“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “Stacy Shaw was strangled. Remember when Two Point broke his wrist trying to go down the library stairs on his bike? His left hand is still all screwed up. I don’t think he’d physically be able to strangle anyone. Besides, he’s a pansy. You know how Bobbie G calls him ‘Tommy Two Feet’ because Tommy runs away if someone says boo. Stealing and running? Yeah, that I’d buy, but killing, no.”
“Yeah,” said Chandler. “I wasn’t thinking about the hand, that’s a good point. And I agree with you about the kind of guy he is. He’s gone down a bad path, but this… yeah. It’s not Tommy.”
The two friends talked for a bit more, then Chandler excused himself to go upstairs to bed.
But Jack wasn’t ready to go to bed yet. He was tired, no doubt about that, but he knew he couldn’t fall asleep, and he wasn’t in a rush to go lie down and stare at the ceiling. So he just sat there at the kitchen table, listening to the sounds of the old house. It was familiar. It was comforting.
Footsteps in the hallway made him turn. Aunt Haddie walked back into the kitchen.
“Do you have a second, Jackie?”
Jack sat up straighter when she pulled back a chair and sat down.
“Mrs. Martin wanted me to thank you.”
“Thank me?” Jack chuckled bitterly. “A lot of good I did. I got Jay looking at a murder charge.”
“But you tried.” She reached out and patted the back of his hand.
“Well, at least I’m done messing up.”
“No. Now Jay needs your help even more.”
“My help?” Jack looked into the old woman’s eyes. She had no idea how close he and Chandler had come to getting arrested. “He doesn’t need my help. The only person who can help Jay is Tommy.”
“Charlotte heard from Tommy today; he’s not going to do anything. Tommy said Jay is on his own.”
“I’m sorry. But in that case, Jay needs to talk to his lawyer. Or the police.”
“He did. They don’t believe him. Jackie… no one else is going to help him.”
“There’s nothing I can do. I already stuck my neck out—not for Jay but for his mom’s sake—and what did it get me? I thought they were going to arrest me for a minute. I don’t like Jay anyway. He’s done enough bad stuff in his life that he never paid the price for. What goes around comes around. I’m not helping him.”
Aunt Haddie pointed at the kitchen door. “Ever since you walked through that door, you’ve told me that one day you’re going to be an officer of the peace.”
“And I am.”
“Then what kind of policeman do you want to be? Are you only going to help white folk?”
Jack’s mouth dropped open and his eyes went wide. “WHAT?”
“Don’t you raise your voice.”
“Seriously?” Jack pointed at himself. “There is no way you’re saying I’m a racist!”
“Of course not.” Aunt Haddie held up a hand. “Now lower your voice, or better yet, listen. You wouldn’t think twice about the color of someone’s skin. I know that about you as certain as I know the sky is blue. But why do you draw a line on who you’ll help? And where do you draw that line? Are you only going to help little old ladies whose purses get stolen?”
“That’s different. She needed my help.”
“Jay needs your help. You and I both know he didn’t do it. But no one else believes him.”
“The little old lady was nice,” Jack muttered.
“Oh, so you’re only going to help nice folk. What about rich folk? Will you help them? How about plump middle-aged ladies like me? Or are you only going to help young skinny girls?”
“This is different, Aunt Haddie. Do you know why they call him J-Dog? It’s short for Junkyard Dog. That’s what he’s like. He’s—” Jack exhaled. “Do you know why I hate him? I had a pin. It was a cheap silver pin, half of it looked like it got run over by a car, but at the top it said Hope. My birth mother gave it to me. She said my father gave it to her. It was the only thing I had from either of them. I took it off when we went swimming, and guess what? A little later, I caught J-Dog in the act of stealing it. And instead of giving it back to me, he threw it in the pond.”
The look on Aunt Haddie’s face was a mix of confusion and anger. “Why?”
Jack laughed bitterly. “Because he’s mean. I doubt he even knows why he did it. Aunt Haddie, some people are born mean.”
