Authors: Thomas Fincham
Hyder proceeded to explain who her father was and what happened to him.
When he finished she put her hand over her mouth, “
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji un
.” (
Surely we belong to God and to Him we shall return
.
)
It was a verse from the Holy Quran that was recited by Muslims upon hearing of a death. “That poor girl, I had no idea,” his mother said. “I had heard you mention Professor Freeland many times. Didn’t we meet him at your convocation?”
“Yes, we did.”
“Let me go and hug that poor child.” With that she was gone.
Hyder went over to the sink and filled a glass with water. He gulped it down.
Mothers,
he thought.
They are so emotional. One minute they are berating you and the next minute they are cuddling you. Go figure.
He went out and found his mom sitting next to Jessica.
“Are you hungry?” his mom said to her. “You are staying for dinner, right?”
Jessica looked over at Hyder as if to say,
Am I?
“Yes, mom,
but
we have a lot of work to do first.”
THIRTY-ONE
Nolan woke up in a cold sweat. He pulled off the bed sheet and sat on the edge of the bed.
He rested his face in his palms but refused to shut his eyes.
The incident had appeared to him again. Like many times before, it had come in the form of a nightmare.
He reached across and grabbed a bottle. He didn’t care what was inside it, only that there was enough of it to soothe his pain.
He took a swig and felt the liquid burn the back of his throat and numb his mind.
Whenever he did not know how to cope, he reached for it. He had come to rely on it. It was now his best friend, a friend that was both helping and killing him.
He threw the bottle across the room. He got up and went for his gun. He cocked the hammer and placed the muzzle in his mouth.
All he had to do was pull the trigger to end his suffering.
His hand began to tremble and he began to sob. Hot tears covered his entire face.
He felt like a coward for not going through with it. He had tried to commit suicide many times before, but in the end, he didn’t have the guts to go through with it.
He dropped the gun and curled up into a ball.
The pain was a constant reminder of what he had lost. It had seeped through every cell of his body, leaving him a shell of his former self.
He thought about his life and what it had become after the tragic event. It definitely wouldn’t have involved him crying on his bedroom floor.
He lifted himself up and slowly went over to the dresser. Women’s make-up and jewelry were neatly placed on top of it as if it had not been touched in over a year. It hadn’t.
In the middle was a small box. On top of it were two rings. One belonged to him and the other to his wife.
Simone Helen Nolan was not even thirty when her car was involved in a horrific crash on the freeway. Her SUV had slammed into an oncoming truck, after the truck had been involved in a collision with another vehicle.
She was five months pregnant
.
Nolan kissed her ring and held it tight in his hand.
The tighter he held it the more he felt like he was holding her.
But this was not true. She was gone, leaving behind this object that was once a sign of their love.
Nolan remembered what he was doing when he had found out.
He was in bed, the same bed he had just woken up in.
It was early morning and he was fast asleep when he received the call. Simone was on her way to work when the accident had happened.
She worked at the department of social services. A job she loved and was devoted to. But more than that, she was looking forward to taking time off. She wanted to spend it with their
daughter
.
Once they had found out it would be a girl they had started work on a nursery. They had already painted the walls pink and were in the process of filling it with furniture. They were even supposed to go shopping for baby clothes on the day of the accident.
Now the nursery, along with the furniture, lay covered in dust.
Nolan didn’t have the heart to go in there. It brought back too many memories of what could have been.
When he had received the call he didn’t believe it at first. They were lying, he had told them. They probably mistook him for someone else. But they confirmed his name and address.
The drive to the accident scene was a blur. He couldn’t remember much of it and was glad for it. He was probably in shock. He kept telling himself that this didn’t happen to people like him, it happened to others.
But it did happen and it changed his life for the worse.
When he reached his destination, what he saw was forever etched in his memory.
The SUV had been crushed from the front end. There was zero possibility the driver inside could have survived.
Nolan was asked to identify the victim.
He wished he didn’t have to. It was his wife, and she was dead.
From that moment on, Tom Nolan had stopped wanting to live anymore. There was no point to his life.
While he didn’t have the courage to end it, he wished the alcohol or someone else would.
THIRTY-TWO
Jessica left her apartment with a mission on her mind.
The previous night she and Hyder had spent several hours in his basement going over the student records taken from the university. They had started from the earliest years and worked forward.
Her dad had taught for almost twenty years, which meant there were thousands of students who were in his class.
Luckily, for Hyder and Jessica knew who they were searching for. They focused their efforts on students with the initials JVL.
The letters J and L was very common, but not the middle letter V.
They then conducted a search online to see if any of the people with those initials were still living in the city. This narrowed their search to seven names:
James Vincent Lowry
Jennifer Valerie Little
Janice Voila Landon
Jonathan Vess Lanham
Jasmine Vicky Johnson
Jacob Volker Lett
James Vander Lee
Jessica had taken the first three names on the list while Hyder took the remaining ones. Jessica wasn’t sure what to expect when she met them. Would they deny ever knowing who her father was? Would they even be the person they were looking in the first place? And, would they be willing to go on record to prove there was a conspiracy that included murder?
