by Gayle Wilson
“Steven?”
“You didn’t know?” Justin laughed. “Everybody knows, Ms. Sloan. He doesn’t have a girl, so…I guess fantasy’s the best he can do. And his all revolve around you.”
“He’s never given me any indication of that.”
“He’s smart enough to know you’d do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Whatever teachers do. Talk to his mom, maybe. She’d have him up at the church altar confessing his sin before sundown.”
Lindsey had no idea if that were a fair assessment. A good proportion of her students belonged to relatively fundamentalist churches, like the one Andrea had attended. Those kinds of public confessions might well be the norm.
“Will you talk to him?” Justin asked.
He meant talk to Jace, she realized. The information Justin had just given her about his classmate seemed to mean little to him. Not nearly as much as his quest to clear his name.
“I already have.”
“You knew they thought I had something to do with this.”
The tone was accusatory. As if Justin expected her to have warned him of the sheriff department’s interest.
“They’re considering a lot of angles,” she said carefully.
“Does that mean they suspect other people, too?”
“I think suspect is too strong a word.”
“Not according to my dad. He’s already talked to a lawyer. Somebody well connected in Montgomery.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad idea.”
“Then they do think I had something to do with this crap. Shit. Just…shit.” His face contorted as if he might cry.
“Justin—” Lindsey reached out, intending to touch his shoulder, but the boy twisted away.
“They’re going to fuck up everything. And I didn’t do anything, Ms. Sloan. Not the fires. Not to you. Why would I want to burn down a black church? Doesn’t that sound more like your little homegrown redneck bigots? I guess it wouldn’t do for anybody to accuse one of them. That might make everybody around here look bad. Especially when you all have got yourselves a perfectly good scapegoat.”
“Justin—”
“I swear if those assholes screw up my life…I swear…”
Either he couldn’t think of a threat dire enough, or he was too cautious to utter one. Instead he flung himself toward the front door, slamming it on his way out of the house.
The sound echoed through the hall, which was as far as Lindsey had followed him. She thought about trying to get him to stop, but there was really nothing more she could say.
“Everything all right in here?”
She turned to find her father standing at the end of the hallway. She nodded, fighting the temptation to run and throw herself against his chest to be comforted as she had as a child.
“That kid have a temper tantrum?”
“Something like that.”
And not without reason. Not if she was right about Justin. And if she were, Jace and Shannon were very wrong.
“I need to talk to you.” Even as the words came out of her mouth, Lindsey hated how they sounded. As if she had called him about some personal need. Sexual. Or even worse, emotional. “It’s about Justin Carr.”
No matter how important she thought it might be to try to convince Jace he was wrong, she didn’t want him to believe she was calling him because of what had been between them.
Past tense?
“What about him?”
Maybe it was the distortion caused by his cell, but Jace sounded distant. Preoccupied. As if he didn’t have time to talk. Or, and the thought was painful, as if he didn’t want to.
“He came to see me. At my parents’ house,” she clarified, not wanting him to jump to any other conclusion.
“Are you okay?”
She took some small comfort from the fact that the first thing Jace asked when she’d mentioned Justin’s visit was not about the case, but about her.
“Of course. He’s upset that you talked to his father. And he’s concerned that West Point or the congressman who recommended him will find out he’s the subject of a criminal investigation. Which I assume he is.” Although her inflection on the last part was inquiring, Jace didn’t address it.
“What’d you tell him?”
“That you’re investigating several people. I hope that’s still true?” Silence was the only answer she received, but it told her all she needed to know. “He mentioned both the snake and the fire, Jace. He said you asked his dad where he was on those nights.”
“That’s right.”
“I was surprised that he knew about the rattler. Nobody at school seemed to. At least they didn’t talk about it to me.”
“That may not mean anything.”
She wasn’t sure whether he was referring to Justin’s comment or the lack of gossip. But neither was really pertinent to what she wanted to tell him.
“He said he overheard Steven Byrd talking about the snake. That Steven has a police scanner.” She waited for the information to sink in, but apparently it didn’t make the impression she’d hoped for. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“A lot of people like to listen to the dispatches. It may be strange, but it’s not illegal.”
“No, but don’t you think it’s revealing? If you were tracking an investigation.”
Another silence. A considering one?
“Are you talking about the arsons?”
“Maybe. He found out about the snake that way. He knew I’d made a 9-1-1 call and that the sheriff’s department had sent someone out. What possible need would a seventeen-year-old kid have for a police scanner?”
“I told you. A lot of people have them.”
“And a lot of people know computers. And a lot are in my gifted program. And a lot went to school with Andrea and Tim. I know that. I also know Steven Byrd is one of them.”
“I felt he was truthful the day I talked to him.”
“And I think Justin Carr is telling the truth. I didn’t know that’s what investigations like this turn on.”
