To Catch a Killer(87)

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…”