The Night Shift (9 page)

As soon as Teneire saw Collin, the look on his face showed that he knew exactly what Collin was getting excited over.

"Uh…yes…yes, right away. Okay. Bye," Teneire said as he hung the phone up. Before he even let Collin say something, he said, "No, Collin, we can't open it back up yet."

The excitement instantly faded. "What do you mean?!"

"That knife that I heard you found that had blood on it?..."

"What about it?"

"We don't even know that it
is
blood. And then we have to confirm that it was Scott's. Then, maybe, MAYBE I'll reopen the case."

"Oh, come on!" Collin argued, letting desperation get the better of him. "Don't you want this thing to be solved and put away?!"

"Of course I do!" Teneire scolded, coming very close to losing his temper from Collin's whining. "But we have other things to work on, Collin. Trust me, I want to get this thing solved as much as you do."

"Then let's open it back up!"

"
Collin
!"

That was enough to get Collin to shut his mouth. He stared at his former boss looking a bit disappointed that the meeting wasn't going the way he hoped that it would, but he was far from completely losing hope. At this point, the only thing he could hope for was that it was really Scott's blood on the knife. If that was the case, then Collin believed that would be all the motivation Teneire needed to reopen it.

It was about 10:00 that night. Collin was in his room, sitting at the computer and logging into his NetPub profile. 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.

After the page loaded, he went to a page where he typed in his new status, writing "Collin is hoping one year of suspense will finally end soon."

Normally he would've been annoyed at the fact the goofy profile picture of him and the words "Welcome, Collin" were still visible on the new page (as well as every other page on NetPub as long as someone was logged in) but he was too excited to care about that minor pet peeve now. He thought that he was going to solve the crime almost single handedly and that he would be the big hero.

Before long, he was day dreaming about figuring out who did it and being recognized by the whole staff at Arbur Winslow, as well as the town. He pictured himself on the news doing interviews and appearing on the front page of the newspaper. As he thought more and more about this fantasy,
a
wide smile started spreading over his face.

Almost every day afterwards, Collin found time to go to the police station and see what the details were on the knife. One day, about a week after the knife was found at the lake, Collin stopped by to see Teneire again. This time, Teneire sounded like he had news.

"Collin…I think you'll want to hear this," he said seriously.

Collin clenched his fists and tried not to look too eager, although he hoped what Teneire was about to say would be what he had been waiting to hear for what seemed like forever.

"We got back the lab results back a while ago…and…the blood on the knife…is Scott's."

"Yeah!" Collin yelled enthusiastically as he pumped his fists in the air. "All right! When does it get reopened!?"

"Collin, calm down," Teneire ordered calmly but sternly. "You don't just say, 'Okay, I'll start working on this again'. First of all, we need to recap everything that we already know and we need to see if that knife offers us any leads. If it doesn't, we might as well leave the case closed and not waste our time and money trying to solve it."

"But what about Jess? Now that we know it was her knife used…"

"She's a person of interest," Teneire admitted as he cut his former worker off. "We may have to call her in for questioning if we find anything else suspicious about her."

"Take her in for questioning?"

"Yes. You don't remember what that is?"

Collin forced a fake chuckle. "Probably because you always had me bring doughnuts to everyone and you never told me about what was going on."

Teneire sighed. "Questioning people is when we take them into a small room-just me and the person I'm questioning-and I record the questions I ask her and watch them back for anything suspicious."

"Can I help out the next time you bring someone one?!"

"Out of the question. It's exclusively for police officers such as myself, not kids who spent the summer here making nine-twenty an hour to clean up the staff room. And don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you'd be much of a help."

"Oh, come on!" Collin begged, beginning to sound pathetic. "How do you know I won't be helpful unless you let me give it a shot!?"

Teneire had a look on his face that made it obvious he knew Collin was going to use that argument. "Look, we have to look back at some of the older tapes first, all right? If I find Jess said anything strange in the interview I gave her last summer, then I'll bring her in again."

"So you'll let me help?!"

"Collin! When did I say
that
?"

"Oh, pleeeease?"

