Page 12 of All He Sees
"I bet you see them a lot," Nicky said. "Do you remember seeing any of them out here last Friday? Might have been around the time you got that call about the camera."
"I don't remember seeing them," the man said. "I mean, I was in the back, puttering around. I haven't seen Dean since, though—Frank came in and promised he’d pay for the camera when he has the money. Needed a new camera system anyway--that one's way outdated. Frank’s a good guy; it’s not really his fault Dean is such a little shit, you know? I didn’t wanna press charges.”
Nicky nodded. Maybe it was just some kid messing around, but the way he'd come up to the shop had looked so purposeful. Plus, on the video, he was alone. No friends to impress or anything like that.
It looked like he wanted to break the camera on his own.
But Nicky didn't know what any of this meant. Obviously, a twelve-year-old child didn't make Mira Phillips disappear. It didn’t make any sense. Yet Nicky had that feeling in her gut—the one that told her this was the right lead to chase down. She’d been wrong before, but Nicky had learned to trust her gut.
Yes, there was no way a little kid made Mira disappear…
But maybe he knew something about the person who did.
***
Nicky steered the car into the parking lot of the skate park, Ken rigid in the passenger seat beside her. The asphalt surface was polished and the curb that bounded it was painted in alternating stripes of yellow. The playground equipment, which spread behind it, was steel and solid, but the color was friendly. Behind it, the skatepark. A group of teenage boys rode their skateboards up and down the ramp, flipping as they landed and rolled back up to do it again.
"Think they did it?" Ken asked as they got out of the car.
"It's possible," Nicky said. She locked their car and started toward the boys. At that moment, she saw one of them quickly clasp hands with another kid--a classic sign of a quick drug deal.
Well, shit. Nicky's job wasn't to bust teenage druggies. Not at all--she had bigger fish to fry, but maybe she could use this to get them to talk. When the boys saw Nicky and Ken, they all looked over with a sort of resigned irritation. Nicky didn't immediately see Dean Spanos, who on the video, was a tanned-skinned kid with black hair and eyes. But these boys looked older, and they were looking at Nicky and Ken like they were fresh meat. Nicky knew that she and Ken reeked of the FBI--but as of right now, they weren't trying to hide that.
"Excuse me," Nicky said, pausing in front of the group of boys. They were all around their late teens, with skateboards on their backs, and all had their hair styled in mohawks or mullets. "I'm Agent Nicky Lyons, with the FBI, and this is Agent Ken Walker. Can we talk to you guys for a minute?"
"What about?" one of the boys asked. "Don't you have anything better to do than harass us?"
"We're not harassing you," Nicky said, annoyed. Teenagers were so dramatic. "We're trying to help a girl who went missing. You might have heard about it--Mira Phillips?"
"I've heard about it," the boy said. "We don't know anything about it, though, so we can't help you."
"And we didn't do it," another kid--the one who had presumably given drugs to the other--said. Nicky noticed his eyes were darting around, like he was paranoid.
"We're not accusing you of anything," Nicky said. "We're just trying to confirm a few stories. We heard that you guys might have been hanging out in the park last week and might have seen something."
"Not us," the boy said. "None of us were in the park last week."
"What about Dean Spanos?" Nicky asked. "He's been seen around here before."
"He hangs around here all the time," one of the other boys said. "He's a little shit."
"What did he do?" Nicky asked. It seemed like these guys weren't quick to protect Dean, which wasn't what Nicky had been expecting.
"Forget it," one of the other guys said. "We're not talking to you. We don't have to."
Nicky trained her eyes on the paranoid kid, who looked away, then at the other kid who'd taken the suspected bag of drugs from him. He was holding his hands in his pocket, probably clutching the bag.
"What's in the pocket, there?" Nicky asked.
The kid scoffed. "Nothing. I don't have anything in my pocket."
"Are you sure?" Ken asked. "Because I could frisk you if you want."
"I'm not hiding anything," the kid said. "I'm not a criminal. I'm not a…a drug addict. I'm not doing anything wrong."
"Really?" Nicky placed her hands on her hips, then glanced around the crowd. "It would be pretty easy for us to call in the local police and let them know we just witnessed a drug deal go down here," Nicky said threateningly, and the boys exchanged glances. "But you seem like good kids. We're just here to ask you some questions. Some questions that might help us find this girl. So, we want to know where we can find Dean Spanos."
Panic flitted across the kid's face. "I don't know."
