Picture This (6 page)

Chapter Ten

I kept my hands perfectly still behind my back when the man circled around me and undid the rope that was tied around the birch tree. He grabbed me by one arm and yanked me to my feet.

“Get moving,” he said, shoving me toward the hole.

I stumbled and fell.

“Get up,” the man said, his voice as hard and cold as his eyes. He grabbed my elbow and pulled me roughly to my feet. As he did, I felt the rope holding my hands give way. I was so surprised that I didn't know what to do.

“I said move,” he said, pushing me again.

I did what he said, and I stumbled again, this time on purpose. I yanked my hands as far apart as I could. The rope fell to the ground. I grabbed the shovel with both hands and spun around. The man had one hand behind his back. He was reaching for his gun. I swung the shovel like a baseball bat and hit him square on the side of his head. He fell to the ground with a groan. He was out cold.

I took the gun gingerly from his hand. I groped in his pockets for his car keys. I checked him again. He was breathing, but he wasn't moving.

I put the gun in the trunk of the car and slammed it shut. I threw the car keys as far as I could into the woods. Then I tied the man's hands behind his back and tied his ankles together. I stared down at his face. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn't tell if that was because I had seen him before or because he just looked like someone I had seen around. Why would someone I didn't know have been trying to kill me?

I dug Mrs. Ashdale's cell phone out of my pocket. Something else came out with it—the card that Officer Firelli had given me. I dialed the number on it, and after a few moments I was put through to Officer Firelli.

“Someone just tried to kill me again,” I said. Even I heard the tremble in my voice. “I think it was the same man I saw downtown. He was going to shoot me. He was—”

“Slow down, Ethan,” Officer Firelli said. “Are you okay?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“What about this man? Is he in a position to hurt you?”

“I hit him with a shovel. He's unconscious. I tied him up.”

“Where are you, Ethan?”

“I don't know. Somewhere out in the country.”

“Where out in the country? Look around, Ethan. See if you recognize anything or see any landmarks.”

I looked all around me. I couldn't believe it. I'd been too scared to realize it at first, but I knew exactly where I was. I was near the tree where the hawks nested, the same hawks whose pictures I had been taking for the past couple of weeks. I told Officer Firelli how to find me.

“Sit tight, Ethan,” he said. “I'm going to get someone there as fast as I can. And I'll get up there as soon as I can too. How's your cell-phone battery?”

I checked it. “It's good.”

“Okay. Just stay where you are. If anything happens, call me. Okay, Ethan?”

“Okay.”

Two other cop cars arrived first. Officer Firelli must have talked to them, because they knew my name. One of the cops looked me over and asked me if I was okay. Two more cops checked on the man I had tied up. When they shook him, he groaned and opened his eyes, but just for a minute.

“We'd better get him to a hospital,” one of the cops said. He went to radio for an ambulance.

Another cop dug into the man's pants pocket and pulled out a wallet. He shook his head as he went through it.

“The guy's a cop,” he said. “From the city. His name is Miller. Robert Miller.”

“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.”