Dark Hearts

by Sharon Sala

  As they ordered their food, talking about what they had yet to face and what they hoped to uncover during the meeting, Sam was wondering what would happen if he tried to fit back in—if he should even try to fit back in—wondering if they would resent him after the way he’d kept them all at arm’s length.

  * * *

  Lainey was in bed with her laptop and a beer.

  After her conversation with Dallas, her curiosity had been piqued. She was reading through back issues of the Mystic newspaper in an effort to catch up on what had been happening.

  She had a whole new level of empathy for Dallas after learning how her father had died, and what she’d been through afterward that had nothing to do with the murder. Attacked by a feral dog, running for her life from criminals in hiding on her property and all the while determined to prove her father had not committed suicide. When Lainey got to the discovery of Paul Jackson’s body, she was struck by the cold-blooded way the murder had been committed. The killer would have had to stand and watch Paul being crushed to make sure he was dead.

  The bottle of beer was empty by the time she got to the story about Betsy and Trina being ambushed, and for her, it struck closest to home. She’d imagined being part of their family most of her life, picturing Betsy as her mother-in-law and Trina as the sister she’d never had. When she began reading about the shooting and discovered that Trey was the one who’d found them, she burst into tears.

  She started out crying for the Jakeses and ended up crying for herself from the shock and grief of being abandoned by the man she loved, to the ensuing years of loneliness and the day she was diagnosed, all the way through to the last day of chemo. She cried until her eyes were swollen and her head was throbbing before she staggered into the bathroom to get something for the pain.

  After that she wandered through the house, straightening a picture hanging on the wall, fluffing pillows on the living room sofa, gathering up a glass and bowl she’d left on a side table, loading the dishwasher and then making sure everything was locked up for the night.

  Finally the lights were out in the front of the house, except for the night-light in the hall. She wandered back into her bedroom and got back in bed, then picked up the laptop. She started to click out of the paper’s site, then decided to see if there were any new articles relating to the crimes.

  The headline for the digital issue of tomorrow’s paper caught her eye.

  GRADUATES OF CLASS OF 1980

  The subhead was a shock.

  MANDATORY MEETING AT CITY HALL

  The hair stood up on the back of her neck as she read the notice posted by Chief Jakes, and then a more inclusive story the editor had added to it. As difficult as it was to grasp, the police were convinced that the three murders were tied to the night the victims all graduated high school, which was why all of the classmates had been summoned.

  Lainey’s heart skipped a beat. Her mother, Billie, had been a member of that class, but her mother was dead. Would she have known anything? Had she heard any gossip that would shed light on this mystery? And then she remembered her mother’s diaries. She’d been obsessive about writing in them on a regular basis when she was younger. Lainey remembered reading from them all the time when she was growing up and then talking to her mother about her life. Oh, how they had laughed. For Lainey, it had the feel of being a child with her mother instead of just reading about her at that age. But now that she’d remembered them, and now that she understood the seriousness of the meeting, she couldn’t let go of the idea that there might be something in them that would help.

  She set the laptop aside again and moved back through the house, turning on lights until she got to the hallway between the utility room and the kitchen, heading for the stairs leading to the attic. They were the old-fashioned kind that pulled down from the ceiling. She grasped the short dangling rope above her head and gave it a yank, then walked backward as the stairs unfolded at her feet. The light switch in the hall turned on the floodlight in the attic above.

  She hadn’t been up here in over a year, and as she reached the top she could easily see the thin layer of dust covering the floor and most of the boxes. She knew where the diaries were because she’d packed them away herself after her mother’s death. In fact, she’d packed them away in chronological order, so she knew exactly where she would find the one she wanted.

  The boxes stacked against the north wall were all labeled Diaries, so she began to look for the one from the year 1980. As soon as she found the right box, she scooted it across the floor to the stairs, then backed down one step at a time, balancing the box in front of her as she went.

  It was now after midnight, but she knew she would never be able to sleep until she was satisfied there was nothing in those diaries that would matter, so she wiped the dust from the box, removed the lid and dug through until she found the volume that began with Billie’s senior year, as well as the ensuing two diaries that had everything else through the night of graduation.

  This time, when she went back to her bedroom, she had the diaries in one hand and a cold bottle of Pepsi in the other.

  She crawled back into bed, took a drink of the pop, opened the first diary and began to read.

  * * *

  It was the wind blowing a branch against the side of the house that woke Lainey the next morning. She rolled over onto her back, wondering why she was sleeping at the foot of the bed, and then saw the diaries and remembered. She glanced at the time and sat up with a groan.

  She headed for the bathroom to shower, and was so anxious about the day ahead and getting all her lesson plans done that for once she paid no attention to her too-thin body or the scars on her chest where her breasts used to be. And when she got out of the shower to dry her hair, it was so short that it didn’t take long. Other than the fact that she was beginning to panic about seeing Sam again, the day passed without consequence.

