The Night Shift (24 page)

"Oh, just admit you're thinking that!" Randy yelled. "Come on, you know that's what you're thinking! But guess what! It wasn't me!"

"Sir, please…" Teneire said. He was the only one showing any control or restraint.

"I didn't kill Scott, and I'll swear that all the way to the gas chamber!"

"Mr. Kayson!" Teneire yelled. "Get a hold of yourself! If you REALLY didn't kill Scott-not that that's what we're accusing you of doing-…"

Oh, please. You know it. I know it. He knows it.

"…then just explain why someone's name is whited out on the records while there's still a log book entry that proves that someone was really working there that night."

"Urgh…all right, fine," Randy said, doing his best to regain his composure.

What?! Is Teneire letting ANOTHER guy slip away?

"I admit it," Randy lowly muttered. "I…actually DID have someone to work the night shift that night."

"I knew it!" Collin victoriously burst out.

"But it wasn't me!" Randy again insisted.

"Then who
was
it?" Teneire sternly asked.

Randy looked like he was ready to say something, but he closed his mouth. "I…don't really remember."

"WHAT?!" Collin erupted.

"What do you mean you don't remember?" Teneire demanded.

"I don't remember who it was who I put on the shift to run things that night….I'm sorry, I guess."

" 'Sorry' isn't good enough!" Collin yelled.

"Mr. Kayson, are you
sure
you can't remember?"

Randy grunted a little. "Positive."

"But you don't deny someone whited out their name on the work records?"

Again, Randy grunted. "No, someone's name was definitely written down on the work records and it got erased. But I…don't remember whose name it was."

"How can you not remember?!" Collin yelled.

"Collin, calm down!" Teneire snapped, instantly shutting him up. "Mr. Kayson…"

"It wasn't me…"

"Sir, we've heard you the first fifty times. We just want to know…"

"I don't know anything!" Randy insisted, starting to feel extremely pressured.

Ugh…this is too much,
Collin thought to himself.
Why does Randy seem so concerned? If he REALLY didn't kill Scott like he says he didn't, then what's the problem? What has he got to hide?...

"That's enough, Mr. Kayson," Teneire bluntly said. "If you're not going to cooperate, then we're done here."

Wait, WHAT?!
Collin thought to himself.
Teneire's just gonna let him go NOW?!

"You mean it?" Randy asked. "You don't have any more questions?"

"Don't think you're done altogether. But for now we don't have any other questions for you. You're free to go."

"You've gotta be joking!" Collin violently yelled as he went over to the door and blocked it. "How can you…"

"Collin!" Teneire yelled. That in itself was enough to motivate Collin to step aside and let Randy leave. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Kayson. If we have any more questions we'll be sure to call you in."

Randy nervously left his seat and walked over to the door. He slowly opened it up and looked back at both Collin and Teneire. In a very quiet and uneasy voice, he continued staring back and forth at them and said, "Both you guys have
a
good day."

With that, he left the room and slowly, but forcefully closed the door behind him.

Chapter 14
 

Recovering What Was Lost

Collin groaned as he slammed his fist against the wall of the room.

"Errrgh…how could we have pulled everyone in for questioning and still come up with nothing?!"

Teneire let out an exasperated sigh as he crossed his arms. "Collin, there's a very good reason this case has been unsolved, you know. Don't you think if we had any more leads we woulda finished it up by now?"

"I guess, but…I just thought finding out that thing about the work records and all that would've helped us out. But if
Randy
doesn't know anything about it, then who would?"

"Good question," Teneire bluntly answered. "Why don't you go find out?"

"Huh?"

"Go see what other people know."

"But we've already pulled everyone else in for questioning. There's no way we're gonna get anything new."

"Collin, I thought I already explained this to you. Didn't you just ask everyone a bunch of general questions and nothing came up?"

"Huh?...uh, yeah…I guess."

"But now that you want to find out more about those work records, why don't you go try asking someone else to see if they might have any idea whose name was on that piece of paper before they erased it."

"Why would they know
that
? I don't think any of them would really make an effort to find out who's working every single shift. And besides, wouldn't they have already told us if they knew something?"

"Maybe it'll jog their memory. I've had a lot of people who have come in for questioning a bunch of times and they keep remembering something useful every time they come in. Who knows? Maybe it'll work if you give it a shot."

"I don't know. I don't even get why you're suddenly feeling so confident in me."

