by Jack Parker
There wasn't much for Collin to say to that other than, "Oh." And just like that, the conversation between the two of them ended and Christine walked away.
As she walked away, Collin stared down at the floor and thought to himself, I wonder if…was it one of them?
Chapter 2
A Year Before
Collin remained staring around at the wooden shack around him. He turned around to see Lisa was standing there and looking at him as if she were expecting an answer to some unasked question from him.
"So, what do you think?"
"About what? Oh, the guys seemed great. I think I'm gonna really love working with them," he bluffed. He really hadn't put too much thought into any of them at this point.
"So, now you know where everything is? The pond, the meeting place, the warehouse, everything?"
"Yup. Every…wait. Warehouse?"
"Yeah. You saw the warehouse?"
"Actually…I don't think I did."
Lisa instantly seemed a little confused. "Really? Well, I'll have someone show it to you right away."
"You couldn't just show me?"
"No, I should be looking at a campsite where some condoms were allegedly left."
Collin was grossed out but did his best to hide it. He always tried to do his best to hide whenever he was feeling sick or uneasy. Gross. What kind of people are coming here, anyway?
Lisa looked out one of the windows and saw Nick was still walking away. She stuck her head out the window and yelled, "Hey, Nick! Show Collin the warehouse, will ya?!"
Nick turned and there was little doubt that he was annoyed about having to what he was told, but he didn't really put up much of a fight. He reluctantly forced his way back onto the wooden flight of stairs leading right into the staff room.
"All right, follow me," Nick ordered almost instantly as he walked in, leaving Collin little choice but to do what he was asked.
Nick simply led Collin out a back door to the headquarters and over to another large building that was hidden behind the one they were just in. There were two large doors to it that were slightly parted open, so all Nick had to do was push them apart enough so that they could both get it.
The inside of the warehouse was fairly dark, only being lit by a few weak ceiling light bulbs. The entire room was hot and stuffy that was almost impossible to stand for more than twenty minutes on end. Piled up against the walls and on some cheaply built shelves were supplies like paint, more slabs of wood, and a few spare car parts just in case some of the vehicles needed some repair.
"All right, here's the paint," Nick said as he slammed the underside of his hand on a random paint can on the shelves. He wasn't staring at Collin as he was explaining this, nor did he put any more detail into his explanation of it than that.
Gee, never would've guessed, Collin sarcastically thought to himself.
"Here's glue, emergency meds, spare two-way radios, and a bunch of other junk that we'll never use."
Collin looked around the room while trying not to let the thick, hot air get to him. As he scanned the large area, he saw something that caught his eye. "What's that?"
Nick looked to where Collin was pointing and saw what he meant. It was a large sign that had a map of the entire state forest on it, but it was covered in bright yellow graffiti that was starting to fade, as was the luster of the wood and image of the map. There were several tiny holes that were scattered all over the sign.
"I have no idea," Nick casually admitted. "About a year ago someone spray painted it and we had to take it down."
A suspicious look crossed Collin's face as he stared at the spray painted map as if it were about to come alive. "Anything else to look at?"
"Um…yeah, hold on."
Nick ran over to a corner and lugged out a metal detector. "You know what this is?"
"Yeah. Metal detector."
"Good. People are losin' their crap all the time around here. Car keys, money, jewelry. You name it, someone's lost it. Whenever you needa find something like that, just call headquarters and someone'll bring the metal detector. We'll find the thing that was lost and everyone goes home happy."
"Sounds like a plan to me."
"Seriously, dude, there's not a lot to see here. That's just about it. I don't know why Lisa made me show ya this dump."
Wow, he's got a really negative attitude.
Nick turned his stare to Collin and looked at him almost as if he could read what was going through Collin's mind. "You got something you want to say to me?"
"Wha?...no, no!"
"All right. Nothing left to see here. You should probably get back to the front of the office and see if Lisa's there."
"Why?"
"I dunno! She probably knows what to do with ya."
"All right, all right!"
Collin turned and walked out of the warehouse and quickly walked back to the front of headquarters. Lisa wasn't there at first, but after he was kept waiting for almost twenty minutes, she pulled up in her car and parked it right in front. She stormed out and appeared as if she just had to break up a fight. There was a sour look on her face until she saw Collin; her expression immediately changed to a more pleasant one when she saw him.
"Hey, Collin. You see the warehouse?"
"Yup."
"Great," she responded as she walked up the steps and inside the building. She went into a drawer right by the sign-in desk and pulled out a fat, somewhat-thick book black book. Taped on the front of it was a piece of paper that had the words LOG BOOK 43 printed on it. She pulled a pen out of her pocket and started writing down something furiously inside.
"What are you doing?"
"Writing in the log book."
As she answered that, she stopped and looked like she had forgotten to tell him something completely obvious. "Sorry, I forgot to mention one thing. Whenever there's an incident or something happened here, we write it down in the log book, all right?"
"Sure."
