Darkness at the Edge of Town (Iris Ballard #2)(21)
They brought me into the station to look at mugshot books, and I found Stephanie Ridley within minutes. Prostitution and drug bust. When I pointed her out, everyone sprang into action, except for Van Den Berg. He drove Grandpa and me home. As I was about to get out of his car, I knew it was my last chance to ask the question that had plagued me since the man threatened me: “Why did this happen? Why did Mr. Armstrong do this to us? To them? He took us to Hershey Park last year. How could we not know he was evil?”
Agent Van Den Berg looked down at me with a frown. “When you find the answer to that, Miss Ballard, please let me know.”
Those questions stuck with me with through the weeks, months. Hell, they’ll stick with me until the day I die. I went to college, then the FBI Academy, and spent almost a decade at the FBI looking for the answers. Still haven’t found them yet.
It filled me with pride when the agents told me it was my evidence about Stephanie Ridley that finally brought Mr. Armstrong to justice. Stephanie Ridley slipped up and told a friend where she and Armstrong were holed up. Vegas PD picked them up. When we got the word he was in custody, Mom was the one who burst into tears. I just smiled. With Stephanie quickly turning on her lover, and all the other evidence against him, Armstrong hung himself in his cell when the DA wouldn’t agree to a plea deal. They were going for death, and in the end he gave them their wish. I was so relieved I wouldn’t have to testify, but mostly because I’d been petrified I’d screw up and he’d go free because of me. I was sure the Sheriff’s Office was glad it was over because I could stop my biweekly bike ride to the station to ask questions about what was happening, and not just about the Armstrong case.
In the months after my FBI friends sparked my interest in those questions, I’d read every book in our library I could find on the FBI, police techniques, and murders, and even stole a copy of The Silence of the Lambs from Blockbuster. I did return it the next day. If the Internet had been around back then, I probably never would have left my room. I would have been researching morning, noon, and night. Instead, after I’d exhausted the library’s resources, I began hanging around the Sheriff’s station. They finally had to bar me from coming into the station with my million questions. I learned to go only twice a month after that. My first part-time job was at the Grey County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Hancock and his son, the future Sheriff Hancock, each wrote me a letter of recommendation to the Academy. As I stared at the old Armstrong place that sweltering July day, I hoped Hancock Junior—my mother’s old flame—would be as accommodating as his father had been during my childhood. I turned my back on the Armstrong homestead and continued jogging.
The once flourishing downtown area of Grey Mills was about a mile and a half from the house, but by the time I reached the town proper you could fill a swimming pool with my sweat. I’d tried to jog while on the press tour but barely managed once a week if that. I probably would have skipped that day too, except Mom usually came over for breakfast and after the previous night’s blowup, I wanted to avoid her until I had something concrete to tell her. Okay, really I was being a bit of a coward and wanted to put off telling her about Billy’s marriage as long as possible. There was also the fact that I wanted to get first crack at the pastry section at Starbucks. Danishes and croissants went a long way when seeking favors from the local constabulary.
I’d unfortunately timed things poorly. The Starbucks line was filled with a pack of women my age in yoga pants and ponytails, chatting and cackling. I kept my head down and earphones on. I recognized one of them from high school: Rachel Gardner. She’d been a year behind me but we had PE together. She was one of my half-sister Merrill’s henchwomen. Merrill didn’t even go to our high school—she attended a private school in Peterson—but her insidious reach extended to my public middle and high schools. Rachel Gardner and Joanie Milliken were the two most popular girls at my school and must have sworn a blood oath to Merrill to take every opportunity to make my and Billy’s lives miserable. They had their boyfriends threaten Billy, ridicule him, and make sure he got picked last for every team and group project. I received similar treatment but rarely cared. I was too busy studying and working to worry about my social standing. I had one goal in mind and one only: to get my ass to college, then the FBI, as fast as possible. I took the GED at sixteen and started community college almost the very next day. One year after that, I moved to Penn State Altoona and never looked back.
I could almost understand why Merrill hated us so much even though we barely crossed paths. Everyone in town knew our father cheated on her mother and that the Ballard bastards, as far too many people in town called us, were the result. She was born a few months after us, but we moved in different circles, attended different schools, and never had extracurricular activities in common. I wouldn’t have known her if we passed her on the street.
Her psychological warfare began for some still unknown reason in the seventh grade, but I assume she’d found out about Daddy’s other family shortly before. I had to chase down the rumors that I gave blow jobs for cash and Billy was gay for a week, but under the threat of a broken jaw someone finally spilled that Merrill Grey put them up to it. I thought of beating her ass too, but I had no way of getting to her. It continued like that through middle and high school, the rumors popping up like a herpes outbreak—a disease I apparently had—about twice a year.