Detective Jack Stratton Box Set

by Christopher Greyson

Replacement clearly didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”

  “The ‘it’ she was talking about was me.”

  Replacement’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  Jack took a seat in front of the microfiche reader. He started with July, placing the square film into the machine. The front page of the paper was displayed on the monitor. “With a town as small as Hope Falls, a stabbing would be front-page news,” he said, “but just in case, we should check the whole paper.”

  They looked through every page, seeing only mundane small-town stories about homecomings and elections. So they moved on to the next week’s paper. A weekly paper, Jack thought. This really is a small town.

  They found nothing in the rest of July either—or in August, September, or October. Every new page that appeared on the flickering machine made Jack’s heart speed up. He forced himself to go slowly and scan each page. Replacement didn’t speak. She just pointed at the monitor once or twice.

  Jack put in the November film while Replacement stood behind him and looked over his shoulder. The machine hummed. They continued to scan through the pages, seeing nothing of interest.

  And then Jack pulled up the November 14 paper—and time stopped.

  Replacement gasped.

  Jack had never in his life seen the teenager pictured on the front page of the paper, but he knew exactly who he was looking at: his father.

  “He was just a kid,” Jack whispered. Maybe seventeen. Smiling. Yearbook photo.

  “You look just like him.”

  Jack didn’t move. His hand was frozen on the knob of the machine. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. “Steven. Steven Ritter. That was my father’s name. I was hoping she was wrong. That it was just some delusion . . .” He tried to read, but his vision blurred. He could just barely read the headline: “Teen Killed at Buckmaster Pond.” Steven’s photo was in black-and-white, but the resemblance to Jack’s own high school yearbook photo was uncanny.

  “It says he was killed, stabbed . . . That’s what my mother said. He was . . .” Jack wiped his eyes and turned toward Replacement. “I can’t read it. Can you?”

  Tears were running down her own face. She leaned down and wrapped her arms around him.

  Jack shook. “I thought maybe . . . maybe she was just crazy. I always thought I’d meet him someday.”

  Replacement didn’t say a word; she just held him tighter.

  “When I was a kid and things were tough, I thought he’d come looking for me, and save me.” Jack’s shoulders slumped. “My father’s dead.”

  He couldn’t hold back his emotions any longer. Replacement slowly rocked him back and forth. Jack had no idea how long he cried, but Replacement never let go of him.

  After a while, he heard a noise from the doorway. He turned and saw Mae, the librarian, standing there, holding a box of tissues. Jack wiped his eyes and looked away while Replacement hurriedly went to the door.

  Mae hesitantly held the tissue box out to Replacement. Her head turned toward the large microfiche screen. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

  “It’s okay.” Replacement took the tissues from her.

  “Please let me know if you need anything else.” Mae rushed out of the room.

  Replacement walked back over to Jack and set the tissues on the table in front of him.

  “Thanks.” Jack’s voice was raspy. “Sorry I’m such a pansy.”

  Replacement lowered her face to eye level with his. “Shut up.” Her lips pressed together. “You just found out your father was murdered.”

  Jack cracked his neck and stood up. He stretched and walked toward the door.

  Replacement’s voice was soft. “Do you want to go?”

  Jack grabbed a pencil and some scrap paper from a basket near the door. “Leave?” Jack’s voice was a low growl. “No. I’m just getting started.”

  9

  Acta Non Verba

  “On November 13, an emergency call came in, reporting a stabbing at Buckmaster Pond. Steven Ritter. Seventeen. Beaten. Stabbed. No other information. Police following all leads, according to Chief Dennis Wilson.”

  Jack stopped talking and looked at Replacement. She had pulled up a chair next to his, and was writing everything down as fast as he spoke.

  “We can come back,” she offered.

  “I’m fine.” He turned back to the monitor. “This is better for me. Really.”

