I can’t breathe and I can’t stop coughing. My body convulses and lurches forward. My ribs are being crushed from the inside.
And yet somewhere, way in the distance, the van shudders and I hear the crunch of breaking glass. A draft of cool air skims over my skin. I breathe in a deep lungful. I’m too tired to cough anymore.
But my world is all mixed up, because now there’s music playing and people dancing. Suddenly Officer Baldwin is here and he’s carrying me. Rachel and the chief are here, too. Rachel is clinging to Lysa’s hand, and Lysa’s parents are pounding the chief on the back. But I don’t know how they got here, because I have Rachel’s car. And I can’t possibly be seeing any of this, because my eyes are welded shut.
And I’m very, very tired.
* * *
I wake up with my throat on fire, like I’ve gargled sriracha with a side of jalapeño juice. My head throbs and my lungs sound like a weak accordion.
I made it out of the van, though, because white light’s seeping through my closed eyelids. I open them carefully. Holy crap, I’m in the hospital. I try to sit up but my muscles scream, Don’t even think about it.
Just then Victor strides into the room.
“Ah, there you are, sunshine. Feeling better?” Except for the large bandage across his forehead, he looks a whole lot better than I feel.
He strokes the hair out of my eyes. “You okay?”
“Ow. I guess.” I press my hands to my head.
“Keep resting. I’ll be back to debrief you in a little bit.”
I come straight up off the pillow, pain and all.
“No. Do it now. I want to know everything. How’d we get out of the van?” I gasp, considering what might have happened. “Is everybody…?”
He comes back and pulls a chair up to my bedside. “We all made it out just fine.”
“How?”
“We were quite the formidable team. You and Spam somehow alerted your third musketeer, Lysa, that you were in trouble. She and her parents called the police. The problem was no one knew where to look, so first they searched the high school.”
“That makes sense.”
“Spam—quite the clever one, that girl—managed to broadcast our exact location, and a bunch of kids showed up looking for a rave.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, that’s Spam. If you want the cavalry, you don’t cry ‘help,’ you yell ‘party.’”
“You probably recall that Journey and I were trying to break out the back windows of the van with our heads? We finally doubled down on one window.” Victor rubs the bandage on his forehead. “That brought in a little fresh air.”
“Oh my god.”
“But you made the most amazing contribution by killing the engine before we were asphyxiated.”
“I don’t even remember.”
“In a magnificent show of stamina, you hooked the gearshift under your arm and forced it into fourth gear. The engine died, and not a moment too soon. There was only two hundred and thirteen cubic feet of space in that van, and most of it was filled with carbon monoxide. We were close to a lethal dose.”
“Yay for never learning to drive a stick,” I say. “What happened to Mr. Roberts?”
“He was quite the clever one as well. Apparently, his night of terror began when he instigated a hit-and-run on Journey’s mother’s car.”
“Oh no! Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. But while everything was going down at the cannery, she was at the emergency room being checked out.”
“Wow.”
“Carl then intercepted Journey on his way back to the pizza place. The last thing Journey remembers was pulling into the parking lot.”
“But why Journey?”
“With me in town following the case, Carl got nervous. He planned to stage Journey’s suicide and leave behind a written confession to killing the bio teacher. I stepped into it when I showed up at Carl’s house. That’s how I became collateral damage.”
“How did he think he was going to get away with all of it?”
“His plan was solid. He had a small boat stashed at the cannery dock. Once he got us set up, he used that to slip back into town. He even stopped by the bar he and I went to the other night, in order to establish an alibi. He left the bar and went to our house, used the key to get in and take the DNA samples from the freezer. He planned to come back to the cannery to make it look like Journey murdered all of us and then killed himself, but I think when he saw all the kids and the commotion, he just took off. Chuck’s team picked him up at the Portland airport about an hour ago.”
“How’d they know he was at the airport?”
“Your buddy Spam gave us that tip, too. We tracked your cell phones. He still had them on him.”
I raise the back of my bed and pull the covers up. “So when you took off last night, did you know Mr. Roberts was the killer?”
“No.” Victor stretches his neck, rolling his head right and left. “It was quite a puzzle. I should have seen it earlier, but when I compared our test results with the ones your teacher did, the fragile X jumped out immediately.”
“You knew he had it?” I ask.
“I knew fragile X ran in Carl’s family. He was always afraid he had the gene but refused to get tested. But even then, I didn’t think he killed anybody. I still don’t understand what CC had to do with him.”
“It stands for ‘coffee cup.’ Miss P lifted Mr. Roberts’s DNA from a coffee cup.”
“You might have advanced yourself beyond star pupil. How did you figure that out?”
“Remember the scrap of the note that matched the chief’s pen? Mr. Roberts dropped the rest of that note in our driveway. The note was from Miss P and she told him what she had done. Then I found his basketball shoes … the ones he loaned to you, in our closet. They not only matched the print in my bedroom, but they also matched the print you described in the blood. I tested them. They made the luminol turn blue. They’re in the trunk of Rachel’s car, if you need them.”
