Page 14 of A Hidden Past

“Yes, thank you,” Lena said patiently. “I’ll take it from here.”

Vince frowned, clearly unhappy that she didn’t shower praise on him for discovering that deep and groundbreaking piece of evidence. He joined Morales, and the two of them walked away.

Lena took a moment to size Nathan Harlow up. He was indeed a good-looking kid, tall, tanned and strong. He had wispy blonde hair and bright blue eyes above a face that should have earned him a job as the next teen heartthrob and not a guy who actually cleaned pools.

At the moment, that face was wide-eyed with shock. Lena decided that his shock was genuine.

Didn’t mean he was innocent.

“Nathan, right?”

The kid nodded.

“I’m detective Lena Ramirez. Mind if I talk to you a little bit?”

He nodded again. She flashed her best smile and said, “You’re going to have to use words if you talk to me, though. I don’t do well at guessing faces.”

That was a lie, of course. Guessing faces was her job.

“Yes, you can talk to me.”

Cute voice too.

“So Nathan, tell me what happened.”

“I already told the other two what happened.”

“So tell me.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He was indeed sweating profusely, and Lena doubted it was all to do with the heat.

“I showed up to the house and knocked on the door, but no one was home.”

“Why were you here?”

“I needed to get the vacuum.”

“The one you forgot yesterday, right?”

“Yeah. I needed to get it back, so I knocked on the door. When no one answered, I decided to just go into…” he stopped and looked shrewdly up at Lena.

“I’m not going to arrest you for hopping the fence for a vacuum cleaner,” Lena said. “Bigger fish to fry. On the other hand, you start keeping things from me, I start wondering if there’s something I should arrest you for. Get what I’m saying?”

Nate nodded. “Yeah. So I decided to hop the fence. I really need that vacuum. Best Pool Cleaners will fire me if I lose their equipment, and I really need this job.”

“Not to be a bitch,” she interrupted, “but I don’t care about your job right now. Tell me what you saw when you hopped the fence.”

He swallowed. “I saw that.” He hooked his head toward the open gate of the yard where uniforms were still milling around, hopefully not obliterating her crime scene.

“You have to tell me what that is,” Lena said firmly but gently. “I need to know exactly what you saw.”

He sighed. “She was in the pool in her underwear and her t-shirt. She was floating face down, and I could tell that she was… that she’d been in there like that for a while.”

“Anything seem out of place?”

“You mean other than the fucking body in the pool?”

She squatted down so she was at eye level with him. He didn’t like that and turned his head away to avoid eye contact. She noted that and said, “Hey, Nate? I get that this is a tough thing to talk about. I also get that I’m not the cuddliest person alive, but I need you to put on some big boy pants and talk to me, okay? We need to figure out what happened here, and you need us to figure out what happened here, because at the moment, I have a dead girl your age wearing next to nothing and no one in the house but you.”

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