  He scanned the article to see whether he’d missed anything. Then his hand turned the knob forward. “Next paper. November 21. Police are asking anyone with information to come forward. No suspects. No witnesses. Steven. Only child of Mrs. Mary Ritter, a widow . . .”

  My grandmother. She was a widow.

  Jack’s fists shook on the table, and he knew he was close to smashing something. “I’m sorry. My head is going to explode. My crazy mother was right. And now I know my father is dead. Murdered. And his father was already dead. My grandmother . . . she was . . . all alone.”

  Replacement put a hand on his arm. “Jack. This is too much for anyone all at once. Let’s go for today, okay? We’ll come back tomorrow. We’ve waited this long. We can wait one more day.”

  “Wait another day? I don’t want to give the guy who killed him another breath, let alone another day. Let’s get a little more. Can you please drive?”

  Replacement hesitated, but when Jack stood up, she took his seat in front of the microfiche machine. “All right. Next paper.” Replacement began to read. “Here we go. November 28. Police say there’s still no progress. Following multiple leads. Cause of death: multiple sharp-force injuries. Police asking for help. They searched the area surrounding the pond, but no weapon was recovered.”

  “Does it give any names? Cops’ names who were involved in the investigation?”

  Replacement scanned the article. “Frank McCann and Henry Cooper. They’re listed as responding officers.”

  Jack wrote that down.

  “Okay, next week.” Excited now, Replacement quickly swapped out the November microfiche for the December one. But when she scanned the front page of the December 5 edition, she frowned; there was no mention of the murder. She flipped through page after page, but there wasn’t a single reference to the crime. She looked at Jack, but he just stared at the screen. She looked through the rest of December, turning the knob slowly, making sure she didn’t skip anything—but there was nothing to skip; no further news on the murder.

  Jack was pacing the small room. “They only dredged the pond. They didn’t even bring in the state police dive team.” He jabbed the screen with his pencil. “It froze over before they could get the divers here. But what about spring? Did they just forget about him?”

  After they went through three more months and found nothing more, Jack ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “I think we’ve gotten everything from the newspaper that we’re going to get.”

  Replacement went to put the microfiche away.

  “One more stop,” he said, “and then we go.”

  The library was absolutely still as they walked back to the front counter. They passed an area where a few empty wooden desks had been set up—a children’s study area. For just a moment, Jack could picture his father as a schoolboy sitting there, reading.

  My father would have come here. He’d have . . .

  Jack stumbled, and his whole body tensed. Replacement looked nervously at him. He could see the concern on her face.

  “I’m fine. I’m just trying not to go down the ‘what could have been’ road.”

  “Don’t go there.” Replacement’s voice was low. “It’ll make you crazy. Then it’ll kill you.”

  Her words made Jack pause. He searched her eyes. Her face was stern and her gaze was steady. “Is that a road you’ve been on?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Back in the main area of the library, they found the main desk unmanned; Mae was nowhere to be seen. That was fine with Jack. After the incident in the microfiche room, he didn’
t much feel like facing the woman.

  He led Replacement toward the nonfiction area, scanning the signs at the end of the shelves until he found what he was looking for: almanacs, yearbooks, and handbooks. He went down that row, stopped in the middle, and gestured to the section he wanted to search. Yearbooks.

  “I can do this,” Replacement said. She grabbed a stepstool and made Jack sit down.

  “Get all the books from thirty years ago to twenty-five years ago, just to be on the safe side,” he mumbled.

  Replacement pulled down a few yearbooks. She handed them to Jack, and he handed three back to her. She began to leaf through the pages.

  Jack decided to look for his father first. He skipped straight to the Rs. “Got it.” He stared at the picture of his father. It was the same as the one in the paper, although this one was in color.

  Replacement leaned over his shoulder. “You look so much alike. Look at his cheekbones and chin. But your eyes . . . they’re the same. Totally.”

  Jack read the text below the photo. STEVEN RITTER. “ACTA NON VERBA.” IN MEMORIAM. Puzzled, he looked up at Replacement. She was already typing on her phone.