Aunt Haddie’s voice softened. “And some people change.”
Jack huffed.
“But even if they don’t, black, white, rich, poor, or mean as a dog—a carpenter’s son I know came to help everyone. And that’s what we’re supposed to do. Love the unlovable.”
Jack looked away.
“Besides, you don’t know why someone acts the way that they do. There’s still some good in that boy. I know it. And even if I didn’t, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. If you’re a police officer, you’ve got to help everyone.”
Aunt Haddie waited until Jack looked into her eyes.
“You need to ask yourself a question before you put on that badge, Jackie. Who are you going to protect and serve? If the answer isn’t everyone, then you’d better think twice about becoming a policeman.”
Jack winced.
“Right now, Jay needs your help.” Aunt Haddie reached out and took his hand. “Will you help him?”
“But Aunt Haddie, what can I do? I’m not a cop.” He shrugged. “I’m just… Jack.”
“Do me one favor? Pray on it. You’ll do that for me?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “That’s not fair. I can’t say no to that.”
Aunt Haddie gave him a little wink, got up, and patted his shoulder. “You should get some sleep. I’ll go make up your bed.”
Jack sat in the kitchen and listened to the silence fill the house. He sat with his head in his hands, still trying to drive the image of Stacy Shaw out of his mind. He kept thinking of how Stacy was murdered—manual strangulation.
She died looking her killer in the eye.
Jack finally stood up. He locked the back door and made sure the rest of the house was secure, then he headed upstairs. At the end of the hallway, he opened the last door on the left and paused. It was like running into an old friend. He’d spent four years calling this room his own. Aunt Haddie had made the bed, and the little room was neat and tidy.
Inside he hurt, but the corners of his mouth turned up.
This was his room.
He still remembered when he first stood here in the doorway and Aunt Haddie said those words: “This is your room.” Jack had felt as though he’d won the lottery and gotten his own castle.
He took off his sneakers and set them down neatly near the door. He didn’t even think about just kicking them off and leaving them scattered; Aunt Haddie ran a tight ship. He pulled off his shirt, lay back on the bed, and interlaced his fingers behind his head.
The house was quiet. The glow from the streetlight shone in the window. One of those stickers from the sheriff’s department was stuck to a corner of the glass, there to let the firefighters know it was a child’s room. The light hit the sticker and cast a shadow of a sheriff’s star on the ceiling. Jack stared at the outline. He used to imagine it was his own bat signal, like Commissioner Gordon calling Batman. He’d pretend that somewhere out there a person was in trouble and it was up to him to rush out into the night and save them. He just never thought the person who would need him would be Jay Martin.
But Jack knew Jay didn’t kill Stacy Shaw. He was just watching out for his brother. And now he might spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jack looked over at the globe on the desk in the corner.
Seven billion people on the planet. Out of that, only six people know Jay’s innocent. Jay, Tommy, me, Chandler, Aunt Haddie, and Mrs. Martin.
Jack shut his eyes.
Seven: the person who really killed Stacy Shaw.
Jack’s chest tightened.
He looked
back to the sheriff’s star silhouetted on the ceiling. Some people called it a badge; Jack liked to call it a shield. When you’re a kid and a victim, a shield’s a good thing. And when Jack was little, he wanted someone to protect him. The first night in this bed was also the first time Jack had finally felt safe.
Aunt Haddie had often talked about layers of defense. That in her house, she was his protector. That the Fairfield police protected the town. That more police protected the state, and even more soldiers protected the country. And Jack had always wanted to protect people too. He didn’t want the monsters to slink off into the shadows and hurt other kids. He wanted to hunt the monsters. To catch them and put them someplace where they could never hurt anyone again.
He looked at his reflection in the window. He wasn’t a kid anymore; he was a man. He wasn’t helpless; he could fight back. He had the power to fight not only for himself, but for people who couldn’t. People who needed his help. Even if no one believed them. Even if they were… unlovable.
