by Lauren Carr
A ding and vibration on her phone prompted Nikki to check a message.
You should invite The One out to that special place where you two used to hang out for cheeseburgers and malts after you close this case. Nothing like nostalgia to get the romantic juices flowing. NerdyGuy added a winking emoji to his message.
She allowed the corners of her lips to curl upward in a grin before she was struck by a question. How does NerdyGuy know that Ryan’s and my old hangout specializes in cheeseburgers and malts? I never told him about Benny’s.
“Good news?”
Nikki jumped at the sound of Wyatt’s voice in her ear.
She swept her thumb across the screen on her phone and dropped it into the pocket of her dress. “Pretty good.”
“You had said you wanted to talk to me after the meeting.”
Before Nikki could answer, a loud snort from the corner filled the room. They looked over to see that Elmo’s front paws were jerking back and forth in a running motion.
“He’s chasing a rabbit,” Wyatt said with a chuckle while nodding a greeting to Ryan as he stepped through the door and closed it.
“More likely he’s chasing his evil stepsisters,” Nikki said while eying Ryan. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Ryan flashed her a broad grin. “I wanted to surprise you.” He hugged her tight, which she did not expect. “Someone has to keep you in line,” he whispered into her ear.
Uncomfortable by the public display of affection, Wyatt shuffled from one foot to the other.
“I don’t need someone to keep me in line,” she whispered back before pushing Ryan away.
Ryan held on to her with an arm draped across her shoulders. “Derrick Unger.”
Reminded of one of her many embarrassing moments, she slumped and crossed her arms.
“Everything okay, Nikki?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s fine.” Her reply came out as a snap. “Sit down.”
“This sounds serious.” Wyatt glanced at Ryan. “The chief of the crime scene unit? Does this have anything to do with Ashleigh Addison’s death?”
“Sort of,” Ryan said. “What would you say if we told you that we found a thumb drive in her briefcase?”
Wyatt chuckled. “I’m sure Ashleigh had a ton of thumb drives. I have dozens myself. Is there anything special about this thumb drive?”
“I’d call an interview with Sam Hill during one of his lucid days special,” Nikki said. “Especially if he had a lot to talk about.”
“Do you mean about how he killed Ross?”
“That wouldn’t be as interesting as him recalling an argument he’d overheard between my father and someone he was talking to on the phone,” she said. “The argument that took place shortly before lunch on the same day he was killed.”
“It’s possible that whatever Sam overheard could tell us the motive for Ross’s murder,” Ryan said.
Wyatt looked from one of them to the other. “If Ashleigh had any such interview, which I doubt, I can tell you right now it would be worthless. Her source has no credibility. Sam was forced into retirement for making stuff up.”
Nikki and Ryan gazed at him.
The only sound in the conference room was Elmo snoring.
Unable to take the silence, Wyatt said, “If Sam was having a supposedly lucid day when he told Ashleigh this crazy story about some argument Ross had with Walt, then he did it out of spite.”
Nikki grinned. “If Sam was making it up, then how is it that you know this fictional argument was with your cousin Walt.”
Wyatt’s eyes grew wide.
“Walt called you after talking to my dad to give you a heads up before the meeting, didn’t he?”
“That fictional phone call is listed in the phone company’s call log for that date,” Ryan said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to uncover a record of Walt calling you here at the station minutes later.”
Wyatt and Nikki locked eyes.
“Now, Nikki—”
“You killed my father!” She sprang out of her seat to stand over him.
“Nikki,” Ryan said, “you need to keep a cool head about this.”
“I didn’t go into that office planning to kill him.” Wyatt slowly rose from his seat. “As a matter of fact, I barely remember how it happened. One minute, he was showing me footage from the on-scene report for the night of the Noah Harper hit and run. Then, he froze the video on a frame—it was just an instant—a single frame, but he saw it.”
“Saw what?” Ryan asked.
