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

from their law schools and the Lynch brothers are remembered as unusually brilliant and angry. Country boys in a desperate hurry to shake off their past, to become gentlemen. Peter married during law school, quite young, and I was told he jumped at the first woman who showed interest. Francis obviously refused to cooperate with my investigation. I know little about him.

There was a summary of Peter Lynch’s life starting at college, including his marriages and disbarment, to his recent history with details about large land purchases in north Roanoke County, but Jennings already knew most of it.

Jennings laid down the paper. Good grief, who could tamper with foster records? Someone who was willing to be bought. Or intimidated.

Everyone had something to lose if they stood up to him.

Kelly Carson would lose her financial payments.

Kabir Patel would lose his job. So would Coach Murray.

His head still spinning, Jennings picked up the sandwich. Decided he didn’t want it and set it back down.

“Um.” He pinched at the bridge of his nose and took a breath. Remembered what he was doing. “Do you think he could be a sociopath?”

“I do not know. His anger issues are well documented.”

“Do you know anything about Mod…about a podcast?”

Patel handed him the final paper and the hair along Jennings’ neck raised to press against his collar.

I had to quit my investigation when I ran out of time and money. In a final act of defiance, I alerted a podcast called Modern Monsters about the Lynch scandal. I could no longer pursue it, but the podcast could because it operated anonymously. Or I thought they did. The podcast producer began doing research, following some of my leads, including Kelly Carson. The final message I received from Modern Monsters was signed by Donald Blair, the producer. He thanked me and said he was meeting with a source, the biggest piece to the whole puzzle and the podcast would be ready soon after. Then nothing. Blair quit responding. I looked him up a month later only to discover he was missing.

It is my belief that Peter Lynch killed Donald Blair. Or had someone else do it. The ‘source’ was a trap.

Make no mistake, I’m suggesting murder. There is zero evidence implicating Peter Lynch—believe me, we looked. But it’s not a coincidence. Blair is dead because of Lynch. It’s not the first missing person Lynch could be linked to. We dug deep enough into his time in California to discover he was suspected in the death of a young woman and the disappearance of two more, but nothing came of it. The young woman had been found buried. Her ears were ripped and she had a hook through her mouth. But there was not enough evidence to even charge Lynch, much less convict him.

Now you know why I live in fear. I half-expect to disappear any moment.

I will not come forward with this information until Peter Lynch is in custody. I have a baby now, and another on the way.

You MUST be very careful. There is more going on than I could discover. Lynch has powerful friends I could not find.

Jennings laid the paper on top of the others. The word murder was screaming at him. A hook through her mouth.

Patel said, “That is all I will share. Anything else would implicate me. Are you finished?”

Jennings felt like he was falling. He nodded. “I’m finished.”

“What is your goal, sir, may I ask?”

“I’m not positive. I suppose…justice. Safety for my colleagues. Safety for his children.”

“We do not live in a safe world, I find.” Patel collected the stack. He stuffed them into his bag and he stood. Dropped a twenty beside his empty plate. “Or a just one. A pleasure meeting you, sir. And good luck.”

Patel walked out.

17

Jennings woke before the sun.

This morning his alarm clock was the pounding of his heart, an alarm he couldn’t quiet. He stared at the black ceiling, sweating. Within a minute, despite the mental meditative exercises, he was gasping for oxygen. There’d been no nightmare, not that he could recall, but the dead howled between his ears just the same. A malaise of anxiety descended like a fog.

He knew what came next. Headaches and then nausea.

Jennings didn’t want to move. He wanted to curl up and wait. The anxiety hurt. But he’d lived with the episodes for a year, knew the enemy required his inaction to thrive.

He counted backward from ten, out loud, and moved on two. Scrambled for his running prosthesis. His muscles protested and the air stung him. He needed the reassuring weight anchoring his knee.

“You’re good,” he whispered. “You’re good, you’re good, you’re good. You got this.”

Clicked on the light. Avoided looking in the mirror. Tugged on a shirt and shorts.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

He shoved his right foot into a Nike.

He flung open the door and ran stiffly from the haunted apartment. Ran from the anxiety. Reached the track, the sky showing a rim of pink to the east. He ran in the thirty-four degree chill, his sweat like ice. One lap, two laps, fighting the earth, he left behind the headache. Three laps, four laps, settling into the gait, he kept pumping and he left behind the nausea. Outrunning the gravel of Afghanistan.

The ninth lap he walked. Hands on his hips, oxygenating. Ignore the knee throb. Ignore the panic.

He ran another mile, the farthest total distance he’d gone in two years, the farthest since his third year in the Army, and relief flooded him as the cross-country team arrived, lead by Chad Riddle, the coach. People. They called to him, Mr. Jennings! And he knew he would survive. He walked another lap in the rich company of other humans and it healed him.

Damn it, he told himself. Damn it, that was a close one.

He hobbled home, soaked with sweat and dew. His apartment held no terror, the ghosts exorcised. He left the front door open, just in case, and he started the coffee.

Jennings left his classroom