Teneire chuckled. "Just keep doing your best, all right? As long as you do that, you've got my complete trust."

Collin smiled. Feeling a new surge of confidence, he warmly said, "Thanks, sir!" and walked out of the room.

As soon as he left the room and Teneire could hear his footsteps were long gone, he sighed and said, "Ugh…how much longer do I have to keep up this game before he realizes he can't solve that crime just because he wants to?"

*  *  *

Collin had the following day off, which was spent thinking about which people he should ask about the whited out work forms. He didn't come up with any particular strategy, which ultimately led him to deciding to ask the first person he saw at work if they knew anything.

Unfortunately for him, no one who he asked had any clue about whose name was erased from the night shift
records
. Still, he persisted; he was sure that everything else would fall into place and the erased name on the form would potentially reveal the name of the killer.

An unexpected stroke of luck came his way when he tried asking Jess a few questions.

"Sorry, but I don't really remember a lot of the stuff that happened around then," she confessed.

Jess was at her post, which was more or less picking up trash around the wooded areas that day. She seemed to be encouraging Collin to ask her questions due to the boring and tedious nature of the trash-picking job that she would spend the next few hours doing.

"Really?" Collin rhetorically asked, the disappointment on his face mounting. "That's too bad."

There was a bit of a silence before he spoke up and said, "You don't think anything that happened around that time would jolt your memory, do you?"

"No, sorry," she sympathetically answered as she continued working the picker and scooping trash into the white bucket she was holding.

"It's okay, I guess. But really, nothing? At all?"

"Nope."

"Those loud thumping noises that were going on that night…the fight you told me about…"

Jess looked like she was becoming sick. "Please…don't remind me of that."

"What? The fight?"

"Yeah. Really, I don't even want to think about those two. All that bickering…ugh, they sounded like small children instead of grown men."

Collin smirked. "Yeah, I guess I'd be annoyed by that, too. But I can kinda understand Nick acting like a small kid. I mean, he's only a year or two older than me, right?"

Jess looked confused. "Yeah, but what does Nick have anything to do with it?"

Collin was perplexed at that question. "What do you mean, 'what does Nick have anything to do with it'? Wasn't there a fight between them that happened just a few days before Scott got knocked off?"

Jess looked like she was deep in thought for a moment before she said, "Oh, NOW I know what you mean. Sorry, I thought you were talking about the other fight."

Now Collin was even
more
confused. "The 'other' fight? You mean there was one besides the one Nick and Ian had?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I didn't
tell
you?"

"No, you didn't."

Jess now looked a bit guilty. "Sorry about that. When you first asked me about that fight you only mentioned Nick and Ian, so…"

"It's okay. Just…what was that other fight you just mentioned?"

Jess sighed. "Randy and Scott had a fight around the time of the murder, too."

Collin's jaw dropped halfway to the ground. "WHAAAAAAT?!"

The air around them suddenly got very stiff. "I didn't know Scott and Randy had a fight, too! Quick! What was it about?!"

Jess was stunned by Collin's outburst of anxiety, but she also understood why he'd be excited to hear this news for the first time.

"I…don't really know," she said a bit nervously. "Sorry, but I really don't."

"Come on!" Collin insisted. "Maybe it'll come to you if you just think about it for a little while."

"Uh…well, I definitely remember stuff from it, but I don't know what it was about."

"Just…tell me what you know!" he ordered.

Jess appeared to be a little annoyed at Collin's sudden bossy nature, but she tried to ignore it and began recounting what she remembered about the fight Randy and Scott had had.

"I was just walking by Randy's office," she said, sounding like she was doing her best to remember what had happened. "I think I was just leaving after my break ended when Scott charged into the office. He looked like he wanted to rip Randy's head off."

"Sounds like Scott was a bit of a scary guy," Collin nervously said as he looked away.

"No, he wasn't scary or anything like that. He just had his moods, is all. Anyway, I just started kinda walking away fast before the argument got really intense. When I was just walking out the door, I heard Randy scream something like, 'Will you go away for a minute', and then Lisa came running out of the room."

"Lisa was there, too?"

"I guess so. At any rate, I just heard the two of them bickering. I have no idea what they were so heated about, and I really didn't care. I just wanted to get away from them before the fight turned physical."

Collin's eyes widened. "They started
slugging
each other?"

"No, I don't think so. But it sure sounded like they were about to."