B00NRQWAJI (7 page)

Fiction, I could see, took up row after row of shelves toward the back of the building. Computers buzzed in their own room off the right. An arrow pointed down a sweep of wide steps to the basement and the Children’s Library. The latest periodicals ranged along a pony wall to my left. Behind that wall was Nonfiction—and if anyone were ever in need of nonfiction, it was me.

A nook in Nonfiction’s far corner bore a banner overhead. It read
LOCAL HISTORY
. I made a beeline in that direction.

Among age-old census records and yellowing telephone directories that predated the digital age and weren’t deemed interesting enough to earn a lane on the international information superhighway, I spied nearly a century’s worth of yearbooks from Fallowfield High School. Barrett was less than a handful of years older than me, so I did a little math, came up with the academic year he and Eric would’ve been seniors, and selected a volume that was twentysomething years old.

With trembling hands, I slipped the appropriate book from its shelf, flipped through its pages. I found Barrett’s graduation portrait right away. Like every kid in America, he’d fallen victim to the fashions of his time. But his spiky blond hair and skinny leather tie couldn’t cancel out the fact he’d been a good-looking boy—who’d grown into a handsome man.

At seventeen, however, with his father dead and his relocation to his grandparents’ tiny hometown fresh, Barrett’s smile was tentative. Not the starburst I knew it to be. And hurt lurked in his chocolate-brown eyes.

But did he look like a rapist?

Did anyone ever?

I searched further through the book, found candids of Barrett in his varsity baseball uniform warming up before his turn at bat, scribbling notes with a No. 2 pencil at a school newspaper meeting, and sticking his tongue out at the camera in Mrs. Millikan’s history class. If his current reading preferences were anything to go by, history must have been one of his best subjects back then. And Eric Wentz and Vance McCabe were clearly two of his best friends. In every photo of Barrett, that dynamic duo was never far away. Some yearbook scribe had even captioned one shot of them together as “The Three Musketeers.”

I recognized a seventeen-year-old Luke Rittenhaus in several photos, too. He showed up a number of times, laughing and joking with Barrett and the other boys. Even Charlotte Mead put in a regular appearance, sometimes with a gaggle of girls and sometimes with a scrawny lad identified as Calvin Mead. Her big hair and short skirts were a definite contrast to his buttoned-down oxfords and argyle sweater vests, but the two had the same round cheeks and rebellious red curls, so I guessed they were siblings.

And then there was Eric’s little sister.

I stumbled across her photo on a two-page spread, right in the center of the book. It was one of those standard headshots taken by an itinerant photographer who travels from school to school, setting up his camera and generic canvas backdrop in every stinky gym. Her first name, according to the script beneath her picture, was Pamela—and, according to the accompanying dates, she’d died that spring at age fourteen.

Eric hadn’t breathed a word about her death. Barrett hadn’t mentioned it, either. But here it was, in black and white, an undeniable fact that made my insides shudder.

The yearbook didn’t go into detail about the cause of her death. But Pamela’s schoolmates had memorialized her with plenty of flowery, adolescent poetry. It spilled all over the layout.

And reading between the lines, I got the idea.

She had killed herself.

The day her picture had been taken, however, she’d arranged her blond baby-fine hair carefully, pushing it back with a black velvet headband, and she’d dressed in a fuzzy pink sweater that flattered her childlike face as it smoothed over her new womanly figure. Hers had been a fragile beauty, but Pamela smiled serenely, confidently, into the camera with a quality that had turned waitresses into Hollywood It Girls for decades. She was an old soul, and her loss, I felt certain, was a loss to us all.

With Pamela’s face fixed firmly in my mind, I paged through the yearbook again, looking for her in spontaneous snapshots taken in class and at extracurricular events. I found her repeatedly. She was never the center of attention, however. Not like Barrett, a senior and big man on campus, or Charlotte, as riotous as a 1980s rock star. No, as a freshman, Pamela was always on the periphery. Always calm and collected when other students, like Calvin Mead for instance, were a blur of action and nervous energy.

