The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [63]
I nodded and motioned for him to continue. What could be more shocking at this point than finding out you have a mole on the inside selling you out and that your best friend has been stealing money?
“Well, everybody you asked me to monitor has checked out so far with no suspicious activity or unusual affiliations. Except for one person.”
I had a bad feeling about this. I had really expected him to say Joe. Or maybe that’s just what I wanted him to say. Not that I would’ve liked hearing that, but Joe was the only one who made sense anymore.
“Who is it?” I asked warily.
“It’s Vince,” he said. My heart started thumping against the inside of my rib cage as if it was trying to bust out of jail. “Now, it might not mean anything, but I caught him conversing with a person of interest.”
“Who?” I asked.
Tyrell started digging in his bag while shaking his head. “I’m not really sure. I’ve got my theories, but I’ve never actually seen this kid before. Why don’t you take a look first?” He took a little video camera the size of a deck of cards from his canvas messenger bag and laid it on my desk. “Hit Play.”
“Wow, this is really clear,” I said.
“It’s the Rear Window Edition P-Tom that I got for my birthday.”
The video was zoomed in pretty close so it would have been hard to tell exactly where the footage was taking place had I not been there myself at least a thousand times before. It was the playground near Vince’s trailer. It was the very same playground in which Vince and I had first started our business. Now it was pretty rundown. The sandbox was a dirt-and-weed box. Only one seat actually remained on the swing set, and it creaked and croaked like a ten-pack-a-day lunch lady asking you for your lunch card. But the playground was still unmistakable.
I also recognized the kid talking to Vince near the old playground slide right away, despite the baseball hat sitting on top of his shaved head. I would never forget that face for the rest of my life. It was Staples.
The video footage on the little screen showed Vince standing with his back to the rusted slide. Staples stood close to him, and appeared to be the one doing most of the talking. At the end Staples held out what looked to be a roll of cash. Vince looked hesitant, but then finally he reached out and took the money. The last bit showed Staples walking away with a grin on his face and Vince standing at the slide until well after Staples had left. Then Vince stuffed the money into his pocket and walked into his trailer.
“When was this taken?” I asked, my voice coming out cracked and broken like a scratched CD.
“This morning around six forty-five,” Tyrell said.
That would be right around the time Vince would be leaving for school. So had Staples paid him to skip school today? If so, why? Or had the payment been for something else?
“How did it all play out?” I asked.
“Well, he left his trailer that morning and headed for his bike. And that’s when the kid in the baseball hat approached him and pulled him aside toward the slide. They spent the next few minutes talking there. Sorry, Mac, but I couldn’t really get close enough to hear what they said. That’s a pretty open place.”
“That’s okay, Tyrell. You did well,” I said, and slid part of his payment across my desk. He grabbed it, and almost before I could blink, he was gone.
So Staples visits with Vince this morning and then he’s coincidentally gone today? And he doesn’t even bother to call and tell me that Staples approached him? Or maybe he did call me. I couldn’t be sure because I’d already left my house by 6:45 this morning. It could have been nothing, and it certainly didn’t prove anything definite, but it didn’t look very good either. In fact, it looked downright horrible.
I doubled over my desk and banged my forehead on its surface.
“You okay?” Fred called out from his chair in the corner near the first stall.
I couldn’t even muster a response. This couldn’t possibly mean what it looked like, could it? There was no way Vince was on Staples’s payroll. No way. But what