"If you ever need to write something down, you'll have to write down the time, the date, and a paragraph or so on what happened, all right?"
"Yeah. No problem."
"Good. I don't think you'll ever have to write something down in here, but if you do, you know what to do."
"Yup."
"Great." Saying this, she clapped her hands together and let out a slight hiss of air. "That's it. I think that's all you need to know for the job here."
"Awesome!"
"Great. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yes. You. Will."
Collin quickly started walking to the door before he got stopped one more time by Lisa. "Hold on a second. I forgot to give you something!"
He turned around and saw Lisa was throwing him what appeared to be a dark green t-shirt. He caught it just in time and briefly looked down at it.
"That's your uniform," she said plainly. "Make sure you wear it in EVERY day."
Collin nodded. "Sure thing. Thanks, Lisa!"
"See you tomorrow!"
Without another word, Collin hopped in his car and turned it on. He pulled it out of the parking lot surprisingly fast as was soon back on the main road. As soon as he was out of sight from the front office, he grinned and cackled to himself. "Awesome," he whispered quietly. "Maybe I'll finally get a good night's sleep this summer!"
Several minutes later, he was driving into the parking lot of yet another place where he was a summer worker…one year earlier.
It was the town's police station, and Collin got a great sense of nostalgia just staring at the large brick building. But he didn't waste any more time before running into the station as if he was a little kid running onto a playground. He excitedly ran down the hall and gave quick nods to all the other officers patrolling the halls or sitting in their offices who happened to be looking out the window in their door at that time.
After a somewhat long power walk, Collin finally stopped in front of a door close to the end of the hall that had a thin bronze plaque on it that re
ad SGT. ROY TENEIRE.
Collin knocked on the door a few times before a commanding voice from inside yelled, "Come in!"
After opening the door, Collin put a smug smile on his face and sarcastically said, "Sir, I'm under arrest for tipping a cow."
Sergeant Teneire looked up. He had a fairly short hair cut, but what hair he did have was fairly shaggy. At forty-nine, he was a twenty-five year veteran on the force and had earned the respect of almost all his fellow officers, despite the fact that he frequently got overly aggressive and worked his squads too hard in some dire times.
"Collin!" Teneire exclaimed happily with a slight smile forming over his face. He got up from his desk and promptly shook Collin's hand. "How've ya been, buddy?"
"Pretty good. Yourself?"
"Oh, the usual. So, how come you're not working here again this summer?"
For the past two summers, Collin had been a seasonal employee at the police station he was in now. When most of his friends said that they'd get jobs as a cashier in a supermarket or a fast food place, Collin opted to work as a "helper" at the local police station instead. Not only did he think it would give him really good insight to what really happened to criminals, but he also thought he'd be able to brag about working there.
"I…got a job at Arbur Winslow," Collin responded as he side-stepped the sergeant's question.
Teneire still retained his pleasant look, although it was obvious there was some disappointment in his eyes.
"Still can't get over that killing, huh? Is that the reason you're working there instead of here this summer, Collin?"
Collin's eyes drooped a little.
A year earlier, when Collin was working at that station and mainly helped officers filing paperwork or keeping the station clean, he was paying close attention to the cases some of the officers were dealing with. Most of them were things like robbery, drug busts, drunk driving, and other pains that the police had to deal with on an all-too-frequent basis. But at one time, something happened that peaked Collin's excitement: there was a murder at Arbur Winslow State Forest. It appeared to be pre-meditated, and the suspect was assumed to be one of the employees who was working there at the time. Investigators looked for any clues, but they turned up surprisingly empty. Still, Collin followed the investigation very closely and paid attention to how it was progressing, and he asked numerous times to even be part of it, despite Teneire's immediate refusal every time.
Not surprisingly, Collin was extremely disappointed when the summer came to an end and there were no huge leads on the murder. But even when he was back in school, Collin still occasionally stopped by the police station to pay Teneire a visit and to check to see if there were any developments. That process repeated itself for about two and a half more months before the investigation went completely cold. The police immediately stopped working on that case and Collin was extremely disappointed. But he still continued visiting Teneire just to say hello, and Teneire even welcomed it.
"Yeah, pretty much," he bleakly answered.
Teneire sighed. "All right, Collin, not to burst your bubble or anything, but we're the police. All right? We've got guys trained to investigate. Trained to know what questions to ask. And they came up with nothing. Now don't take this the wrong way, but if those guys couldn't find anything, you couldn't."
Collin brushed off the discouraging remark. "How do you know? I'm now working with the guys who potentially did it. Maybe I could trick them into saying something that could give us a hint."
Teneire lightly put his hand out like he was stopping Collin in his tracks. "Don't get too confident, all right, buddy? If you want to work there, great. But I hope you're not expecting to really find something that'll give us a hint."
Collin looked down at the ground a little bit before he said, "Sir, can you please re-open the Arbur Winslow case?"
Teneire smiled a little bit. "You know I can't do that. We don't have any leads, and there are other cases out there we have to work on. I can't just reopen one unsolved case just because a kid who used to spend his summer here wants me to."