All of this suggested how Pamela Wentz had lived. But none of it told me how she’d died. Or what she might’ve suffered along the way.

The yearbook told me nothing about Barrett’s involvement with her, either. It didn’t even hint at his alleged attack. And my Internet search on the subject had turned up zilch.

In short, if I wanted to know about Barrett’s relationship to this girl, I needed another news source. I needed a local source. And a hard one.

I hunted for the town’s own newspaper, found a rack bearing
The Fallowfield Examiner.
But the issues were current and I needed back copies. Way back.

So I headed to the library’s front desk.

Like the bridge of a ship, a combination circulation and reference desk commanded a view of the stacks from the center of the floor. But the word
desk
was a misnomer. Long-gone craftsmen had built an elegant oval workstation of the darkest hardwood. Its grandeur practically overshadowed the lone librarian working within its curve. I’d almost overlooked him, but there he was, at the end of the ellipse, shoulders rounded as he transferred returned books from a deep bin to a pushcart.

He’d filled out some since the days chronicled in the yearbook I’d studied. Apparently, he’d traded in his argyle sweater vests, too. Now he wore a crisp white shirt and a smart tweed jacket complete with suede elbow patches. A satiny wine-red handkerchief peeped from the jacket’s breast pocket. The look was savvy and sophisticated—and a far cry from the fashion choices the other local men at the Apple Blossom Café made.

“Excuse me,” I whispered, though my voice still seemed to boom in the library’s quiet. “You’re Calvin Mead, aren’t you?”

The librarian abandoned his books, smiled at me as he ran a hand through his unruly auburn hair. “Guilty as charged. Do we know each other?”

“No. But I met your sister, Charlotte, this morning.”

“Ah, you must be Jamie, Adam Barrett’s friend.”

Friend
seemed to be an overstatement at the moment, but I didn’t want to go into all that.

“Actually,” I told him, “I’m a private investigator.”

“Really? Char didn’t mention that.” He smiled again. “You see, news travels fast in Fallowfield, especially when it comes to strangers.”

Being the stranger in question, I didn’t like that fact at all. But I was determined to make the most of it. “I’m interested in news. Old news, to be precise. Do you have back copies of the
Examiner
on microfilm?”

“No, there’s no room in our budget for that. We’ve kept actual copies of the paper, though, since 1833. They’re in the basement. I’ll show you.”

I followed Calvin down a set of sweeping marble steps, across the deserted children’s area, and through a door marked
STAFF ONLY
. Behind it was a long, skinny room built of concrete and claustrophobia. Cardboard file box after cardboard file box gathered dust on industrial-gray shelves the length and breadth of the place. My guide led me to one shelf in particular, grabbed a box positioned high above my head, and pulled it down for me. The dates on the end of it corresponded perfectly to the year Pamela had been attacked and died.

“You’ll find everything you want to know in here,” Calvin said, “and then some.”

I swallowed hard, afraid he might be right. “How do you know I want the information in this box?”

“Because,” he said, not unkindly, “you’re Adam’s friend.”

The librarian left me alone then, with old newspapers and the past.

I lifted the top from the container, was met by the acrid scent of harsh ink and stale newsprint. If the Fallowfield Public Library didn’t come up with the funds to preserve these papers on microfilm soon, they and every word on their broad pages would be lost to time and chemistry. But as I sifted through edition after edition, I began to believe that that might be a good thing.

The papers were arranged in chronological order. And since Pamela had died in the spring, it didn’t take me long to find the first disturbing headline. Much too soon, there it was, on the front page of the April 9 issue.

Local Girl Sexually Assaulted

At 7:23
A.M.
, sheriff’s deputies responded to a call at a location off Hawthorn Road, where a teenage boy reported finding his younger sister in the creek bed bordering Barrett Orchards and the farm of Marty Wentz. The girl had sustained numerous abrasions and contusions. Her nightgown had been removed from her and has not been recovered. She was transported to Fallowfield Memorial Hospital, where she was treated and released. Sheriff Bowker states his investigation is ongoing.

