The Fallen

by David Baldacci

  “Yeah, they have. I looked it up. The odds, I very roughly calculated, are about the same as dying in a plane crash.” He stared at her. “So, do you still think it was probably an accident or maybe worth investigating?”

  When Jamison didn’t answer, he rose and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going now?” asked Jamison.

  “Back to high school,” replied Decker.

  Chapter 37

  IF THIS WAS the current state of education in America, Decker thought, the country was in serious trouble.

  Baronville High School looked like it was nearly ready for the wrecking ball to come through. In fact, it wouldn’t have taken a demolition team to knock the place down, it appeared one guy with a sledgehammer and a six pack of Red Bull could do the job just fine.

  The roof had holes in it, some windows were broken, and the front door stuck so much that Decker nearly wrenched his shoulder out of joint tugging it open.

  When he entered the school and headed to the office he could smell mildew and damp everywhere. The linoleum floors looked untouched since they had been installed. The trophy cabinet outside the office had no trophies inside it.

  He presented himself at the office and told them who he was and what he wanted. The assistant principal, a petite mousy woman with graying hair, a stiff gait, and a melancholy expression, escorted him to the library.

  “Looks like the school has seen better days,” commented Decker.

  “The whole town has seen better days,” she replied. “No tax base means no money for this place. And we’ve only got half the number of students we used to have. The great exodus is on. Actually, it has been for about thirty years now.”

  “But things might be turning around. There’s the fulfillment center. That employs a ton of people.”

  “And I understand that someone died there.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  She led him into the library. The shelves held few books, and there were a couple of antiquated boxy computers on metal tables. There wasn’t a single student in the place.

  “The yearbooks are over there,” she said, pointing to a far corner.

  “If I have any other questions, can I just ask the librarian?”

  The woman went over to the door and looked back. “You could if we had a librarian. We lost her in the last round of budget cuts. We can spend a billion dollars on a sports arena, but we can’t drop a dime on our kids.”

  Decker just stood there and stared at her awkwardly.

  She said quietly, “If you need anything else, Agent Decker, you can come and get me. I’d be glad to help.”

  “Thanks.”

  She left and Decker walked over to the yearbooks and scanned the volumes there. He pulled out four of them from the span of time he needed to check, sat at one of the rickety tables, and opened the first one. He found the students he wanted in the freshman year.

  John Baron the Fourth looked so young, and he was, barely fourteen at the time. He was still growing into a body that would become long and lean. His Adam’s apple stuck out prominently from the photo, along with his toothy grin. Decker ought to have been surprised that the elite Baron would have been sent to a public school, but he had learned that Baron’s parents had actually been pretty much broke when their son was growing up. A free public education may have been their only route.

  Decker turned the pages until he got to another alphabetical section.

  Joyce Ridge, who had become Joyce Tanner upon marriage, looked back at him. She was exceptionally pretty, with long blonde hair and soft blue eyes.

  Decker had seen her autopsy photo with this same face torn apart by a shotgun blast. He had learned Tanner’s maiden name during the course of his investigation.

  He flipped through some more pages to find that Tanner and Baron had been members of the school’s honor society. He turned to the sports section of the yearbook and saw that Baron, despite being a freshman, was a starter on both the football and baseball teams. His stats as a quarterback and pitcher were listed and would have been impressive for a senior.

  Tanner was on the tennis team and was also a cheerleader.

  Decker went through their sophomore and junior yearbooks and saw the pair grow up in the photos. Tanner was voted Most Popular as a junior, and Baron’s athletic career was on a tear. As a junior, he was all-state in both football and baseball.

  Decker next picked up their senior yearbook and slowly went through the pages.

  Baron was now at pretty much his full height, and handsome, with strong features, thick dark hair, and a pair of bewitching eyes. An article in the sports section of the yearbook reported that Baron threw for nearly three thousand yards and thirty touchdowns as a quarterback, and as a pitcher on the baseball team, he was undefeated and had tossed the only perfect game in school history. He was one of only two high school athletes named first team all-state in two sports that year, and subsequently had been named athlete of the year for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

  He had also signed a college baseball scholarship, the yearbook reported, evidencing both his athletic and academic prowess.

  Joyce Ridge had grown into a beautiful young woman. She was tall, athletically built, captain of the tennis team, and head cheerleader. Her future seemed limitless, though there was no mention of her going to college or receiving a scholarship.

  Decker turned to the prom pages and saw that she also had been voted homecoming queen.

  But Baron was not homecoming king. Another young man, named Bruce Mercer, a wrestler and president of the Spanish club, had been chosen to walk the field with Joyce. She didn’t look happy about this, Decker concluded as he studied the pair on the field. At the edge of the photo was Baron, his football helmet off. He was staring at the pair with such a desolate expression that it moved even the normally stoic Decker.

  Decker looked back at the sports team photos from all four years.