There were a lot of ‘ifs’ but she had no choice. She had to forge ahead. She had to prove—at least to herself—that her dad’s death was not in vain.
Someone had killed her dad because her dad was close to finding out the truth. What was this truth?
It was up to Jessica to find out.
Hyder and Jessica had at first thought to call the names on the list, but soon they decided against it. What if the person they were looking for refused to even answer their call? Even if they did, Hyder and Jessica would never know if they were telling the truth. The best approach was to meet them face to face. They could decipher from their body movements whether they were being honest or not.
They also wanted to put a face to the initials.
Jessica took the bus to the first address.
The house was located in a nice neighborhood. It was surrounded by a wall with a giant metal gate in the front.
Jessica pressed the buzzer and waited. A few seconds later a female voice said, “Yes?”
“Hi, I’m looking for Mr. James Lowry. Does he live here?” Jessica said.
“He does. What’s this about?” the woman said.
“Can I speak to him, please?”
There was a pause. “Wait.”
A minute later a man came out of the house. Jessica spotted a young woman holding a baby by the front door. The woman was looking in her direction suspiciously.
The man had salt and pepper hair and he immediately unlocked the gate.
“I’m James Lowry,” he said.
“Mr. Lowry, were you a student of Professor Eric Freeland’s at the University of Franklin?”
Lowry’s face was hard. “I was. How did you know?”
Jessica was prepared for such a question. She couldn’t possibly tell him that they had found his name on stolen university records.
She had to bluff and hoped that it worked. “We saw your name on the university’s alumni list and we wanted to speak to you.”
“Alright,” he said, crossing his arms.
The next question would give Jessica the indication whether this was the person she was looking for. “We wanted to let you know that Professor Freeland was dead.”
Lowry’s face didn’t soften. “So? What’s it got to do with me?”
Jessica wasn’t expecting that response but kept going. “We were creating a web page devoted to him and we wanted to get some quotes from his students to put on there.”
Lowry shrugged. “I don’t mind saying something about him, but I’m a busy man. It would have been better if you had called instead.”
He provided some generic lines. When he was finished, Jessica said, “Where do you work, Mr. Lowry?”
“Is that important?” he said.
“It would be nice to put underneath the quote, to show what Professor Freeland’s students had become.”
Lowry sighed. “Okay, whatever. I’m the owner and CEO of Lowry Paper Mills. Are we done?”
“Yes, thank you.”
As Jessica left, she crossed out James Vincent Lowry’s name. Lowry wasn’t the person they were looking for.
THIRTY-THREE
Hyder sat in the office of Jonathan Vess Lanham. Lanham was in his early thirties, but he looked like he was ten years younger. He was portly, with no signs of any facial hair. Lanham was the marketing director for an ad agency.
Hyder had gone through the same routine as Jessica, informing Lanham of the death of Professor Freeland.
When he was about to tell Lanham the reason he was there Lanham broke down in tears. The man sobbed so uncontrollably that Hyder felt like getting up and giving the poor man a hug. Hyder offered him tissues instead, which he took and blew his nose loudly with.
To Hyder’s relief his cell phone rang. He politely excused himself and answered it out in the hallway.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hyder, it’s Dunny,” his editor said.
Hyder’s back tensed. He had never received a call from Dunny before. Was he in trouble? Was she calling to fire him?
“Yes?” Hyder barely said.
“You know the story you told me about your Professor… well, I want you to drop it.”
“Why?” Hyder said.
“I don’t think we should be using our valuable resources on a phishing expedition. Plus, Veronica had already printed the story on his suicide.”
“But what about the pages he sent to me from his diary?”
“Hyder,” Dunny’s voice became stern. “We are not the police. We don’t investigate a crime, we report it. If you feel your professor was murdered, then you need to speak to the authorities.”
“I did,” Hyder said.
“And?”
Hyder sighed. “They thought it was a suicide.”
“Exactly. So drop it. We need something we can print now. I’ve got another story for you to follow.”
Hyder listened. There was a dispute between two neighbors and Hyder had to get quotes from both of them.
When he hung up, he felt sick to his stomach. How was he going to explain this to Jessica?
He wouldn’t, he decided. After speaking to the neighbors, he would continue going down the names on his list.
He was certain Jonathan Vess Lanham was not the person who was somehow involved in Professor Freeland’s death, however.
Lanham was still sobbing when Hyder re-entered his office and politely excused himself.
THIRTY-FOUR
Jennifer Valerie Little lived in a two bedroom condo on the south side of the city, near the waterfront.
Right away Jessica knew Little was not the person she was searching for.
There was no possible way a mother of two, aged three and nine months, could have been involved in corruption, bribery, and even murder.
Little was a stay at home mom who spent most of her day tending to her children.
Unlike Lowry, Little had read about Freeland’s death in the newspapers and she was deeply saddened by it. She wished she could have gone to the funeral, but it was just not possible with the children.