Sunken Graves by Alan Lee (life books to read txt) 📗

the bakery’s newspaper. Peter Lynch’s obituary ran and Jennings was respecting the dead by marveling over the man’s accolades.

He felt a cold detachment about that night. No relief, no satisfaction. Nothing beyond the guilt of Lynch’s children being deprived of their father. But, he told himself, they were better off this way, removed from their sociopathic guardian.

And that, he told himself, might be bull. A shield to hide behind.

What remorse he felt came from the loss of himself. Looking back on the previous two weeks, he recognized his own psychosis. He’d been a lunatic running on fear and memories and no sleep. Lynch had battered his body and his emotional stability, and Jennings hadn’t borne up well enough. The conclusion to their first conversation floated back to him…

Not bad, Daniel. You reek of sweat and fear but you didn’t break.

I don’t break, Mr. Lynch.

In the end, however, it had taken a divine visit from Daisy Hathaway to save him. He’d survived through luck Lynch didn’t have.

In the process he’d lost a man and he felt the lash of blame. Craig, he hoped, would consider the end result worth his sacrifice. He’d said as much. Yet it would be another thing hard to live with.

No one gets out of these things unscathed. There were always consequences.

Mackenzie August strode into the shop. He got a coffee and sat down.

The private detective said, “Why’d you call me this morning, Jennings? And not a few days ago?”

“My phone broke and I didn’t have your number. I wasn’t thinking straight and it all happened fast.”

“You’re alive. Barely.”

Jennings grinned. “That counts.”

“I happen to have an intimate relationship with an attorney who is at the courthouse today. A Sunday. The place is nuts. She tells me charges against you from last week are being dropped. All of them, trespassing in Peter Lynch’s field, assault, cocaine possession, everything.”

Jennings leaned back into his chair. He’d expected this but hearing confirmation made his ears tingle. “That’s great news.”

“Your alleged victim, Peter Lynch, is dead. Without his eyewitness account, prosecution doesn’t have much of a case. The CA admitted he thought the cocaine charge was bogus. Even so, she’s going with you to the police station later to make another statement about Friday night. Just to be safe.”

“I appreciate it,” said Jennings.

“Lynch was aced with a shotgun. Killed in the middle of a party. No one saw it and no one heard it, or at least, they didn’t know what it was. And the murder weapon’s gone. You know what that is? That’s damn impossible.”

“Or maybe, providence.”

“It’s gotta be. I heard what happened to your previous attorney, Josh. A gruesome find, even for a former military medic.”

“Lynch’s final victim.”

“He was a buddy.”

“I’m sorry, Mackenzie. I told Josh to stay away but he had stars in his eyes.”

“I gave him the same advice I gave you.”

“Stay alive? Don’t do anything stupid? Don’t mess with a murderer?”

“That’s it.” Mackenzie was nodding. “But he didn’t take it.”

Neither of us did, thought Jennings. But I’d been desperate instead of ambitious.

“I was told to go over your story with you, before you meet with the police,” said Mackenzie.

“Your intimate friend the attorney told you?”

“She’s persuasive. And she wants to make sure you don’t slip up.”

“You want the whole story?” said Jennings.

“I want the story you’ll tell the police. After that, it’s up to you.”

Jennings outlined his fight with Lynch in the field, the sunken grave discovery. And his conversations with Josh Dixon and the surprise visit from Francis Lynch. (At that, Mackenzie made a hmm’ing noise.) Jennings’ suspicion that Hathaway had been kidnapped and his discovery of Byron’s body at Hathaway’s house. And Josh Dixon in Lynch’s basement.

“I was looking for a phone when the fire started. I saw Lynch about to impale Daisy with a hook, so I hit him with a horse statue. She and I ran out,” said Jennings.

“You hit him and ran out.”

“That’s what I’ll say, unless you advise otherwise.”

“When the police ask about Peter Lynch being dead, how will you respond?”

“The last I saw him, he was lying in the main room.”

“He was shot. What will you say to that?” said August.

“Like everyone that night, I was swabbed for gunpowder residue. Officer Hudson forced me to go first but released me. He said my hands were clean.”

Mackenzie nodded to himself. “Hudson swabbed you and released you. Said you’re clean. That’s good.”

A lull in the talk then, when Mackenzie wanted to ask how he’d done it, how he’d fired a shotgun without his hands being stained with microscopic residue, without people hearing or seeing. Jennings would’ve told him, the unimaginable irony of getting away with it because of his missing foot. The gunpowder residue being absorbed inside his pant leg, and him limping away with the murder weapon. But the question of how remained unspoken. There was no question of if, not between the two men.

“How’s Ms. Hathaway?” said Mackenzie instead.

“She’s shook up about Byron. Her mother collected her from the hospital, but she said she’d be back in time for school Monday.”

“Do you know what happened to Buck Gibbs?”

“I assumed he burned. I left before investigators went into the house.”

“He shot himself in the head. He was found lying beside Peter.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Jennings, stunned. He remembered the gunshot then.

“There’s talk he shot Peter first, but then where’d the murder weapon go? Between us, I’ve never seen so many people happy about a double homicide.”

“More people died than just two,” he said, and Mackenzie inclined his head to agree. Important not to forget Josh Dixon and Byron Horton. “Why would Gibbs kill himself?”

“Probably Gibbs knew he was about to catch hell. That the skeletons in the family’s closet would no longer stay buried, and he went out on his own terms.”

“Still, though.”

“Maybe madness ran in the family.” Mackenzie pointed at him with the hand holding his coffee. “You did good, Jennings. You did something I couldn’t. You found proof and you took Lynch down. Lynch and his father.”

“The wheels