  In each, Baron, though clearly the star of both the football and baseball teams, had been shunted off to the side. Decker knew from experience that your best players, and certainly your seniors, were given prominence in team photos. That was just how it worked.

  Yet even in Baron’s senior year when he was setting all sorts of records, he was in the back row and off to the right. His being a head taller than anyone else around him was the only reason that he stood out. The same for the baseball team, where the pitcher of a perfect game was relegated to the fringe of the photo.

  He should have been captain of both of the squads, Decker felt. But he wasn’t.

  And Decker certainly knew why, and also why the young scholar-athlete had not been voted homecoming king.

  He was a Baron.

  For the seniors, there were short biographies on each. With Joyce, Decker learned that her uncle was a pastor at Baronville Baptist Church and that Joyce taught vacation Bible school in the summer, was a lifeguard at the community pool, and volunteered to tutor freshman students in math. She also competed in dance and was quoted as wanting to work with the handicapped. With Baron, Decker found that he had started up a Greek mythology club, could read Latin, and wanted to play major league baseball as well as start his own business one day.

  They certainly seemed to be impressive people, Decker thought. Maybe a little too perfect. When he’d been in high school all he had pretty much focused on was football and girls.

  But then again, Joyce had lost her parents at a young age, and was being raised by her aunt and uncle. And he knew Baron’s life wasn’t perfect, and maybe Joyce’s wasn’t either. Perhaps they strove as hard as they did to compensate for negative elements in their personal lives.

  Decker next turned to a few other photos that he had found in the yearbooks. Each showed Tanner and Baron together. In the way they looked, or held hands, or rubbed shoulders, Decker could easily see that the young couple were deeply in love.

  So, what had happened?

  Baron had gone off to college and his girlfri
end had stayed here? And done nothing with her life? Ending up fired from a JC Penney. Living in a ratty apartment. Being murdered next to a man with whom she apparently had no connection.

  Decker closed the books and replaced them on the shelves.

  He sat back down and mulled over what he had discovered.

  His coming here had been a hunch based on a few facts, the paramount one being that Tanner and Baron were the same age and probably had attended school here at the same time.

  So Joyce Tanner and John Baron had a connection dating back to high school. Baron had lied about that, because he’d said he didn’t recall if he had known her or not. Then there was the Bible verse found on the wall behind the bodies of Tanner and Babbot. Was that somehow tied to Tanner’s religious background? And was the Thanatos symbol found on Costa’s forehead connected to Baron’s founding a Greek mythology club?

  There were other possible connections.

  Michael Swanson may have been living in John Baron’s potting shed.

  Bradley Costa’s bank had been a sponsor of Baron’s Little League team, and the murdered man had a photo of the team, and Baron, in his home. And the bank held the mortgage on Baron’s property. Decker had made inquiries at the bank about whether Costa had worked on the mortgage, but had received no answer as yet.

  But what about Toby Babbot? Did he also have a connection to the man?

  If not, three of the four did. That brought it outside the realm of coincidence, at least in Decker’s mind.

  So what do I do now?

  He left the school, trudged down the steps, and headed to his truck.

  And stopped.

  The pale blue Suburban was parked on the street.

  And John Baron the Fourth was leaning against the front fender, his arms folded over his chest, as he watched Decker leaving his old school.

  Chapter 38

  BARON SAID, “TIRED of busting bad guys? Looking for a teaching job?”

  Decker walked over to him. “No, but the place looks like it could use some TLC.”

  “The whole town could benefit from that.” Baron pushed off the truck and put his hands in his pockets.

  Decker noted that he was wearing the same pair of dungarees, though the shirt was different and looked freshly laundered. Sandals were on his feet despite the cool air.

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  Baron pointed to the truck. “Recognized it from when you came to visit me.”

  “Right.”

  “How’s the investigation coming?” asked Baron.

  “It’s coming.”

  “Read that there was a death at the fulfillment center.”

  “That’s right. It was actually my partner’s brother-in-law.”

  Baron looked genuinely surprised. “Damn, tell her I’m sorry. I like Alex.”

  “I will.” Though Decker was thinking that Baron didn’t really know her.

  “How did it happen? What I read wasn’t really clear on that.”

  “Accident. Robot met human and the human lost.”

  Baron nodded. “Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie.” He glanced at the school. “So why the interest in Baronville High?”

  “Just running down a few things. Joyce Tanner was a student there.”

  “She was Joyce Ridge back then.”

  “Surprised you knew that, considering you told us you didn’t know her.”

  The two men stared at each other. “Let me guess,” said Baron. “You were either checking out anyone still working at the school who knew us, or you were taking a stroll through the yearbook section?”

  “The latter.”

  “Is the fact that I knew her a crime?”

  “Lying about it to law enforcement during a murder investigation is. It’s called obstruction of justice.”

  “I guess I didn’t see the relevance.”

  “That’s my job to determine, not yours,” Decker said sharply.

  Baron performed a mock bow. “Mea culpa, Agent Decker. I’m in the wrong and you’re in the right.”