Jack got out of bed. He walked over to the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a pocket notebook. He fanned out the pages to make sure it was blank. Then he wrote FACTS on the top of the first page.
Underneath it he wrote: Jay Martin is innocent.
16
So Has Mrs. Franklin
Early the next morning, Chandler shut the Impala’s door. “What are we doing here?”
“Starting at the last known place Stacy was.”
Ford’s Crossing was an underdeveloped area of Fairfield a mile northwest of Hamilton Park. Jack had parked at the side of the road where the main electric high-tension wires that ran into town cut across. The street was wide and deserted.
Jack walked down the grassy slope toward a thick old oak tree. A yellow ribbon had been tied around the trunk. “This must be where they found Stacy’s car.” He pointed at a two-foot section where the bark had been broken away and fresh wood was exposed. Pieces of broken glass and plastic lay on the ground. “But she was killed near her office. If she wrecked her car, why would she head back to work?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to get a ride home?”
“No, that doesn’t add up either.” Jack squatted down and smoothed out an area of sand with his hand. Using his finger, he made a large rectangle. “This is Hamilton Park.” He marked the basketball courts down at the bottom left corner and then above that the baseball field at the west entrance. He picked up a rock the size of an egg and placed it just below the bottom center of the rectangle. “That’s H.T. Wells.” He made an X well outside the upper left-hand corner of the park outline. “We’re way up here somewhere.” Then he grabbed an acorn and held it up. “This is Stacy’s house.” He placed it just above the upper right-hand corner of the park outline.
“How do you know where she lives?”
“I Googled it,” Jack said. “She lives in Morton’s Hill. It’s that house next to where we’d go sledding.”
“The little yellow ranch with the tall bushes?”
“Yeah.”
Chandler pointed at Jack’s dirt map. “So it would have been faster for her to walk due east and head straight home than go back south to her work?”
“Very good, Watson.”
“Then why did we find her body in the middle of the park?”
Jack shrugged. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
“Look.” Chandler sighed. “I don’t think we should be doing this. No good can come from us sticking our noses where they don’t belong. Leave it to the cops.”
“I would, except the cops aren’t looking anymore. They think Jay is guilty. Once they charge someone, they’re done looking.”
“Then that’s Jay’s problem. I’m not getting jammed up because of him,” Chandler said.
“That’s why I told you to stay home.”
“Not gonna happen. You go, I go.”
Jack stood up. “I want to check out her work. Did you call Makayla’s cousin? Is everything cool?”
“Makayla called her, but I don’t think this is your smartest idea. Lori’s just the receptionist. She didn’t work with Stacy or anything.”
“I only want to talk to her. We’ll take her to lunch. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Jack parked in front of the office building that housed H.T. Wells. Built in the 1960s, the brick building had been recently remodeled to house shops on the first floor, with the four floors above dedicated to office space. H.T. Wells had the top two floors to themselves. It must be a nice place to work, Jack thought—great views of the park.
Chandler craned his neck out the window to look up at the building. “Why don’t we wait until she’s off work?”
“Let’s just go up and ask her if she wants to go to lunch. That way we get a look around inside, too.”
“No. There is absolutely no way. I promised Makayla we wouldn’t get Lori in trouble. Besides, I hate to break this to you, but you can’t look around inside. Not even if you were a cop, and you’re not.”
“I’m not pretending to be a cop—”
“Then why did you put on your police academy shirt?”
Jack looked down at his blue and white t-shirt with the police academy logo. “It’s the only clean thing I had in the car. It was in my gym bag.”
“You could have borrowed a shirt.”
“One of your shirts would look like a muumuu on me. I look good in this.” Jack turned in his seat to face Chandler. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this. I’ve been reading and watching cop shows since I can remember.”
“So has Mrs. Franklin next door, but she’s still a little old grandmother. It doesn’t make her a detective.”
Jack stared out the windshield. The silence in the car became thick.
