Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 01 - The Sex Club (14 page)

The fax of the phone records had come in, and someone had put it on Jackson’s desk. Its arrival saved him the hassle of scrolling back through Jessie’s call history one number at a time. Jackson labeled Jessie’s phone and took it to the fingerprint techs in the department’s small lab. Maybe the killer had handled it.

Back at his desk, he rummaged around for the cheap reading glasses he kept handy, then began to scan the list of numbers on the phone records. It took a minute to pick out Jessie’s phone number from the others. After twenty minutes, Jackson had found five phone numbers that had connected with her—either in or out—at least ten times in the last billing cycle. He circled two more numbers that appeared five and seven times each.

Starting with the most frequent contact—twelve outgoing and fourteen incoming connections—he punched the number into LEDS, the law enforcement data system. The phone line was registered to Joanne Clarke and was part of a cluster of three numbers, all of which had cell phone prefixes. Nicole Clarke was one of Jessie’s friends, and Joanne was probably Nicole’s mother and the one who paid the phone bill. He opened his electronic note file, added the name and the number of calls, then moved back to the records.

Three of the other frequently called numbers belonged to Angel Strickland, Ruth Greiner, and Katrice Jahn. Angel Strickland was one of the girls he’d interviewed, and Ruth Greiner was the mother of Rachel Greiner, the third member of Jessie’s clique. The name Katrice Jahn was new to him. But she was probably the mother of Tyler Jahn, the surfer boy from the Teen Talk group. He plugged the address into the database just to check. Katrice was listed at 3460 Potter Street, which was in the Kincaid neighborhood.

Jackson sipped his cold coffee from that morning and punched the next number into the database. This one had eleven total calls and a 206 area code, which Jackson recognized as Seattle, Washington. The computer came up with Paul Davenport, Jessie’s father. Jackson had met the man once, two years ago at a soccer game. Had he moved to Seattle? Even so, with a cell phone, Paul Davenport could be calling Jessie from anywhere. Schakowski was already tracking him down, and a father’s calls to his daughter didn’t trigger Jackson’s suspicion.

He kept moving down the list. A local number with only seven connections belonged to George Miller, the first name in the group that sparked Jackson’s interest. A classmate? A boyfriend? He ran him through a second database.

Miller lived on Friendly Street, worked for the county as a building inspector, and had three kids. One was a fourteen-year-old boy named Greg Miller who attended Kincaid Middle School. The boy had been picked up for shoplifting in a convenience store when he was twelve. As Jackson made a note to interview Greg Miller, he realized that the kid was also one of the Bible study group. He wondered if Evans had interviewed him yet.

Jackson punched in the last number he’d circled, which also had a 513 cell phone prefix. A moment later, a familiar name came up: Miles R. Fieldstone.

The mayor again?
A tingle went up Jackson’s spine.

He quickly scanned for the address associated with the number: 27575 Blanton Heights. Yep, that was the mayor. Jackson glanced back at the printout. The calls were evenly split both ways, four incoming, three outgoing. Now the hairs on the back of his neck were standing at attention. Why would the head of the city chat on the phone with a thirteen-year-old girl seven times in thirty days?

To arrange get-togethers at the apartment he rented near her school—right next to where her body was found.

A surge of adrenaline rushed through his torso, and Jackson bolted out of his chair. Now he had a suspect with a direct link to the victim.

But that charged feeling—like a bloodhound that has picked up the fox’s scent—was overshadowed by a more sobering thought. Fieldstone was the mayor. He played golf with the chief of police. This would not go down easy.

Thursday, October 21, 1:05 p.m.

Nicole sat in the back of her fifth period class, waiting for Mr. Abrams to show. She hated math, especially negative integers, and she really wanted to leave. She was having trouble concentrating. Around her, the unsupervised kids buzzed with animated conversations, lewd laughter, and occasional bursts of music from forbidden iPods.