  “What happened?”

  “To Joyce?”

  “To the both of you.”

  Baron leaned back against the truck fender. “I went to college and she didn’t. I don’t know why. She was really smart and I kept on her to go. But I think her aunt and uncle laid a guilt trip on her to stay in Baronville, get a job, and help them out because they had taken her in after her parents died. Her uncle was a minister and didn’t make a lot of money, and he was really strict with her. But we were still together. I came home as often as I could. We had a plan to have a life together. Then my parents died and I found out I didn’t have a dime. I knew we weren’t rich, of course. But we still lived at the Baron estate and my father always told me that there would be some money for me, which did not turn out to be the case. Then, I blew out my arm pitching, they revoked my scholarship, and I pretty much went into a tailspin. I didn’t have the bandwidth for Joyce or anything else. I could barely keep myself together.” He looked down at his clothes and then at the ancient truck. “And some would argue that I failed miserably at that anyway.”

  “I saw in the yearbook that she taught Bible school. And that you were into Greek mythology.”

  “I barely remember any of that. It was a long time ago.”

  “Still into mythology?”

  “I have a hard enough time dealing with real life.”

  “So, what happened with Joyce after she graduated from here?”

  “I dropped out of her life because of my own problems. About four years after graduation she married a guy named Rick Tanner and she had a couple of miscarriages. He was a jerk, he drank too much and beat her up. They finally got divorced. By then, she was a totally different person. No confidence, no ambition. She got into drugs. She got a series of lower- and lower-paying jobs, injured herself at one of them, and got hooked on painkillers like a lot of people in this place.”

  “You seem to know a lot about her. Did you two keep in touch?”

  “We were still friends. Neither of our lives turned out as expected. That worked to bring us together, I guess, especially after she was divorced.”

  “Ever think about getting back together?”

  Baron shook his head. “If I married someone, I would like to be able to help support them. I’ve got nothing. And why would I subject Joyce to all the crap I deal with? Making her a Baron? Worst thing I could do to her. When I thought I would have some money, my plan was to move away and we could have had a life where nobody cared what my last name was. I was going to be a big league pitcher, start my own business. Be successful off my own efforts. That didn’t pan out, obviously. But we did keep in touch.”

  “She was laid off from JC Penney some months before her death.”

  “I know. Not the future one would have expected for the homecoming queen. But Joyce was also a member of the honor society and also excelled at math. She was no dummy. She could have had a far different life. I wish she had.”

  “What about you? You weren’t the homecoming king. You got voted best athlete in the entire state and you’re not even team captain of your high school squads?”

  “We live in a democracy, Agent Decker. One person, one vote. It’s inviolate.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s right if people are voting for the wrong reasons.”

  “Happens every two, four, and six years in this country. And I didn’t care about being homecoming king or team captain. I really didn’t.”

  “But you did care about Joyce. Is that why you were supporting her all these years?”

  Baron looked at him shrewdly, but said nothing in reply.

  Decker continued. “She had no job, but she could pay her rent. She had a car. She put food on the table. And you said she was addicted to painkillers. That’s not cheap either.”

  “Okay, I gave her some money.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any.”

  “I don’t have a lot of money. But I have some. I don�
�t actually nap all day. I do work. I do have an income. And I have family heirlooms that I can sell in a pinch. I spend virtually nothing on myself. So I could help her. And I wanted to.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “She deserved it. And for the record, she used to be a pain pill addict. She wasn’t any longer. She kicked it. It was damn hard, but she did it.”

  “Did you help with that too?”

  “Why does that matter to you?”

  “In an investigation, you try your best to get a full picture of what you’re seeing. Those sorts of details round things out. Provide motivations on myriad levels.”

  “Do you mean motivations to murder? I did not kill Joyce.”

  “There are other kinds of motivations.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as helping other addicts, even drug dealers. Like Michael Swanson? You said you didn’t know him, but I’m pretty sure he was living in your potting shed.”

  Baron looked unfazed by this revelation. “Was he? Didn’t know. It’s a big property. And the Barons haven’t had anything to ‘pot’ for decades.”

  “So you’re saying he was coming and going a hundred yards from your house and you had no idea?”

  “You said you were ‘pretty sure,’ which means you have no proof.”

  “Are you saying you had no inkling someone was squatting in your potting shed?”

  “‘Someone’ and ‘inkling.’ Very broad terms. Are you trying to catch me in another lie?”

  “It will not end well for you if I do.”

  Baron cocked his head. “Your tone has become a full degree more serious.”

  “I just want to impress upon you that a federal penitentiary is not the place you want to be.”

  Baron thought about this for a few seconds while he stared up at a bird floating along on thermals. “Mike Swanson was…a loser on many levels. I can relate to that. I can understand that. Now, there are losers who are bad people. Really bad people.”

  “But Swanson wasn’t one of them?”

  “He was an idiot. But he was a nice idiot. He sold some pot. He sold some pills. He was basically harmless.”