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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 lookhappy 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 baseballteams, 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 hestood 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 shortbiographies 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 mythologyclub, 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 littletooperfect. When he’d been in high school all he had pretty much focused on was football and girls.
But then again, Joyce had lost her parents at a young age, and was being raised by her auntand uncle. And he knew Baron’s life wasn’t perfect, and maybe Joyce’s wasn’t either. Perhaps they strove as hard as they did to compensate for negative elements in their personal lives.
Decker next turned to a few other photos that he had found in the yearbooks. Each showed Tanner and Baron together. In the way they looked, or held hands, or rubbed shoulders, Decker could easily seethat the young couple were deeply in love.
So, what had happened?
Baron had gone off to college and his girlfriend had stayed here? And done nothing with her life? Ending up fired from a JC Penney. Living in a ratty apartment. Being murdered next to a man with whom she apparently had no connection.
Decker closed the books and replaced them on the shelves.
He sat back down and mulled over what he had discovered.
His coming here had been a hunch based on a few facts, the paramount one being that Tanner and Baron were the same age and probably had attended school here at the same time.
So Joyce Tanner and John Baron had a connection dating back to high school. Baron had lied about that, because he’d said he didn’t recall if he hadknown her or not. Then there was the Bible verse found on the wall behind the bodies of Tanner and Babbot. Was that somehow tied to Tanner’s religious background? And was the Thanatos symbol found on Costa’s forehead connected to Baron’s founding a Greek mythology club?
There were other possible connections.
Michael Swanson may have been living in John Baron’s potting shed.
Bradley Costa’s bank had been a sponsor of Baron’s Little League team, and the murdered man had a photo of the team, and Baron, in his home. And the bank held the mortgage on Baron’s property. Decker had made inquiries at the bank about whether Costa had worked on the mortgage, but had received no answer as yet.
But what about Toby Babbot? Did he also have a connection to theman?
If not, three of the four did. That brought it outside the realm of coincidence, at least in Decker’s mind.
So what do I do now?
He left the school, trudged down the steps, and headed to his truck.
And stopped.
The pale blue Suburban was parked on the street.
And John Baron the Fourth was leaning against the front fender, his armsfolded over his chest, as he watched Decker leaving his old school.
