140. Did we just become the Scooby Gang?
140
DID WE JUST BECOME THE SCOOBY GANG?
Nate
There was absolutely no way that Archer took his car, got into an accident, hit someone, and then brought it back and went to sleep as if nothing was wrong. Absolutely none. The lawyer had a copy of the security footage, and we all sat in his office and watched it. It was blurry, but even I could see the person driving was too tall to be Archer. It was all kinds of bullshit.
But that didn’t make the police change their point of view. They said it was officially in the hands of the DA’s office and the case against Archer was a slam dunk. Jerks.
We would just have to prove them wrong.
But since none of us could prove definitively that Archer did not take the car out in a weird sleepwalking horror movie type situation, our hands were tied. Or were they?
I spent the morning looking up the kind of surveillance system Daire had installed before I met him. We could see the car being taken out but it was too dark to see who it was.
To steal the car and freak out after hitting someone, they’d have ditched it. At least that’s what I assumed. So why did they return the car? None of this made sense so pretending that I could logic my way to problem solving wasn’t helping.
The manor family hadn’t asked me to look into this and I was probably stepping on toes but I needed to do something. The thought of Archer having to go through a trial and then potentially ending up in jail made me sick to my stomach. He was a father and those kids would be just as heartbroken as he was if he was gone for I didn’t even know how long.
They said the victim had no life threatening injuries but that didn’t mean the same thing as being non-life altering. The paper didn’t give details and Archer hadn’t gotten any reports from his lawyer about the extent of the injuries. And even if he did, not all scars are visible.
We were having a day of shifting and eating and basically forgetting the bad shit and focusing on the good at Daire’s family estate. I understood the purpose. But also I wanted to fix things and I couldn’t really do that from there. Not that I could do it from here. But still…
“Are you ready?” I came into the kitchen where Daire was packing up some snacks. We each took a type of food, almost like a potluck. Or maybe exactly like a potluck but without the expectation of anything being homemade.
To make it fair we pulled food groups out of a hat. Worked for us. We got snacks and that meant buying chips, dip, and cheese.
“I felt weird bringing a lot of junk food.” My mate picked up a large covered plastic bowl. “So I made a fruit salad too.”
“You know that someone had fruit, right?” We were going to have so much fruit.
“Watch. No one is going to stick to their list. No one.”
And he was right. When we all arrived and started setting up, not one person only had what was on their list. We had enough subs for a crew twice our size, fruit for thirty, junk food to rival any Super Bowl Party, and three trays of deviled eggs.
There might not have been too many of those, though. They were eaten lickety split.
“I’m so full.” Toby fell into his blanket. “Why did I keep eating?”
“Because you’re a growing boy,” Martin reminded him. “Maybe take the kids onto the grass and play. Help everyone to burn off some of your lunch.”
Toby got up and brushed off his jeans. ”But don’t think I don’t know this is so you guys can have some grown up talk,” he said pointedly.
Martin opened his mouth as if to rebut and then closed it again.
“Were we supposed to have grown up time?” Ryder asked with a forced chuckle. “I didn’t come prepared for that.”
Toby rolled his eyes again and this time gathered the kids.
It was fun to watch them playing like that. You could see the shifter in them the way they pounced as if hunting prey.
“We really do have grown up things to talk about,” Archer started. And that was for the best, because this really was about him first and foremost. At least, I assumed he was wanting to talk about his arrest.
“No one thinks you did it,” Ryder said and the rest of us all piped up in agreement.
“I didn’t think you did. But you aren’t the people we have to convince. My lawyer says it doesn’t look good, so I need to come up with a Plan B.” He twisted off the top of his soda and took a long swig.
“I was thinking about that, too,” I confessed.
“I don’t want my mate to be alone raising the kids. I was thinking maybe we could buy a big house for all of you to live in and be a huge extended family.”
His words shocked me. It was like he had given up already. “We kind of have that now at Sunshine Manor and the two other houses. You know? We’re already kind of a pack.”
Archer’s words stunned us all into silence, including Micah.
It broke me to see him so unable to see the possible light at the end of the road.
“I have half an idea.” I finally said when the prolonged silence was too much. “It’s not great but together we could work on it.”
That had everyone’s attention.
“The security footage stunk. We know this and there’s nothing we can do to make it better.” It wasn't like on the crime shows where they can miraculously take some random corrupted film from a mile away and make it clear enough to see an odd tooth they use to match dental records or what not. This was real life and shitty footage was shitty footage.
“It does show someone taller than Archer though,” Ivor noted.
“True but my lawyer said I could’ve been sitting on a pillow and that it means nothing.”
It blew my mind how horrible this entire system was. So much for the innocent until proven guilty crap they taught us in school. It was more like guilty if it was easier than trying to look for the real answer.
“What if we get better cameras and motion detecting lights? And position them in a different way than we have at the moment?” Said like that, it sounded so dumb.
“And how does that help?”Archer asked with no snideness to his tone. “He already did it.”
“Or she,” Ivor added. “We don’t know.”
“They brought back the car,” I said. “If they were a random person, the car would have been in the river or stashed in the woods, not parked exactly as you had it before.”
“And you think they’ll be back?” Micah pushed himself up to be fully seated.
Neil rubbed his chin. “Perhaps we could do like a stake out instead.”
Toby called Martin over, something about poop, while the rest of us tried to form a decent strategy. By the time those of us who planned to shift took our fur, we had a tentative plan ready to go. It might not work, but at least we felt like we were doing something and we needed to not feel so helpless.
Daire spoke close to my ear as the Sunshine Manor crew was cleaning up from our picnic. “There was a dark cloud over us and now… now there’s a glimpse of the sun. ”
“I love you, Daire.”
“As I love you, Nate.”
It took us a week of watching and filming and crossing our fingers the person would return to the scene of the crime. I was pretty sure Archer lost a few years of his life with all the worry he had, not for himself, but for his mate and his children. The weight piled on him because some asshat decided to take his car was unforgivable.
But somehow Archer did forgive, when we caught a teenager, Mike, from around the corner coming back for the car. The kid had been using it to get to work. His grandfather, the one who was raising him, had been suffering with high blood pressure, and they needed the money for rent. What he didn’t have money for was a car and working the nightshift meant the public transportation wasn’t running.
Apparently Archer had purchased “the most stolen car” in the nation and not because it was the best car ever. Nope. It was because they made exactly six different keys for it and what did the teen have in his possession? The same key as Archer’s car. Archer wasn’t chosen to be a victim, he just happened to have the right car.
And the week Mike hadn’t returned? That was the week his grandfather fell and had to be hospitalized, the week he stayed in the hospital to make sure his grandfather was treated well because he said that hadn’t always been the case. The kid did wrong, but in so many ways he was a victim too.
He hadn’t meant to hit the car when he swerved out of the way of a dog, and he swore he didn’t know that he had hurt anyone. By the time the police came to get him, he was sobbing, not for himself, but for his grandfather. He didn’t want him to lose his apartment. And what did Archer do? Archer promised to make sure he didn’t.
Why? Because that was the kind of person Archer was.
And Micah arranged for the lawyer they’d used to represent Mike. He had to pay a fine and got one year of jail time, but he’d be out earlier with good behavior.