  “Acta non verba,” she repeated as she continued to type. “It’s Latin. It means deeds, not words.”

  Jack flipped to the Cs next. “Marie Drake . . . Theresa Cook . . . Alyssa Connery . . .”

  When he came to the photo of his mother, he stopped and stared. She had long blond hair, wore a simple white dress, and was smiling from ear to ear. She was beautiful. Jack squeezed the yearbook, and his eyes narrowed.

  The yearbook text read, PATRICIA COLE, but underneath her name, someone had handwritten CLASS SLUT.

  Jack’s anger boiled.

  “They were in the same year,” Replacement said.

  “We need to look for a guy named Terry,” Jack growled. “She said Terry told her to get Steven to come to the pond. If you find a Terry, any Terry, flag the page. You start on the previous year.”

  “Do we know if Terry even went to her school?”

  “No. But I’m assuming.”

  They both flipped through pages. After a minute, Replacement blurted out, “Found one.” She pointed.

  Jack looked at the picture. A young, smug-looking guy. Dark hair and brown eyes. TERRY BRADFORD.

  “He was a year ahead of my par— of them. Keep looking.”

  Replacement flagged the page. Jack kept scanning.

  All these kids. They knew my father. I wonder . . .

  He narrowed his eyes and tried to concentrate. His finger moved across every name. When he got to the Ms, he stopped.

  “I’ve got two. Terry Martinez and Terry Martin.”

  Replacement poked Terry Martin’s picture. “He looks like a jerk.” Terry Martin was dressed in a football sweater with an open collar around his thick neck. Jack took one look at the kid’s cocky grin and wanted to knock it off his face.

  Then Replacement pointed to Terry Martinez. “He looks nice, though. Nerdy, but nice.” Dressed in a white shirt and plain blue tie, Martinez looked younger than the other students. He was pudgy, with a mop of black hair and thick glasses too big for his face.

  The book’s cover made a cracking sound as Jack’s hand tightened around it. He relaxed his grip and continued to flip pages.

  They went through all the other yearbooks Replacement had pulled out, but found no one else named Terry. “Well, we’ve got three,” Jack said. “It’s a place to start.” He put away most of the yearbooks, but kept the two they had originally flagged. “We walked by a photocopier. I want to copy the pictures.”

  Replacement followed him to the copier. It wasn’t the best quality, but after a couple minutes, Jack had his copies. He began to walk away to put the books back, then stopped and sighed.

  “Jack? What’s wrong?”

  A world of pain I didn’t know existed two days ago is making me crazy was what Jack wanted to say, but instead he replied, “I feel like I should photocopy these whole books. There might be something in here.”

  “Can’t we just check them out?”

  “No. See the little sticker on the back? ‘Not available for checkout. Do not remove from Hope Falls Public Library.’ I guess because they’re unique reference books. But it’s fine. We got what we needed.”

  “Okay. I’ll go put them away.” Replacement took the two yearbooks from Jack and hurried back to the shelves.

  Jack ran through his options. Three names. How can I run background checks on them from here? I don’t think I can connect to any of the police systems with just a cell phone. The chief wouldn’t be too happy if I logged in to the police system through a public library computer, and I’m sure the inn won’t have a computer—since I doubt they had computers in the Revolutionary War. I could just call Cindy and have her run a check on the QT—

  When Replacement touched his arm, he jumped.

  “Sorry.” She smiled.

  “Let’s go. Are you hungry?” Jack asked.

  “Starving.” Replacement hugged her stomach.

  “You just ate that humongous breakfast. How can you be starving?”

  “It’s already after lunchtime.” She held up her hand. “But we can keep working if you—”

  “I didn’t realize it was so late. I’m sorry. Come on.”

  Mae was still nowhere in sight when they walked past the main desk. They strode out into the cool air, and Jack stopped and breathed deeply.

  Replacement grabbed his arm. “I’m driving.” She pulled the keys from his pocket and darted to the car. “You look like death.”

