Sunken Graves, Alan Lee [all ebook reader .txt] 📗

answer but she’d hang up if he stepped wrong.

He said, “In my head, there’s a bunch of…not lesser crimes, but crimes society is willing to look beyond. But they all matter, Ms. Carson. People are getting hurt. Multiple people. And it adds up to…to something that should change.”

“Who is getting hurt? Do you know?”

“He’s making unwanted advances on my colleague. He’s threatening someone else’s career. He beats his kids. He hurt you.”

“That’s all you know? You’re describing most white oppressive assholes in our country,” she said.

“He molests children. Or at least one child. That in itself is enough.”

“He does a lot more than that, Dan. You didn’t research thoroughly enough.”

A shock to his system, like mild electrocution. “What else is there?”

“I’m not talking about this, remember?”

“Ms. Carson, you just told me—”

“Modern Monsters.”

“What?”

“The Modern Monsters podcast. Look it up before you decide to stick your neck out. That’s a trip down a fucking rabbit hole you might not come out of.”

Jennings repeated the name under his breath. And again so he’d remember it. Modern Monsters.

“I’m not making any accusations, hear me, Dan? We’re just chatting. You can’t use any of this against me, and I’m only letting it slip because you’re being respectful. And there’s one more thing. Find Kabir Patel.”

“Who is Kabir Patel?”

“It probably won’t do you much good. You can try. Good luck, hot history teacher. Please don’t call me again. I suffered enough for my sonofabitch step-father.”

She hung up.

Jennings’ truck didn’t move for the next hour and he eventually turned the engine off to save gas.

He surfed on his phone.

Modern Monsters was a podcast that ran for nine months, one episode per month, detailing sordid crimes that were unsolved or ‘inappropriately’ solved, calling attention to miscarriages of justice or corruption in law enforcement. Listeners also enjoyed Serial and the Casefile True Crime podcast. After only nine episodes, Modern Monsters had eight thousand positive ratings. The episodes ended abruptly three years ago. None of the episodes were about Peter Lynch or Kelly Carson.

The creator of Modern Monsters was a man named Donald Blair. He lived in upstate New York in a town called Plattsburgh and he was missing. His disappearance had been exhaustively covered by Press Republican, the newspaper in Plattsburgh. Blair vanished without a trace soon after the ninth episode of his podcast had been released. A website was built and dedicated to tracking him down, along with a GoFundMe to raise money for private detectives, but there’d been no activity on the website for over a year.

Modern Monsters and Donald Blair.

A rabbit hole you might not come out of.

Kabir Patel was easier to find. He was a journalist and his name was attached to some of the articles about Peter Lynch that had been deleted. By clicking enough, Jennings could find the journalist’s name but not the text. Kabir Patel was now writing for a newspaper in Richmond.

Jennings wrote the man an email from an old burner account.

Mr. Patel, I’m curious why many of your articles on Peter Lynch are no longer online? That’s a story that should be more thoroughly documented, isn’t it?

He clicked send without using his name and immediately after his phone blinked off, battery exhausted.

Jennings glanced around, experiencing the sensation that Peter Lynch could be leering at him through the window. But he was alone. He started the engine and the dash clock informed him he’d missed dinner at the dining hall, so he went for Chipotle.

He returned to the dormitory carrying the bag of hot food. The dark Academy walkways were dotted with landscaping lanterns. Despite the chill, boys played three-on-three basketball on the lighted outdoor court. Most students watched movies or played video games in their rooms.

Jennings unlocked his door and went in.

No warm air greeted him. His suite was cold, the same temperature as outside. He forgot to set the thermostat?

Clicked on the lights.

His bedroom window was smashed, letting in the atmosphere through the jagged wound. Dammit. Shards of glass glinted on his bed. He stepped closer and kicked something with his shoe.

Jennings set down his food, feeling ill.

He’d kicked a brick. On one side of the brick, a note was attached. On the other side was a dead animal. Both the note and the animal were held in place with rubber bands.

He nudged the grisly thing with his toe. The squirrel’s neck and skull looked crushed, like it’d been stomped to death. Jennings fetched two trash bags from the kitchen and used them as makeshift gloves to detach the squirrel, still fresh. Bulging eyes watched him do it. He sealed the carcass inside a bag and washed his hands.

He pinched the note’s edges with his fingertips to open and read it.

I saw you at the football game.

Standing with the lonely and lovely Ms. Hathaway.

She does NOT belong to YOU, Staff Sergeant

Time to find a new career, DANIEL, or you CAN GO TO HELL.

No signature. The note was penned in blocky handwriting. By the end, the letters were slashes and hard to read, like the author grew more and more agitated as he wrote.

Lonely and lovely Ms. Hathaway.

Daniel.

Peter Lynch threw a dead animal through my window to warn me away from Daisy Hathaway. Good grief.

The man was insane.

Jennings laid down the note, carefully. The author would have left fingerprints.

Do you believe in evil, Dan? Is a person evil?

Craig Lewis in his ear. He’d been warned.

He returned to his truck. He looked in every direction to ensure he was alone and he reached into the rear of the cab for the bag. He ran back and closed the door to his suite.

He set his grandfather’s shotgun, the Browning, in the corner. Unloaded, still zipped up. Two boxes of shells—one box of target loads, one box of 00 buckshot for hunting—he put into his sock drawer. As soon as he cleaned up the glass shards he’d decide where to stow the weapon. A shotgun on campus wasn’t ideal. But Jennings wanted to play it safe.

He’d attracted the attention