Sharon Sala - Dark Hearts

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.

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