The Suicide Club (25 page)

Almost against her will, Lindsey’s eyes followed the drape of that material upward. And found that the sheet had been placed over the face of the person on the stretcher.

Her knees literally gave way. Although the deputy tried to hold her, she fell to the ground as the first sob tore through her throat.

The man beside her stooped down in an awkward attempt to comfort or lift her, but the paramedics didn’t look her way. They continued toward their vehicle, the stretcher bumping over the uneven bricks of the sidewalk.

With the ease of long practice they began to put their burden into the back of the van. Lindsey realized that she had no idea where they would take the body. No idea if they had notified Shannon’s family.

She looked up at the deputy to ask those questions and realized he was no longer watching the body being loaded. He was looking instead at the door of the house.

Jace stood on the threshold, his eyes on her. Her tears started again. Relief that she wouldn’t have to ask for answers to any of those questions.

Jace would take care of everything. He’d notify Shannon’s mother. That was his job. That was what he did.

And he’d take care of her, too.

Jace crossed the lawn, stopping just before he reached her. He nodded to the deputy. And then he bent, making sure they were on eye level, before he spoke to her, the words slow and clearly enunciated, as if he were speaking to a child.

“This isn’t what you think, Lindsey. That isn’t Shannon on the stretcher.”

“
B
ut what was Dave doing here?” Lindsey asked. “And where’s Shannon?”

She was sitting in the passenger seat of Jace’s car, sipping from the glass of water he’d sent the deputy to get inside. She no longer looked as if she were about to pass out.

“I don’t have any answers. Not to either of those questions. All I can tell you is that she isn’t in that house.”

Shannon’s cleaning lady had discovered the principal’s body in the back bedroom, but only after she’d collected the trash from the wastebaskets in all the other rooms and taken it outside. She had told the deputy who’d responded to her panicked 9-1-1 call that she’d wanted to get the garbage bagged and out on the curb before the truck came.

“I started trying to call her from the time you and I hung up,” Lindsey said. “She
always
answers her cell.”

He could tell by a sudden widening of her eyes that she’d thought of something. She didn’t offer an explanation of what that might be, hiding that involuntary reaction by lowering her head to take another swallow from the glass she held.

“Can you think of somewhere she
might
be?” he prodded. “Somewhere she might have spent the night? Somebody she’s involved with, maybe?”

“I don’t know. Shannon doesn’t hide the fact that she…” She stopped, touching her tongue to the center of her top lip before she started over. “She still sees Rick Carlisle occasionally. It isn’t serious, but…you might want to check.”

“To see if she’s at Carlisle’s?”

She nodded. Which meant Lindsey also knew that Shannon slept with the deputy “occasionally.”

He opened his cell and punched up the dispatcher. When she answered, he said, “Nolan. Can you give me Deputy Rick Carlisle’s home phone number, please?”

“You want me to contact him for you, Lieutenant?”

“I just need his number. And his cell if you have it.”

“We don’t usually—”

“Make an exception,” Jace interrupted. “It’s important. If Carlisle complains, I’ll clear it with the sheriff.”

“On your head then, hon,” the woman said.

“Yes, it is.”

“That number is 555-8219. I don’t have a cell listed.”

“Thanks.” Jace pushed the “End” button and then put in the number he’d been given. He waited through the rings until the answering machine picked up before he pushed the button again.

“No answer?” Lindsey asked.

“You know how to get there?”

Like Lindsey, he was growing concerned about Shannon Anderson. He could find out if Carlisle was on duty today, but it seemed simpler just to show up at his place than to go through the small town bureaucracy again.

“It isn’t far. I don’t know that she’s there. You said…” Lindsey took a breath, releasing it before she finished. “You said she told you she was going to check something out. Something that had to do with the advice I’d given her.”

“That’s what she said.”

“The only advice I gave her, Jace, was that she needed to tell you or someone in the department about the kids she thought could have set those fires.”

“Are you saying she suspected someone?”

“It wasn’t that specific. There were a couple of boys she believed might be capable of doing something like that.”

“Then why hadn’t she come to us?”

“Because that’s all it was. A feeling someone might be capable of that kind of mischief. She didn’t want to ruin a child’s life based on nothing more than that.”

“You think she might have gone over there to tell Carlisle what she suspected?”

“She and Rick are close. Despite what you’re thinking, it’s more friendship than anything else. Whatever else—”

“I don’t give a damn who your friend sleeps with, Lindsey. What I
do
care about is that we’ve got a rash of fires and three people, all of them associated with Randolph-Lowen, who are dead. And don’t tell me Campbell was influenced to commit suicide by the attention those other two received.”

