Secret Histories yrj-1 Read online

  “I’m not kidding, Tim.” He might be “Deputy” to everybody else, but he’d been “Tim” to eight-year-old Jack back when he’d gone out with Kate and so

  he’d always be “Tim” in Jack’s mind.

  “It’s true!” Weezy puffed as she pul ed up beside him. “I saw it too!”

  Tim’s smile vanished as he stared at Jack. “This had better not be one of your practical jokes.”

  Jack gave him a wounded look. “Who, me?”

  He’d pul ed a couple of pranks on Tim and Kate when they were dating—innocent little tricks like resetting Tim’s watch and his car clock ahead so

  they’d get home an hour early. Truth was, even though he’d liked Tim, he hadn’t wanted Kate dating anyone.

  “Look at us.” Jack pointed to his face, then Weezy’s. “Do we look like we’re joking?”

  People were discovering bodies al the time in the mystery-thril er-adventure stories Jack devoured. He’d always thought he’d be pretty cool if ever in

  that situation.

  Uh-uh.

  He could stil feel the dry, rotted flesh against his fingers, see those empty eye sockets, the grinning teeth, the matted hair. Ugh. It made him queasy to

  think about it. He tried to push it from his mind but it kept slithering back.

  He wasn’t sure but he thought he might have screamed right along with Weezy. If so, he hoped she hadn’t heard him. That would be majorly

  embarrassing.

  Tim got on his radio. “This is A-seventeen requesting backup. I have a report of a corpse in the Pines near Johnson.”

  A burst of static fol owed, choking a voice saying “Rogerthat”or “Ten-four”or whatever.

  Tim opened his door, unfolding a map as he stepped out. He spread it on the hood of his car.

  “Where exactly did you find this body?”

  Jack looked at the angled lines of the fire lanes and the winding old Piney roads and didn’t know where to begin. He’d been fol owing Weezy’s lead and

  hadn’t been paying attention.

  Weezy stepped forward and jabbed her finger onto the map. “Right about here.”

  Tim looked at her. “That’s Zeb Foster’s land.”

  Weezy went al wide-eyed and innocent. “Is it? Oh, my goodness. We had no idea. We were just fol owing this fire trail, then we took the right fork here,

  and the left fork here …”

  Jack spotted Eddie standing by the rear bumper, leaning on his bike and looking annoyed. Jack wheeled over to him.

  “You guys weren’t kidding, were you,” he said. “Al the way home I half thought you were putting me on. Wouldn’t be the first time you sucked me in.”

  “But we wouldn’t be putting on the sheriff’s department, right?”

  He shook his head. “I guess not. So if it was real, why didn’t you let me see?”

  “Nobody stopped you. You could’ve gone over.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you were kidding and you’d laugh at me.”

  “We’re a little old for ‘made-you-look’ stuff, don’t you think?”

  Jack hadn’t pul ed anything on Eddie since this past winter when he’d pul ed the ancient trick of rubbing some black grease around the edges of the

  eyepieces of a pair of old binoculars. After Eddie had taken a look, he’d wandered around his house for hours with two black eyes. Hadn’t a clue until

  Weezy came home and cracked up at the sight of him.

  Eddie pounded a fist on his handlebar. “Man, some people have al the luck.”

  “Trust me, if you’d seen it, you’d be thinking ‘yuck’ instead of luck.”

  Eddie’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Yeah, but a deadbody.Awesomacious.”

  Jack turned back to Tim and Weezy.

  He heard her saying, “You fol ow those trails and look for a burned-out area on your right. That’l be the place.”

  Tim was nodding. “Sounds easy enough. Anything else you can tel me?”

  Jack caught Weezy’s eye and nodded to the black box in the bike basket. She returned a frantic No-please-don’t!look. So he said nothing.

  Tim looked at Jack. “We’l probably need a statement from you three sometime tomorrow.”

  Another sheriff’s car pul ed up then. Tim and the newcomer talked for a minute, then the two of them roared off toward the Pines.

  Jack, Weezy, and Eddie stood there, looking at each other.

  “Now what?” Eddie said.

  Weezy pul ed the black box from her basket. “We go back to my place and see if we can open this.”

  Jack said, “What makes you think it opens?”

  She handed it to him. “Check the edges. Don’t those look like seams? This could be some kind of ancient puzzle box.”

  Yeah, the edges did look seamed … or creased.

  “Sounds like fun but …” Jack handed it back. “I promised Mister Courtland I’d mow his lawn today.”

  “You can mow it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow I’m at the store. Besides, I promised him today.”

  Weezy sighed. “Okay. Stop by later and see what we found.” She looked at the box, turning it over in her hands, then back at Jack. “Thanks for not

  mentioning it to Deputy Dog.” “Tim’s okay.”

