by catt dahman
“They were the bad ones, not you girls. There is no excuse for what they did.”
Sandy nodded.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No, ma’am, I was embarrassed, and Jennie was mortified. About a week later, after being glared at for days by Lisa Marie, she approached me after school.”
“Lisa Marie did?”
“Yes, she was furious, andshe said she awoke in Steve’s house and went looking for Tommy, her boyfriend. She finally went to the pool house and found the door locked but heard the boys laughing and kind of yelling. She peeked through the blinds and saw…well…her timing was perfect to see when Tommy raped me. She thought it was something else though. Just sex.”
“In front of the others?”
“Yeah, I know, but she said I was that slutty to have an audience. She said I was a big ole whore.”
“Wow. That was cruel, but I guess her jealousy blinded her.”
“I burst into tears and tried to explain, and she slapped me! Hard! She asked if Jennie was there, too, and I nodded. I was humiliated. I just wanted to die. She said I caused her boyfriend to cheat on her and that she hated my guts. She blamed it all on me and called me names.”
“Then what happened, Sandy?”
“The next day, Sue was in a steam all over school, snapping the heads off anyone who spoke to her, and Jasper looked rough. When I tried to say something to Tommy, he told me to leave him alone, and that if Lisa Marie found out, I would be sorry, so I knew she didn’t confront him. He didn't know that she knew.”
“That makes sense.”
“A few days later, Jennie was crying in the locker room, and I found out that Wayne punched her in the stomach for giving him VD, and he warned her to keep her mouth shut. She said he was furious with her and called her a slut.”
“He punched her?”
“Yes, Ma'am. Because of the VD.”
“We know about that part. That’s how the boys got it.”
“Vivian, I know…knew Jennie, and she was a nice girl. She had not been wild, so I don’t see how she could have given them anything. It’s impossible. Maybe one of the boys had it and spread it. Jennie didn't sleep around, I swear.”
Vivian wondered who gave it to whom then. “Do you know who killed the rest?”
“No, ma’am, but when Tommy was killed, I wondered about it, and I asked Jennie if she did it. She didn’t. I know she didn’t. She was with me when Wayne died, anyway. So it wasn’t her. She asked if I had done it...imagine that.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“As each died, I saw the pattern. All the kids figured the boys had done something bad because they all did the same things, together. Later, the kids all knew it was sex ...they kind of figured it out...and they knew it was about me and Jennie because Mindy and Lisa Marie started calling us names.”
“Like do-me instead of Dome?”
“Right. They said ‘Sandy Slider, what a twit, give her a dollar, she’ll show you her tit.’ Then Jennie…” Sandy cried again. “I thought about telling you before, but then this…and I know I’m on the list, and so is Steve, I think.”
“Who is the killer though?”
“I don’t know for sure, but maybe one of those girlfriends? Lisa Marie?”
“Maybe,” Vivian admitted.
“Does this help?”
Vivian smiled and answered, “You helped a lot. You’re very brave, and trust me, they were jerks; you didn’t cause it.”
“Poor Jennie.”
“Those boys were very wrong in what they did, and Lisa Marie was wrong as well, but she knows only what she thinks she saw, not the whole truth of what went on. No wonder everyone has been keeping this a secret.”
“I did because face it, Vivian, no one would ever believe me against those boys.”
“Boys who are now dead.”
“Yeah. I’m not glad, but I can’t say I’m sorry, either.”
“So all the kids kind of know why the boys were killed...I mean they know it was about sex? But no one has said a word.”
“They're afraid. They don't want to get involved?”
“Sandy, where were you last night?” asked Vivian who thought maybe Sandy killed her tormentors and Jennie so that no one would ever know.
“I was at church and then home with my parents. You don’t think….”
“I’m just asking, Sandy. Someone hated those boys enough to kill them.”
“Not me. I…Check out my story. I swear I didn’t do anything. In fact, I saw the coach at the movies. He can say Jennie and I were there .”
