The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(62)
“Unfortunately, yes.”
She led him into the library. The shelves held few books, and there were a couple of antiquated boxy computers on metal tables. There wasn’t a single student in the place.
“The yearbooks are over there,” she said, pointing to a far corner.
“If I have any other questions, can I just ask the librarian?”
The woman went over to the door and looked back. “You could if we had a librarian. We lost her in the last round of budget cuts. We can spend a billion dollars on a sports arena, but we can’t drop a dime on our kids.”
Decker just stood there and stared at her awkwardly.
She said quietly, “If you need anything else, Agent Decker, you can come and get me. I’d be glad to help.”
“Thanks.”
She left and Decker walked over to the yearbooks and scanned the volumes there. He pulled out four of them from the span of time he needed to check, sat at one of the rickety tables, and opened the first one. He found the students he wanted in the freshman year.
John Baron the Fourth looked so young, and he was, barely fourteen at the time. He was still growing into a body that would become long and lean. His Adam’s apple stuck out prominently from the photo, along with his toothy grin. Decker ought to have been surprised that the elite Baron would have been sent to a public school, but he had learned that Baron’s parents had actually been pretty much broke when their son was growing up. A free public education may have been their only route.
Decker turned the pages until he got to another alphabetical section.
Joyce Ridge, who had become Joyce Tanner upon marriage, looked back at him. She was exceptionally pretty, with long blonde hair and soft blue eyes.
Decker had seen her autopsy photo with this same face torn apart by a shotgun blast. He had learned Tanner’s maiden name during the course of his investigation.
He flipped through some more pages to find that Tanner and Baron had been members of the school’s honor society. He turned to the sports section of the yearbook and saw that Baron, despite being a freshman, was a starter on both the football and baseball teams. His stats as a quarterback and pitcher were listed and would have been impressive for a senior.
Tanner was on the tennis team and was also a cheerleader.
Decker went through their sophomore and junior yearbooks and saw the pair grow up in the photos. Tanner was voted Most Popular as a junior, and Baron’s athletic career was on a tear. As a junior, he was all-state in both football and baseball.
Decker next picked up their senior yearbook and slowly went through the pages.
Baron was now at pretty much his full height, and handsome, with strong features, thick dark hair, and a pair of bewitching eyes. An article in the sports section of the yearbook reported that Baron threw for nearly three thousand yards and thirty touchdowns as a quarterback, and as a pitcher on the baseball team, he was undefeated and had tossed the only perfect game in school history. He was one of only two high school athletes named first team all-state in two sports that year, and subsequently had been named athlete of the year for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
He had also signed a college baseball scholarship, the yearbook reported, evidencing both his athletic and academic prowess.
Joyce Ridge had grown into a beautiful young woman. She was tall, athletically built, captain of the tennis team, and head cheerleader. Her future seemed limitless, though there was no mention of her going to college or receiving a scholarship.
Decker turned to the prom pages and saw that she also had been voted homecoming queen.
But Baron was not homecoming king. Another young man, named Bruce Mercer, a wrestler and president of the Spanish club, had been chosen to walk the field with Joyce. She didn’t look happy about this, Decker concluded as he studied the pair on the field. At the edge of the photo was Baron, his football helmet off. He was staring at the pair with such a desolate expression that it moved even the normally stoic Decker.
Decker looked back at the sports team photos from all four years.
In each, Baron, though clearly the star of both the football and baseball teams, had been shunted off to the side. Decker knew from experience that your best players, and certainly your seniors, were given prominence in team photos. That was just how it worked.
Yet even in Baron’s senior year when he was setting all sorts of records, he was in the back row and off to the right. His being a head taller than anyone else around him was the only reason that he stood out. The same for the baseball team, where the pitcher of a perfect game was relegated to the fringe of the photo.
He should have been captain of both of the squads, Decker felt. But he wasn’t.
And Decker certainly knew why, and also why the young scholar-athlete had not been voted homecoming king.
He was a Baron.
For the seniors, there were short biographies on each. With Joyce, Decker learned that her uncle was a pastor at Baronville Baptist Church and that Joyce taught vacation Bible school in the summer, was a lifeguard at the community pool, and volunteered to tutor freshman students in math. She also competed in dance and was quoted as wanting to work with the handicapped. With Baron, Decker found that he had started up a Greek mythology club, could read Latin, and wanted to play major league baseball as well as start his own business one day.
They certainly seemed to be impressive people, Decker thought. Maybe a little too perfect. When he’d been in high school all he had pretty much focused on was football and girls.