Lifeguard - James Patterson [28]
Chapter 32
I TOLD ELLIE SHURTLEFF everything.
Everything I knew about the art heist down in Florida. I left out nothing.
Except the part about meeting Tess. I didn’t know how to tell her about that, and have her believe me about everything else. Besides, I found it really hard to even think about what had happened to Tess.
“I know I’ve done some stupid things in the past few days,” I said looking at Ellie, earnestly. “I know I shouldn’t have run back in Florida. I know I shouldn’t have done what I did today. But you have to believe me, Ellie . . . killing my friends, my cousin . . .” I shook my head. “No way. We didn’t even take that art. Someone set us up.”
“Gachet?” Ellie asked, making a few notes.
“I guess,” I said, frustrated. “I don’t know.”
She looked at me closely. I was praying she believed me. I needed her to believe me. She switched gears. “So why did you come up here?”
“To Boston?” I put the gun down on the bed. “Mickey didn’t have connections down there. At least, not the kind who could set up that kind of heist. Everyone he knew was from up here.”
“Not to locate a fence for the art, Ned? You know people up here, too.”
“Look around, Agent Shurtleff. You see any art here? I didn’t do those things.”
“You’re going to have to come in,” she said. “You’re going to have to talk about whoever your cousin knew and worked for. Names, contacts, everything, if you want my help. I can soften the blow on the abduction thing, but that’s your only way out. You understand that, Ned?”
I nodded resignedly. I had a sour taste in my mouth. Truth was, I didn’t know Mickey’s contacts. Who was I going to give up, my father?
“So how’d you know where I was headed, anyway?” I asked. I figured Sollie Roth had called the police when I ran.
“There aren’t that many old Bonnevilles out there,” Ellie said. “When we found it in South Carolina, we had a pretty good idea where you were headed.”
No shit, I said to myself. Sollie never turned me in.
We ended up talking for hours. It started out about the crimes, but Ellie Shurtleff seemed to want to go through every detail of my whole life. I told her what it was like growing up in Brockton. The neighborhood and the old gang. How my ticket out had been the hockey scholarship to BU.
That seemed to surprise her. “You went to BU?”
“You didn’t know you were talking to the 1995 Leo. J. Fennerty Award winner. Top forward in the Boston CYO,” I grinned with a self-deprecating shrug. “Graduated,” I said. “Four years. A BA in government. You probably didn’t figure me for the academic type.”
“Somehow when you were trolling around the supermarket parking lot, searching for a car to steal, I just never went there.” Ellie smiled.
“I said I didn’t kill anyone, Agent Shurtleff.” I smiled back. “I never said I was a saint!”
That actually made Ellie Shurtleff laugh.
“Want another surprise,” I said, leaning back on the bed, “as long as I’m doing the résumé? I actually used to teach for a couple of years. Eighth-grade social studies, at this middle school for troubled kids, here in Stoughton. I was pretty good. I may not have been able to give you chapter and verse on every constitutional amendment, but my kids could relate to me. I mean, I’d been there. I’d faced the same choices.”
“So, what went wrong?” Ellie asked, putting down her notepad.
“You mean, how does a hotshot like me end up as a lifeguard down in Palm Beach? That’s the million-dollar question, right?”
She shrugged. “Go on.”
“My second year, I took an interest in one of my students. A girl. She was from south Brockton, same as me. Dominican kid. She was running with a rough crowd. But she was smart as a whip. She tested well. I wanted her to do well.”
“What happened?” Ellie leaned forward. I could see this wasn’t about Florida anymore.
“Maybe I scared her, I don’t know. You have to understand, teaching that class meant everything to me. She accused me of something. A grade for a favor, that sort of thing.”
“Oh, no.” Ellie pulled back. She looked at me warily now.
“There was nothing