Was Serena right? Did it have something to do with steroids?
When I got to town, I went straight to the police station.
“Sorry,” Sergeant Evert, aka Sarge, said. “Your aunt is busy right now. She can’t be disturbed.”
“Can I wait?”
“It could be a long wait, but be my guest.”
I sat down on a battered wooden bench and pulled out one of the photos Mike had printed for me. I circled the person coming out the side door of the rec center, and the time-and-date stamp in the bottom corner, and then drew an arrow to the back of the photo, where I scribbled a note for Aunt Ginny to call me. I dug in my backpack for the plastic bag with the pieces of Charlie’s jacket in it and took it and the photo to the desk.
“Sarge, do you have an envelope?” I asked.
Just as Sarge swung around to snag a large brown envelope from a tray to his right, the station’s main door opened and two uniformed cops came in. One of them paused when he saw me. He was the cop Detective Martin had sent to drive me to the police station. He nodded at me. Sarge broke into a wolflike smile when he saw the officer.
“Ah, Theroux, just the man I was hoping to see.” Sarge crooked a finger, and Theroux approached the desk. Sarge extended a hand. “Your paperwork.”
“Still working on it, Sarge.” He came right up behind me as Sarge handed me the envelope. I could smell the coffee on his breath when he spoke. I scrawled Aunt Ginny’s name on the front and slid the photo and the pieces of jacket into the envelope, doing my best to ignore Theroux’s prying eyes.
“Can you give this to my aunt?” I asked Sarge. “It’s important.”
“I’ll do it, Sarge,” Theroux said. “I have to pass by the detectives’ office to write my report.”
Sarge held up the envelope. Theroux disappeared with it through an inner door.
“I want that paperwork!” Sarge bellowed after him.
I shrugged into my backpack.
“Not going to wait?” Sarge asked.
“She’ll call me.” Soon, I hoped. “Thanks, Sarge.”
I was unlocking my bike outside when I got a text.
It’s Andes. Need to talk to u. Meet me asap. He gave me a location and ended with Don’t tell anyone.
I knew Andes hadn’t been on the roof when Ethan died. But I couldn’t help wondering about Serena’s accusations and the shadowy character I had seen pushing something through the fence to Andes. Maybe Ethan hadn’t been taking steroids. But he had gotten that bottle from somewhere, and I had the feeling that maybe Andes knew where.
If I had been on the ball, I might have wondered how Andes had gotten hold of my cell number.
FIFTEEN
I rode out to meet Andes at a roadside clearing just past the turnoff to the dump and on the way to Maracle Salvage and Scrap, close enough to be convenient for Andes and far enough away to give him privacy from his father. Someone had built a fire pit in the middle of the clearing and dragged some logs around it for seating. Andes wasn’t there yet. I parked my bike and sat down on a log to wait. I pulled out the rest of the photos Mike had printed for me and sorted through them again, looking in vain for another sighting of the man in the picture I had left for Aunt Ginny. I hoped there was a computer program that Aunt Ginny could use to enlarge the man’s tiny face. I’d seen it done on a TV cop show, so there had to be, right?
It’s funny how you can look at something a hundred times and not see what’s right before your eyes. I held the photo closer to my face and remembered what Mike had said when I asked him if he’d given the photos to the cops. No, he’d said. They were already on it.
They were already on it.
I was fumbling in my pocket for my cell phone when I heard something—car tires crunching over gravel. Andes in his pickup truck?
The sound stopped abruptly. A moment later a cop stepped into the clearing. Theroux. The cop who had delivered my envelope to Aunt Ginny. The cop who had shown up first on the scene after Ethan died.
“Riley, isn’t it? Detective McFee’s niece.”
What was he doing here? Where was Andes?
“Does your aunt know you’re out here?”
“I was just going to call her.” I brought my phone out of my jacket pocket.
“Why don’t I give you a ride back to town? I’ll throw your bike in the car.”
He grabbed my bike and started to his car. “Come on.”
“No, thanks,” I said. I wished he would go away. “I’m waiting for someone.”
He frowned. “Out here, all by yourself? That doesn’t sound safe.”
I fumbled with my phone to find Aunt Ginny’s number. Theroux grabbed the phone from me.
“Come on,” he said. “You don’t want to do that.”
“My aunt is going to be looking for me when she opens that envelope,” I told him.
He was shaking his head before I finished speaking. “I don’t think she’s expecting to hear from you until later tonight.”
For a couple of seconds I was confused. What was he talking about? Then it hit me.
“You opened the envelope.”
“Where did you get that picture?”
That answered my question. It also probably meant he hadn’t delivered my envelope to Aunt Ginny. Had he destroyed it? The pieces of jacket were irreplaceable, but I still had Eldridge and the security guard. They would be able to tell Aunt Ginny that they had spoken to me. They’d be able to tell her what they’d told me. As for the photo, Mike had the original on his computer. All I had to do was get away from this man.
He repeated his question. His tone was more threatening.
“That’s none of your business,” I said.
He shrugged. “It shouldn’t be hard to find out. I know when it was taken, and that angle…” He shook his head again. “I should have known you’d be a problem when I saw you out at Maracle’s.”
So he was the man I’d seen talking to Andes through the fence when I’d gone to the junkyard. It all came together.
&nb
sp; “You’ve been supplying steroids to the football team,” I said. It was the only thing that made sense. “Ethan found out it was you. You went up on the roof that afternoon to talk to him. You were there when Charlie got there, weren’t you? That’s why Ethan wouldn’t let Charlie onto the roof to look for my charm.” It was also probably why Ethan had kept his eye on the door latch. He was afraid someone else would show up, and he wanted to talk to this cop alone. “He confronted you, didn’t he? What happened? Did you get into a fight? Or did you just push him off the roof?”
Thoughts exploded in my head. That man in the photo, walking away from the rec center carrying something yellow. A cop car in the parking lot of the rec center, seconds away from the scene of Ethan’s death, but no police car arriving on the scene until well after the ambulance. Ethan asking me about cops. Do cops stick together? Do they hang out together? Do they protect each other? Had that been the point of his questions? Had he found out something about a cop? Maybe something about a cop who pushed things through fences instead of handing them over in a straightforward way? A cop who was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing that Ethan found out about?
The cop who had been assigned to the police car in Mike’s picture. The cop who had taken more than ten minutes to respond to a 9-1-1 emergency right next door. There was only one reason I could think of for that. Theroux didn’t want the dispatcher to know how close he was to the scene. He must have told someone—a dispatcher, his sergeant—that he was somewhere else. But Mike’s photo placed him practically at the scene immediately before the incident. If he was the one who had pushed Ethan off the roof, then by the time he got back to his car and drove away, he would have been no more than a minute or two away when I made my call. It had taken him over ten minutes to show up—well after the ambulance.
Where was Andes? Had he set me up for this encounter? And then I asked myself the question I should have asked in the first place: how did Andes get my cell number?
I bet there were plenty of ways this cop could have gotten it though. For sure it was in Aunt Ginny’s file somewhere. Maybe she even had it at her desk.
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