  She went to bed and set the alarm, then dreamed all night that she was trying to find Sam. In the dream, everywhere she looked he was already gone. She woke up frustrated and anxious, then headed to the bathroom to get ready for the meeting.

  She could already tell the day was going to be cold, because the house was chilly. When she went back to her room to get dressed she turned up the thermostat in the hall. Her clothes didn’t fit well anymore, but she managed to cope. She put on a pair of blue jeans and a thick sweater. Her jeans were held up by a belt, and the cable-knit weave of the loose sweater helped hide her flat chest.

  It was 11:00 a.m. by the time she headed out the door. It would take about fifteen to twenty minutes to get to Mystic unless traffic delayed her. The meeting began at noon. If she didn’t get a chance to catch Trey before he went into City Hall, she would have to wait until it was over. Either way, she would feel better knowing she’d done her part.

  * * *

  The day was cold, the wind sharp enough to bring tears, as people began filing into Mystic City Hall. They walked with their heads down, their shoulders hunched against the weather, but it made them appear as if they all had something to hide.

  Trey was already inside. He had his officer Earl Redd guarding the entrance to the meeting, with orders to keep out the curiosity seekers.

  Sam and Trey had made a plan, and Sam was in his car, parked at the back of the courthouse until closer to the time for the meeting to start.

  Lainey had the diaries in her hand as she ran up the front steps and inside, then quickly explained her reason for being there to Officer Redd, who let her into the courtroom. She slipped into the room and took a seat in the back just as Trey walked up to the front to begin the meeting. He had an updated list from Dallas regarding the people who still lived in the area, and would know if anyone was missing.

  As Trey turned to face the group, he glanced out the windows and saw Sam on the sidewalk. His entrance should rattle the group
. It was time to get started.

  “Thank you for coming. Beginning with you on the end, tell me your name at the time of graduation, so I can check you off the list.”

  He pointed straight at Marcus Silver, and Marcus promptly replied. Then Gregory Standish, then Will Porter, and on through the crowd until he noticed Lainey Pickett in the back of the room and frowned.

  “Lainey?”

  “I’m here on behalf of my mother, Billie Conway. She kept diaries. I brought the ones pertaining to her senior year.”

  Trey’s heart skipped. Something must be in them or she wouldn’t have come. Before he could say anything else, the doors at the back of the room opened, and everyone turned to look as Sam Jakes came in and strode straight down the aisle toward Trey, glaring at everyone he saw.

  Lainey could tell from his expression that he didn’t see her, but she saw him, the wide set of his shoulders beneath his coat, the dark brown Stetson on his head, and struggled with the urge to run. Then he reached the front and turned to face the crowd, and she lifted her chin and stared back, waiting for him to see her.

  Sam looked out across the room, meeting gaze after gaze, waiting until each person looked away before moving on to the next. Then he saw the woman at the back of the room. Stunned by her presence, he was the first to turn his gaze elsewhere.

  Then Trey began to speak, saving him.

  “All of you know my brother, Sam. He owns Ranger Investigations in Atlanta, and he’s come home to help me find a killer, which is also why you’re here. You’re going to help us find him, too.”

  “What makes you think it’s a man?” Will Porter asked.

  “Because Dick Phillips was over six feet tall and weighed two hundred and five pounds, and there are precious few women anywhere in the world who could lift that much dead weight and hang it from the rafters of a barn.”

  Will flushed. “Yes, of course. I didn’t think,” he mumbled.

  “Well, I have thought,” Trey said. “I’ve done nothing but think ever since this nightmare began, and this is what I know. Something happened the night of your high school graduation. I believe Connie and Betsy and their boyfriends Dick and Paul witnessed a crime, and we think it had to do with at least one of your classmates, because police found a bloody tassel in Paul Jackson’s pocket the night of the wreck, and it didn’t belong to him or anyone else in the car. Theirs were all accounted for. My mother dreamed about seeing a dead body, but she never saw a face. I believe they wrecked because they were trying to get back to Mystic to tell what they saw. I know they were going too fast when the car left the road, and the logical explanation for driving so recklessly was because they were being chased.”

  “Or the fact that they were drunk,” someone muttered.

  “Oh, yes, we know that, but that doesn’t explain the bloody tassel. It’s being tested for DNA, by the way.”

  People were beginning to shift nervously in their seats, which was exactly what Sam had been waiting for.

  “One of you knows something, and your silence has aided a killer in getting away with murder...three times for sure, and maybe a fourth back then. Is that how you want to be remembered? Talk to me, damn it!”

  Lainey stood up, holding the diaries against her chest.

  “My mother is gone, but her words are not. She kept diaries. I have them, starting from when she was nine all the way through her first year of college.”

  Sam saw her lips moving, but he couldn’t focus on what she was saying for looking at the desolation in her eyes.

  “Is there anything in there that you think would help us?” Trey asked.

  “A couple of things, I think. I’ll leave them with you, of course, as long as I can have them back at some point. The first thing that caught my attention was her writing about gossip flying through the school about cheating on tests. I teach history at the University of West Virginia, so I’m aware that’s an ongoing issue, but according to my mother’s entries, it pertained to the senior class specifically.”