A sound like an exhalation came over the line. It took a second for her to realize it had been a laugh. “Is that funny?”
“I’m not making fun of you, Lindsey, believe me, but the reality is investigations often follow an officer’s instincts. His gut. His sense of who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.”
That was the way a classroom worked, too. You didn’t always know the facts, so you relied on that elusive sixth sense you’d developed through years of dealing with kids.
“I don’t think Justin’s lying.”
Again, Jace didn’t respond, allowing the silence to become uncomfortable enough that she finally broke it.
“Have you found anything that would tie him to any of this? Anything in his past?”
“No.”
“Has he even been in trouble before?”
“Not that we know of.”
She had waited, dreading his answer, so that when it came, she closed her eyes in relief. “Then all you have to go on is what Shannon told you? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Right now.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I believe she’s wrong. I want to go on record as saying that. She’s wrong, Jace.”
“Or you are. And both of you can afford to be wrong. I can’t. Three people are dead, Lindsey. And the more I find out, the more I know one of those kids is responsible.”
“The more you find out?” He had told her they’d found nothing on Justin. This had to be something else. Something that he hadn’t known the last time they’d talked. “Like what?”
“Someone had been cyber-bullying Tim Harrison.”
“Cyber-bullying?”
“Did you know he was gay?”
“Tim? Who told you that?”
“His father. Supposedly nobody else knew. But for three or four days before he died, he got hundreds of very graphic e-mails detailing his supposed sex
ual activities.”
“Like Andrea,” she breathed. “Just like Andrea.”
“Enough alike to establish a pattern. In Tim’s case they didn’t need to put up a profile. Apparently just the whisper of his sexual orientation was enough to set off the rampage.”
“Oh, God. Poor Tim. Poor Walt.”
“It doesn’t explain everything, but…it’s enough to tie the two student deaths together.”
“And Dave?”
“We don’t have results back yet from the autopsy or the evidence tests. Harrison did tell me the truth about something else.”
“Something else?”
“You remember the conversation you overheard that night in the field house?”
“I remember.”
“You were right. It wasn’t about booster activity. And it wasn’t about Andrea, either.”
And suddenly she knew. As if Jace had already told her. “Shannon. Those were the rumors Walt was warning him about.”
It explained so much. Dave’s distraction. His despondency. His suicide?
“It wasn’t Andrea and Tim he thought might keep him from getting that promotion,” she went on, thinking aloud. “It was their affair. Maybe that’s why he went over there that night. To talk to her about the gossip. To tell her they had to break it off. When she wasn’t there—”
“He killed himself?” Jace’s question was cynical.
“He had a lot to lose, Jace.”
“And he knew that when he started with her. Besides, Shannon said he wasn’t the type.”
It rankled that he was again quoting Shannon’s opinion to her. Until she realized why he had. “You don’t think he killed himself?”
“They may be smart, Lindsey. They may be goddamn little geniuses. But I swear, nobody is that good. Or that lucky.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They target three people who are vulnerable for one reason or another. And they succeed in getting all three to commit suicide? I don’t buy it. Not three for three.”
She waited, but he didn’t go on, forcing her to ask. “What does that mean, Jace? That they aren’t that lucky.”
“I think at some point they stepped over the line. I think they went from pushing the vulnerable to take their own lives to helping someone along who wasn’t quite so willing to cooperate.”
Twenty-Eight
“Sorry to call so late, but you said you wanted the results as soon as they were available. I got in from the Gulf a couple of hours ago and came over to do the autopsy before I grab a few hours sleep and have to start operating on the living.”
The county coroner’s choice to do the autopsy, a surgeon at the regional medical center, had been out of town on a fishing trip when Campbell’s body was discovered. At Jace’s urging, the sheriff had requested the coroner’s office make the principal’s autopsy a priority, apparently prompting this Sunday night call.
“Not a problem.” Jace laid down the permanent records Shannon had provided him to pull his notepad closer. “I appreciate your getting on this so quickly.”
“Mondays are always bad. I knew if I didn’t do it tonight, might be another twenty-four hours before I got to it.”
“Anything interesting?”
His sense that there was something fishy about Campbell’s death had grown over the weekend. Although he’d reviewed the photos taken at the scene a dozen times, he hadn’t been able to put his finger on anything concrete to verify his suspicions.
“I got the coroner’s notation about the Scotch and the pills. You were right about one at least.”
“Which one?”
“The deceased consumed alcohol. Probably not enough that he’d even be tested if he’d been pulled over on his way home.”
“He wasn’t drunk.”
“Not by any standard. One drink. Maybe two, depending on the strength of the mix and when he’d consumed them.”
“No pills.”
“I don’t know what happened to the ones that were supposed to be in that bottle, but the victim didn’t consume them.”