Next to her, a loud sharp thump burst through the noise. Nicole turned to see Pat Kelly’s math book on the floor. One row over, David Turner laughed like the idiot that he was. Nicole was not amused. Pat was a small, moon-faced boy with thin, white grandpa hair who had no friends and got picked on all the time.

Without a word, Pat retrieved his book and placed it back on his desk.

Moments later, David knocked it on the floor again. A few kids laughed. Most did not even notice. What a jerk, Nicole thought. She wanted to get up and punch him in the chest. Or at least, tell him off. But of course, that would focus everyone’s attention on her. They would probably even make fun of her for being a nerd.

Pat picked up his book, still not looking at David or showing any expression, and set it back on his desk. This time, he kept his hands on top of it.

Good, Nicole thought. Now it would be over and she could stop worrying about Pat and–

Thunk. The book was back on the floor.

Without thinking, without realizing she was even going to do it, Nicole yelled at David across two rows of desks, “Leave him alone!”

The room went silent. Every pair of eyes stared directly at her. Nicole grabbed her backpack and fled.

She ran down the open breezeway, flip-flops squawking, and ducked into the school’s computer center. Only a few kids were in the room, and the supervisor was nowhere in sight. Where were all the teachers?

Nicole picked a PC in the corner, dropped her heavy pack on the floor, and wished she could just disappear. A year ago, her life had been happy and simple. Now she and her friends were fornicating like crazy, Jessie was dead, and she had just screamed at another student in front of the whole math class. She didn’t care what David thought of her, but she did like to have more control of herself than that.

Nicole closed her eyes and tried to pray, but she became so filled with guilt, she couldn’t continue. Why should God help her? She had been self-involved and unconcerned with His feelings for a long time.

Nicole tried again. This time she prayed for Jessie. She prayed that God would welcome Jessie into heaven and keep her safe for eternity. But the prayer gave her little comfort. Nicole could not visualize what the afterlife looked like. She could not believe that Jessie was really gone. Nicole kept seeing Jessie’s body in a dumpster and imagining the horrible things that her friend had suffered before she died. Why had God let that happen?

One thought kept coming back to her. What if God didn’t just let it happen, but actually made it happen? Nicole could not let go of the idea that God had punished Jessie as a warning to all of them. That He had picked Jessie out of the group to make an example of because she had gone too far. Fornication was one level of sin, adultery was another.

Nicole knew what she had to do. She thanked God for sparing her life, then logged into her Hotmail account. Without even checking her messages, she opened an outgoing message box and typed in two addresses:
[email protected]
,
[email protected]
.

Rachel and Angel
I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you guys. I’m not mad or anything. I’m just pretty freaked out about Jessie. I don’t think I’m coming back to Teen Talk. I’m not sure the sex is OK anymore, and I don’t like living the lie. I have a lot on my mind, and I need some time to figure things out. Don’t take it personally. You’re still my friends.
Love Nic

Nicole quickly pressed send before she could change her mind.

As soon as the message disappeared, she regretted it. She should have told them in person and reassured Rachel and Angel and the guys that the secret was safe with her. Just because she planned to stop going to the meetings didn’t mean she would tell anyone about their activities. But she had been thinking lately that telling someone, maybe even her parents, about the sex would make her feel better. She loved her parents deeply and hated keeping this secret. But she also hated the idea of hurting them with the truth. They said they wanted her to always be honest with them, but they couldn’t handle the truth about Teen Talk. They would be devastated. Nicole didn’t know what to do.

To distract herself from the jumble of thoughts, she opened her e-mail. Tyler Jahn wanted to know if she wanted to hang out with him at the dance this Friday night. Nicole hit reply and told him her parents wouldn’t let her go. The rest was junk mail, so she clicked on her favorite blog by a guy named Jimmy in Hawaii who surfed and painted and talked about spirituality. But today the words just swam in front of her.