“The last few days he seemed…I don’t know. Disheartened. He’d put his whole life into this school. Dave thought he was in line to become superintendent when Dr. Burke retires. That’s why he’d started working on his doctorate. With the fires and the suicides, he must have believed he’d never get that chance.”

“Even if he were that despondent, why here? Why in Shannon Anderson’s bed?”

He hadn’t told her that detail before. Her eyes widened as she grasped the implications.

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine why he’d come here, much less…” She shook her head again.

“Then it seems the only person who can give us that information is your friend. Let’s start at Carlisle’s.”

Jace stabbed the doorbell once more, listening as it chimed inside the brick two-story colonial Lindsey had directed him to. She was standing beside him on the front porch, her arms crossed over her chest as if she were cold.

“There’s a garage out back,” she said, glancing up at him. “You want me to see if his car’s there?”

Before he had a chance to answer, Jace heard the lock being turned. The door opened to reveal Rick Carlisle, wearing nothing but a pair of rumbled jeans. It was obvious by his disheveled hair and the fact that he hadn’t taken time to do up the button at his waistband that they’d gotten him out of bed.

The deputy’s eyes fastened first on Jace and then settled on Lindsey. “Somethin’ wrong, Linds?”

“Is Shannon here?”

His gaze went back to Jace. “Depends on who’s asking.”

“I am,” Lindsey said. “I just need to know that she’s all right, Rick. Is she here?”

The belligerence faded from Carlisle’s expression to be replaced by puzzlement. “Why wouldn’t she be all right?”

“Because we found a dead man in her bed,” Jace said.

The deputy’s eyes swung back to his face. For a moment he didn’t say anything. Then, “She’s here. Come on in.”

When he stepped away from the doorway, Jace gestured for Lindsey to go first. As he entered the foyer, he automatically checked out the disordered living room adjacent to it.

A pizza box lay on the coffee table, a single slice remaining. Half a dozen empty beer bottles were scattered around the area between the couch and the table. There was a stack of unlabeled DVDs on the floor, and the doors of a massive entertainment center across the room stood open.

“What’s going on?” a female voice demanded.

Jace turned to watch Shannon Anderson descend the stairs. She appeared to be wearing a man’s shirt and nothing else. The garment ended midthigh, revealing a long length of tanned legs. Her dark, curly hair tangled around her face, and mascara smudged the skin beneath her eyes.

“Linds? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I thought…Were you here all night?”

“I didn’t want to be by myself,” Shannon said. “I’m sure you, of all people, can appreciate the feeling.”

“Tell her what you told me,” Rick demanded.

“What?” Shannon’s bewilderment appeared genuine, as her gaze moved from one to the other of them.

If she knew about Campbell, she was wasting her time as a counselor, Jace thought. She should be making movies. If nothing else, the kind she and Carlisle had probably watched last night.

“When she arrived for work this morning, your maid discovered the body of David Campbell in your bed.”

Shannon’s lips parted and then stayed open as she attempted to assimilate the news.
“Dave?”

“You have any idea what he was doing there?”

Shannon closed her mouth. Her eyes met Lindsey’s briefly, before, slightly defiant, they came back to his.

“Probably waiting for me to come home.”

“In your bed?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Jace heard Lindsey’s inhalation, but he ignored it. Despite all the clues, including Campbell’s attitude toward Shannon, which Lindsey herself had told him about, she’d obviously had no idea the two were involved.

“But you hadn’t been expecting him last night.”

Shannon shook her head.

“When’s the last time you talked to him?”

She exhaled, her cheeks puffing out as she lifted her hands to rake her hair back from her face. “I don’t know. He wasn’t in the office when I left school yesterday. I thought he might call during the afternoon, just to talk, but he didn’t. Then Lindsey came by to tell me about Tim and…I never thought about Dave again. Was it a heart attack?”

To Jace’s ear the question seemed perfectly nuanced.

“He killed himself,” Lindsey said softly.

“
Killed
himself. Are you saying—? No.” Shannon shook her head. “Goddamn it, no. I don’t believe that.”

“Shannon—”

“
Not
Dave. He wasn’t the kind.”

Jace couldn’t decide if that was denial or if it was based on her knowledge of the principal’s personality. In either case, that statement, too, had the ring of absolute sincerity.

“Given what’s been going on…” Lindsey began again.