  “Thanks,” Jack muttered, but he didn’t protest. “I feel like death.”

  He got in the passenger’s seat and looked over at Replacement, who was squirming around behind the steering wheel. Perplexed, he asked, “Do you need help getting your jacket off?” Then she leaned forward and, with a triumphant grin, pulled two yearbooks from inside the back of her sweater.

  “You stole the yearbooks?” Jack’s mouth fell open.

  “I didn’t exactly steal them. You said there might be something you need in them.”

  “There might be, but you took them.”

  “Yes, I took them, but I didn’t steal them because I’m going to return them.”

  Jack was about to argue, but decided there was no point. “Fine.” He leaned against the window.

  Replacement broke into a huge smile. “I’m glad you agree.”

  As Replacement pulled out of the parking lot, Jack saw the librarian standing at a side entrance, talking with a tall man about Jack’s age. He wore a worn baseball cap, tan work coat, jeans, and boots.

  Mae saw Jack looking, grabbed the man by the arm, and pulled him inside the library.

  “Where do you want to eat?” Replacement asked as she headed for the main road.

  Jack tried to drive his police officer paranoia out of his head. “Anywhere, klepto.”

  10

  Buttercup

  They pulled up outside Bartlet’s Family Restaurant, which looked like a log cabin with a wide wraparound porch. Quite a few cars were parked here, so Jack hoped the food was the draw. Jack stretched as he opened the car door. He couldn’t get over how warm the winter had been. He still needed a jacket, but for the beginning of February, this could be considered a heat wave in these parts.

  The doors to the restaurant opened onto a spacious front room that doubled as a gift shop. The place had all manner of touristy stuff—plastic toys for kids, crafts, shirts, caps—and it seemed that just about everything was either on a yellow pine shelf or in a pine barrel. Jack strode purposefully through the bric-a-brac to the main restaurant, then realized that Replacement was no longer with him. Backtracking, he found her examining a pink T-shirt with HOPE FALLS written in the middle of a large red heart. He grabbed her by the arm and headed for the hostess, but she begged, “Can’t I look for a minute?”

  “You can look for an hour after we eat. You’re starving, remember?” He smiled at the young
hostess behind her wooden podium, who asked, “Two for lunch?”

  She led them to a little corner booth. As soon as Replacement slid into her seat, she looked out the window and her mouth dropped open. Behind the restaurant was a small garden with a little natural waterfall.

  “Isn’t it pretty?” the hostess remarked. “I just love it. It’s so romantic.” She gave Replacement a little pat on the shoulder and winked.

  “It’s beautiful.” Replacement kept gazing out the window.

  Jack suddenly stood up again. “I’ll be right back.”

  The two women exchanged a perplexed look.

  “Burger and fries,” Jack called over his shoulder as he marched back into the store. “And a Coke.”

  He walked into the gift shop again and scanned the shelves but didn’t see what he needed.

  “Do you have any notebooks?” he asked the cashier.

  “Yes, right over there.” She pointed to a shelf that held precisely two notebooks: a thin one covered in puffy baby farm animals, and a thicker, purple one, decorated with sparkling confetti and the words “HOPE FALLS” in hot pink.

  Jack rolled his eyes and paid for the thicker notebook, along with a pen.

  “She’ll love them,” the woman confidently assured him.

  “Who will?”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  Jack tilted his head down, grabbed the bag, and hurried back to the table. Replacement was still looking out the window as he slid back into the booth.

  “Where did you go?” she asked.

  “I needed to get a notebook.” He put it on the table.

  She snickered. “Pink’s not your color.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What’re you, five years old?”

  “Me? I’m not the one with the Pretty Pony notebook.”

  “Anyway.” He pulled out his scraps of paper from the library. “I figured we could get started organizing the information we have.”

  “I’ll write.” She took the pen.

  They transcribed the notes while they ate. Once they had everything written down, Jack frowned. “We don’t have much.”