“The rearview mirror that got torn off the car,” Wyatt said. “Then he showed me the camcorder footage of the car freshly repaired. The next thing I know, he’s telling me that he had talked to Walt. He’d figured out everything.”
“If it was an accident, why didn’t you stop?” Ryan asked.
“Because I panicked! You don’t understand! Ross didn’t understand. I had nothing when he brought me to WKPG. I worked my way up from crew hand to director to producer.” Wyatt pounded his chest. “I married Suzanne Lipton. I went from nothing to living in a beautiful home and being married to a star! I would have lost everything!”
“The Harpers lost their son,” Ryan said. “Nikki lost her father.”
“Now you sound like Ross!” Wyatt said. “He just refused to listen to me! He’d called his good buddy the sheriff. He gave me no choice. If I didn’t confess to running down Noah Harper, then he would turn me in himself. The next thing I knew, my best friend was dead.”
“Don’t give me that garbage,” Nikki said. “All you ever cared about was yourself. As soon as you realized that I was going to keep digging into my dad’s case, you threw Debra and Sam under the bus. ”
“Now you look here—”
“If Dad was your best friend, you wouldn’t have killed him! If you were so virtuous, you would have turned yourself in when you realized Mom and I were onto you instead of shooting at us.”
“Shooting at you?”
“There’s no point in lying anymore, Wyatt. You saw us going into accounting the other day.”
“Oh yeah! I saw you going into accounting all right!” Wyatt pointed at the bruise on his forehead. “I still have the headache to prove it!”
“You’re going to have a lot more than a headache when I get through with you!” Nikki threw up her fists to do battle.
Ryan threw his arms around her. “Nikki, let’s not upset the murderer before Tanya gets here,” he said in a low voice.
“You knew the phone records would prove that Dad had made no calls that afternoon,” Nikki said as Ryan ushered her away from Wyatt. “That’s why you took a shot at us to scare us off.”
“I assumed that was Art Lowell trying to scare us off the board of education story!”
“My point is that we have evidence that Dad wasn’t on the phone at all,” Nikki said. “That proves he was dead when you left the office. You killed Dad because he was going to turn you into Sheriff Van Metre for covering up for Suzanne running down Noah.”
“That’s where you have it wrong.” Wyatt slowly shook his head as he reached into his pocket. “I was the one driving that night.” He pulled a pistol out of his pocket. “Your father knew that because he helped me pour Suzanne into the passenger seat. That’s why he was adamant about me turning myself in. He felt responsible for letting me get behind the wheel. He thought I was sober.”
“Now look what you did, Nikki.” Ryan stepped in front of her. “You’ve upset the killer, and now he’s pulled a gun.”
“He’s not going anywhere.” Nikki leaned around Ryan to tell Wyatt, “Sheriff Williams is waiting outside to take you into custody as soon as you leave.”
“Actually, she’s not,” Ryan whispered to her.
Unsure if she understood him, she asked, “What did you say?”
“She’s n
ot outside,” he said in a low voice.
“What—”
“He said Sheriff Williams is not outside to take me into custody,” Wyatt said.
“We had it all set up!” Nikki said. “Tanya did this on purpose! This is for the stink bomb in her new Volvo in our senior year, isn’t it? She wants Wyatt to shoot me.”
“I think this has more to do with the bank robbery over on Pine Street,” Ryan said.
“Bank robbery!”
“It’s okay. They got the guy. He fainted when he heard the sirens.”
“Fainted? When he heard the sirens?” Nikki shook her head. “Only in Pine Grove.”
“I hope we got a camera crew out there,” Wyatt said.
“You should call down to the newsroom to see who’s covering it,” Nikki said.
Wyatt reached for his phone, only to stop and grin when he realized her ploy to distract him. Aiming the gun at them, he stepped forward.
“Now, Wyatt, you’re in deep enough as it is,” Ryan said as they backed away from him. “We can talk this out.”
