Without Mercy

by Lisa Jackson

  Glasses fogging, Charla seemed to think that the school’s medical bases were covered. Jules didn’t agree, but she held her tongue, nodding in all the appropriate conversation lapses while holding the hood of her ski jacket tight at her chin. Even in her boots, with her warm socks, her toes were starting to feel numb.

  As they made a circuit of the campus, Jules asked, “How long have you been here?”

  “Eighteen years in April,” the woman said proudly. “I was the first person Reverend Lynch brought on board. I helped him organize and hire the teaching staff. Back then, when the school was new, there were only a few of us.”

  “And before that?”

  “Oh, the property was in disrepair.” She waved a gloved hand toward the buildings. “Horribly so. It had been donated to a church in the late forties to be used for family retreats and counseling, but the facilities were neglected and run-down. I think the reverend’s father came here as a child, then later brought Reverend Lynch here when he was a boy. Hunting and fishing, that sort of thing. Years later, when Reverend Lynch came up with the idea of the academy, he thought this would be the perfect spot. Isolated and idyllic, close to God. He found some investors and worked hard to fulfill the dream. Now the academy is a standard for learning institutions throughout the country, probably the world,” she said proudly.

  “And Mrs. Lynch, she’s a part of this?” Jules asked, thinking of the angry conversation she’d overheard between the reverend and his wife.

  “Oh, of course.” Charla’s face lost a little of its animation, but her smile returned, as if on cue. “Mrs. Lynch’s father, Radnor Stanton, was a major investor in Blue Rock Academy. He was a philanthropist. An entrepreneur. Made his fortune in shipping, I think.” She waved a gloved hand, as if Stanton’s occupation was of no consequence.

  But it explained the mansion in Seattle. “I take it he’s passed on?”

  “Ten years ago and it’s too bad,” she said. “He was a good man. Far-sighted, like the reverend.”

  “And maybe Reverend McAllister?” Jules prompted.

  Charla sighed. “He’s … different. The board of directors wanted to have someone more youthful on the staff, I guess, and he was available, but he believes the students should, you know”—she made air quotes—“do their own thing. Have their own personal relationship with God. He seems to disdain order and doctrine.” She slid Jules a look. “As I said, different.”

  “I know what you mean. Nontraditional.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “But the two ministers, they work well together?”

  “Reverend Lynch says ‘there are many paths to God.’”

  “And Mrs. Lynch agrees?”

  “Cora Sue? Who knows?” Charla said hotly.

  “And their marriage? How is it? What with him being here most of the time and she in Seattle.”

  “It makes it easier for her,” Charla said with a trace of bitterness.

  “And him. Without the wife around, well, he can … do whatever he wants.”

  Charla turned horrified eyes on Jules. “Are you suggesting that Tobias would cheat on Cora Sue?” Her back was really up. “He would never do anything of the kind. He is not an adulterer.”

  “And Cora Sue?”

  Charla stopped dead in her tracks. “This is none of your business or mine,” she said. “Reverend Lynch is a good man! Kind, just, and extremely forgiving …” There was a hint that she wanted to say more but thought better of it.

  Jules pushed, “Even when his wife …?”

  “Cora Sue isn’t as … dedicated as the reverend is.” Charla glanced sharply at Jules. Disapproval was evident in her eyes. She knew the marriage was strained and that the problem was with the reverend’s wife. She kept walking, her cheeks red with the cold.

  Jules kept up and decided to test the woman even further. “I could see from my first interview that Doctor Lynch is a doctor as well as a preacher, right?”

  Charla beamed again. “Double Ph.D. Psychology and religious studies. Extremely well educated—one of the most honored theologians on the West Coast. Absolutely dedicated to the students.”

  Jules guessed the besotted secretary was stretching things a bit but said, “I knew he was a true man of God. That’s one of the reasons I took the job. Like Reverend Lynch, I’m committed to helping young people.” At least that much was true, and Charla seemed to believe her. “But there are some gaps in the curriculum I received from my predecessor, Ms. Howell.”