Pamela Wentz hadn’t been named as the victim, of course—at least, not in this initial report. But the rest of the facts were there. And despite the dispassionate language the reporter had used, my stomach ached as I read them.

But Pamela’s name wasn’t withheld forever. Three days later, on April 12, the
Examiner
announced Pamela Wentz, age fourteen, had been found hanging by the neck in a barn behind her family’s farmhouse shortly after dawn. The coroner ruled her death a suicide—and cited her April 9 rape as a possible motivator.

This unleashed a maelstrom of stories chronicling the community’s shock and outrage. Weepy high school girls, who couldn’t profess to being actual friends with Pamela before her death, recounted sweet remembrances of the freshman. Upright citizens ranted about kids’ coursing hormones, heavy underage drinking, overprivileged teen athletes, and inattentive parents. And someone in the Sheriff’s Office was credited with leaking a list of boys who’d been brought in for questioning about Pamela’s assault.

The paper printed them all.

And I saw Barrett’s name in black and white.

The paper’s secret source wasn’t afraid to say why he’d made the list. DNA testing was still in the early stages of development back then, but according to the reporter’s informant, a saliva sample had been lifted from Pamela’s mouth. It had matched Barrett’s DNA perfectly.

And that revelation twisted me into knots.

Then, in the April 15 edition, there was this little gem, published as an anonymous letter to the
Examiner’s
editor:

Dear Editor:

When are the people of this town going to wise up? What will it take before we see justice done? Does another Fallowfield girl have to get hurt? Adam Barrett may be the grandson of two so-called pillars of this community, but he wasn’t born here, he wasn’t raised here, and everyone knows things like this didn’t happen before he came here. The sheriff keeps pulling him in for questioning. It’s time we the people demand Sheriff Bowker step up to the plate and lock this boy away.

But Barrett was never arrested. And in a news conference on April 21, the sheriff cautioned citizens against jumping to conclusions. That didn’t stop the good people of Fallowfield from taking matters into their own hands, however.

On May Day, the paper reported, an angry mob marched on the Barretts’ place after dark. Some carried flashlights. Others carried torches. Those folks touched off a blaze in a corncrib. And set fire to the house itself.

The family lived to tell about it, but Neville Barrett—who I took to be Barrett’s grandfather—had been treated for smoke inhalation. Elise and Miranda were treated for shock. The fire chief was quoted as saying the property damage was relatively minor—but I figured that was a matter of perspective.

In any case, I found I couldn’t stomach reading any more after that.

I packed the papers away and, upstairs, searched out Calvin Mead at his post behind the circulation desk. He was repairing the spine of a book that had seen better days. Keeping my voice low so as not to disturb a pair of little of old ladies fingering an encyclopedia at a reading table, I thanked him for his help.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

“Some of it,” I said, “but not all of it.”

He nodded, plucked a business card from an ornate brass holder alongside a stack of books.

“These are our hours.” He offered the card to me. “And you know where we are if you need more assistance.”

I muttered more thanks, shoved the card in my pocket, and left.

By the time I turned into Miranda Barrett’s driveway, the sun had dipped behind the cheery scarecrow standing in the midst of his straw bales. But if the cars parked outside the combination greenhouse/gift shop were anything to go by, Barrett’s grandmother was still doing a brisk business even this late in the day. And after all I’d read about the townspeople storming her home like angry villagers in some sick
American Gothic
/
Frankenstein
mash-up over twenty years ago, I was glad to see some of them made no bones about contributing to her livelihood now.

Steering clear of the congestion in front of the barn, I parked by the garage on a patch of bare earth. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to cut the engine. Briefly, I considered sneaking into the house, snagging my suitcase, and hightailing it back to Washington without another word to anyone bearing the last name of Barrett.

But I wasn’t a quitter.

And I wasn’t a coward.

I’d face Barrett and whatever the truth might be. So I got out of my car. And that’s when I spied Barrett himself, elbows propped on the rail outside the garage’s second-story apartment. He didn’t hail me or offer any kind of hello. But in my heart of hearts, I knew: Adam Barrett was waiting to talk to me.

Chapter 7