The Suicide Club

by Gayle Wilson

  Maybe he’s right.

  “I’m okay. It’s just that…All the way over here I was psyching myself up to handle the kids. The closing came as a shock. I guess I needed to vent to someone, and yours was the first name on the list.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  She shouldn’t have expected any expression of appreciation from him because he’d been the one she’d turned to. That he hadn’t responded to her confession was only a guy thing.

  Jace had a job to do, one that had been made more difficult by the events of yesterday. He’d comforted her last night when she’d really needed it. She couldn’t expect to keep going back to that particular well or it was likely to dry up very quickly.

  “Thanks. I’m going to call Shannon and see if the counselors were part of the process in reaching that decision. I’d feel better if that’s the case.” Besides, she wanted to ask about the message Shannon had left with Jace.

  “Okay, then. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Before she could say goodbye, the connection was broken. He had probably taken her saying she intended to call Shannon as a sign she wanted to end this conversation. Another of those natural assumptions, but this one left her feeling that the call had been unfinished. Especially since there had been no mention of when the “talk” he’d promised would occur.

  She brought the phone down from her ear, vowing not to invite herself over to his apartment tonight. After Tim’s suicide, no explanation would be required if she showed up at her parents’ house.

  The thought was tempting. Maybe she would head over there after she’d talked to Shannon.

  Before she did either, however, she needed to get out of the clothes she’d been wearing for the last twenty-four hours and grab a shower. Once she had, she might feel more hopeful about the long, empty day, as well as the possibility of an equally long and empty night, that stretched before her.

  After splashing water on his face, Jace glanced up into the mirror above the lavatory. He’d gotten a decent amount of sleep last night, but his eyes were bloodshot. The beard that darkened his cheeks added to the look of exhaustion. He needed a shave and a shower, not necessarily in that order, and then he needed something to eat.

  He’d pretended to be asleep this morning when Lindsey slipped out of his bed. He’d lain there, eyes closed, listening to the sounds she made as she dressed.

  He wasn’t sure why he had hidden the fact he was awake. Because he wasn’t up to dealing with the inevitable “morning after” dregs of emotion? Or because he thought it would be better if they both had some time—and some space—to think about what was happening between them.

  For the first time in longer than he could remember, he allowed his eyes to examine the reflection of the puckered scars that marked his chest. A reminder, if he’d needed one, that there was no room in this job for emotion. Not of any kind.

  He’d learned only later that the kid holding the gun in the drug deal gone wrong had been thirteen. He’d looked younger. Too frigging scared to ever pull that trigger.

  Jace had had maybe half a second to make that determination. Instead of blowing the kid away, he’d screamed at him to drop the gun. The kid had put two bullets into Jace and one into his partner before they’d taken him down. Geoff hadn’t made it. And there had been many times during the next year when Jace had wished he hadn’t.

  It had been a hard lesson. One he had believed he’d mastered. Until he’d let himself become involved with Lindsey.

  Until this was over, that involvement was something he needed to rethink. His first reaction when she’d told him about the school closing had not been to wonder how that would affect his investigation, but to worry about how it was affecting her.

  There were any number of ways he could justify the relationship he’d allowed to develop between them. Lindsey was someone he’d once believed possessed information he needed to solve the arson. Then, with the two attacks, she had become someone who might have been targeted because he’d deliberately singled her out. Someone deserving of his protection. All of those were still legitimate concerns, which made it difficult to put a necessary distance between them. At least until this was over.

  Given the deaths of two students in her program, he didn’t need further confirmation that he’d been right about her students being involved. He wasn’t sure, however, that he had enough evidence to make a case to the sheriff that Lindsey should be assigned protection. If he couldn’t, he’d have to figure out how to provide that and at the same time disentangle their developing personal relationship from their professional one.

  And maybe you ought to start by not sleeping with her….

  The lips of the man reflected in the mirror flattened until they almost disappeared. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten so deeply involved. All he knew was that until he figured out what the hell was going on in this town, he didn’t need the distraction Lindsey had become.

  Explaining that would be a bitch, but if he put the brakes on now, without making some attempt to do so, she’d believe exactly what his intent had been when he’d asked Campbell to arrange a meeting. That he’d been using her. He wasn’t proud he’d intended to do so, but it was part of who and what he was.

  And part of the job he’d undertaken. This—whatever was between them now—wasn’t. But unless he did something about it—

  His phone rang, vibrating so hard that it jumped against the hard tile of the counter. He picked it up, peering at the number before he flipped open the case. “Nolan.”

  “Looks like we’ve got another one,” the sheriff said. “Corner of Oakmont and Locust. You need to get over there.”

  “On the way.” And then, because he knew enough about the kids in Lindsey’s program to want to know, “You got a name?”

  “They’re still waiting for an ID. Maybe by the time you get over there, they’ll have one for you.”

  Lindsey listened to the rings, counting them until Shannon’s voice mail message came on again. When it did, she brought the phone down, taking her gaze off the road long enough to punch the “End” button.