She kept thinking about Teen Talk and how it had started so innocently, or at least, so easily. One day last March, Angel had announced at the start of a meeting that she had a surprise. “I found this tape in my dad’s study,” she’d said with a strange little laugh. Dad was Reverend Strickland, the First Bible Baptist preacher, and the tape was a porno film with group sex. The Teen Talk kids had been transfixed, intensely curious to witness the activity their parents were so intent on suppressing. And, as Greg Miller had commented, “If the Reverend watches, it must not be a sin.”

At first, Nicole had been disturbed by the close-ups, the slapping of flesh on flesh. But she had also been fascinated, then eventually, very turned on. Everyone had been turned on. And there was no stopping a roomful of teenage hormones. Only Jessie and Greg had gone all the way that first time. But after a few more meetings, during which they viewed more of the Reverend’s collection, everyone hooked up. Once Nicole let her body relax and feel what it was supposed to feel, the sex had been great. Finally, she understood what the obsession was all about.

The small group of kids had sworn—on their lives, with a mingling of blood from pricked fingers—to never tell anyone about the sex. Katie Jackson had stopped coming to Teen Talk soon after, but she swore she would keep their secret.

“Nicole?” Mrs. Greeley was suddenly standing over her, trying to get her attention. Nicole quickly shut down the website.

“Yes?”

“Why aren’t you in class? This isn’t your free period.”

“Sorry, I forgot my homework and didn’t want to be called on.”

The technology teacher shook her head. “You’d better get going.”

Nicole picked up her backpack and shuffled out. But she didn’t head for math. There was no way she was interrupting that class again. Besides, she was still confused and unable to concentrate. She wished she had a rational adult she could talk to about sex and God and why a person could not have both.

Thursday, October 21, 1:16 p.m.

Kera drove from the Mongolian Grill directly to Kincaid Middle School. Traffic was light and she was happy to be out and about in the warm afternoon. There would not be many more days like this. They were already shorter and darker and the cold weather was coming.

She had called Kincaid’s principal, Andrew Taber, this morning, and he’d reluctantly agreed to give her twenty minutes of his time this afternoon. He was leaving tomorrow to attend a conference, and apparently he didn’t want this meeting waiting for him when he got back. Kera was always surprised at how uncomfortable the subject of teen sex and birth control made people.

As Kera walked across the south Eugene campus, a crisp wind carried the smell of damp grass and triggered a nostalgic, back-to-school memory—new clothes, fresh books, and the anticipation that exciting things were about to happen. The feeling stayed with her as she crossed the narrow lawn and entered the front office. Young people were everywhere. Waiting in chairs, standing in the short hallway. Two female students were even behind the reception counter assisting other students. Kera waited her turn until one of the young assistants pointed her “down the hallway and to the left.”

Taber’s office was small and cluttered, with only one narrow vertical window. The view, which could not be enjoyed from where the principal was seated, was of a dull gray building on the other side of a walkway. Kera wondered how much he was paid to spend his days in such a claustrophobic environment. It made her appreciate her job.

Taber was her height and a little stocky. His hair brushed his coat collar, and his glasses had minimalist frames. A liberal, she thought, pleased. The principal shook her hand as they exchanged names and pleasantries.

Kera took a seat.

“What can I help you with?” His tone was abrupt and wary.

“I’d like to know about your sex education curriculum and perhaps recommend some supplementary reference material.” Taber didn’t respond, so Kera plunged forward. “Planned Parenthood is sponsoring an outreach program that involves young people acting as mentors and educators for other young people. These programs have been very successful in Europe, and we hope to duplicate that success with the support of local schools.”

“We don’t have a sex education curriculum anymore,” Taber said. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sleeve as he talked. “Historically, Oregon has had a progressive attitude about young people’s ability to think for themselves. That is why our state allows Planned Parenthood to dispense birth control to minors without parental consent. But in many schools, Kincaid included, sex education has come under pressure from the Conservative Culture Alliance.” Taber sighed. “Between the CCA and budget cuts, we had to cut sex ed from the curriculum.”