Vivian nodded, “I will. I hope you aren’t involved, Sandy. If you are, tell me, and let me help you with this.”
“I’m not involved with anyone’s dying.”
Vivian hugged Sandy and asked the sheriff if a deputy could stay with Sandy until they had the case solved. Sandy gave her a little wave as she left. Vivian asked that the deputy also watch Sandy for suspicious activity and went to call the coach and check Sandy’s alibi.
It was solid.
Nick waved a folder and said, “We know how Jennie got VD.”
Vivian nodded, “Good, I know what went on at the party and what the boys had in common.”
Chapter Twelve: Secrets Always Come Out
Vivian laid out the photos in the order of the crime scenes and put paper next to each so that she could write the links they shared. On another large sheet of paper, she wrote names of the boys in one column and their girlfriends in the next. She drew arrows in red to indicate that they shared a common disease.
Beside each boy’s name, she wrote the COD, or the cause of death, for each. In black, she drew arrows as she filled in more information. As she looked over the information, she shook her head, unable to believe the way the evidence pointed; she’d never heard of a case like this that was so convoluted and involved so many people.
“How’s it going?”
Vivian nodded to the papers and pictures. “I want to finish with the coroner’s reports and have them handy, but everything is lining up perfectly. I’ve had to ask the sheriff for some information, so I could fill in the blanks, but it’s coming along perfectly.”
Nick sat in a chair and looked at everything. “Why do you think they went so far with this?”
“Because they’re all good kids, right? I don’t know, Nick. Maybe Virgil’s friends from the Fordham Clinic could tell us, but I’m not expert with mental issues.”
“Was it the cheating that caused it? I mean, come on, that goes on a lot, but people don’t always kill people for it.”
“Maybe it was too much. Maybe it was crowd behavior? I am beginning to think this entire case hinges on peer pressure, but some things still doesn’t fit. Even with that. “
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Nick quoted.
“Maybe,” replied Vivian as she sat back, finished. “This town is so pretty and old fashioned looking but all these so-called good kids are hard partyers ,some use drugs and a hand full are rapists.”
“Bunch of trash.”
“I hope Sandy is okay. She’s right about being the next in line, along with Steve, but she’s also still trying to deal with the rape.”
“And no one will want to believe she wasn’t a willing participant,” Nick added.
Vivian tightened her lips. “That’ll be brought up at trial, I’m sure. I kind of wonder if she isn’t our killer, too. She had the reason to kill them.”
“I guess it’s a strong possibility. It’s likely, in fact.”
“What’s likely?” Virgil asked as he and the others came into the room. Vivian told them the story and caught them up on the information.
He frowned, “I can see it. If the boys were stabbed or had genital mutilation, I would say we should bring her in again and lean that direction. But there’s a lack of passion in the murders, and that to me kind of removes the sexual motive. But I may be dead wrong.”
“I kind of think she may have killed them
,” Nick said, “but I don’t want to believe it. Things fit her as the killer even if her alibi checks out. It makes the most sense and fits evidence.”
Vivian shrugged. She didn't think so.
The town’s doctor admitted to Nick that he had treated Jennie’s father for gonorrhea. He brought in the entire family for what Nick called a ‘Come to Jesus meeting’ which meant that the doctor blasted the family, the parents, actually, and told them how things were going to be. He raised his voice and railed over them.
He told Jennie’s mother that her husband and daughter were both positive for VD and that they both were going to be treated for it. Then he demanded an explanation. Jennie cried and curled into a ball, and the father turned bright red. Before the doctor could do anything, Jennie’s mother jumped from her chair and grabbed a book and began beating her husband’s face.
He raised an arm, and the woman dropped her book, grabbed his hair, and started punching him. When he got up, she drove a knee into his groin, letting him fall to the floor.
The doctor said he was going to report to the sheriff that Jennie was being sexually abused,but he never got around to that.”
“That's seriously negligent,”Vivian yelled.
