The Suicide Club

by Gayle Wilson

  “What’s going on?” a female voice demanded.

  Jace turned to watch Shannon Anderson descend the stairs. She appeared to be wearing a man’s shirt and nothing else. The garment ended midthigh, revealing a long length of tanned legs. Her dark, curly hair tangled around her face, and mascara smudged the skin beneath her eyes.

  “Linds? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I thought…Were you here all night?”

  “I didn’t want to be by myself,” Shannon said. “I’m sure you, of all people, can appreciate the feeling.”

  “Tell her what you told me,” Rick demanded.

  “What?” Shannon’s bewilderment appeared genuine, as her gaze moved from one to the other of them.

  If she knew about Campbell, she was wasting her time as a counselor, Jace thought. She should be making movies. If nothing else, the kind she and Carlisle had probably watched last night.

  “When she arrived for work this morning, your maid discovered the body of David Campbell in your bed.”

  Shannon’s lips parted and then stayed open as she attempted to assimilate the news. “Dave?”

  “You have any idea what he was doing there?”

  Shannon closed her mouth. Her eyes met Lindsey’s briefly, before, slightly defiant, they came back to his.

  “Probably waiting for me to come home.”

  “In your bed?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Jace heard Lindsey’s inhalation, but he ignored it. Despite all the clues, including Campbell’s attitude toward Shannon, which Lindsey herself had told him about, she’d obviously had no idea the two were involved.

  “But you hadn’t been expecting him last night.”

  Shannon shook her head.

  “When’s the last time you talked to him?”

  She exhaled, her cheeks puffing out as she lifted her hands to rake her hair back from her face. “I don’t know. He wasn’t in the office when I left school yesterday. I thought he might call during the afternoon, just to talk, but he didn’t. Then Lindsey came by to tell me about Tim and…I never thought about Dave again. Was it a heart attack?”

  To Jace’s ear the question seemed perfectly nuanced.

  “He killed himself,” Lindsey said softly.

  “Killed himself. Are you saying—? No.” Shannon shook her head. “Goddamn it, no. I don’t believe that.”

  “Shannon—”

  “Not Dave. He wasn’t the kind.”

  Jace couldn’t decide if that was denial or if it was based on her knowledge of the principal’s personality. In either case, that statement, too, had the ring of absolute sincerity.

  “Given what’s been going on…” Lindsey began again.

  “Have you told his wife?” Surprisingly, Shannon sounded as if she cared.

  “The sheriff was going to get Coach Spears to go over with him. They should have done that by now.”

  “And his boys,” Shannon said. “God, he loved those boys.”

  Implying that he hadn’t loved his wife? Jace wondered.

  “Are they sure it was suicide?” It was the first question Carlisle had asked since they’d come inside.

  Prompted by Shannon’s disbelief? Or by the same instinct Jace had felt about Campbell’s death since he’d walked into Shannon Anderson’s bedroom this morning.

  “Nothing at the scene to indicate otherwise.”

  “But?”

  Maybe that had been implied by his wording. “The techs will check to be sure. And there’ll be an autopsy, of course.”

  “Cause of death?” Rick probed.

  “No visible injuries. There was a bottle of Scotch and an empty bottle of pills nearby.” From the residue in the glass and on the surface of the bedside table, it appeared the medicine had been crushed and mixed with the liquor.

  “What kind?” Shannon asked.

  “Klonopin. The prescription was in your name, Ms. Anderson. You have any idea how many were left in that bottle?”

  The counselor took a breath. “I’d had it refilled earlier in the week. Maybe…Monday.”

  “So you’d gotten a month’s supply, which would be what—thirty pills?—on Monday. How many have you taken since then?”

  Not that it really mattered, Jace thought. More than likely it had been the combination of medication and alcohol that killed David Campbell. However many pills were left—

  “One for each night. I wouldn’t have slept without them.”

  “And the Scotch? Any idea how much was in the bottle when Campbell arrived? Or would he have brought it with him?”

  “Dave had brought a bottle over a while ago. Not my poison of choice, so I don’t have any idea what kind of inroads he’d made on it before last night.”

  “What does it matter?” Lindsey asked. “Whatever was there was clearly enough.”

  Still, there was something about the scenario that bothered Jace. He knew from experience that if he let it go, stopped trying to figure out what that was, it would come to him.

  “You realize you can’t go back home until the techs finish,” Jace warned.

  “I’m not in any hurry.” Shannon looked at Carlisle as if asking permission to stay.

  He shrugged in response. The gesture fit with Lindsey’s description of their relationship. They might sleep together, but the involvement was clearly casual.

  “You can stay with me,” Lindsey offered. “As long as you want. You know that.”

  For the first time this morning, the counselor’s expression lightened. “I didn’t think you were staying at your place, Linds.”

  “I’m going to my parents’ for the weekend. But you know you’ll be as welcome there as you would be with me.”

  In spite of Jace’s earlier conclusion that his involvement with Lindsey was becoming detrimental to his ability to do his job, that announcement was like a kick in the gut. Not only had he not expected it, he didn’t like it.

  “I know I would,” Shannon said. “And believe me, I’m grateful, but…I’m fine here. Really.”