  Maybe she’d decided to sleep in this morning. With the cancellation of school, there was no reason for her not to.

  And she’s probably muttering curses from under her pillow every time I call her.

  That very logical explanation for why she was getting no answer didn’t quell the nagging anxiety she’d felt since she’d left the first message. Shannon didn’t have a landline, so she slept with her cell on the bedside table. She had always answered it in the past. Even the times Lindsey had called before she’d managed to drag herself out of bed on a weekend.

  Like last Saturday. The morning she’d confessed to mixing alcohol and Klonopin. If she’d done something like that again…

  As she maneuvered her car along the narrow, tree-lined streets of the old neighborhood, she fought those circling thoughts. The ones that had fueled the apprehension that had driven her out of the house and on what she had told herself over and over was a wild-goose chase.

  Shannon was fine. She had been okay emotionally when Lindsey left her house last night. And she’d come by Jace’s apartment to leave a message, which meant she hadn’t reacted to Tim’s death the same way that she had to Andrea’s.

  Maybe they’d become too accustomed to that kind of news. Callous to the tragedy it represented. Or maybe—

  As she turned onto Locust, she could see two cars parked along the curb near the end of the block. Within a couple of seconds, she’d identified the nearer one as a county cruiser. As she neared the house on the corner, she saw the emergency vehicle in the drive, its rear doors standing open.

  The terror she’d managed to hold at bay during the last forty minutes flooded her mind. Her heart lodged in her throat and her hands trembling on the wheel, she guided the Honda to the curb on the near side of the drive.

  A sheriff’s deputy was leaning against the side of the patrol car. Although he was facing away
from her, it was apparent he was talking on a radio. And the paramedics…

  Her gaze flew back to the house. A dark rectangle marked the location of the front door. Also open.

  From force of habit, she turned the key in the ignition, killing the engine. Although her knees felt too weak to support her, she fumbled for the handle of the door.

  The deputy talking on the radio turned when she slammed it. She ignored him, her sole focus on putting one foot in front of the other until she’d crossed the lawn and gotten inside that house. At some point during that journey, she began to run.

  “Hey! Hey, you! You can’t go in there.”

  She heard the words, but their meaning was totally disconnected from the dark rectangle that beckoned her. She needed to find Shannon. She needed to know what was going on.

  “Ma’am! Ma’am! You can’t go in there.”

  This time she stopped, turning to watch the deputy sprint towards her across the lawn. “What’s going on? What’s happening in there?”

  His face changed as he took in her state. He slowed, his mouth opening and then closing. Finally he shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I really am, but I can’t let you go inside.”

  As she turned and again started toward the house, he reached out, catching her elbow. She tried to wrench her arm away, but his hold was firm.

  “Ma’am. I’m really sorry, ma’am.”

  She was no longer listening. Instead she was watching as a man in uniform began to back out of Shannon’s front door. He felt for his footing as he stepped over the threshold, carefully pulling a wheeled stretcher out with him.

  Lindsey stopped struggling against the deputy’s grip. Her world had narrowed to the two men maneuvering the unwieldy stretcher through the door and down the front steps of Shannon’s house. As they made the turn to head toward the emergency van parked in the drive, she could see the pale blue fabric that covered whoever they were bringing out of the house. A corner of that sheet, along which Lowen County was stenciled in faded black letters, trailed through the grass, its edge darkened by the morning dew.

  Almost against her will, Lindsey’s eyes followed the drape of that material upward. And found that the sheet had been placed over the face of the person on the stretcher.

  Her knees literally gave way. Although the deputy tried to hold her, she fell to the ground as the first sob tore through her throat.

  The man beside her stooped down in an awkward attempt to comfort or lift her, but the paramedics didn’t look her way. They continued toward their vehicle, the stretcher bumping over the uneven bricks of the sidewalk.

  With the ease of long practice they began to put their burden into the back of the van. Lindsey realized that she had no idea where they would take the body. No idea if they had notified Shannon’s family.

  She looked up at the deputy to ask those questions and realized he was no longer watching the body being loaded. He was looking instead at the door of the house.

  Jace stood on the threshold, his eyes on her. Her tears started again. Relief that she wouldn’t have to ask for answers to any of those questions.

  Jace would take care of everything. He’d notify Shannon’s mother. That was his job. That was what he did.

  And he’d take care of her, too.

  Jace crossed the lawn, stopping just before he reached her. He nodded to the deputy. And then he bent, making sure they were on eye level, before he spoke to her, the words slow and clearly enunciated, as if he were speaking to a child.

  “This isn’t what you think, Lindsey. That isn’t Shannon on the stretcher.”

  Twenty-Five

  “But what was Dave doing here?” Lindsey asked. “And where’s Shannon?”

  She was sitting in the passenger seat of Jace’s car, sipping from the glass of water he’d sent the deputy to get inside. She no longer looked as if she were about to pass out.

  “I don’t have any answers. Not to either of those questions. All I can tell you is that she isn’t in that house.”

