Dark Hearts (6 page)

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

S
am 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 when 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.

Glen Sherman was asking everyone who walked past him if they would give him an interview, but no one was talking.

Trey and Sam were the last to exit, and Trey saw Sherman heading straight for him just as his phone rang. He spoke briefly to the caller. “I'm on my way,” he said, and then grabbed Sam's arm. “I've got an emergency. I'll talk to you later.”

Sam nodded.

Glen Sherman frowned. “Is there anything either one of you would like to say?” he asked.

Sam paused. “I guess there's one thing that was said in the meeting that needs to be repeated.”

Sherman pressed a button on his cell phone to record the statement, and then held it close to Sam. “Go ahead,” he said.

“We'll find out the truth whether someone helps us or not, and when we do, whoever is keeping secrets to protect the killer is going to wind up in prison for aiding and abetting a murderer.”

“Thank you,” Glen said, and then he added, “You know, Betsy was real proud of you. She talked about all her kids all the time, but she had a special place in her heart for you, I think.”

Sam was shocked, listening in disbelief as Glen continued.

“She always said you were most like Justin, and you know how much she loved your daddy. She said you took on more burdens than you needed to in an effort to protect everyone you loved. Anyway...thanks for the statement.” With that, he hurried back toward the newspaper office.

Sam watched him go, trying to find the impetus to move.

* * *

Lainey drove home in a daze, barely aware of the tiny snowflakes that were beginning to fall. She'd dropped the diaries in the officer's hands and left City Hall on the run, pushing her way through the crowd outside, ignoring their comments and stares. Right now it hurt to breathe, and tears kept blurring her vision.

He'd finally come home—ten years late, but he was here. Sam. Her Sam. He'd gone away a boy and come home some kind of warrior. He scared her, and at the same time she thought she would die from the pain of wanting him. Damn him to hell and back for quitting her like he did. All these years she'd thought she was over him, and right now she felt as if she'd suffered a beating.

The snow was falling a little heavier by the time she got home. She drove into the garage, and then went inside, upping the thermostat as she went to her room to change. She wanted warmer clothing, and turned on the light in her closet so she could see to find what she wanted from the cedar chest.

She sorted through the folded sweaters and winter slacks until she found the sweatshirt she was looking for and began to pull it out. But it was hung up on something, and she stopped before it made a hole in the fabric. The moment she realized it was caught on the corner of a picture frame, her heart sank. She knew which picture it was and remembered all too well packing it away. It was the height of irony that this would happen today of all days.

She pulled it out and stared.

It was a picture of her and Sam taken only days before he'd left for boot camp. They had been on a picnic down at the family pond with Trey and Dallas. She could still hear Dallas's giggles as she kept telling Sam to stand still. As usual, he had ignored what she said and swooped Lainey up into his arms just as the picture was snapped. Lainey's feet were up, her head was falling back against his arm and she was reaching for him with one hand, thinking he was going to drop her. And she was laughing.

Lainey kept staring at her face, remembering the joy. Then she noticed Sam's expression, and it broke her heart. He was looking at her with so much love.

Her heart was pounding now, and it hurt to even breathe.

Damn that war.

Damn Sam Jakes for not trusting her love.

She rolled over on her side, pulling the shirt and the photo against her like a pillow, and cried herself to sleep.

* * *

The killer was anxious and trying to hide it. Knowing that the police were slowly putting clues together was nerve-racking, and learning about Billie Conway's diaries had been a shocker. Definitely not something he had expected or prepared for. His only saving grace was that they were focused on one angle while he was coming from another. If he could just silence Trina Jakes, his troubles would be over, and he had an idea for how to make that happen.

* * *

Sam stepped out of the hospital elevator and into the lobby with a heavy heart. It was getting dark, and the snow was falling faster now. It was close to Thanksgiving, but a little early for this kind of weather.

Trina was no better, but she was also no worse.

He'd stood at her bedside watching her breathe until he couldn't take it any longer, and seeing the way Lee was with her made him realize something else. Lee was there regardless of the consequences of her condition.
He
needed to be with
her
. He needed to know in his heart that he was doing all he could to give her strength and courage to fight her way back to them, while
he
had never given Lainey that chance.

When he had returned stateside, he'd been so hurt in mind and body that he had mentally crawled into a shell. He'd lied to himself, believing no one would want anything to do with him. It wasn't so much that he'd feared she would be disgusted by his wounds. It was more about how disgusted he had been with himself. And now here they were, ten years later, and because of him, they were still in limbo.

He walked out into the snow, heading for his car. He hadn't eaten any dinner, but he wasn't hungry, either. All he wanted was a shower and a bed. Maybe he could sleep away some of this heartache.

The drive to the motel was brief. He pulled around back, parking beneath one of the security lights, and when he got out, the snow swirled around him like bugs swarming beneath a streetlight. He ducked his head and made a run for the door. Once inside his room, he shed his hat and coat, kicked off his boots, got his handgun from the suitcase and stretched out on the bed. He laid his phone on his belly and turned on the television, and within minutes he had fallen asleep.

* * *

“What's Mama doing?”

Sam frowned at his little brother. “Shh. She'll hear us.”

Trey leaned closer to Sam's ear and whispered, “But what's she doing?”

Sam was watching their mama put two boxes up on the top shelf in her closet. He knew she was hiding their Christmas presents. He'd found out a couple of years ago that Mom and Dad were really Santa, but Trey was younger and still believed, so he wasn't going to tell.

They watched her step away from the closet, and when she shut the door it squeaked loudly. The boys jumped at the unexpected noise, and then, fearing they had been found out, they hightailed it back to their room and into bed. They heard her coming down the hall, and when she peeked in on them moments later they were bunched up beneath the covers in their usual places, seemingly dead to the world.

* * *

A loud squeak sounded outside Sam's motel room, and he sat up with a jerk and grabbed his gun, ready to shoot whoever was coming in the door. And then he realized the squeak was from the wheels of someone's suitcase being rolled past his room. It was five minutes after 4:00 a.m., and he'd come close to shooting someone.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, then set the gun aside and shoved his hands through his hair. He heard the heating unit come on and realized the room was chilly, so he got out of bed, turned up the heat a little and looked out to see if it was still snowing, which it wasn't, and then headed for the bathroom.

When he came back, he took off his jeans and shirt and got between the covers. He tried to go back to sleep, but he couldn't get the dream out of his head and tried to remember what she'd hidden. He thought it was new cowboy boots for the both of them but wasn't sure. He hadn't thought of that night in years and chalked it up to coming back to Mystic. That was resurrecting all kinds of memories.

He rolled onto his side and pulled the covers up over his shoulders and closed his eyes. And as he did, he remembered the expression he'd seen on Lainey's face in the courtroom. She hated him. He didn't blame her. But he had to talk to her. Tomorrow. He would do it tomorrow. No, it was already tomorrow. He didn't know where she lived, but that was no problem. He found people for a living. He could surely find her, too.