  “What about what you told Lindsey?” Jace asked.

  Shannon didn’t pretend not to understand. “About her kids and the fires?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s why I came last night. To talk to Rick about it.”

  “Why not talk to me when you were at my apartment?”

  “I guess I felt talking to Rick would be less official.”

  “We’re past the point of any information being ‘unofficial.’ And if there is some connection between those fires and the suicides—”

  “Justin Carr,” Shannon offered before he finished.

  Jace remembered the name from the special education rolls Campbell had provided him.

  “Because of what he said about Andrea?” Lindsey asked. “That’s not fair, Shannon.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who told me to come forward, even if I don’t have proof. And it’s not just because of that remark, although you have to admit it was typical Justin.”

  “He apologized. It wasn’t directed at Andrea. He said his father says that about any suicide or death that shouldn’t have occurred. And it certainly isn’t original with Colonel Carr.”

  “Still defending them, Linds?” Shannon taunted.

  “What did he say about Andrea?” Jace didn’t look at Lindsey, addressing his question to Shannon instead.

  “That her death was survival of the fittest.” Shannon’s chin lifted, as if daring him to say that wasn’t significant.

  “Anything else?”

  “About Andrea? Not that I heard. You or Rick need to talk to the kids, though. Enough of them dislike Justin that they might be willing to tell you other things.”

  “You told me you suspected someone before Justin made that comment. Who were you talking about then?” Lindsey asked.

  “Him, for one. His attitude sucks, and you know it. I’m not denying that he can come across as sincere and polite when he wants to, but that’s an a
ct. If you’re around him long enough, it’s evident that’s all it is. His old man probably beat him until he could carry it off.”

  “If you suspected he’d been abused, you should have reported it,” Lindsey said. “That’s your job, remember.”

  “His father keeps a tight rein?” Jace asked, attempting to defuse the atmosphere.

  “He’s ex-military. Very strict. Very old school. Justin has siblings, but he’s the only one at home. His parents are considerably older than the norm for our seniors. At least his father is. I got the impression Justin was an unexpected addition. Maybe an unwanted one. I can’t remember the mother ever even coming to the school. Justin’s dad handles everything, including making a lot of demands on the guidance office to procure his son a scholarship or an appointment.”

  “Justin will probably get an appointment to West Point,”

  Lindsey added. “I know he applied. Both his grades and test scores put him in the top few percentiles.”

  “He won’t if I have anything to say about it,” Shannon said. “And I do. I wouldn’t recommend that punk for anything.”

  “He’s bright. He’s polite. And he’s not from around here.” Lindsey no longer bothered to speak to her friend. Instead, she seemed to be lobbying Jace on the kid’s behalf. “That’s the biggest strike Justin Carr has against him.”

  Maybe she thought that as an outsider, Jace could identify with the boy’s difficulties. The trouble with her supposition was that at this moment, he cared nothing about some kid’s bruised ego, unless it gave him a motive for what had been going on.

  “We have lots of military brats,” Shannon said. “And most of them aren’t. This one…I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “You think his dad would be the kind to set a curfew? Check the mileage on the car?” Jace asked.

  “That sounds just like him.”

  “Any run-ins with the department?” Jace asked the deputy.

  Carlisle shook his head. “Not that I remember. Most of the kids around here are relatively well behaved. Especially when you hear about the stuff they do other places. If he’d been into anything serious, I’d remember the name.”

  “The snake even sounds like something he’d dream up,” Shannon added. “He is a snake.”

  “Not the symbolism they were going for,” Lindsey said. “And not an interpretation I can agree with.”

  She’d told Jace the snake was a warning. And a message that she was a snake in the grass because she’d associated with him, something her students, if they were involved, would view as a betrayal.

  “And the fire at the stadium?” he asked.

  Shannon shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine he’d take a chance like that. Not in that setting. As Lindsey pointed out, he’s got a lot to lose.”

  “Can we find out if he was at the game that night?” Although Jace had couched that as a request, Carlisle nodded, recognizing it for what it was. “Like you, I can’t remember anything in our files about Carr, but information about something that would put him under the control of the juvenile authorities in another location wouldn’t necessarily be available. It would be sealed. How long’s he been here?”

  “He enrolled at the first of last year,” Lindsey said.

  “As a junior?”

  She nodded, her face strained.

  Regret that she was being forced to face these unpalatable truths stirred in Jace’s chest. But Shannon was right. The time for protecting any of these kids was long past.

  “I want to see the records from his previous schools, not that they’re likely to tell us much.”

  “You got it,” Shannon said.

  “I don’t think you can do that,” Lindsey objected.

  “You hide and watch me,” Shannon said. “I don’t know about Andrea Moore. Maybe she was just a time bomb waiting to explode. Tim Harrison? Hard to believe, but kids do crap all the time that nobody can believe. But Dave? Think, Lindsey. Think. Dave was one of the most stable people I know. He isn’t going to copycat some sixteen-year-old’s stupidity.”

  “He was unstable enough to jeopardize his marriage and the boys you say he loved by having an affair with you.” Lindsey’s voice was cold.

