Picture This

by Norah McClintock

“That name sounds familiar,” one of the cops said. But he couldn’t seem to remember why.

  The other three cops looked at me, like all of a sudden they weren’t sure who the bad guy was.

  “Tell us exactly what happened,” one of them said.

  They were still looking suspiciously at me when I finished my story, as if they thought I was the one who had been digging the grave for the man and not the other way around. But what kind of sense did that make? I’d called the police. I wouldn’t have done that it I was going to kill anyone.

  Officer Firelli showed up right behind the ambulance. He introduced himself to the other cops and watched as the man was loaded into the ambulance. One of the cop cars followed it to the hospital. The other two cops stayed to talk to Officer Firelli.

  “The kid knocked out a cop,” one of them said.

  Officer Firelli looked surprised.

  “His name is Miller,” said the cop who had found Miller’s id.

  “Robert Miller?” Officer Firelli said. He looked even more surprised.

  “You know him?” the cop said.

  Officer Firelli nodded. “We’re in the same division. He made the news about a week ago. His wife is missing. Her sister called the police. Miller said he and his wife had a big fight and split up, but the sister isn’t buying it. She thinks something’s wrong.”

  “He kidnapped me from the city,”

  I told Officer Firelli. “He brought me out here and tied me up while he dug that hole. Then he took out a gun. He was going to shoot me.”

  “What did you do with the gun, Ethan?”

  “I locked it in the trunk.”

  He held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”

  “I threw them away.”

  Officer Firelli stared at me. I was afraid he didn’t believe me. Then he said, “Tell me everything that happened.”

  So I did. I told him about being kidnapped. I showed him the smashed camera. I told him about Miller mugging me in the alley. “He had a gun then too,” I said. “But I didn’t think it was real until he shot at me.”

  “He shot at you?” Officer Firelli said. “Did you tell the Ashdales about this?”

  I shook my head. “I thought he was some crazy meth-head or something. I didn’t want to worry them.”

  “You told me on the phone that you think he’s the guy who shot at you downtown.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, if that’s true,” Officer Firelli said, “and if he had the same gun today as he did last week, ballistics should have no trouble matching it.”

  “He knew where to find me,” I said. I told him how I thought that had happened. “He was waiting for me in the ravine.”

  “But why?” Officer Firelli said. “Why is he so interested in you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “In the alley, he was ready to shoot me over my backpack. I tried to tell him there was nothing in it.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Just my camera.”

  “Your camera?”

  I explained what I had been doing all summer.

  “But I don’t know why he’d be so interested in that,” I told Officer Firelli.

  “Was he interested?”

  “A cop went to the youth center and asked the program director if he could see the pictures I’d taken.”

  “Did the program director show him your pictures?”

  “He couldn’t. They were in my camera. I hadn’t backed them up. DeVon—that’s the program director—is always bugging me about that, but I don’t like people to see my stuff until I’m ready to show it.”

  “I’d like to take a look at that camera,” Officer Firelli said.

  “You can’t. He smashed it.” I showed him what was left of it.

  Officer Firelli sighed. “I guess we’re just going to have to wait until Miller wakes up,” he said.

  I looked at Officer Firelli. I thought about what he had told the other cops about Miller. I thought about the shovel I’d hit Miller with. An idea took shape in my head.

  “You don’t have to wait,” I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Because it was Sunday, Officer Firelli had to track down the director of the youth center at home. He asked him to come to the youth center and let us in. He also asked the director to find DeVon and get him to join us.

  The director unlocked the youth center door. Then he unlocked the door to the Picture This room. I turned on the computer. The director had to type in a password before we could get to any files.

  “DeVon said if anything happened to my camera, I’d lose all my pictures,” I said. “So for once I listened to him. I backed everything up on Friday before I went home.”

  I clicked with the mouse. Another password box came up, and this time I typed in the password. Officer Firelli pulled up a chair and sat down next to me.

  “Show me everything that was in your camera,” he said.