  Charla visibly stiffened. “She’s been gone for a while. Dean Hammersley and Mr. Taggert filled in for her until you were hired. If there are gaps, you should speak with them.”

  “I just thought that since you seem to be the coordinator of the entire school, you might have some idea where I’d find Ms. Howell’s class notes and detailed lesson plans.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, but there was a little gleam in her eye, as if she were dying to pass on a tidbit of Blue Rock gossip. “I’m sure everything the school has is in the file you were given.”

  “I got the book and the syllabus, but I thought you might give me some insight into the woman. She worked with the kids I’ll be teaching. She must have known them well.”

  Charla sighed. “I really shouldn’t talk about her.”

  So much for subtlety or beating around the bush. “Because of the lawsuit?”

  “That was dropped,” she snapped fiercely, then caught herself. “Just recently … It’s no secret, I guess. Maris was caught with one of the students, Ethan Slade. Understandably, his parents were upset.”

  “But he’s still here,” Jules pointed out.

  “Oh, yes. And he became a TA and is going to college through the school, all gratis—part of the deal his parents worked out. Maris was let go, but even the DA backed off. Charges dropped.” Obviously Charla didn’t approve. As if realizing she’d said more than she should, she picked up the pace. “This is our gymnasium.” She motioned grandly to the huge building with its soaring, curved roof. “Every student is required to take physical education courses along with survival training. You’ve met the instructor, Mr. Trent. He’s relatively new to his position but works with each of the kids, and the curriculum isn’t limited to indoor sports. Mr. Trent spends a lot of his time outdoors. Everything from soccer to archery, to horseback riding, yoga, and windsurfing.

  “Reverend Lynch, he’s quite an athlete himself, a boxer, and he believes in physical fitness, that the body and mind are God’s gifts. Each student is taught to take care of both.”

  Back to the good reverend. Boy, Charla had it bad.

  They passed several groups of students who were helping clear walkways, and Charla waved to a big man wearing an insulated hunter’s cap with earflaps. “Hi, Joe!” At six-foot-four or five, he was built like a lineman for a professional football team. “Joe Ingersoll, our maintenance supervisor.”

  Appearing perturbed, he nodded but never stopped instructing three of the teachers’ aides whom Jules didn’t know by name yet.

  Charla held a gloved hand up to her mouth. “We were talking about Ethan Slade. He’s the one next to Joe.” She pointed to an earnest boy, the one supposedly caught up in a scandal with Maris Howell. Jules made a note to talk to him. “The kids with him are TAs as well,” she added, “Roberto Ortega and Kaci Donahue.”

  “You know all the students by name?” Jules asked.

  “Of course.” Charla’s breath was a puff of white. “Some of the TAs take instruction from Joe before leading teams to work on the grounds or in the buildings.”

  “And the TAs also help with security, right?” Jules asked.

  “Yes, under supervision, of course.”

  “Whose supervision?”

  “We hire people, like the guard at the gate, but ultimately, if you have a problem, you need to talk with Bert Flannagan or Kirk Spurrier. Flannagan was solely in charge until one of the students went missing,” she said nervously. “Since then, he and Spur
rier have been a team.”

  “You’re talking about Lauren Conway,” Jules said, seeing a way to switch to the topic. “I read that she disappeared without a trace.”

  Charla stiffened. “There’s all sorts of speculation, I know. But, if you ask me, she ran away, plain and simple. The press, they wanted to make it look like something horrid had happened to her, and I can’t say that it didn’t, but she was a manipulator, that one. Came down here, begging to be part of the TA program to help her pay for school.” She shook her head. “I had her pegged from the start, you know. Knew she was up to no good.”

  “You think she had another reason for being here.”

  “I can’t prove it, of course. But there was just something not right about the entire situation.” Then, as if realizing she’d again said too much, Charla made a sweeping gesture toward the administration building and effectively changed the topic. “Here we are, back where we started. If you want coffee, tea, or cocoa, it’s available all day at the cafeteria.