“Victim?”
“We aren’t dealing with suicide here, detective.”
Although Jace should have been pleased by the validation, it was still a jolt to have it confirmed. “So what killed him?”
“Took a little digging, but I confess I got interested. There were bruises that couldn’t be explained by lividity.”
“Defensive in nature?”
“Probably. Suggestive of that, in any case. Enough so that they made me look harder than I might have otherwise.”
“And you found…?”
“A needle mark. Just beneath his ear actually.”
“Do you know what was injected?”
“Maybe. You familiar with KCl?”
“Not really.”
“Potassium chloride. It’s used medically to balance electrolytes. Given intravenously in high enough concentrations or injected too rapidly, it can stop the heart, which is why it’s also part of the protocol in lethal injections.”
“So death would appear to be caused by a heart attack.”
The doctor laughed. “Except, as in this case, when you lack any evidence of heart disease.”
“Then why…?” Jace’s question ground to a halt, but the doctor knew what he was asking.
“Because, according to popular culture, it’s undetectable.”
“Is it?”
“It breaks down into its components, both of which are naturally occurring in the body. But high levels of either in the blood can be suspicious. Coupled with an injection site…”
Jace could almost see the shrug. “Why the charade of the empty pill bottle and the residue in the glass?”
“The simplest answer is usually the right one. Somebody wanted those pills.”
Klonopin, Jace remembered. Shannon used them to help her sleep. Were they something that might prove convenient when administered covertly to an overly watchful parent?
“So how would someone obtain potassium chloride?”
“A hospital would be the logical source. Anybody who works in one could have access to the stuff.”
“You’ve been a big help. I wonder if I could come by and get a statement detailing what you’ve found.”
“This is preliminary. Just the bottom line. It’s gonna take me a few days to write up official results.”
“I understand that. I was wondering if you could give me enough tonight that I could get a warrant for a search.”
“Sure. If you can be here within the next half hour.”
“You got it. And Dr. Wayne, I appreciate this.”
“I hear you’re the investigating officer for the church fires. Could this have anything to do with those?”
“It’s very possible.”
“Then I’m doubly glad to help. Those fires made this community look like something straight out of Deliverance. Bastards.”
The last was a sentiment Jace could certainly share. And if Justin Carr were responsible, then Randolph would get a deserved reprieve from those accusations of racism.
A win-win situation. For everyone except Lindsey.
Justin’s father opened the door the following morning, wearing a silk bathrobe over a pair of black pajamas. His wife, who was fully dressed, hovered in the hall behind him.
“I’d like to speak to your son, Colonel Carr.” Jace nodded to the woman before he turned his eyes back to her husband.
“Whatever you have to say, you can say to our attorney. That’s Phillip Stone. Cohen, Stone and Longdale in Montgomery.” Carr began to close the door.
Jace put his palm against the wood. “David Campbell was murdered. We’ve received the autopsy results last night.”
There was a momentary hesitation, but Carr recovered quickly. “As I said, talk to our attorney. Whatever kind of witch hunt you’re on, detective, we don’t intend to help you.”
“I have an order signed by Judge Reynolds that allows me to collect Justin’s co
mputer as evidence.”
“His computer? Evidence for what?”
“A murder investigation.”
Carr laughed. “I told you. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Justin’s a good kid. He’s been assured of an appointment next year. I warn you, if you continue this harassment—”
“If I need to, I can come back with enough deputies to take the computer by force. The smartest thing you can do for your son, Colonel, is to let me have it without the theatrics. And without getting yourself arrested. If you’re right about your boy, then our examination of his computer will prove it.”
He could see Carr was considering the idea. And like his son, he wasn’t stupid. “Go get him, May,” he said to his wife.
“Justin’s not here, Paul.”
Carr turned to look at her then. “Where the hell is he?”
“He’s already left for school.”
“This early?” It had been a few minutes before seven when Jace had pulled into their driveway. Judge Reynold’s wife had refused to wake him last night, but she had agreed to have him call as soon as he was up. Jace had picked up the warrant on his way here.
“He had a project due today,” Mrs. Carr explained. “He said he needed extra time to get it set up in the classroom.”
“What kind?” A finger of cold ran up Jace’s spine.
“I can’t remember if he said. Science, maybe? He’s had those before. He was working on it all weekend downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”
“In the basement,” Carr explained. “It’s not finished, but when we moved here, Justin claimed the area for his own. He doesn’t sleep down there, you understand. I drew the line at that, but the rest of the time—”
“How big was his project, ma’am?”
Jace’s interruption seemed to surprise them both. Apparently when the colonel talked, everyone listened.
“I don’t know.” Justin’s mother shook her head. “There were several pieces, I think. He had a duffel bag—”
Before she could finish the sentence, Jace was down the steps, running for his car.