  I showed him my pictures one by one. He was a lot smarter than I thought. He recognized where they had been taken.

  “That’s where we found you today,” he said.

  I nodded.

  Officer Firelli frowned.

  “Why would Miller be interested in pictures of trees and hawks?” he said.

  “I don’t think he was,” I said. I kept clicking through my pictures until I found the one I was looking for.

  Suddenly Officer Firelli perked up when he saw it. He pointed to a small figure in one corner of the frame. It was a man holding a shovel—the same man that Mrs. Ashdale had noticed and asked me about. Officer Firelli squinted at him.

  “Can you make that bigger?” he said.

  I increased the size of the picture and stared at the man with the shovel. My hunch had been right. It was the same person who had been digging my grave a few hours ago. It was Robert Miller.

  DeVon arrived. Officer Firelli asked him to describe the police officer who had come to the youth center to ask about me. The person DeVon described sounded an awful lot like Robert Miller. Then Officer Firelli asked him to look at the picture on the computer screen.

  “That’s him,” DeVon said. “That’s the cop who was here.”

  Officer Firelli stared at the picture again. He said, “You see where that picture was taken? Do you think you could find that spot, Ethan?”

  “Sure.” I’d spent so much time out in those woods that I knew the area like I knew my own room. I didn’t ask him why. I already had a pretty good idea.

  Officer Firelli made a few calls. Then he phoned Mrs. Ashdale and told her that I was with him and that I was helping him with a police investigation. He said she shouldn’t worry, that I hadn’t done anything wrong. He told her that he would have me back home in a few hours. Before we left the youth center, we printed out a couple of copies of the two photos that had Robert Miller in them.

  We drove back out to the woods where I had photographed the hawks. I looked at the photos. Using the hawks’ nesting tree as a landmark, I led Officer Firelli to the place where Robert Miller had been standing when I had accidentally taken his picture. Officer Firelli told me to stand off to one side while he examined the ground.

  Some police cars showed up. So did a police forensics van. Officer Firelli talked to them for a few minutes and let them take over. It wasn’t long before one of the cops said, “It looks like we have something here.”

  Before they touched anything, they took a lot of pictures. Then they started digging. They took even more pictures. Then one of them said, “We’ve got a body.”

  Officer Firelli went to talk to the other cops. Then he said, “Come on, Ethan. We’d better get you back home.”

  “But—”

  “It’s going to take a while to identify the body, and it’s getting late.”

  He drove me back to the Ashdales. When we got there, he came with me into the house to tell the Ashdales what had happened. Mrs. Ashdale’s face went white as she listened. Mr. Ashdale put his arm around her. Officer Firelli promised to
tell us what they found out there in the woods.

  “Ethan should be safe now,” he said. “From what Ethan’s told me, Miller realized that his picture had been taken. He was afraid that someone might connect him to that spot in the woods. That’s why he tried so hard to get Ethan’s camera. When that didn’t work, he tried to get rid of Ethan.”

  For the second time since I came to live with her, Mrs. Ashdale hugged me. It almost made me cry.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was in the newspaper the next morning, but by then I already knew the whole story. Officer Firelli had called. The body they found in the woods was Eileen Miller, Robert Miller’s missing wife. My pictures showed that Miller knew where she was all along. She had been shot with the same gun that Miller had used to shoot at me downtown. The police also found the bullet that he had shot at me in the alley. It was embedded in a door frame.

  “It all ties back to Miller. He’s going to stand trial for murder, a couple of counts of attempted murder, and kidnapping— unless he gets smart and pleads guilty,” Officer Firelli said. “He must have had a good look at you that day in the woods, Ethan. He used to work in your old neighborhood. He picked you up a few times when you were underage—once for shoplifting and once for attempted purse-snatch. You remember?”

  I nodded. That explained why I’d had the feeling that I’d seen him before.

  “I didn’t recognize him,” I said.

