Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [79]
She sniffed. “Didn’t you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Somebody just heard it on the radio. The police dug up a body in the Pines yesterday.”
Jack nearly choked on his sandwich as the table went silent. His mind raced. Another Lodge member, like the one he and Weezy had found? Or…?
“Do they know who it is?”
She nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “They say it’s Marcie Kurek.”
Jack felt a chill. Marcie Kurek … the sophomore girl who’d disappeared last year.
“Did they say where in the Pines?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Jack looked straight into her eyes. “Do you think it could have been…?” He didn’t want to say where.
Weezy stiffened as if she’d been hit with an electric shock.
“Ohmigod!”
“What?” Eddie said. “What are you two talking about?”
A couple of the other kids at the table wanted to know too.
Jack leaned back. “Nothing.”
“Bull!” Eddie said. “You guys know something. Give. What is it?”
Jack looked around the caf. He could see the news spreading from table to table like a wave. He heard screams from over where the junior girls usually sat—Marcie would have been a junior this year. Jack had never met her, and had seen her face only in newspaper photos shortly after she disappeared, but she had been talked about so much in the past year, he felt as if he knew her.
He closed his eyes and wished he could teleport himself into the Pines, because he knew—or at least was as sure as he could be without actually going out there—where they’d found Marcie.
School seemed like a prison now. He knew where he’d be headed as soon as he was sprung. He glanced at Weezy and knew she’d be with him.
3
But Weezy couldn’t.
She had to go to Medford with her mother. She didn’t say why, but Jack suspected it was to see that Dr. Hamilton. He’d spotted her in the car with her mother last Wednesday. A weekly visit?
The state police and the sheriff’s department had only one car each in the Pines today. Jack recognized the license plate on Tim’s unit. No surprise since he patrolled this section of the county.
He dropped his bike and hurried along the ruts. This time, in addition to the suicide tree, he found the entire dead zone taped off as well. Jack moved up as close as the tape would allow. A large hole, big enough to fit a human, had been dug in the center of the clearing.
I was right, he thought, feeling suddenly short of breath. She was buried right here … right where they found that sock.
He’d suspected it earlier, but now … to see … to know …
He looked around and saw Tim Davis walking his way, an angry look on his face.
“You’re really pushing me, Jack.”
“That’s where you dug her up, right?”
Tim pointed toward the firebreak trail. “Out. Now.”
Jack started to obey, then stopped and held his ground.
“Come on, Tim. You owe me.”
His expression changed to surprise. “Because I once dated your sister? I don’t think so.”
“No, because I showed you where that sock was. You wouldn’t have found Marcie without that.”
“Yes, we would have.”
“But who knows when? You were digging way over the by the sui—by the oak.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it yesterday. Come on, Tim. It’s only fair.”
He stared at Jack a long moment, his eyes unreadable behind his sunglasses. Finally he sighed and looked around.
“Okay. It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper anyway. I guess I can give you a preview.”
Jack had been putting the pieces together all day. He was reasonably sure of the answer, but asked the question anyway.
“Do you know who did it?”
Tim nodded. “Carson Toliver looks good for it. He’s our number one suspect.”
Jack said nothing. Like seeing the spot where they’d dug up Marcie—one thing to suspect it, quite another to hear it confirmed.
“You don’t look surprised,” Tim said.
“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought.”
Tim snapped off his glasses and stared at Jack. “The hell you did! No way you could put that together.”
Based on the little Tim thought Jack knew, that would seem true. But Jack knew Toliver was capable of violence—though he’d never dreamed he