"But…please, sir!"
"Not unless you can give me a reason to reopen it, Collin."
The teen looked down at the floor and gritted his teeth a little. "I'll find something that'll get you to reopen it," he said as if he was making a promise to a loved one on their death bed. "And don't forget-I still have this!"
Collin reached into his pocket and pulled out a bronze police badge that Teneire had given him towards the end of last summer for all his good work.
"Oh, you've still got that?"
"Of course! And remember what you said to me? With this, I can go pretty much anywhere in this station…including the evidence room!"
Teneire didn't look too concerned about that. "Yeah, but you already know all the stuff that we have in there, and we didn't get much of a lead from any of it."
"But I can still go in there, right?"
"Yes, but…"
"Awesome! Well, I need to go home now. Thanks, Sergeant! Have a good day!"
Collin quickly walked out the door, leaving Teneire sitting at his desk staring out. He sighed. "If only half my investigators were that spirited."
After walking out to the parking lot and getting in his car, Collin quickly drove off and went home. He living in a one story house, but it was built fairly solidly and had quite a few luxuries in it that not many other houses in the area had.
As he walked inside, Collin dashed into his room and closed the door behind him. His bedroom was a bit small and was pretty messy. His bed was right in the middle of one of the closest wall, with the door being on the right and his closet being on the left. Right across from the bed was his computer, and in the corner to the right of that was his electric guitar.
But in just a few seconds, he picked up the guitar and put it very close to the closet. He went onto the computer and logged onto Arbur Winslow's official website and printed out a large version of the map. He taped the map onto the wall next to the computer, planning to use it to mark up things such as where he thinks key events during the murder happened, where people supposedly were, and other details. He was basically acting like he was a one-man investigation team and he was seriously going to solve the crime just by doing things like this.
Still on the site, he printed out pictures of all the employees who had profiles on the site and had seen earlier that day. He planned on putting their pictures up on the wall left-to-right in order of which one he thought was the most likely to have been the killer, with the one on the left being the least suspicious.
"Heh heh heh…watch out, killer! Collin Bansen, ace detective, is on the job!"
He immediately sat on his bed and started pondering several theories in his head about who could've committed the murder and how they did it.
"Hmmm…I'd better start from scratch…"
Collin reached into his computer desk and pulled out an old school notebook. He flipped to some blank pages about halfway through and wrote down everything he knew about the murder that happened thus far.
Here was how it had happened: on July 27 the year before, Scott Halpen, a thirty-three year old state park employee, was found by a hiker on one of the trails at about 7:00 in the morning. The hiker instantly called the police. From there, it was determined that Scott had been killed by a stab wound to the neck with what appeared to be a small knife. But the odd thing was that the knife wound seemed to be a bit different than usual; it appeared that Scott wasn't flat-out stabbed in the neck because the wound wasn't anywhere near brutal enough. Authorities had suspected that the knife had instead been thrown into the neck from a distance, but the knife that supposedly did the killing was never found.
That was the basic idea of what had happened. But Collin remembered one more interesting thing that Teneire told him when the case was really starting to open up. Teneire said that, based on the autopsy report, Scott was actually dead several hours before the body was found.
&nbs
p; "Oh, man, this is awesome!" he said to himself as he stared at the mini-wannabe-station that he had created from his bedroom. He truly thought he was going to solve the crime just because of this, clearly letting his over-excited nature get the best of him.
Despite having the entire groundwork of the case laid out in front of him, Collin still had hardly better of an idea about what happened than he did before. He had a way to get more organized, and he hoped that would be all the help that he would need to finally figure out what had happened.
He couldn't remember a time he felt more anxious about something than when the murder happened while he was working at the police department. Ever since it had happened, he wanted nothing more than to solve it. He was sure Teneire and the rest of the officers felt the same way, and he understood that they couldn't just talk about an older case when there were new ones to solve.
But from Collin's view, if they weren't able to solve the crime, he would do it himself. He wasn't going to rest until everything finally came to the light.
Chapter 3
A Fight and a Knife
"Iiiiiit's show time," Collin muttered to himself as he was arriving at headquarters for his first official day on the job. He walked up the wooden steps confidently and opened the door, stepping inside the only part of the whole forest that really had air conditioning.
Almost like she was waiting there the whole time for him, Lisa got up from the front desk where campers booked themselves in and went over to him. "Hey, Collin. Ready to get some work done?"
"Yup," he replied very easily. He was hoping he could keep his true motive for working there under her radar.
"Good. All right, like I said, you're gonna be doing some maintenance work today. I'm assigning you to work down at the front of the hiking trail with Jess, all right?"
"Sure thing. What do you want me to do?"
"She's busy raking up all the pine needles that fell from the trees. You're gonna help her rake them up."
"Rake up pine needles?"
"We want to keep the park clean, don't we? Don't worry about a thing. It's a very easy job and time flies."