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

kitchen, listening to music. Her laptop was open too; no emails tonight, though she kept hoping. An empty wine glass rested beside the keyboard. She wasn’t crying. But if her anxiety deepened further, the dam would break.

In the basement Byron Horton played video games with a friend, and they shouted at the television loud enough to be irritating despite the closed door.

She called to her Amazon Echo, “Alexa, turn up the volume.”

The speaker complied. The music was an old song of Byron’s.

She wrinkled her nose at the speaker. Enough of that.

“Alexa, play…The Postal Service.”

Music from her youth. A song came on and whisked her backward in time to early adolescence. A song about kissing Clark Gable that she’d sung a dozen times with her eyes closed tight in her bedroom, back when that was possible.

I want so badly to believe

That there is truth, that love is real

And I want life in every word

To the extent that it’s absurd

I know you’re wise beyond your years

But do you ever get the fear

That your perfect verse is just a lie

You tell yourself to help you get by.

Hathaway moved her lips with the words. The lyrics had passed through some refraction and sounded different now. The vast gulf between herself as a teenager and herself almost thirty, the thought of Peter Lynch leering at her, books soaring like rockets but the administration was already hiding, the cold loneliness, and suddenly life was too heavy and the dam broke and she fled to her bedroom.

Daniel Jennings’ laptop was also open. He slumped at his desk, late, researching Peter Lynch but learning little. The man was a ghost.

Jennings’ prosthesis was still attached, though it was an irritant sitting. It felt alien but it was better than nothing.

Do you ever wonder if they shot you on purpose?

Jennings had wondered that. He knew it wasn’t true, but at the moment he didn’t trust himself to lay down and think about it.

That afternoon he’d sent an email to Dean Gordon.

Mr. Gordon,

We need to inform you of an incident that took place in Ms. Hathaway’s classroom after school. Peter Lynch arrived unannounced to talk with Ms. Hathaway about hosting the holiday banquet. When Coach Murray and I stepped into the room, Mr. Lynch became irate. He cursed and threw her novels and left. His language toward her was inappropriate and his behavior bordered on abuse.

If it happens again, we will be alerting the school board of trustees and maybe the police.

I trust you will help us enforce the civility and safety our school deserves.

Daniel Jennings

Daisy Hathaway

Coach Murray

That evening, Jennings received Gordon’s reply.

Mr. Jennings,

Thank you for notifying me. Parent/teacher conferences can get heated. I’ll keep your email on file. Please let me know if you have another meeting with him and I’ll sit in.

-Gordon

Garbage. Pathetic and cowardly garbage from the school’s dean, a man in need of Lynch’s millions. More and more Jennings realized he’d get no help from the school.

The dorm had been silent for two hours but there could be no sleep for him. He clicked and skimmed until his eyes burned. His head and ribs ached from the police brutality, and his stress was a motor winding him up.

At one in the morning, yawning and irritated, he switched tactics. He quit searching Peter Lynch. Instead he typed in Francis Lynch.

His browser filled with articles and photographs. Francis was popular with the local paper and with the news stations. Just like with Peter, however, there seemed to be little personal information.

Jennings clicked until finding a photo of Francis’ investiture ceremony. Much of the bar had come out to witness his oath of office—local defenders, Salem prosecutors, and two other judges. Plus his wife. Francis, tall and stately, looked like a Transylvanian vampire wearing his robe, his black hairline forming a widow’s peak.

Peter Lynch wasn’t in the photograph.

Jennings surfed away but came back a minute later.

Something from the photo whispered at him. Look at me, look closer. He recognized many of the faces, movers and shakers around Roanoke. The photo was taken ten years ago. He found the newspaper article attached to the photo, written by Kabir Patel. Patel helpfully included the names of some faces…

That was it. Jennings latched onto a name. Buck Gibbs.

Gibbs was the man he’d met at the police station, the chief. In the photo he was listed as Detective Buck Gibbs. Jennings hadn’t recognized him because he still had hair.

Jennings leaned forward and enlarged the photograph.

Why did this bother him? Surely it wasn’t that unusual for a police detective to attend a judge’s swearing-in ceremony. He scanned the list again. Salem’s sheriff was there too.

Jennings stared until the photograph went blurry, until the figures disintegrated into grainy pixels. Stared until his eyes closed, the photograph printed into his vision.

Look at me, look at me closer.

24

Jennings returned from the track the next morning, sweating and blowing steam, to find a man standing at his door.

Jennings’ defenses dropped into place. His head still ached from the police assault, and the man before him looked like law enforcement. Tall and broad, though he dressed better than a cop. “Help you?”

The man kept his distance, hands in his jacket pockets. “Sorry for the surprise. My name’s Mackenzie August. We have a mutual friend who expressed some concern for you, and he asked me to check in.”

“Who’s our mutual friend?” said Jennings.

“Kabir Patel.”

Oh. “The reporter.”

“That’s him.”

“What’s he worried about?” said Jennings.

“Believes you’re in danger.”

Without thinking about it, Jennings’ hand rose to the bruise on the back of his skull. “How do you know Kabir?”

“He hired me to help him with an investigation, few years ago. Yesterday he called, worried you’ll get yourself killed. He says you’re looking into the same man I was.”

The alarm in Jennings’ chest began to lessen. “You’re the private detective he worked with.”

The man nodded. “You got time for coffee?”

Jennings showered and dressed, and August brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Both men drank it black.

Jennings had thirty minutes