  “That wasn’t an affair, Linds. It was stress relief. Sex. Like minds. However you want to describe it, I don’t give a damn. All I’m telling you is that Dave didn’t kill himself by downing too many pills. Or any other way. That dog won’t hunt. And it’s past time somebody put an end to whatever the hell is going on around here. If you don’t want to help him do that,” Shannon said, nodding toward Jace, “then get the fuck out of the way and let me.”

  Twenty-Six

  “The kid’s clean,” Carlisle announced, dropping a folder onto Jace’s desk. “At least according to the locals where the family’s lived before. We haven’t gotten anything back from the Army. I don’t know whether they’re protecting their own or whether their bureaucracy is just slower than everyone else’s. You talk to the dad?”

  Jace had intended to wait for that interview until they’d gotten all the background information on Justin, but Shannon’s surety, combined with his sense that things were escalating, had forced his hand. “This morning. I didn’t get very far.”

  The description of Justin’s father as “old school” had been on the mark. Judging by the colonel’s weather-beaten features, Jace would have estimated his age in the late fifties, but the ramrod posture and snow-white buzz cut made it possible he could be off by as much as a decade.

  Justin’s mother, who had appeared to be younger than her husband, hadn’t opened her mouth during the half hour he’d spent in their immaculate living room. Her eyes had been merely guarded where the colonel’s had been openly hostile.

  “I figured as much. He called the sheriff to complain that we were harassing his son. How about the kid?”

  “The father refused to let me talk to him.”

  “Sounds like he knows something’s up with the boy.”

  “Maybe, but he’s also a guy who’s used to calling the shots. I think he was making that point.”

  “You could bring Justin in.”

  “Not on what I’ve got. There’s nothing to tie him to the fires or the attacks on Lindsey. I’m betting that if I try to lean on him, his parents will provide him with an alibi for each and every one of those occasions. I know they’d have a lawyer here before the boy opens his mouth. And, according to both Shannon and Lindsey, he’s exceptionally bright, which means he’d be smart enough to know he doesn’t have to talk to us. You find out who he runs with?”

  Carlisle shook his head. “Seems to be pretty much of a loner. Most of the local kids don’t like him, but he doesn’t give a shit. He isn’t breaking down any doors to get accepted. The consensus is he’s smart, but weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “They didn’t go into details, and I hated to try and pin anyone down. Just weird. Different,” Carlisle said with a shrug. “Around here that could mean somebody who doesn’t like football or NASCAR. It don’t take much.”

  Over the course of the last forty-eight hours, Jace’s opinion of the man he’d once characterized as “Deputy Dawg” had undergone a revision. Carlisle fit in well with the good old boys he’d grown up with, but underneath those folksy Southernisms was a native intelligence and the dogged determination of a better-than-average investigator.

  “Can you think of anything we haven’t covered?”

  Jace’s question seemed to surprise Carlisle, but he took it in the spirit of cooperation in which it had been rendered. Or maybe he recognized the request for what it was—a peace offering of sorts.

  “You’ve talked to his parents and to the assistant principals. I’ve touched base with the guys I trust to give me the straight shit. Shannon. Lindsey. Not much left.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

  Jace had tried every one of those avenues, and other than Shannon’s strong instincts about Justin’s culpab
ility, none of them had provided evidence the boy was anything other than a brilliant loner. It was frustrating because the longer he worked on this, the more convinced Jace had become that there was something to Shannon’s assessment of the kid.

  For one thing, she’d been in this business a long time. He trusted that, because of her experience in dealing with them, she would have a feel for the ones who spelled trouble.

  And Lindsey wouldn’t? After all, brilliant loners were her specialty. Carlisle’s question interrupted that nagging caveat.

  “You’re planning to talk to Harrison again, right? Try asking him about Carr. About the relationship between him and his son. If there was one. And while you’re at it, talk to Andrea’s mother about Justin. If you really think the suicides are connected to one another and to the fires, that seems to be something to look at. Carr’s association with the victims.”

  Justin’s school records didn’t indicate he’d had any personal dealing with Campbell, nor had the assistant principals Jace talked to. Still, everything from the two attacks on Lindsey, which had immediately followed Jace’s first contacts with her, to the relentless and slanderous online assault on Andrea indicated there was a thread that tied these events together. And a controlling evil behind all of them.

  “Hard to believe he could fool this many people,” Jace said, touching the file Carlisle had pitched on his desk. “And Lindsey, who’s known Justin as long and as closely as anybody in this town, remains convinced he isn’t involved.”

  “You met her folks yet?”

  “Lindsey’s?” Jace shook his head.

  “If you had, you might understand her. Lindsey was brought up to believe the best of people. And she isn’t cynical enough to have figured out that some criminals start young and fast. Sometimes it don’t matter what type of home you come from or what kind of upbringing you had. Some people come into this world looking to hurt and destroy.”

  “The bad seed.”

  Carlisle shrugged. “You could put it that way. Lindsey wouldn’t. She’d find some evidence that they’d been abused or neglected or something. You’d think with her training that would be Shannon, but she wasn’t protected like Lindsey growing up. She’s harder. If I had to bet on which of them was right, I’d be backing her gut about Carr.”