“We’ve had enough talk,” Nikki said while ducking behind him. “Ryan, arrest him for murder.”
“He’s got a gun and I don’t. That means he has the advantage.”
She rose up onto her toes and hissed into his ear. “What do you mean you don’t have a gun? Back in Vegas all of the CSIs carried.”
“In case you haven’t notice, this isn’t Vegas. There, they have blackjack and champagne. Here, we have bingo and sweet tea.”
Wyatt swung a chair around. “Sit down!”
“You’re in big trouble, buster.” Nikki plopped into the chair. “If you don’t put that gun down and turn yourself into Ryan peaceably, you’re going to end up suffering the full wrath of Elmo.”
The three of them looked over at the dog bed where Elmo was curled up like a corkscrew with his head upside down. His jowls quivered with each heavy breath. He continued to snore in the background.
“Elmo! Wake up!”
The dog snorted.
“By the time that dog wakes up, I’ll be halfway to Canada,” Wyatt said. “Where’re your handcuffs, Ryan?”
“He doesn’t have any,” Nikki said.
“They’re in the inside pocket of my case,” Ryan said.
“Why do you carry handcuffs if you don’t have a gun?” Nikki asked.
“You can’t shoot people with handcuffs.”
“When Elmo wakes up, he’s going to be furious,” Nikki said, “and you’re going to wish that you’d never messed with his human.”
Aiming his pistol at them, Wyatt directed Ryan to sit in the chair next to Nikki. He cuffed one end around her wrist, looped the cuff through the arm rests of both chairs, and then snapped the other cuff onto his own.
“Ryan, aren’t you going to do something?” Nikki asked before leaning in the direction of Elmo’s bed and hissing for the dog to wake up.
“I’m focusing on keeping you from getting shot,” Ryan said before asking Wyatt, “When did you realize Ashleigh was on to you?”
“She never let me know that she was on to me.” Wyatt opened the conference door a crack and peering out to make sure the corridor and common area in front of the elevator were clear.
After five o’clock, the third floor was vacant.
Wyatt craned his neck to look up and down the corridor. “If Ashleigh really did have proof that I’d killed Ross, she could have demanded every perk imaginable and as general manager, I could have supplied it. I guess she was saving her story to spring on the air live, because I didn’t have a clue about it. As a matter of fact, Nikki, I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t heard about Ashleigh’s announcement at the party. I knew nothing about that until Monday morning.”
“Because you had to take Suzanne home from the party before Ashleigh had made her announcement,” Nikki recalled.
“Now Suzanne is going to be your problem.” Wyatt opened the door and took a cautious step into the hallway. He tucked the gun into the waistband under his suitcoat before turning the button on the doorknob to lock the door. “This should hold you until I make a clean getaway.”
“Wyatt, before you go, I need to tell you something important,” Nikki called to him.
Wyatt paused and turned back to her.
“You’re fired.”
With a chuckle, Wyatt closed the door. It clicked as the door latched.
“When Elmo wakes up and sees what you did to us, he’s going to hunt you down and bite you in the butt,” Nikki yelled after him. “Count my words. When Elmo takes a bite out of crime, he really does take a bite out of crime. That killer he caught in Vegas will never be able to father children.”
“Nikki, you need to calm down,” Ryan said in a surprisingly calm tone.
“Says Cyrano de Bergerac.”
“Who?” Ryan asked.
“Cyrano de Bergerac,” Nikki said. “Shakespeare. The guy who sent love poems to the love of his life while pretending to be someone else. Get my point, NerdyGuy?”
“I’m not NerdyGuy.”
“If you’re not NerdyGuy, then how do you know who I’m talking about?” Nikki cocked her head at him. Her left eyebrow arched.
Elmo snorted and jerked awake.
“Finally!” Nikki yelled.
The dog rose from the bed. He bent his head up and back, arched his back, and did a long leisurely stretch.
“Elmo! We need you!”