He gives me an admiring look. “Amazing.”
“How’s Rachel, is she okay?”
Victor smiles. “She’s been at your side all night. I just sent her home to shower and eat. She’s fine, though not very happy with me. She blames me for getting you in the middle of all this.”
“Pfft,” I snort. “If Rachel had her way…”
Victor dismisses my comment. “Give her a break; she doesn’t have the same stomach for this that we do.”
“I guess that’s true,” I say.
“Plus, she now has to live through the story of your mother’s murder all over again.”
I flop back against my pillow. I hadn’t thought about that. Finding my mother’s killer will make us all notorious again. There’s a lot I haven’t had a chance to think through yet.
“And by the way.” Victor’s look becomes stern. “Journey fessed up about the tie in the van and how it linked the bio teacher to your mother’s murder. You held back evidence from me.”
Oops. “Sorry, I just thought—”
“I don’t care what you thought, that’s not how we do things,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if we’re a family or a forensic team. We never hold back evidence. Is that clear?”
I cringe. “Yes, sir. Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Victor pats my hand. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Why did all of my evidence point to Chief Culson?”
“Trust me, I wanted to clear that up, too. Because of his…” Victor struggles for the right word. “… affection for Rachel, Chuck personally followed up on every piece of evidence. He did actually go to Journey’s house and inspect the spot where the van rammed the wall. He went to the tow yard and physically inspected the van, too. He was doing this for Rachel, and he was doing it for you, too. This is probably how his fingerprints wound up inside the van, but here’s the lesson about evidence. At any crime scene, you will find a lot of it. It’s our job to figure out…”
I finish the stat
ement “… what’s crime and what’s scene.” Victor includes that line in every one of his books.
“Keep it up and you’ll become my star apprentice,” he says with a proud smile.
It’s tricky to pull off in a hospital bed, but I manage a little celebratory flailing-arms dance. It’s not every day I get a compliment like this.
“One last question.” I stall. “About Principal Roberts … he isn’t really…?”
“Your father?” Victor shakes his head. “No. I know it was creepy and it led him to commit very bad deeds. But I think he really wanted it to be true. He wanted to hold an important place in your life, and that says a great deal about what an amazing young woman you are.”
Victor’s right. It is confusing and creepy. Mr. Roberts had a place in my life. He was my constant. “How did he get my nail file?”
“We think he must’ve grabbed it out of your locker.”
“Oh right. The infamous locker checks,” I say.
“We have him on security video going into Journey’s locker and stealing his phone.”
“What a creep. Why would he do all of that to me?” I sit up.
Victor gives my wrist a squeeze and buries my hand between both of his. “Your mother was special, Erin. A lot of men were in love with her. But obsession is a strange beast. I honestly believe Carl became obsessed with the notion that you and your mother were his family. Sarah didn’t share that notion and her rejection pushed him over the edge.”
I have to look away or I’m going to completely fall apart.
“I know these are just words, but you can’t blame yourself. None of us knew. Not even Rachel. She’s blaming herself, too.”
I pull my hands from the sheet and force them to rest quietly on top. “What about Spam and Journey?”
“They were both released a couple of hours ago.”
I flop back against the pillow and snuggle into the warmth of the bed. “Does this mean you’re leaving soon?”
“That depends.” Victor scoots his chair a little closer to the bed. “I’ve done a little thinking about that, and I have an offer for you to consider.” A grin spreads across his face. He looks a little shy, almost embarrassed. “First of all, I quit my job. I’m leaving the bureau and moving back to Iron Rain.”
“What about…?”
“Getting axed?”
I nod.
“This could be viewed as sort of a preemptive move against that action, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I owe it all to you, Erin. You changed me.”
“Me?”
“You’re an amazing survivor. Even more than that, you thrive. But I think the clincher, for me, is how you clung to your mother’s evidence in that box, up in that attic, with the conviction that someday you would solve her murder.”
I look up at him through damp eyelashes and a tangled veil of copper hair. “And we did. We solved it.”
“Yes, we did.” He smiles. “Which is why I think maybe we should tackle the other mystery in your life.”
Excitement thrums through me. “What other mystery?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s possible, but if it is, I thought we should try to identify your father.”
I can’t take all this good news at once. The stress of the last twenty-four hours finally dissolves my defensive crust and a few fat tears slide down my cheeks.
Victor takes my hand. “Hey, this is what you want, isn’t it?”
“Are you kidding? It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Hmm. I don’t think that’s exactly true.” Victor adopts a teasing tone.
“Don’t say that. It’s totally true. You can ask anybody. Spam. Journey. Lysa.”
“Actually, I think there’s one more thing on Erin’s Wish List.”
I dab my eyes with the edge of my sheet. “Well, what then?”
“I think you’ve wanted a forensic class. And guess what, you’re getting that, too.”
I let out a shriek that’s so loud a nurse pops her head in the door. Victor nods to assure her that we’re okay.