“Look.” Chandler rapped his knuckles against the door panel. “I know you—you keep going and you don’t quit. Sometimes, Jack, that’s not a good thing. Most of the time it just ticks people off and gets you in trouble.”
“I’ll be right out. Fifteen minutes.”
Chandler’s eyebrows went in opposite directions; one dropped heavily on the lid while the other arched high. “Are you even listening? And why are we risking this? For J-Dog? I thought you can’t stand him.”
“I can’t.”
Chandler huffed. “You know the rules, Jack. You get in trouble and we’re screwed as far as the recruiter goes. One call to the cops could make them take a second look at us.”
“Stay here.”
“That’s not happening.”
“I’m serious. It would look weird both of us going in anyway.”
“I’m not waiting here. You go, I go. That’s the deal. Besides, I promised Makayla.”
Jack opened the door.
“Hey.” Chandler grabbed Jack’s arm. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Come on. It’s me you’re talking about.” Jack got out of the car.
“That’s why I’m saying it.”
They took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The doors opened onto a posh reception area. A hallway led off to the right, and to the left was a waiting area with leather couches and marble coffee tables covered with glossy magazines. Directly across from the elevator stood a long reception desk with a floating glass counter, silver accents, and teak wood. A vase of summer flowers in full bloom added a colorful dash to the dark-brown wood. Jack wrinkled his nose. The fresh flowers mixed with the synthetic smell of carpet cleaner produced an odd odor.
Lori stood behind the desk, where three men in suits were taking turns signing their names in a ledger. When she saw Chandler, Lori held up one finger and pointed covertly to the waiting area. Jack and Chandler moved to the side.
Lori handed lanyards to the men in suits. On the front of each card, the word Visitor was printed in bright-green text. The men chatted with Lori until a thin woman in a sharp gray suit strode down the hallway. She greeted the men, and they followed her back down the hallway.
Now that she was alone, Jack was ab
out to approach the desk, but just then a beefy custodian in navy blue coveralls pushed a rolling recycle bin down the hall to the reception desk. His small, close-set eyes, set in a round, ruddy face, stayed focused on the ground, and his mouth hung open in a slack way. “Do you have any recycling, Lori?” he asked.
She picked up a white container and handed it to him. “How are you today, Jeremy?” she said with a smile.
He shrugged and dumped the container. “Still sad.”
She patted his arm. “It’ll get better.”
“It’ll get better,” he repeated.
“Jeremy?” Lori pointed down at the floor. “Can you use less carpet freshener next time?”
Jeremy nodded quickly. “Sorry. Someone spilled. I had to get the stains out. Sorry.” Jeremy tipped the heavy bin back and wheeled it toward the elevator.
When he was gone, Lori waved Jack and Chandler over. They walked to the desk as she scooted around.
Medium height, a little on the curvy side, and in her early twenties, Lori looked every bit the business receptionist—charcoal slacks, pale blue top, her long, dark hair swept up in a low chignon. She grabbed Chandler’s hand as though they were old friends.
“Look at you!” She grinned at Chandler. “I can’t tell you how grateful my aunt is for that refrigerator.”
“That’s on Mr. Emerson.” Chandler blushed. “He’s the one who fixed it.”
“Mr. Emerson didn’t bring that refrigerator up four floors. Anyway, she’s tickled pink, let me tell you.” Lori squeezed his hand.
As Chandler and Lori chatted, Jack glanced down at the visitor sign-in log and his eyes widened. Detective Lyle Vargas. Under “purpose of visit,” he had written “Review security footage.” The checkout time was blank. Jack’s heart beat fast.
“Makayla called me,” Lori said. “What’s the big favor?”
“It’s, ahh…” Chandler cleared his throat and looked at Jack.
Jack tore his eyes from the log. “We were wondering if we could take you out to lunch. Now. Out.”
“Sure. Why?”
Footsteps came down the hall, and Jack held his breath. But it was just two women walking to the elevator, engaged in a quiet conversation.
And Then She Was GONE: A riveting new suspense novel that keeps you guessing until the end Page 14
