Shattered Justice

For the rest of the morning, Parks worked the militia angle and conducted phone interviews with Bannock’s work buddies, while I interviewed teachers. Most of them could remember one boy or the other, but no connection between them. I requested a roster for that summer school class and began calling students. Not many of them remembered Walker and Bannock. I checked out Hughie Black’s school days, and his family hadn’t even lived in the state back then, so that was a relief. I looked deeper into Mrs. Handie, too, but didn’t find much other than that she was a crazy woman with a stuffed cat and poor cleaning habits.

Late that afternoon, Parks and I teamed up to go through the yearbooks together. We were in the department conference room, Wilco napping under the table and a half-dozen McCreary High yearbooks spread between us. Bannock was a year ahead of Walker, so we had five years to cover. We’d done a quick check to see if they were on any teams or did other organized activities together. No luck there. Now we were looking at the candid pictures to see if any included both boys.

Parks looked over at me and sighed. “That cat was creepy.”

“It was.” Some people are just plain nuts about their animals.. . . I looked down at my own dog.

I was nuts about my dog.

Parks continued, “I don’t know if we can believe anything she said.”

“At least we have a connection.” I hesitated, then said, “Today at Mrs. Handie’s place, you said you never took senior English.”

“No. I didn’t make it that far in school.”

“But you’re a cop. You must’ve—”

She picked up one of the books and flipped the pages, slid it my way. “Second row. Brace face.”

I skimmed the page, landed on a younger version of Parks, thinner, with permed hair and braces. “Wow. That hair.”

She giggled. “I know. Can’t believe we did that to ourselves then.”

I didn’t. Wanted to, though. But Gran and Gramps had always said the money was better spent elsewhere. “So, what happened?”

“My girl happened, that’s what. I was a sophomore. We’d just moved here from Asheville, North Carolina.”

“That must’ve been hard.”

I slid the yearbook back. “So you didn’t know Walker and Bannock?”

“I didn’t know anybody. I was in school for only a month before I started showing. Just long enough to get a yearbook picture taken. The father was back in Asheville. Mama home-schooled me, and then I got my GED and went to community college.”

“That’s when you met John?”

“Yup. He’s been the best daddy ever. To both the kids.” Something flashed in her eyes then. Regret? The nausea and the tiredness, maybe it wasn’t what I thought, but something else. I reached for a book in the stack next to Parks. “Hey, Parks. Are you—”

“I’ve gone through those already.” She pushed the stack aside.

“Thought I’d just do a double check,” I said. We’d been at it for a couple hours, and so far nothing.

Parks marked her current page and glanced at the wall clock. “That does it for me.”

“Heading home?”

“It’s after five, and hubby gets all hangry if I push dinner off for too long.” She picked up the stack of books. “I’ll take these and go over them again tonight.” She headed toward the door, a slight limp still, and stopped. Jake stood in the doorway. The two of them squared off for a second; then Parks dipped her head and shuffled by.

Jake let her pass. “Yearbooks?” He walked in and looked over my shoulder.

“We found a connection between Walker and Bannock,” I said. “They were in the same summer school English class. That would have been the year before Bannock graduated. We interviewed the teacher. She says they were friends. Pranksters was her word. We’re trying to see if they’re pictured together or maybe with someone else. We figure if there’s going to be a third victim soon, we’d like to get to that person before the perp does.”

“Get anything from the girlfriend yet?”

“Nikki? No. Not much. She’s in bad shape.” I scanned the next set of photos and got distracted by a picture of a long-legged girl wearing a super-short miniskirt. And people think our young Pavee girls dress provocatively. I squinted closer. Oh, I knew this girl, well, a woman now; she was married and lived a few trailers down from me. Okay, guess we Pavees do have a noticeable style. I flipped to the next page. “What brings you by, anyway?”

He smiled. “I was driving by and saw your car in the lot. Thought I’d pop in and see if you wanted to go for dinner.”

“Tempting. And thanks, but I want to finish this.” I moved on to the next page. Pink balloons, glitzy dresses, twisted streamers looped from the ceiling, boys in tuxes, with dirty thoughts on their minds. Candids from prom. Glad I had skipped mine.

“You have to eat, Brynn.”

“Uh-huh. There’s a vending machine down the hall.”

“I can do better than that. I’ll get takeout and be back. Give me fifteen.”

I shrugged and turned the page.