“It’s true. The district was having trouble finding a replacement for your biology teacher and now they have to replace the principal, too. I’ll still have to get my teaching credential and figure out how to engage a group of zombie teenagers. But yeah, we’re going to change it up. Biology 101 will become Forensics. That’s the bad news; you get the class but me as your teacher. And, we’re working out a deal with Iron Rain PD to kick in some budget dollars to trick out the lab. They get a part-time criminalist, the school gets a teacher and a new lab. It’s win-win.”
Holy crap. “I’m also getting an uncle.”
“And I’m getting a family. I just hope you’ll be my goodwill ambassador to let all those kids know I’m cool so they won’t humiliate me again.”
“Well yes, of course. I’ll have your back; you can count on that. But, think about this … our school can now officially be called C.S. High—get it?”
Victor chuckles. “Funny.”
This is so huge I start planning out loud. “We should change our mascot from an acorn to a giant fingerprint. We can have crime-scene tournaments … and…”
“Whoa, slow down. It’s just one class. One step at a time.” He pulls a buccal swab from his pocket. “If you’re up for it, I thought I’d start with an official DNA sample. One I can send back to my buddies at my former lab for them to process and run through the DNA database. Are you ready?”
“I’m so ready,” I gasp.
Victor opens the swab and hands it to me. I scrub it on the inside of my cheek.
“Do the inside of your lip, too.” I scrub it around a little more and hand it back to him. He drops it into the tube and then into the box. He takes out a pen and writes my name on the side. Then he slides the box into a FedEx envelope. A nurse sticks her head in the room. He signals for her to wait a minute. “Okay, she’s going to check your oxygen level. If it’s okay, they’ll release you. I’ll be waiting right outside.”
As he slips out of the room, I jump out of bed and rummage around for my clothes. They’re beyond filthy, but I slip into them anyway. I could dance all the way home.… I wouldn’t even need a car.
I can’t sit still.
I open the door, intending to shower Victor with a huge hug to show my appreciation. However, instead of waiting right outside the door, he’s standing at the nurse’s station, a few feet away. His back is to me, but I watch in amazement as he breaks open another buccal swab and begins to scrub the inside of his own mouth. When he’s finished, he slides the swab into the tube, scrawls his name on the side, and drops it into the same FedEx envelope with my sample.
As he seals the envelope, I close the door quietly and press my back against the wall. Little sparks of happiness turn everything bright. What just happened?
Is it possible that Victor’s … no. Wait. Could he be? He must think there’s a chance. There’s no other reason for him to put his DNA swab into an envelope with mine. Right?
The door opens and Journey peeks his head in.
“Erin?”
Wrapped in his fist are the strings of a huge bouquet of balloons. It’s a challenge, but he manages to wrangle himself and all the balloons the rest of the way into the room. “Are you in here?”
I hold my fingers in my ears, waiting for a balloon or two to pop. Once he’s inside, I tap him on the shoulder. He whirls around and we hug, mashing the balloon strings between our bodies. Journey holds up the ribbons from the ends of the balloons, revealing a card tied there.
I touch the card. “What’s this?”
“Open it,” he says with a smile.
I slide out a white card embossed with our school logo and the word “PROM.”
“Will you?” Journey asks. He pauses to wet his lips nervously. “Go with me?”
42
“Erin! I need you down here, now.” Rachel’s voice is shrill and anxious. For the first time in a long time, I’m not frozen in fear that she�
�s stumbled over one of my deep, dark secrets or caught me in a giant new lie.
Rachel knows it all now. She knows how much I needed to talk about my mother and what happened to her. She knows about the attic, the box, my investigations. She even knows about Cheater Checks, though we have agreed to table those until I’m out of high school.
Victor brokered this landmark, two-sided confession, which he called our Family Fess-up Fest. Rachel had to come clean, too. And not just about her relationship with the chief. She had to fess up about my mother and her feelings of survivor guilt. Needless to say, the last couple of weeks have changed all of us.
With Victor around, Rachel is more relaxed, and the three of us function like a true family. I’m learning to open up and tell her the truth, and she’s learning not to hold back.
“Erin!” she screams from downstairs. “Journey’s here.”
Oh yeah, Journey is no longer banished from my life, either, which is another good thing.
Now, if I could just twist myself into slightly more of a pretzel shape, I would be able to reach the zipper on this dress. Rachel and Lysa shopped for it together and were extremely proud of the fact that it goes perfectly with the strappy silver shoes Lysa made me buy at Shoe Haven.
Rachel has delivered a Cinderella’s-godmother level of fussing and attention to getting me ready for my first prom. She did my hair up with tiny wisps trailing down. No hiding behind the veil of death tonight. Lysa found a delicate pearl headband, which is the perfect touch, and it matches the heart-shaped locket that Rachel gave me about an hour ago.
“Your mother was the prom queen, but she gave this to me to commemorate our first prom. Inside is a photo of the two of us when we were exactly your age,” she said. “I’ve been saving it for the right moment.”
Now, I squint at the dime-sized image and I recognize the familiar slope of her nose and the slightly almond-shaped eyes. “Hey, Mom,” I whisper, touching the photo.
To Catch a Killer Page 26