“Kids make suicide pacts all the time. You read about it on the news,” D-Ray interjected. “It’s not that rare.”
“No, it’s not. But we need to make sure that’s what we are dealing with,” the chief said. “Keep on it, all of you. I want this resolved. If these kids had a suicide pact, dammit, I want you to find it.”
And bury it right alongside their bodies.
No one wanted to think that their community held a secret that led to teen suicides. But a murderer would be even worse. A serial murderer who couldn’t be stopped because they were too busy looking at suicides.
Even though you all know that’s not what’s happening.
“Chief? I think you’re a damned smart man,” Sam said, “And I think you know, just like I know, that these aren’t suicides or some suicide pact. Gage is right. It’s too well thought out. Too organized. Too methodical. Pictures of each body taken postmortem.”
“Suicide would be better,” he said tersely. She didn’t take offense. She knew what he meant.
“Push the ME on the autopsy. They need to get their shit in order and get it done. Push some buttons, Sam. This is Kanesville, for hell’s sake. These son-of-a-bitching things do not happen here.”
“I will,” she assured him, slightly worried about the bright red shade of his face. He was not a thin man or in good shape, and a coronary might not be that far off. The more upset he was, the more he cursed. She knew that every Sunday Chief Roberson put on his Sunday best and sat up in front of his ward, serving as a first counselor in the bishopric. His language was undoubtedly cleaner at his church meetings, but it was a funny thing about cops and soldiers. It didn’t matter where you were or what religion you espoused … everything you saw and dealt with had to have an outlet. And one of those outlets was cursing. Sometimes it was alcohol. And sometimes it was even worse. Whenever you touched the dark side, you never came back whole. And something always tagged along.
Sam knew. She’d been the one to find Callie hanging from the biggest peach tree in the family’s backyard. Sam’s mind had since blocked out most of it.
But something always tagged along.
SIXTEEN
The meeting dispersed with Sam sending D-Ray off to interview the high-school football coach. D-Ray and the chief resumed their discussion on sports as they left the conference room. Gage followed closely behind Sam, so close he would run into her if she stopped suddenly.
“So, boss, what’s my assignment?” he asked, more than a hint of needling in his voice.
“You could go through the Dumpsters behind the seminary building and look for evidence,” she suggested, an innocent look on her face. He knew, as she did, that the job of sorting garbage had already been handled by two uniforms and, as usual, nothing had come up.
“I’ll just come with you,” he said.
Panic filled her stomach. She thought fast. “Actually, I do have a job for you. I’m going to interview Devin Templeton, Jeremiah’s best friend. I also need to meet with Brother Eldon Green, his ward youth leader. You can do that. I never do really well with the men, since I don’t have the, uh, priesthood.”
Gage grinned at her, making her stomach churn with frustration. He knew she did not want to be alone with him. She gave him Brother Green’s number and sent him on his way, relief flowing through her system as they drove off in different directions.
Sam drove through the streets of Kanesville slower than usual, taking time to peruse the town’s newer portion of high-end suburban homes. She eyed the fancy brick-and-stucco houses and wondered what evils lurked inside the beautiful exteriors.
The city was an interesting mix of new and old, with a history dating back to pioneer times, although the town fathers had recently allowed two very old buildings—a pioneer cabin and the original city hall—to be destroyed to make way for parking lots. The Kanesville tabernacle had hosted one of the oldest structures in the town, but the Church dictated that parking was more important than a building.
Sam didn’t understand this dichotomy of progress and history. She remembered hearing about the Mormon pioneers in church classes almost every Sunday. The martyrs, the deaths, and the horrible travesties the pioneers endured as they crossed the plains, wanting only to be able to worship God’s true Gospel. That lesson was underscored with trips to the actual places her ancestors lived, worked, and worshiped.
Soon, those stories would be nothing more than
stories.
How would the younger generation take these tales with no physical reminder that the people in them had actually lived?
Would the annual “Pioneer Trek”—where the Church attempted to re-create the actual conditions without killing off the teenagers—be enough?
These kids were raised on Facebook, cell phones, and instant proof. Would the Church slowly start to die away?
Sam slowed as she reached 4799 Green Street, a large, stately cream and redbrick two-story that could have housed two to six families, as far as she could tell.