  “Well, he recognized you. We found a copy of your police record at his house. He knew where you were living. He must have followed you when he mugged you in that alley. Then he broke into the house to look for the camera and to check to see if you had backed up your photos on the Ashdales’ computer.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “He figured that out. He also knew about your involvement with the Nine-Eights. One of the guys we arrested said that someone tipped them off that you were downtown. They went there looking for you. Miller took advantage of that. He shot at you.”

  Shot and missed.

  “He also knew about the program you’re in at the youth center. It was in your file. And he knew you ran in the ravine every Sunday. A girl at the youth center told him.” He meant Sara.

  “He must have decided to grab you when he found out that you always had your camera with you but that you never backed up your pictures. He decided he wasn’t going to take any chances. He was going to get rid of you and the camera. He must have thought that would put him in the clear. And he was right. We never would have found his wife if you hadn’t taken those pictures. He would have gotten away with it. I know how scared you must have been, Ethan, but your photos helped us catch a killer.”

  A week later, the Picture This program ended with a special showing of our projects. Mine took first prize. The Ashdales were there with Alan and Tricia. So was Officer Firelli. He congratulated me on my work. Sara was there too. She took second prize. She didn’t seem to mind that I had beaten her. She held my hand the whole time. I’d decided that you never know what’s going to happen, so you shouldn’t waste time. I’d asked her out right after Miller was arrested. She’d said yes right away. For once, things were going right for me.

  Norah McClintock is the best-selling author of a number of titles in the Orca Soundings series, including Tell, Snitch, Down and Back.

  The following is an excerpt from another exciting Orca Soundings novel,

  Hannah’s Touch by Laura Langston.

  Chapter One

  A bee sting changed my life. One minute I was normal. The next minute I wasn’t.

  If you listen to my parents, they’ll tell you I haven’t been normal since my boyfriend, Logan, died. But they don’t get it. When he died, a part of me went with him. Plus, I could have stopped it. The accident that killed him, I mean.

  But I was normal. Until it happened.

  It was the third Sunday in September, sunny and warm. School was back in. The maple leaves on Seattle’s trees were curling like old, arthritic fingers. Fall was only a footstep away.

  I wasn’t thinking about fall that Sunday. Or school or maple leaves. For sure I wasn’t thinking about bees.

  I was at work, thinking about Logan, and I was cold. It was freezing in the drugstore. Bentley had the air conditioning cranked to high.

  “I swear, Bentley, it’s warmer outside than it is in here.” We’d run out of Vitamin C, so I was restocking the middle shelf beside the pharmacy. “I don’t know why you need the air conditioning on.”

  “It keeps the air moving.” He was behind the counter, slapping the lid on a bottle of yellow pills. “Besides, fall doesn’t officially start until September 23.” He slid the bottle into a small white bag.

  Like that made any difference. But Bentley, who was the pharmacist, was also the boss of Bartell Drugs. As far as he was concerned, summer was sunscreen displays and air conditioning. No matter how cold it got.

  I only had to whine a few more seconds. “Take twenty,” Bentley said. “It’s quiet today.”

  I grabbed a soda from the cooler by the magazines, waved at Lila, our cashier, and wandered outside. The heat was better than any drug Bentley sold. I popped the tab on my can, took a sip, breathed in sunshine.

  “Well, well, just the gal I want to see.”

  It was Maude O’Connell, leaning on her turquoise walker, her uni-boob and gold chains practically resting on the top bar. An unfortunate orange and blue caftan covered her plus-size body.

  “My gout pills ready yet, Hannah?” she asked.

  “Behind the counter and waiting, M.C.” I’d called her Mrs. O’Connell only once. She preferred M.C.

  Hanging from the walker was a basket lined with fake brown fur. Home to Kitty, a nearly bald ten-thousand-year-old apricot poodle (yes, Kitty is a dog) who couldn’t walk. When I leaned over to scratch her head, she growled and bared the few yellow teeth she had left. I pulled back. Not from fear, but because the smell from the dog’s mouth made me queasy.