Teneire sighed. "You're acting like a little baby, you know? Ugh…tell you what. I'll at least let you watch the interviews from last year, all right?"

"You
will
?!"

"If it'll make you happy and shut you up, then yeah."

"What if I find something strange that you missed?"

Teneire looked like he was using every ounce of professionalism to hold back his frustration. "Don't push it, kid. All right?"

Still grinning widely, Collin shook his head. He had been waiting for something like this to come by for over a year, and it was finally happening.

Grunting reluctantly, Teneire went over to a large shelf in the
corner
of his office stuffed with DVDs of interviews and question sessions from years past. After searching for a minute or so, he found the one with Jess on it from the previous summer and popped it into the disk drive on his computer. After a few seconds, a small window popped up with the first frame of the video in the window. The video started playing when Teneire hit the right button.

The picture was in slightly blurry black and white imaging. Teneire was sitting in a chair with his back to the camera while Jess was sitting right across from him, looking a tad on the nervous side.

"
Were you the one who killed Mr. Scott Halpin on July the twenty-seventh?"
Teneire asked in the video, his voice sounding a bit grainy.

"
No, sir."

"
Do you know who could possibly have done it?"

"
No, sir."

"
Do you know how Mr. Halpin was killed?"

"
Yes…it was a knife wound to the neck, from what I've heard."

"
Now, from what I understand, you and your workers were issued knives to work with on the job. Is that correct?"

"
Yes."

"
And did you have your knife on the night of the killing?"

"
No, sir."

"
You didn't?"

"
No."

"
Why not?"

"
I lent it to one of my other co-workers. A kid named Nick."

"
You lent it someone else?"

Collin's eyes immediately shot open and he tried thinking back to a conversation that he had had several days ago with Jess. He clearly remembered something Jess said when they were helping Nick cut off some of the branches after he had just found out he would be filling in for Ian as a lifeguard the next day.

"
Hey, how come you're not using your pocket knife?"

"
Wha?" Jess asked, obviously not expecting that question. "Oh. I, uh, kinda lost it."

"
You lost it?" Collin again rhetorically asked. He didn't think his next question would get him anywhere, but he decided to ask it, anyway. "When'd you lose it?"

"
Uh…last summer."

Almost like he had just been jolted alive after being in a coma, Collin slammed his hands down on Teneire's desk and eagerly yelled, "Jess just lied!"

Teneire turned around abruptly and looked at him like he had just walked in wearing women's makeup. "What are you talking about?"

"Jess just lied in that video!"

"How do you know?"

"I was talking to her the other day, and I
clearly
remember her saying she 'lost' her knife, not giving it to Nick!"

"Huh?"

"Sir, she was either lying to me or she was lying when you filmed this!" Letting his excitement get the better of him, he continued with, "And the time Jess told me she 'lost' her knife…
was last summer
!"

Teneire didn't
look
too phased at all from hearing about this slight inconsistency, but Collin thought it was the key to the case at this point. "Teneire, that's a BIG inconsistency! We have to find out what really happened!"

"Collin, calm down. It's been a year and how she lost her knife is probably a trivial detail to her. I don't think it's very important that she forgot how she lost it."

"But it's the same knife that was used to kill Scott! And what if she was telling the truth in that questioning session you filmed?!
It would make NICK
a
suspect!
"

Chapter 6
 

Questioning Jess

Teneire looked even more upset now that Collin had found
a
small inconsistency with one of the videos but thought that it was going to shine a whole new light to the unsolved mystery.

"Collin, I talked to Nick last year when I brought him in for questioning. He said he didn't have his knife with him that day at work and he asked to use Jess's instead. He even showed his own one, so..."

"But Jess's knife was what killed Scott! We've
gotta
look into this some more!"

"
We
? Go to a police academy and train or a couple years and become an officer,
then
we can talk about what "we" need to do."

"Please, sir!" Collin pleaded, sounding more desperate now than he ever had in his life. "Even if I'm not a police officer, didn't you notice how quick I picked up on Jess lying? Come on…couldn't I
at least
help catch some people lying when they question you?!"