by Jack Parker
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 wa
nted 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…"
His eyes widened with excitement. "Yeah?"
"I…I think we should talk about this someplace else."
The excitement quickly turned to puzzlement. "Wha?..."
"I don't think my office is the best place to talk about this. Someone could be listening in on us. Or someone could walk in."
"Wait, go somewhere else?!"
"What are ya, goin' deaf? Yeah."
"Okay…and where exactly did you have in mind?"
"How about the warehouse?"
Collin's eyes dimmed. "Uh…okay. Let's…go to the warehouse, then."
After a short walk behind the headquarters, the two Forest employees made it to the old abandoned warehouse. As they walked in, they both groaned as they inhaled their first breath of the stuffy air. Collin closed the doors tightly behind them, leaving some cheap, weak-watted bulbs keeping the room lit up.
"Okay, so what were you saying?" Lisa asked, making sure she understood everything perfectly.
"You want me to go over the whole thing AGAIN?"
"Not the whole thing. Just the important stuff."
"Ugh…all right. Scott prints off the picture of Nick and threatens to show it to Randy unless he starts acting like less of an asshole-pardon my French. Nick doesn't, then gets worried that Scott's gonna show Randy the picture, and he decides to kill Scott to make sure that never happens."
"Collin, I think there's a problem with that," Lisa interrupted. "Randy didn't do ANYTHING to Nick, so that means he didn't see the photo."
"So?!"
"So…even Nick would be smart enough to realize Randy didn't know that picture existed. So he wouldn't have had much of a reason to murder Scott."
"Oh, please, Lisa," Collin sarcastically moaned. "Just because Randy hadn't seen it then doesn't mean he never would. He must've just thought Scott hadn't given the picture to him but still planned on it. And like I said, he had to make sure Scott didn't do that."
"But Randy had the photo in his desk…"
"And how was Nick supposed to know that?!"
"Ugh…okay, you got a point there."
"So, there you have it! Nick waits until it's dark out, and when he knows that Scott's on the hiking trail, he stabs Scott in the neck with Jess's knife. You know the rest from there."
"Stop it, Collin!" Lisa anxiously yelled as she put her hand up. "Now you're REALLY beginning to lose me."
"Why, am I going too fast?"
"No. There are a bunch of problems with that theory of yours. First of all, you said Nick STABBED Scott. But you of all people should know that Scott didn't die from getting stabbed."
Collin was silent, but then grunted loudly and violently. "Crap! You're right!...wait a minute! Scott's blood was still on Jess' knife, right?!"
"Yeah."
"And it was obvious the blood wasn't just smeared on the knife as a distraction, right?"
"Right."
"But the knife wound was too small for it to have been a stabbing, right?!"
"Yeah, but…"
"Well, isn't it obvious, then?! You're absolutely right: Nick didn't stab with the knife. He threw it!"
Lisa looked like she was struggling to come up with a counter for that argument, but she couldn't think of one. After several tense seconds, she said, "All right, but…you're forgetting about something else."
"What's that?"
"Remember that big deal you made about the name on the work forms being whited out that night?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
"Well, you concluded that whoever was working that night was the one who killed Scott and they erased their name so they wouldn't look suspicious, right?"
"Yeah."
"So that means Nick was the one who was working that night, right?"
"Yeah."
"But that would mean Scott just happened to be on the hiking trails that night. And Nick would've had to know he was. Now let me ask you this: why would Scott decide to show up here at 1:00 in the morning, and how would Nick have known about that?!"
Collin listened to Lisa's intense questioning and promptly went quiet. He tried coming up with an explanation, but for a while he just couldn't think of one. Then, something bizarre happened; it looked like something had just clicked and jolted him to life. "I'm so stupid!" he yelled as he smacked himself on the forehead.
"What is it now?" Lisa asked.
"Lisa, those were some pretty good points. You're right. Scott wouldn't have agreed to be at the forest that early in the morning, especially if Nick was the one who arranged that meeting, right?"
"What makes you think Nick arranged it?"
"Well, because you said that Nick would've also had to have known Scott was there, right? And the only way he would've known where Scott was and what time he was there would have been if he was the one who set it up, right?"
"Exactly. Scott wouldn't have done it."
Collin began grinning again. "Assuming it really was Nick who was working the night shift that night."
Lisa suddenly looked confused again. "What do you mean?"
Collin let out a little chuckle, but then he started looking generally concerned while still wearing a nervous smile. "Lisa, I've had it all wrong. Scott was the one who was working that night, not the killer!"
"What?!"
"Think about it: the only way Nick would've known Scott was there at night was if Scott was working! And if Scott was working, then he would've had no idea Nick was lurking around in the dark waiting to strike."
"What?! You're not making any sense."
"Actually, I'm making perfect sense. This would also explain why someone put their name down on the records. If Scott was the worker, then it makes perfect sense for a name to be there. He thought he was simply signing in for something that he thought would just be another night shift!"
Lisa was again stunned beyond words. So much information was suddenly coming about at once that it was hard to keep track of it all.
"So you're saying Nick was lying near the hiking trail while Scott was working that night, and then when Scott came by, Nick threw the knife and killed him like that?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying!"
"But why would Scott have even gone on the hiking trail that late at night, anyway?!"
Collin was silent for a while, but then his sneaky grin returned. "Lisa, you couldn't have asked a que
stion with a more obvious answer. You never read the log book from that night, did you?"
"No. Why, was there something in it?"
"Oooooh yes.
'JULY 27th, 1:32 A.M.- Camper in space 21C complains of loud thumping noise a few feet from her cabin. I will investigate this myself soon and try to figure out what it is. I'll report back when I have found the source.'
"Scott was outside that night because people were calling and complaining about a loud thumping noise! And if Scott was REALLY the one working that night, then that would explain why there was never another log book entry after this one, even though the person who wrote this said that they'd report it when they figured out what that loud thumping noise was!"
Lisa looked like she was watching someone get brutally killed right in front of her eyes. But after just a moment or two, she shook that feeling off. "Sorry, Collin, but I can't believe that."
"What!? Why not?!"
"You've apparently forgotten it's still dark out at 1:30 in the morning. Nick would've had no way of seeing where Scott was or anything like that. And throwing a knife in the dark?...please, that's gotta be borderline impossible."
"Hey, Nick would've had an easy time seeing where Scott was. Scott was probably carrying a flashlight when he went out to see what that loud thumping noise was. That alone would've been enough light for Nick to see that it was him!"
"Fine! I'll give you that. But still, Nick wouldn't have been able to see clearly enough to throw a knife. And besides, he'd have to be pretty damn accurate if he could throw a knife in the dark and land a direct hit."
"So? Maybe he was lucky."
"Collin, no one's that lucky. He would've needed some serious practice if he wanted to throw a knife that powerfully and that accurately."
After that, Collin went dead silent. He peered behind Lisa, his mouth hanging wide open in astonishment. He looked like he had just won the lottery but had yet to smile.
"Well, Collin?! We checked Nick's background before he came here and knife throwing lessons certainly weren't mentioned anywhere! So, how did he do it?!"