  “And it goes without saying that if you have any questions, I’m usually available.” She added, “The reverend wanted me to remind you that you have a meeting with him tonight. Seven o’clock in his study at the chapel.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jules said, trying to keep the bite out of her words.

  As Charla hurried up the snowy steps of the admin building, Jules wondered about the secretary and her relationship with her boss. Charla obviously had no love for Cora Sue Stanton Lynch, and Jules thought there might be a grain of envy. Because of Cora Sue’s wealth? Or the fact that she was married to the Reverend Tobias Lynch?

  It was hard for Jules, head bent against the wind, to think of the preacher in sexual terms, but then, what did she know? She’d been involved with Cooper Trent when he was a low-down rodeo rider, and truth to tell, she still found him attractive.

  “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath as she stomped snow from her boots on the porch of Stanton House. Glancing behind her to make sure no one was watching or following, she proceeded inside, wondering what Trent would be doing today.

  Stop that. It’s over.

  Whatever fascination you had with him should have died years ago.

  But there it was.

  Like a damned toothache, one you hoped would go away if you ignored it, though it just got worse.

  CHAPTER 26

  There had to be some kind of law against this kind of inhumane treatment, Shay thought. Didn’t shoveling horse manure fall under the category of cruel and unusual punishment? There had to be some child labor laws against this kind of abuse on the books!

  Standing in the gray mare’s stall, Shay rammed her shovel under the steaming manure and dirty straw and scooped the dung into a half-full cart. Though it was freezing, she was beginning to sweat, probably because she was seething inside. Shoveling horse dung with Lucy and Eric was the worst!

  She had hoped Jules had a plan to get her out of here. But it seemed pretty lame. What was it again? Join the staff and poke around and tell Shay to “be patient.”

  She pushed her shovel again and heard it scrape against concrete. A good sign. At least this box was almost done.

  But the stable was huge. There had to be thirty boxes, all of them needing to be cleaned while the horses milled around the indoor arena.

  It would take forever to get it clean and spread new straw. Meanwhile, the horses would just keep fouling the place up.

  Even though she was wearing thick leather gloves, she still felt the sting of blisters forming. But she didn’t dare stop or complain. Not with Flannagan popping in and out and Eric and Lucy ready to rat her out if she didn’t keep working. Her shoulders and back ached. Even her arms were protesting, though she kept herself in great shape. Worse yet, she stood ankle-deep in horse manure.

  Could the juvenile detention center be worse than this? Shay doubted it. She flung another shovelful into the cart positioned in the aisle behind all the stalls and thought about sending a stray pile of dung straight at Eric’s face. But she didn’t. He was working twice as fast as she was, which only made less work for her.

  “This is so unfair!” Lucy hissed from the stall of Roscoe, a dun gelding. She slid a dark look in Eric’s direction.

  “I know,” Shay agreed.

  “Oh, shut up, you wusses!” Eric straightened, sweat running down his face. He was about finished cleaning out Scout’s stall. “It could be worse.”

  “No way!” Lucy said, always quick with a challenge. “How?”

  Rolfe smirked, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Try it in summer, when it’s over a hundred degrees. It smells a thousand times worse, and there are flies everywhere, not just buzzing but stinging. Sometimes the shit has worms in it. Or grubs.”

  “Are you trying to gross me out?” Lucy asked.

  Eric snorted. “Just work and stop complaining.”

  Creaking on freezing casters, the sliding door to the pasture opened, and Flannagan strode inside. “Is there a problem here?” Snow covered the shoulders of his jacket and the brim of his hat. “I hope not, because if you think I don’t have better things to do than babysit your sorry backsides, then you’ve all got another thing coming.”

  “I’m fine,” Eric said, and picked up the handles of the cart to wheel it outside. “It’s just the girlies. They don’t know how to handle hard work.” He pushed the cart down the aisle and out the open door.