“Have you told his wife?” Surprisingly, Shannon sounded as if she cared.

“The sheriff was going to get Coach Spears to go over with him. They should have done that by now.”

“And his boys,” Shannon said. “God, he loved those boys.”

Implying that he hadn’t loved his wife?
Jace wondered.

“Are they sure it was suicide?” It was the first question Carlisle had asked since they’d come inside.

Prompted by Shannon’s disbelief? Or by the same instinct Jace had felt about Campbell’s death since he’d walked into Shannon Anderson’s bedroom this morning.

“Nothing at the scene to indicate otherwise.”

“But?”

Maybe that
had
been implied by his wording. “The techs will check to be sure. And there’ll be an autopsy, of course.”

“Cause of death?” Rick probed.

“No visible injuries. There was a bottle of Scotch and an empty bottle of pills nearby.” From the residue in the glass and on the surface of the bedside table, it appeared the medicine had been crushed and mixed with the liquor.

“What kind?” Shannon asked.

“Klonopin. The prescription was in your name, Ms. Anderson. You have any idea how many were left in that bottle?”

The counselor took a breath. “I’d had it refilled earlier in the week. Maybe…Monday.”

“So you’d gotten a month’s supply, which would be what—thirty pills?—on Monday. How many have you taken since then?”

Not that it really mattered, Jace thought. More than likely it had been the combination of medication and alcohol that killed David Campbell. However many pills were left—

“One for each night. I wouldn’t have slept without them.”

“And the Scotch? Any idea how much was in the bottle when Campbell arrived? Or would he have brought it with him?”

“Dave had brought a bottle over a while ago. Not my poison of choice, so I don’t have any idea what kind of inroads he’d made on it before last night.”

“What does it matter?” Lindsey asked. “
Whatever
was there was clearly enough.”

Still, there was something about the scenario that bothered Jace. He knew from experience that if he let it go, stopped trying to figure out what that was, it would come to him.

“You realize you can’t go back home until the techs finish,” Jace warned.

“I’m not in any hurry.” Shannon looked at Carlisle as if asking permission to stay.

He shrugged in response. The gesture fit with Lindsey’s description of their relationship. They might sleep together, but the involvement was clearly casual.

“You can stay with me,” Lindsey offered. “As long as you want. You know that.”

For the first time this morning, the counselor’s expression lightened. “I didn’t think
you
were staying at your place, Linds.”

“I’m going to my parents’ for the weekend. But you know you’ll be as welcome there as you would be with me.”

In spite of Jace’s earlier conclusion that his involvement with Lindsey was becoming detrimental to his ability to do his job, that announcement was like a kick in the gut. Not only had he not expected it, he didn’t like it.

“I know I would,” Shannon said. “And believe me, I’m grateful, but…I’m fine here. Really.”

“What about what you told Lindsey?” Jace asked.

Shannon didn’t pretend not to understand. “About her kids and the fires?”

He nodded.

“That’s why I came last night. To talk to Rick about it.”

“Why not talk to me when you were at my apartment?”

“I guess I felt talking to Rick would be less official.”

“We’re past the point of
any
information being ‘unofficial.’ And if there
is
some connection between those fires and the suicides—”

“Justin Carr,” Shannon offered before he finished.

Jace remembered the name from the special education rolls Campbell had provided him.

“Because of what he said about Andrea?” Lindsey asked. “That’s not fair, Shannon.”

“Hey, you’re the one who told me to come forward, even if I don’t have proof. And it’s not just because of that remark, although you have to admit it was typical Justin.”

“He apologized. It wasn’t directed at Andrea. He said his father says that about any suicide or death that shouldn’t have occurred. And it certainly isn’t original with Colonel Carr.”

“Still defending them, Linds?” Shannon taunted.

“What did he say about Andrea?” Jace didn’t look at Lindsey, addressing his question to Shannon instead.

“That her death was survival of the fittest.” Shannon’s chin lifted, as if daring him to say that wasn’t significant.

“Anything else?”

“About Andrea? Not that I heard. You or Rick need to talk to the kids, though. Enough of them dislike Justin that they might be willing to tell you other things.”

“You told me you suspected someone
before
Justin made that comment. Who were you talking about then?” Lindsey asked.

“Him, for one. His attitude sucks, and you know it. I’m not denying that he can come across as sincere and polite when he wants to, but that’s an act. If you’re around him long enough, it’s evident that’s
all
it is. His old man probably beat him until he could carry it off.”