In the end Chris and Carrie told the detective the truth but without bringing the San Telmo into the story Most people didn’t immediately assume the two scared and still-damp kids had been looking for a lost treasure ship and it was pretty easy to skate around why the professor had decided to leave them in the ocean So Chris and Carrie told Detective Hermann that they’d been accompanying the professor professor and some grad students who were supposed to be studying coastal erosion and that the professor had gotten a fake grad student to throw them overboard They did not say that they suspected it was so that they couldn’t interfere with the professor’s hunt for the San Telmo As for the other pieces of the story they had nothing to hide They’d met Bethy and the currently AWOL Redd on a camping trip recently they’d fallen down the well in the cistern at Saint Erasmus while doing research for a school project and they’d been threatened recently by the same man who had killed their aunt Uh-huh Detective Hermann said 8
We did do a little research into the San Telmo when we were doing that school project Chris offered hoping desperately that the detective wasn’t about to see through him and demand that he stop looking for the San Telmo altogether But I don’t know why Professor Griffin is so obsessed with it Willis Griffin is a very obsessed individual Agent Grey said startling everyone She’d folded herself into a chair next to Detective Hermann just as he was starting to question Chris and Carrie One desk over her partner appeared to be doing the same thing with Maddison and her family But the instant Agent Grey had sat down she’d faded into the background background almost completely It was a terrifying skill to have and Chris could see why it would be useful for a law enforcement official Griffin’s dangerous He’s intelligent he’s driven and for some reason he’s convinced that you two are the key to his delusions Agent Grey went on And as of this moment he’s in the wind Harvey Tanner called the first Kingsolver phone number he 9
found She gave Carrie a look and Carrie clapped both hands over her mouth in horror as she realized what she meant that Harvey Tanner had called her parents But aside from a sobbing confession and repeated insistence that he didn’t mean to do it we haven’t been able to get anything else out of him Figuring out where he parted with Griffin and where Griffin is now will take us a while and in the meantime meantime you should probably have a police escort Agent Grey means all of you Detective Hermann said raising his voice so that Agent Holland stopped talking quietly with Dr McRae and turned towards Detective Hermann Yes especially the people who have unpleasant history with Griffin Agent Grey agreed giving Dr McRae a significant look I can’t force you to accept Detective Hermann added Especially not when we have no real proof you’re going to be in danger but I don’t like the way you’ve been targeted Dr McRae looked uncertainly at his wife 10
I especially don’t like the way you seem to attract trouble the detective added and actually smiled at the way Maddison’s mom stomped on her husband’s foot when he did Ow I assure you Detective Dr McRae said hopping a little on one foot no member of the McRae family will be doing any funny business especially since you’ve got an equally good reason to put cars outside the Kingsolver residences That’ll cut down on Maddison’s reason for wandering Oh no Chris thought Parents Everything had happened so fast that he hadn’t had a chance to worry about how his parents were going to react to Chris and his cousin falling overboard or the fact that it was Professor Griffin’s fault Chris got Detective Hermann as his police escort Detective Hermann also brought along an Officer Carson who was going to be watching the house if 11