Undoubtedly, the boy she was here to see went on the Pioneer Trek every year; and probably smuggled in his iPhone, taking pictures along the way, documenting his journey, uploading them to a social networking site seconds after they were taken.
* * *
“So, did your friend Jeremiah act like he was depressed? Did he ever talk about taking his own life?” Sam asked the morose, broad-chested, handsome teen sitting in the easy chair across from her. His name was Devin Templeton, but he went by “Slick,” for reasons she could not quite fathom. He did not look slick right now. Maybe a little nervous, belligerent, and sporting an arrogant façade, but underneath was a skeleton of pure fear. Why?
They sat in his living room, with his mother hovering not too far away in the kitchen, making kitchen noises, while trying, Sam knew, to listen to every word. The father sat in the other chair across from Sam, silent, arms folded, lips pursed.
Patriarchy. Had to love it. Until it got in the way of doing your job.
“He wasn’t depressed,” Slick said, finally answering her question. “He was the toughest guy I knew. Always up for fun, and always up for a par— I mean up to go out and have a good time.” He shot a nervous glance at his father, then looked back at her.
“So no indicators that he was having problems at home, or at school? Nothing that might make him so depressed that he wanted to kill himself?” Sam tried to keep her tone gentle, but the boy’s attitude was not helping. There was grief there. She could see it, underneath the layers of fear, apprehension, and anger. But it was almost buried, which was not common in teens. She’d grown to learn that pretty much whatever they were feeling at the time was splayed out for everyone to see in living color. Not here. He was hiding something.
“He wasn’t depressed.” Slick’s words were stubborn, recalcitrant, fired at her like pellets from a BB gun—intended to sting but not seriously injure.
“No girlfriend problems, or maybe problems with his grades?”
“I told you, no! He was fine. Just fine.”
“Devin,” his father chided, anger furrowing his brow. “That is not respectful. You apologize.”
“Sorry,” Devin said. Slick was gone. Banished to the nether regions by a father’s influence and priesthood authority.
“Look, I understand this is hard. You’ve lost a good friend.” Sam leaned forward and caught Devin’s eyes. “I’m sorry I have to question you like this. But we are trying to find out what happened to Jeremiah. And you knew him best. You were his best bud, right?”
Devin looked away and tightened his lips, closing and opening his eyes a few times, to blink away tears. “He was my best friend,” he said, without looking at her. “He didn’t kill himself. He wouldn’t.”
“So you think something else happened? Maybe an accidental death?”
He pursed his lips tighter and didn’t speak.
“Look, this is really hard for him,” Eric Templeton said, rising from his chair next to his son’s. He wore a short-sleeved shirt that showed his garment line, khaki dress pants, and the frazzled look of a father in over his head. He was nearly bald, with a rather large nose, and his face was dotted with the remnants of freckles that would have made him hard to take seriously. He looked kind and rather effeminate and nothing like his son. “He just lost his best friend. I know you’re trying to do what’s right, but I have to think of my son, and I don’t think he has any information that will help you.”
Sam didn’t agree. She also knew that if the father had not been sitting there, she could have gotten more out of the boy. But Eric Templeton wasn’t going anywhere. He made that clear from the very beginning.
“I’m not just trying to do what’s right, Mr. Templeton,” Sam said. “I’m trying to find out what happened to a seventeen-year-old boy who is now lying on a slab at the morgue.”
Sam heard a gasp from the mother in the kitchen and instantly regretted her words, but she would never take them back. Sometimes it was necessary to tread roughly on the graves of the dead in order to get them to rise.
Eric Templeton’s lips tightened, and he stood. Devin’s eyes widened and a tear escaped, trailing down his cheek, leaving a path of moisture and regret. He swiped at it angrily with a fisted hand.
“I think you are out of line here, Detective Montgomery,” Mr. Templeton said. He didn’t raise his voice, but Sam knew this was his “tough” stance. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s grieving. This needs to end now.”
“It may end now for you,” Sam said softly. “But there are two parents who have no idea what happened to their son. They woke up one day, a normal day, and their whole world imploded. They need to know what happened. They need to be able to put this to rest, in order to move on.”