  Shannon’s cleaning lady had discovered the principal’s body in the back bedroom, but only after she’d collected the trash from the wastebaskets in all the other rooms and taken it outside. She had told the deputy who’d responded to her panicked 9-1-1 call that she’d wanted to get the garbage bagged and out on the curb before the truck came.

  “I started trying to call her from the time you and I hung up,” Lindsey said. “She always answers her cell.”

  He could tell by a sudden widening of her eyes that she’d thought of something. She didn’t offer an explanation of what that might be, hiding that involuntary reaction by lowering her head to take another swallow from the glass she held.

  “Can you think of somewhere she might be?” he prodded. “Somewhere she might have spent the night? Somebody she’s involved with, maybe?”

  “I don’t know. Shannon doesn’t hide the fact that she…” She stopped, touching her tongue to the center of her top lip before she started over. “She still sees Rick Carlisle occasionally. It isn’t serious, but…you might want to check.”

  “To see if she’s at Carlisle’s?”

  She nodded. Which meant Lindsey also knew that Shannon slept with the deputy “occasionally.”

  He opened his cell and punched up the dispatcher. When she answered, he said, “Nolan. Can you give me Deputy Rick Carlisle’s home phone number, please?”

  “You want me to contact him for you, Lieutenant?”

  “I just need his number. And his cell if you have it.”

  “We don’t usually—”

  “Make an exception,” Jace interrupted. “It’s important. If Carlisle complains, I’ll clear it with the sheriff.”

  “On your head then, hon,” the woman said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “That number is 555-8219. I don’t have a cell listed.”

  “Thanks.” Jace pushed the “End” button and then put in the number he’d been given. He waited through the rings until the answering machine picked up before he pushed the button again.

  “No answer?” Lindsey asked.

  “You know how to get there?”

  Like Lindsey, he was growing concerned about Shannon Anderson. He could find out if Carlisle was on duty today, but it seemed simpler just to show up at his place than to go through the small town bureaucracy again.

  “It isn’t far. I don’t know that she’s there. You said…” Lindsey took a breath, releasing it before she finished. “You said she told you she was going to check something out. Something that had to do with the advice I’d given her.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “The only advice I gave her, Jace, was that she needed to tell you or someone in the department about the kids she thought could have set those fires.”

  “Are you saying she suspected someone?”

  “It wasn’t that specific. There were a couple of boys she believed might be capable of doing something like that.”

  “Then why hadn’t she come to us?”

  “Because that’s all it was. A feeling someone might be capable of that kind of mischief. She didn’t want to ruin a child’s life based on nothing more than that.”

  “You think she might have gone over there to tell Carlisle what she suspected?”

  “She and Rick are close. Despite what you’re thinking, it’s more friendship than anything else. Whatever else—”

  “I don’t give a damn who your friend sleeps with, Lindsey. What I do care about is that we’ve got a rash of fires and three people, all of them associated with Randolph-Lowen, who are dead. And don’t tell me Campbell was influenced to commit suicide by the attention those other two received.”

  “The last few days he seemed…I don’t know. Disheartened. He’d put his whole life into this school. Dave thought he was in line to become superintendent when Dr. Burke retires. That’s why he’d started working on his doctorate. With the fires and the suicides, he must have believed he’d never get that chan
ce.”

  “Even if he were that despondent, why here? Why in Shannon Anderson’s bed?”

  He hadn’t told her that detail before. Her eyes widened as she grasped the implications.

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine why he’d come here, much less…” She shook her head again.

  “Then it seems the only person who can give us that information is your friend. Let’s start at Carlisle’s.”

  Jace stabbed the doorbell once more, listening as it chimed inside the brick two-story colonial Lindsey had directed him to. She was standing beside him on the front porch, her arms crossed over her chest as if she were cold.

  “There’s a garage out back,” she said, glancing up at him. “You want me to see if his car’s there?”

  Before he had a chance to answer, Jace heard the lock being turned. The door opened to reveal Rick Carlisle, wearing nothing but a pair of rumbled jeans. It was obvious by his disheveled hair and the fact that he hadn’t taken time to do up the button at his waistband that they’d gotten him out of bed.

  The deputy’s eyes fastened first on Jace and then settled on Lindsey. “Somethin’ wrong, Linds?”

  “Is Shannon here?”

  His gaze went back to Jace. “Depends on who’s asking.”

  “I am,” Lindsey said. “I just need to know that she’s all right, Rick. Is she here?”

  The belligerence faded from Carlisle’s expression to be replaced by puzzlement. “Why wouldn’t she be all right?”

  “Because we found a dead man in her bed,” Jace said.

  The deputy’s eyes swung back to his face. For a moment he didn’t say anything. Then, “She’s here. Come on in.”

  When he stepped away from the doorway, Jace gestured for Lindsey to go first. As he entered the foyer, he automatically checked out the disordered living room adjacent to it.

  A pizza box lay on the coffee table, a single slice remaining. Half a dozen empty beer bottles were scattered around the area between the couch and the table. There was a stack of unlabeled DVDs on the floor, and the doors of a massive entertainment center across the room stood open.