  “Yeah, but he would’ve wanted it for evidence or something.” Her expression was fierce as she clutched it against her chest. “This is mine.”

  Jack dramatical y cleared his throat. “Um, if I remember, we found it together.”

  Her expression faltered. “Yeah. Okay. I guess we did. You want it?” Her eyes said, Pleasedon’tsayyes.

  “Nah. You keep it.”

  She grinned her relief. “You’re a good friend, Jack. The best.”

  She leaned close and touched his arm, and for an instant he feared she might kiss him. Not that it would be so bad in itself, but jeez, not in front of

  Eddie. He’d never hear the end of it.

  He said, “Just let me know if you discover any ancient secrets—like eternal life, or how to turn lead into gold. I get an equal share.”

  “Deal. As for secrets …” She stared again at the box. “… the world is fullof secrets.”

  Eddie rol ed his eyes. “Here we go again. ‘The Secret History of the World.’”

  “Stop it, Eddie. There isa secret history. And who knows? This just might hold one of those secrets.”

  She replaced it in her basket, then waved and started pedaling off.

  “See ya.”

  Eddie fol owed. “Later, Jack.”

  As Jack watched them go, Weezy’s words echoed in his head.

  You’reagoodfriend,Jack.Thebest.

  Am I? he thought as he hopped on his bike and headed home.

  Was anyone real y his friend? Sure, he hung out with kids. Not very many. Just a few, in fact. Mostly Weezy and Eddie, and lately Steve Brussard. But he

  didn’t feel they were true friends. More like acquaintances. The only one he felt any connection to was Weezy, and she was a girl. And even that wasn’t a

  real connection.He simply found her unique. No one he knew looked at the world the way she did. She was always finding weird links between seemingly

  unrelated things or occurrences.

  He saw himself, on the other hand, as pretty dul . Whatever he liked to do tended to be something done alone. Like reading. Like mowing lawns. Like

  swimming—he was on the Johnson swim team, and yeah it was cal ed a team, but he couldn’t think of many things more isolated than stroking back and

  forth the length of a pool where the only thing to hear was the splash of his arms and legs, and the only thing to see was the black lane strip on the bottom.

  Except maybe cross-country running, which he also liked.

  Where did he fit? Where did he belong?

  Maybe high school would be different. Dread tinged his anticipation. Meeting new kids. Being at the bottom of the pecking order. SBC Regional had

  kids from
al over the area. Maybe he’d find a bunch he could connect with. And maybe he’d fol ow the same pattern as he had in middle school. The difference between loner and loser was one letter.

  Which was he?

  5

  “Oh, Jackie!” his mother said as she hugged him for the umpteenth time since he’d dropped the bomb about finding the body. “Wil my miracle boy be

  able to sleep tonight?”

  “It’s Jack, Mom. Jack,okay. Please?”

  He’d been cal ed Jackie—at least at home—for most of his life. But he was heading for high school now where he wanted to be Jack.His mother was

  proving the hardest to break of the habit.

  As for “miracle boy”—forget about it. He’d come along when she’d thought she was through with having children, thus the name. She’d no doubt cal him

  that on her deathbed.

  Mom dying … he brushed the thought away. He couldn’t imagine it. He expected her and Dad to live forever.

  He had her brown hair and brown eyes, and her love of music, although their tastes were nothing alike. She listened to the same Broadway albums over

  and over— SouthPacificwas playing now—while Jack was firmly into rock. His current faves were Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and the eerie

  “Synchronicity” off the new Police album.

  She used to be thin but now complained about putting on weight these past couple of years. He’d heard her blame it on “the changes.”

  “Okay, yes,” she said smiling at him. “Jack.I’m trying, honey, but old habits are hard to break, you know.”

  “Just think: Whenever you’re about to say ‘Jackie,’ cut it in half.”

  She laughed. “I’l try, I’l try.”

  She turned on the dishwasher and headed for the living room to read. She loved novels and belonged to both the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the

  Month Club. He’d noticed she was reading something cal ed MasteroftheGame by Sidney Sheldon.

  Jack had the kitchen with its dark cabinets, Formica counters, and Congoleum floor to himself. The house had started as a three-bedroom ranch and

  probably would have remained so if not for Jack. Not so many years after his arrival, his folks had added dormers and finished off the attic into a master

  bedroom suite. They moved upstairs, leaving the downstairs bedrooms to the kids.

  He retrieved a bag of pink pistachios from a cabinet and sat down at the kitchen counter to shel them. Rather than eating one at a time, he liked to

  col ect a pile of twenty or so and gobble them al at once. As he shel ed, he thought about dinner, just recently finished.

