“I’m not sure,” Justin admitted. “But I suspect he feels he wants to redeem himself. There’s also the time element. Once this latest death hits the airways, everyone we’re investigating will disappear into the night. That’s why we’re taking it slow. I’m following Nathan’s lead, but he’s frustrated. And, I’ve never seen him quite like this.”
“I’ve never seen you quite like this,” Rafe pointed out.
“I knew Derek personally,” Justin said, slowly. “I wish Nathan had, too. Maybe then he’d have believed Derek’s death was murder from moment one, and he’d be doing things a bit differently.”
“Why?”
Justin cleared his throat but didn’t answer, struggling with his grief.
“Why? Why would he do things differently?” Rafe asked again.
“I’ve been undercover now for over five years,” Justin finally said. “In that time, I’ve had three kids die. One OD’d, and let’s just say the other didn’t fulfill an obligation. Then there’s Derek. None of them were yet twenty-five. Their deaths made the streets safer and my job easier. I went to their funerals. I understood why they’d died and I didn’t worry about blowing my cover by attending their funeral.”
“You did all you could, and—”
“See,” Justin continued, not waiting to hear Rafe’s platitudes, “there’s a few things I haven’t shared with you. Things that I only reported to Nathan because we don’t want to blow my cover if we don’t have to. You should know, though, that I was at that farm an hour before it exploded. They’d finished making the batch for the day. They’d cleaned up.”
“Who cleaned up?”
Justin named a few names that meant nothing to Rafe.
Justin continued, “After they cleaned up, a couple of the guys went smurfing for materials for the next batch, but there were no plans to head back to the house that night. We all knew it would be awhile. See, it was no longer safe for the boys to simply walk into a nearby store and buy the stuff. They’d been in there buying supplies already that week. They couldn’t afford to be recognized trying again. They had to find a third party, someone who hadn’t bought the supplies in the area before. So Derek and I headed to a burger place, ate, and then went our separate ways. We were supposed to meet at a party later that night. Derek didn’t show.”
“Because he’d died in the explosion.”
“Right,” Justin said bitterly. “But there was no reason for him to return to the house, none. There were no plans to start the next batch, and Derek wasn’t the cook anyway. The kid could barely make a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich. So he must have been lured back or forced back and then...”
Before Justin even said the words, Rafe knew what they would be. Justin had uttered them once before, clandestinely, just two days ago, over the phone.
“...he was murdered.”
No doubt about it. Now that Patricia had been killed, Derek’s untimely demise would receive a bit more attention.
And so would Janie.
“So,” Rafe said, “theoretically, you were the last person to see Derek alive.”
“Except for whoever murdered him.”