“You have to be kidding,” Marcus said. “I’d like five minutes alone with that bastard.”
“Wait in line,” Nick said. “First thing in the morning, the sheriff is going to have the pond behind Jennie’s house dragged for a body. Frank Dome was thought to have run off. The doctor and sheriff thought Mrs. Dome ran him off for what he did or that he escaped prosecution, but with all this, no one is sure, now. Sheriff Briggs is also looking at the doctor for obstructing justice and misconduct.”
“Edna Dome could be our killer. Maybe she killed her husband for what he did and the boys, but why her own daughter?” Fin asked.
“Because to her, that was cheatin’?” Vivian asked.
“Why didn’t we know this sooner?”
Nick smirked and said, “I asked the same thing, and the sheriff said it would take two weeks, twenty-four hours each day, non-stop to tell me every little secret about all these people. He didn’t know what mattered and what didn’t.”
Marcus nodded and said, “I can see that. Without the other information, I wouldn’t know what was important.”
“I guess that’s why when we asked them to tell us the secrets they were hiding, they didn’t know which ones we meant,” Vivian said.
Virgil said, “Secrets always come out.”
Chapter Thirteen: He Was ‘Our’ Star
Vivian stayed in bed late, sick to her stomach and feeling poorly. She managed some tea and toast and fell asleep again, wondering if she had a cold or the flu. She felt as if she were missing everything.
When she awoke at noon, she went to the diner by herself and frowned over the menu. Everything looked good now that her stomach was settled. She opted for a big lunch, starting with a large salad drenched in ranch dressing and covered with garlic croutons and cheese. Next, came her main course, and she studied it hungrily. There was a big steak, cooked rare and covered with mushrooms, along with mashed potatoes and sides of spinach and carrots, just what she wanted.
She ate half of a slice of chocolate cream pie and drank a third glass of iced tea before she stopped eating, paid, and headed for the station. She felt much better and thought maybe she had been dehydrated and hungry. She was ready to tackle the case.
“Hi, what did I miss?” she asked Fin when she arrived.
“Practically a whole case in itself. Feeling better?
“Much. I had a huge lunch. What’s up?
Fin sighed. “Okay, so reports are that all the boys had gonorrhea. The doctor can’t divulge confidential information, but he did say it was, and I quote, ‘all over town’.”
“Yuk.”
“Next, our boys dragged the pond, and guess what? The sheriff is one bright cookie.”
“Light. Cookies aren’t bright, Fin.”
“Okay. Granted. He’s smart and has good instincts. The victim’s head was a mess. The coroner will examine him though. Meanwhile, when questioned, Mrs. Dome came clean and said she killed he husband with a hammer and threw him in the pond. There used to be an alligator that lived in the pond, and she had hoped it would eat her husband.”
“Really?”
He read her statement, “I kept thinking on him messin' with my sweet girl and giving her a sickness. What would he get? A year in jail? I waited until he were drinking and said we should go catch some fish. He laughed and looked at me like he figured I was forgivin' him or that I didn't care and he grabbed some worms and cane poles and we went over to the pond (there were no paragraphs and little punctuation) I carried my basket he thought was full of beef jerky and beer and cookies and shit but no, it wasn't that. He drunk his beer and rambled about stupid shit and said my Jennie brought it on herself being sexy and she need better home trainin' bullshit. I bides time and he got boozy. I took my ball ping hammer outta the basket and rared back like I wassa gonna break a concrete block and I kept going til he was a jelly...grey and pink and red jelly. I don't care I don it he wont mess with another girl, he sure wasn't gonna get my girl. That pond's full of alligators and alligator gar and catfish...crawfish...so that what I done to him and I'm glad I done it.”
“I hate alligators.” Vivian shivered; she was almost alligator food a few months back when she and her best friend tackled a case.
Fin nodded. “I know. Probably nothing much left of him there.”