  “He is such a pain.” Lucy sighed as the men left the building. “It’s the TAs. They all get big heads.” Lucy sent a withering look at the door. “Think they deserve to be treated differently. Like they’ve earned it or something.” Her nose wrinkled. “It’s weird, you know. Like they’re part of a secret club or something.”

  “It’s no secret,” Shay said.

  “I’m not talking about just being a TA. I think it’s something different. Something … I don’t know, more intense. Maybe it’s not all of them.” Lucy frowned, her pencil-thin eyebrows drawing together. “Lauren Conway, the girl who disappeared before Thanksgiving? She said there was something going on, like a cult or something, and she should have known because she was one of them.”

  “A cult of TAs?” Shay almost laughed.

  “Hey, I’m serious. I think that’s why she disappeared,” she said, leaning on the handle of her shovel. “I think she knew too much.”

  “So now they’re a deadly cult?”

  Lucy mopped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. “I know it sounds crazy, but maybe it’s not so far off base. I mean, what do you really think happened to Nona and Drew?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think a lunatic group of TAs attacked them. I mean, come on, Drew Prescott is one of them! Don’t tell me you think they all ganged up on him because he’s, like, a rogue TA or something? And the same with Lauren Conway. She didn’t fit in, so they what, killed her and got rid of her body somehow?” Shay rolled her eyes. “You know, Lucy, this is right up there with Maeve’s great Shakespearean tragedy.”

  “I know it sounds out there, but I’m tellin’ ya. There is something going on here.”

  Wind whistled around the building, and overhead the timbers creaked. Lucy glanced up, and Shay knew what she was thinking, that this was where Nona and Drew were attacked. Where Nona had lost her life.

  “That’s how they do it, you know,” Lucy said. “This”—she motioned to the half-cleaned stalls and their shovels—“this isn’t the real punishment. It’s the psychological stuff. Lynch’s specialty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lucy looked around to make sure no one overheard. “We could have been assigned to the kennels, or the barns, or the pigpens. Right? Wouldn’t that have been worse, the pigs? But, no, we’re here in the stable”—she looked up toward the loft—“right where Nona was killed.”

  “So?” Shay said.

  “Think about Reverend Lynch’s last name. Lynch. As in noose. As in hanging.” Lucy actually shuddered. “You th
ink that’s a coincidence?”

  Before Shay could respond, the lights flickered ominously.

  “Oh, for the love of God,” Lucy whispered, and the sound of angry voices swept into the stable.

  “And I expect you to maintain focus,” Flannagan was saying, obviously irritated. “We didn’t handpick you so you could go punching girls, Mister Rolfe. Don’t screw up again.”

  Lucy met Shay’s eyes and lifted a shoulder, as if to say, Didn’t I tell you?

  “Oh, so now what? Flannagan’s involved, too?” Shay laughed. “I hate to tell you this, Yang, but Flannagan’s a little old to be a TA. And so is Lynch.”

  With a grim slash of a frown, Lucy moved on to another stall. Shay bent into her task as Eric, his face red from the cold and a dressing-down, wheeled the cart down the aisle.

  He stepped into Omen’s stall. “I hate that old man,” he said under his breath as he scooped up another shovelful of straw and manure. “I wish the son of a bitch were dead.”

  Jules stomped the snow from her boots before pushing open the door to the empty chapel. She had left the dining hall with the dinner meal in full swing, wanting to be on time for her appointment with Dr. Lynch, though the thought of crossing the campus alone after dark had given her some pause.

  Once inside, she pressed into the shadows of the nave. The tile floor reflected the glow of battery-powered candles placed strategically to light the way up the center aisle to the altar. Behind her, recessed lights illuminated the massive cross built into the window.

  Her footsteps hushed by the red floor runner, Jules made her way to a side door and down a short hallway to Reverend Lynch’s private office. She knocked, listened. When no one answered, she tried the door.

  Of course it was locked.

  It seemed she was alone in the building.