  “ ’Bout time,” M.C. complained. “I called Friday, and they weren’t ready.”

  “Friday was nuts,” I said. Three-quarters of the customers at Bartell’s were lonely seniors. I liked talking to them as long as they didn’t bring up bodily functions.

  “Your hair’s growing in nice.” Like Kitty, M.C. was nearly bald. She obviously missed having hair, because she always commented on mine.

  “Yeah.” Six months ago, I hacked off my long blond hair. After Logan died, kids I didn’t even know started coming up and asking if I was “the girlfriend of the dead guy.” My friends kept telling me I was different too. I didn’t need the judgment or the attention. But instead of flying under the radar, I decided to be different. So I hacked off my hair. It was a dumb thing to do.

  “The color looks nice.”

  It was blond, the same color it had always been. “I’m thinking of dying it midnight black next month.” I played with Logan’s St. Christopher medallion. I’d been wearing it since the accident. “To mark—” I stopped.

  The one-year anniversary.

  Everybody kept telling me I had to get over Logan; I had to move on. Like I could get over him. And anyway, my sadness kept him close. My sadness and his medallion—they were the only things I had left. “To mark Halloween,” I lied.

  M.C. sniffed. “All Hallows’ Eve is about more than black hair and broomsticks. It’s a true pagan holiday.” Her pale blue eyes took on a sudden gleam as she leaned close. “It’s the time of year that spirits can most easily make contact with the living.” She frowned at the look on my face. “It’s true!” She grabbed my arm. “I talk to my Danny boy every year at midnight. You can talk to your Logan too.”

  I didn’t want to talk to Logan. Getting in that car was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. The shock of his death had worn off, and I didn’t cry every day anymore, but I hadn’t forgiven him or me or Tom. Especially not Tom. He’d bought the beer. And insisted they race.

  When I didn’t answer, M.C. dropped my arm in disgust. “Ok
ay, so you’re a nonbeliever.”

  The truth was, I believed the dead go somewhere. It’s not just lights-out, erased forever like a mistake on a test. That wouldn’t be logical. In nature, everything gets recycled. Why should we be any different?

  “I know you Christians.” M.C. stared at Logan’s St. Christopher medallion. “You’ve been fed a load of bull crap about All Hallows’ Eve. I’m telling you, it’s about as far from the devil as a daffodil.”

  You Christians. I thought of my friend Marie. “I’m not sure I’m Christian, M.C.”

  “What are you then?”

  “Undecided.” And before she could demand more, I changed the subject. “You’d better go get those pills before Bentley goes on his break.”

  “Undecided is for wusses and politicians,” M.C. said as she headed for the door. “Smart people believe in something.”

  I walked across the parking lot to the grass on the corner. I believed in lots of things. Tennis and lululemon yoga pants. The importance of saving. Love. And God too, in a casual go-to-church-at-Christmas kind of way.

  Later, after it happened, I wondered if being a go-to-church-every-Sunday kind of girl would have spared me. Then again, it might have made it worse.

  I flung myself on the grass between two clumps of flowers—one orange with brown centers, the other a brilliant pink—and wedged my pop on the ground beside me. Once, this spot had been nothing but bark mulch and a few droopy shrubs. You could still see it in old pictures showing our location. But last year Bentley had removed the bark mulch, laid sod and thrown down a fistful of wildflower seeds.

  For a guy who dealt drugs all day, he sure liked his flowers. Especially ones that smelled good.

  The sun beat on my face. I settled with a sigh. The odd car drove up and down the street. Geese honked somewhere above me. Relaxed and finally warm, I shut my eyes.

  I drifted, thinking of homework, of foods class. We’d been assigned groups to prepare theme dinners. I’d been set up with Tom, who insisted we choose Mexican because he wanted to cook with tequila. Like that would fly. Still, knowing Tom, he’d find a way to screw the rules, and we’d fail.