The boxer stopped when he saw the two of them looking at him. His eyes grew big.
“Elmo, Wyatt did this.” Dragging Ryan in his chair with her, Nikki wheeled over to the door and used her free hand to unlock it. She yanked it open. “Wyatt’s the bad guy. You need to take him down! Go get him!”
Motionless, Elmo stared at them with wide eyes.
“You heard me! Go get Wyatt! And when you catch him, bite him in the butt—hard!”
Elmo cocked his head at her.
“What’s wrong with him? He’s usually right on the ball.”
“You forgot to say ‘please,’” Ryan said. “You must always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”
Nikki growled. “Please go take down Wyatt and bite him in the butt!”
Elmo galloped out of the conference room and into the hallway. He slid to a stop in front of the elevator, jumped up onto his hind legs and tapped the call button with his paw. The elevator doors opened, and he ran onto the car.
“He’s taking the elevator?” Ryan asked.
“It’s faster,” Nikki said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Is so.”
“Is not,” Ryan said.
“Wanna bet? As soon as we get out of this, we’ll race. Fifty dollars.”
“You’re on,” Ryan said as he offered his free hand.
They shook.
“Just so you know, I’m mad at you, NerdyGuy.”
“You’ll get over it,” he said.
“What makes you so sure?”
He chuckled. “Because I’m The One.”
Wyatt had to move quickly. Ryan Spaulding may have been a science geek, but that science geek was the head of the crime scene unit. He was the police. That meant the gun toting police were not far behind.
How much time can it take to arrest a fainting bank robber?
As he made his getaway, Wyatt congratulated himself on thinking far enough ahead to have set up a secret bank account offshore the year before. Originally, it was to hide money from Suzanne while he concocted an escape plan from his miserable life.
At first, marrying the beautiful Suzanne Lipton had been a dream—until he saw that behind the poised sophisticated façade was an insecure lush.
Luckily, most of the crew and journalists on the ground floor of the station were busy in the studio preparing fo
r the six o’clock news hour. Wyatt took the stairwell that came out at the back door of the studio. He burst through the door into the parking lot.
Having completed the on-scene report of the fainting bank robber story, the news van pulled into the lot.
Wyatt only had to go around the corner of the building, casually walk to his car, and leave without attracting the attention of the camera operator and news journalist.
Should be easy enough? How many times have I done that over the last forty years?
He turned the corner. With a pleasant wave of his hand and nod of his head, he greeted Becca Cambridge and the camera operator as they approached the front door. With a “how do you do” Wyatt strolled toward his vehicle.
The camera operator yanked open the door.
Rawr!
A quick glance over his shoulder told Wyatt all that he needed to know. Elmo was awake and Wyatt was going to learn why it is always best to let sleeping dogs lie. He broke into a run for his black Mercedes parked under a shady tree.
“Is that Elmo?” Becca Cambridge asked. “Why’s he chasing Wyatt?”
Wyatt was halfway across the parking lot when what felt like a bear trap clamp down onto his ankle. He hit the ground hard. Anxious to escape, he attempted to scramble back onto his feet only to feel Elmo’s teeth pierce his left buttock.
Wyatt screamed.
“Tell me you’re getting this, Billy!” Becca yelled.
“Wyatt, what are you doing playing with Elmo?” Suzanne demanded from somewhere on the fringes of the mob. “I thought we were going to go to happy hour?”
“I’m kind of busy right now, Suzanne!” Wyatt shouted over the snarling while trying to crawl away.
Elmo tugged and pulled on his pants until they slipped over his hips to his knees—underwear and all—to reveal his bare buttocks.
Wyatt saw the feet of two camera operators recording it all from different angles. “Are you kidding me?”
The sound of the fleet of the sheriff department’s cruisers prompted Wyatt to kick his feet out of his pants to make his escape.
Elmo released his grip on the empty pants and leapt onto Wyatt’s back—pinning him to the ground.