“So good clean case, maybe? She says she didn’t kill anyone else and has an alibi for when her daughter and a few of the others died. She didn’t know Jennie was raped. She lost her cool and broke down, crying like a baby when she found out, and she said if she had known, they wouldn’t have died so easily.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Yeah. So does Virgil. She killed her husband for what he did to Jennie, but she honestly didn’t know about the boys and their attack on her daughter.”
Vivian pretended to pout. “I missed everything. I bet she would have just thrown gasoline in the car and killed them all at once if she known. She seems pretty straight up.”
“That isn’t all,” Fin told her.
There had been another murder while Vivian slept.
Steve Turner’s car crashed into a tree, and he was killed when he was thrown from the driver’s seat. The deputy guarding him, sitting in the passenger seat, was hurt in the crash and was taken to the hospital. The deputy was in serious, but stable condition.
Vivian asked why they thought it was a murder when it sounded like a tragic car wreck.
Fin explained that the brake lines had been cut and Steve’s seat belt was cut almost apart, and although it seemed to work, when it had to hold him in the car, it came all the way apart, and he flew through the windshield and was killed. “People knew he loved to drive that fancy go-go car and drive fast as he could.
“That’s insane. How did someone get to his car?”
“Makes you wonder. Maybe someone came up to his house at night and did it. They’re investigating it right now, and Virgil is steaming mad that someone outsmarted his team to get to the kid.”
“You’re missing information,” Deputy Watts said.
“Huh?” Fin turned.
The deputy was walking through the room with some folders and pointed to all the information Vivian had marked on and taped up so they could see it. He pointed to a column: “Missing Things.”
Fin had been busy and had forgotten to look at the information, so when Vivian came in, he had a lot to tell her. Neither had looked at it.
Vivian stood and asked, “Like what?”
“Here, you have the girls listed, and you have that Jean’s father dealt with beekeeping and extermination and removal of insects.”
“The sheriff told us that when we interviewed Jean. He mentioned it then, rather. I wrote it in because it was an interesting connection.”
“You didn’t add in anything for the other girls. Lisa Marie’s father is a mechanic and owned the service shop,” Watts said.
Vivian wrote it in and circled it, connecting it to the fact that Tommy, her boyfriend, was killed with antifreeze which was related to cars. “What about Mindy?”
“Her father does plumbing and house repairs.”
“Electrical?”
“A lot of it, actually. Hey, Terri’s father owns the salvage yard and the new car lot.”
Vivian felt her pulse racing and asked, “And Sue?”
“Her folks have the hunting place…bait…all kinds of outdoor supplies. Guns and Supplies is what the place is called. They’re hunting fanatics.”
“What about Jackie?”
Watts answered, “Her dad has the lake’s marina. He does a lot with boating. That don’t fit, huh? Noose and boats.”
Vivian thought of her best friend and fellow agent, Tina Rant. They had just solved a case not long before where this very thing came up. “Boats, lines, and tying nooses. It’s a loose fit, but it may be something.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Deputy Watts, you are brilliant. Can you do a favor for me?” she asked as she told him what she wanted, and he agreed.
The station was a mad house as agents, deputies, and the sheriff went in and out, but Vivian stayed with her papers and jotted notes. Fin helped her, making sure she was getting everything she needed and helping her plan her big show.
At exactly 4:00, all of the agents came back as they had been asked, each with a puzzled look, but Fin and Vivian refused to say a word. They had to wait.
At 4:15, the big meeting room was full of students, parents, and lawyers, all looking vexed and irritated at being called to come to the station.
Fin smiled and said, “Welcome, thank you for coming. I’d like to share a story with you.”
He began with the story of Jennie’s family, outlining her abuse and explaining that her father had been killed and that Edna Dome had admitted to the murder. “Jennie's father abused her and she caught Gonorrhea from him. We think it was only three times he abused her, which is three times too many, but this abuse happened on a tight time line. Jennie went for treatment, and Edna Dome lost control, was furious, and protective of her child, and she killed her husband. She dumped him in her pond.”