  Sam shifted focus. “Was it true? Was someone cheating?”

  The room was silent.

  “She mentioned names,” Lainey said, and just like that the room erupted.

  Five

  Sam was elated. This was exactly what he’d hoped would happen. Everyone wanted to tell their side of the story before someone else accused them of doing the cheating.

  “Hey! Shut the hell up!” he shouted.

  Lainey flinched. The power in his voice surprised her and obviously startled the others because the room went quiet.

  Trey held up the list Dallas had given him.

  “Dallas has been checking the whereabouts of your classmates. There are a few names we still can’t verify. I’m going to read them off, and if anyone knows anything, speak up.”

  “Harold Martin.”

  Will Porter raised his hand. “He was in Sarasota, Florida. He died about ten years ago.”

  Trey nodded and marked him off. “Charlotte Marshall,” he said.

  “She’s in Washington, DC. Retired. Lives with her youngest son and family,” a lady offered.

  Trey marked her off, and one by one, he went through the list until they were down to only two.

  “Anthony Castle.”

  Greg Standish held up a hand. “He’s a Catholic priest, and last time I heard was living in Bolivia running an orphanage.”

  “One more here, and then the rest of them are all sitting in this room. What about Donny Collins?”

  The room was silent.

  Sam glanced back at where Lainey had been sitting, and his heart sank. He needed to talk to her, but she’d slipped out of the room.

  “Anyone? Donny Collins?” Trey asked again.

  They were all shaking their heads.

  “Last time I saw him he was giving the salutatorian address,” a woman said. “Donny was smart.”

  “So what about the cheating?” Trey asked. “What do you know?”

  One by one, they admitted they’d heard about it, but they all had the same story. No one had known who was involved. And then a woman Trey recognized as one of his mother’s friends raised her hand to speak.

  “I can’t believe cheating on a test would ever be a reason to kill someone. I mean...what would be gained if someone told and what would be lost if someone was found out? Just a bad grade, that’s all. At least that’s what it would have been back then. It sure wasn’t something worth dying for.”

  “That’s not always the case to the people involved,” Sam said. “You said Donny Collins was salutatorian. Who was valedictorian?”

  Marcus Silver raised his hand. “I was.”

  Sam nodded. “So what did you have to gain by being valedictorian?”

  “Nothing,” Marcus said.

  Then a woman stood up. “That’s not true. There was that five-thousand-dollar scholarship.”

  Sam watched the man’s face for a sign of guilt but saw nothing.

  “At the risk of bragging about my family’s status, my father was well-to-do and you know it. I didn’t need the scholarship to go to school. It was already paid for,” Marcus said.

  Sam glanced at Trey and could tell his brother was satisfied with that answer.

  “So Donny was salutatorian. What did he get?” Sam said.

  “There wasn’t any money for salutatorian,” Will Porter said.

  Sam stood there with his hands on his hips, staring at the faces of people he’d known all his life, trying to picture one of them being a cold-blooded killer, and couldn’t do it.

  “Look,” Sam said. “Here’s the deal. No matter what you think you’re hiding by staying silent, the truth is going to come out, and when it does, whoever has been hiding what they know is likely to be charged with aiding and abetting. So wh
en you go home today, ask yourself if keeping a secret is worth losing your freedom.”

  There was a gasp from the back of the room, and then everyone went silent.

  Trey guessed they’d stirred up all the ghosts he could stir today, and he wanted them to leave here as unsettled as they could possibly be.

  “Just so you know, I’m pretty disgusted by the lack of compassion you’re all showing. Dick Phillips wouldn’t have stayed quiet. Paul Jackson would have told. Betsy Jakes was trying to remember. It haunted her sleep until the day she died. They would have done anything they had to do in the name of justice for you. Someone hanged Dick from the rafters of his own barn. He wasn’t dead when they strung him up. They broke his neck by yanking down on his legs.”

  A woman in the front of the room moaned, and then began to cry.

  Trey kept pushing them.

  “Paul Jackson was working late doing someone a favor. The killer, being the coward he is, used the familiarity of his face to catch Paul off guard. Paul died from a crushed skull. My mother knew she was a target. She didn’t want to die, but she also wasn’t going to hide.” Trey’s voice started to shake. “The son of a bitch shot half her face off, and I was the one who found her. My sister is hanging on to life by a thread right now because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and one of you knows something you’re not telling.”

  Everyone in the room was visibly moved.

  Sam jumped in before Trey lost his composure.

  “If anyone knows anything, you better tell it now, because if I find out who did it and learn that any of you knew and kept quiet, I will make it my personal business to see you behind bars.” Then he waved his hand. “We’re done here.”

  Not one word was spoken as the old classmates got up and walked out of the meeting, and when they exited City Hall and came face-to-face with half the town watching them exit—waiting for news—they started trying to get away.

  People began crowding around them, talking, pushing, trying to get the lowdown.