  The hot topic of conversation around the table had been—no surprise—the body. Tons of speculation on who it was, how old it was, whether it was an

  ancient Lenape Indian mummy or the victim of a mob hit transported down here from New York in a trunk and buried where they thought it would never be

  found. Or that maybe it was Marcie Kurek, the sophomore who’d disappeared from SBC Regional last year and never been heard from since. That idea

  had silenced the table.

  Otherwise it had been kind of fun listening to al the theories. One of those increasingly rare family dinners when everybody was present. What with Tom

  back and forth to Seton Hal law school and Kate getting ready to start med school at UMDNJ in Stratford, that hardly ever happened anymore. Most

  nights lately it had been just Mom, Dad, and Jack.

  Of course the event wouldn’t have been complete without the inevitable lecture from Dad about the dangers of kids wandering through the Pine Barrens

  without adults. Jack had listened patiently, trying to look interested, but he’d heard it so many times he could recite it by heart. Dad was a good guy, but he

  just didn’t get it.

  Yeah, the Barrens had its dangers. Some of the Pineys were what they cal ed inbreds—what his brother Tom liked to cal “the result of brothers and

  sisters getting too frisky with each other”—and maybe a little unpredictable. And you could come upon a copperhead or timber rattler, or lose some toes

  to a snapping turtle if you dangled a bare foot in the wrong pond. But you learned to keep your eyes open … you became Pine-wise.

  Old Man Foster might have a deed that said he owned a whole lot of acres and the state conservation agency might pass al sorts of regulations, but as

  far as Jack was concerned, the Pine Barrens were an extension of his backyard, and no one was keeping him out of his own backyard.

  Kate came in then. Slim with pale blue eyes, a faint splash of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and a strong jawline. Her long blond hair, which she

  worked at keeping straight, had gone wavy in the humidity. Jack warmed at the sight of her. Eight years older and a natural nurturer, she’d practical y

  raised him. She’d been his best friend growing up and had broken his heart when she left for col ege. Last year, when she’d spent her junior year abroad

  in France, had been the worst. He didn’t know what went on over there, but it had changed her. Nothing he could put his finger on, but no denying the

  feeling that she’d come back just a tiny bit … different.

  “Just got off the phone with Tim,” she said.

  Tom came in behind her, smirking. “Rekindling the old flame?”

  He was ten years older with a bulging middle; his brown eyes and brown hair were the exact same shade as Jack’s. They’d never got along wel .

  Though Tom had never said it, Jack knew he saw him as a fifth wheel on the family car.

  Kate gave Tom a tolerant smile. “Not likely. He’s engaged. But he gave me what information he could on the body.”

  Jack was al ears. He licked his fingertips, red from opening the pistachios. He had seventeen of the little nuts piled before him—three more to go

  before gobbling time.

  “Do they know who it is?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. They think it’s maybe two years old.”

  “Aaaaw,” Jack said as he popped open another shel . “There goes the Indian mummy idea.”

  Kate smiled. “Afraid so.” Her smile faded as she glanced at Tom. “Tim says it was a murder.”

  Jack froze, feeling creeped out. The three of them stood silent around the counter. Even big-mouth Tom seemed to have lost his voice.

  Final y Jack regained his. “R-real y?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, his skul is cracked. But more than that, he says it was some sort of ritual kil ing.”

  Jack’s mouth felt a little dry. A ritual murder … images of an Aztec priest cutting out a stil -beating heart flashed through his head. Definitely gross … but

  kind of cool.

  “Did he say what kindof ritual?”

  Kate shook her head. “I asked, but he said that’s al he’s heard.”

  Tom gave a low whistle and grinned at Jack. “And to think, this heinous crime would have remained undiscovered, maybe forever, if not for our own

  miracle boy.”

  Jack was about to say something when Dad popped his head through the door. He looked excited.

  “Hey, kids. Come here. You’ve got to see this.”

  Jack left his pistachios behind as the three of them trooped into Dad’s study. They found him seated before his brand-new home computer. It looked

  like little more than a beige electric typewriter with a couple of oblong boxes atop it, crowned with a six-inch black-and-white monitor. On the table next to

  it lay copies of a magazine cal ed inCider.

  Years ago Dad had built an Apple I from a kit, but it never worked right. This one he’d bought ful y assembled. Unlike the Apple I, which used tape

  cassettes to store programs, this baby used things cal ed disk drives.

  General y pretty quiet, Dad seemed fired up. He worked as a CPA, recently moving from Arthur Anderson in Phil y—for some reason, he hadn’t beenr />
  getting along with them—to Price Waterhouse in Cherry Hil , which meant a shorter commute. His two loves, outside of his family, were tennis and this