James Patterson - Lifeguard

“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 to it, Ellie. Maybe I did a few stupid things. Like drive her home a couple of times. Maybe she got trapped in a lie about me, and it just snowballed. All of a sudden her story grew. Suddenly I had accosted her. In my classroom after school, right on school grounds. They gave me a hearing. But that kind of thing – it doesn’t go away. They gave me a chance to stay, in some sort of lesser capacity, an admin job. I quit, walked away.

“A lot of people gave up on me. My dad…”

“Your father’s got a record, right?” Ellie injected.

“A record? More like his own cell up at the Souza Correctional Center in Shirley permanently on reserve. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree , I remember him saying, like I proved him right. Imagine, he was the one who gave up on me. A few years before, he got his own goddamn son killed. My older brother. You know what the real joke was, though?”

Ellie shook her head

“About a month after I left, the girl recanted. I got a nice letter of apology from the school. But by then, the damage was done. I couldn’t be a teacher.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said.

“But you know who didn’t give up on me, Agent Shurtleff? My cousin Mickey didn’t. And Bobby O’Reilly. Or Barney or Dee. For a bunch of Brockton losers, they understood how that teaching job meant everything to me. And you think I’d kill those guys…” I tapped my chest, close to my heart. “I’d kill myself if it would bring them back. Anyway” – I smiled, feeling that I’d gotten a little emotional – “you think if I had sixty million in stolen art, I’d be talking to you in a fleabag motel like this?”

Ellie smiled, too. “Maybe you’re more clever than you look.”

Suddenly a news bulletin interrupted the TV show. Breaking news … A report of today’s abduction. My eyes got wide. Here we go again. My face was on the screen. Jesus Christ… My name!

“Ned,” Ellie Shurtleff said, seeing the panic on my face, “you’ve got to come in with me. It’s the only way we can work this out. The only way .”

“I don’t think so.” I took the gun and grabbed her by the arm. “C’mon, we’re getting out of here.”

I TOSSED MY FEW BELONGINGS into the back of the minivan. I’d managed to locate a screwdriver in a tool kit and switched the Massachusetts plates with Connecticut ones off another car in the lot.

And I had to get rid of the van now, too. They would’ve found the 4Runner by now. And I had to ditch Ellie Shurtleff. But what I couldn’t do was turn myself in. Not until I found out who’d set us up and murdered my friends. Not until I found fucking Gachet.

I hopped in the van, nervously driving around. “Where we going?” Ellie asked, sensing that everything had changed.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You want me to help you, Ned,” Ellie said, “you have to let me take you in. Don’t do something even more stupid than you’ve already done.”

“I think it’s too late for that,” I said. I was searching for a place I could drop her.

I found a quiet section on Route 138, between a granite yard and a used-car dealership. I turned off the main road and pulled up to a quiet spot hidden from view.

Ellie was getting alarmed. I could see it in her eyes. It was clear we weren’t headed where she thought we were. What was I going to do?

“Please, Ned,” she said. “Don’t do something stupid. There’s no other way.”

“There’s one other way.” I put the van in park. I nodded – like Go on, out the door .

“They’re going to find you…” she said. “Today. Tomorrow. You’re going to get yourself killed. I’m serious, Ned.”

“Everything I told you is true, Ellie.” I looked into her eyes. “I didn’t do these things. And I didn’t do some other stuff you may eventually hear about. Now, go on, get out.”

I popped the locks. I reached across her body and flung open the door.

“You’re making a mistake,” Ellie said. “Don’t do this, Ned.”

“Well, you heard my story. I’ve been making them for years.”

Call it the Stockholm syndrome in reverse, but I had grown a little attached to Special Agent Ellie Shurtleff. I knew she truly wanted to help me. She was probably the last, best chance I had. So I was sorry to see her go.

“Not a wrinkle in your clothes, just like I promised.” I smiled. “Be sure and tell your partner that.”

Ellie looked at me, with a combination of disappointment and frustration. She slid out of the van.

“Answer me one question,” I said.