And then Devin “Slick” Templeton surprised her.
“And so do I,” he said, his voice a mere whisper. “Dad, I need to do this on my own.”
Eric Templeton left the room reluctantly, but not before leaning down and whispering in his son’s ear. Devin shook his head sharply, and his father’s face tightened, a grimace of worry. He left the room and headed into the kitchen area, where Sarah Templeton was moving pots and pans around, apparently cooking—or pretending to be busy.
“What did he say to you?” Sam asked, her voice low and conversational.
“He wanted to give me a blessing,” Devin said, a grimace of disgust crossing his face. “It’s his answer for everything.”
“My dad’s the same way,” Sam said.
“You’re Mormon?” Devin asked, surprise crossing his face, and his eyes shifted to her sleeveless ribbed tank. She’d removed her jacket shortly after they started the interview. One sure way to tell a Mormon from a non-Mormon, at least in Sam’s age bracket, was the evidence of garments.
“Born and raised. Not really practicing,” Sam admitted calmly.
Devin cocked his head, a dimple in his cheek appearing as he gave her a breathtaking smile. His eyes were a dark, solid blue, and Sam figured he made many a young girl’s heart flutter. But she wasn’t impressed. She’d heard about his reputation—and Jeremiah Malone’s—as a hard partier and ladies’ man. As D-Ray so crassly put it, the boy liked to “dip his wick.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why don’t you go to church anymore?”
“It’s a long story. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“So you’re an apostate?” he asked, his face suddenly arrogant, his demeanor cocky.
“No, I’d say I’m a detective,” Sam answered coolly. Her attempt at putting him at ease had failed. He had, instead, decided she was less worthy and thus did not deserve his respect.
“Yeah,” Devin said, his look darkening. “But I don’t think I have much to say to you.”
“I thought you wanted to know what happened to your friend,” Sam said.
“I do. But I don’t think you’ll figure it out.”
“Why’s that?”
“You just won’t. You can’t.”
“Because I’m not a guy? Because I don’t have the priesthood?” Sam guessed.
“I didn’t say that.” Devin sat back and crossed his arms. All his earlier charm of the moment before was gone. He was back to being morose, a step away from childlike grief, teetering on the edge of adulthood and yet not ready to dive into the pit.
Life, the impish devil, was going to push him right in. He just didn’t know it yet.
“Then why?”
“Because you can’t understand it. I don’t understand it.”
“What don’t you understand, Devin?”
“How the whole world could turn upside down. Things were normal, the usual, everything going on like it always had, and then one day it just switched. And they started dying.” His voice lowered as he spoke, and he looked around nervously.
“What do you mean by things just switched?”
“Look, you aren’t
that
old. You know how high school is. You have to remember. There are groups and everybody has a place.”
Sam grimaced a bit at the “
that
old” comment but let it slide. She knew he had a direction, and she wanted to guide him there with as little interference as possible.
“I remember.”
“Well, I’ve known most of these kids all my life. And they all know where they fit. The jocks hang with the jocks, the band geeks with the band geeks, the hot girls with the other hot girls.…” He looked up at her and flushed a bit, smiling at her, trying to look übercool. “I bet you were a hot girl.”
Sam’s eyes widened. She still hadn’t recovered from the “
that
old” comment. Now she was a “hot girl”?
“Uh, well, you’d be surprised.”
“You were a cheerleader, right?”
“No, I ran track.”
“Oh.” He looked a little disappointed. And Sam fought back the urge to shake her head a bit, trying to rid herself of the image of this boy imagining her in a cheerleading uniform.
“Anyway, I know how it goes. Everybody has a place. Things are easy to understand.” She smiled disarmingly at him while inside she winced. She didn’t like this type of police work, but it was opening him up and she was going to stick with it.
“Yeah, well, then this new girl came to school. Bethany. Moved here from Germany, or somewhere. Mom’s in the military. And she’s not Mormon, but she’s hot, and she fit in with the other girls. Until she got into a fight with Whit. And it’s because Whit was jealous. She caught Jeremiah kissing Bethany after a game one night. Jer wouldn’t have anything to do with Whit after that, because she was being such a bi—uh, well, a…”