Not Even Past

The Jackson Donne series

When One Man Dies

The Evil That Men Do

Witness To Death

For

Erin and Ben

“The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”

—William Faulkner

W
HEN
J
ACKSON
Donne saw the eight-year-old picture of himself, he thought the email was the weirdest form of spam he’d ever gotten.

It was taken on graduation day at the police academy, and Donne was in his dress blues, smiling in front of an American flag. His hat was tilted down, leaving two fingers of room between the brim and his nose, exactly as they’d been taught. Jeanne had taken it. They had only been dating three months, and he remembered how happy she was that he’d completed training. Now, they would have some extra time to spend together. Donne was smiling more about that than he was from actually graduating from the academy.

He hadn’t seen the picture in years. It had been boxed up somewhere with the rest of Jeanne’s things. Had her parents taken that stuff after she died? He didn’t remember. Donne scrolled down some more and saw the email’s text. The muscles in his shoulders tightened as if someone had grabbed him. Written in bold italics was
Click and watch. Her life depends on it
. Next to that was a link, but not to a website Donne recognized.

Don’t click on it
, he thought. Probably some virus, something that would eat up all the files on his computer. He couldn’t afford that, not now, with exams looming. Of course, the only reason he logged on in the first place was to procrastinate.

But this email tickled his brain. The picture. Who had found and sent him that picture? He looked at the email address again, a string of numbers and a domain that just read “di.com.” Nothing familiar jumped out at him.

Donne quickly forwarded the email from his school account to his personal one. Then he closed it, without deleting it. Scrolled through the rest of his email. Nothing from his professors. No study guides, no cheat sheets, no rubrics. No help at all. His time at college had been tedious, full of syllabi, message boards, readings, and essays. But this was his life now.

No gunfire. No one dies.

Life was what it should be. Boring. Work on what you have to, have pizza and a beer on Friday night. Watch some movies. Tweet.

And now that he was so close to the end, closing out his degree, he wanted it to be even easier. Kate said he had senioritis. He didn’t disagree.

Which was why this email bothered him. Donne clicked on it again and looked at the time stamp. It’d been sent at six this morning. Now, according to his iPhone, it was 10
AM
. Four hours that email had sat there waiting for him. The Microsoft Outlook email system Rutgers used didn’t jibe with his phone, otherwise he might have gotten it earlier.

But no, that picture had sat there while Donne had gotten up and gone for coffee and a bagel. Surfed through some New Jersey websites looking at the news and procrastinated overall instead of studying.

The mouse arrow hovered over the link, turning from arrow to finger. His own finger hovered over the button.

A bead of sweat formed at his hairline.

He clicked the link. And his gut gurgled when he got the pinwheel cursor. His computer had frozen, and for an instant he worried about every one of his files disappearing into some abyss of zeros and ones. About spending the next twelve hours waiting in line at the Genius Bar at the Menlo Park Mall.

The pinwheel stopped and his browser opened up. Donne stared at the screen. A black square, then a play button in the middle. He clicked on the triangle and waited.
It must be buffering
, he thought, because nothing else was happening.

There was a loud
swoosh
from his speakers and the screen went bright white, like sun reflecting off snow. Donne flinched and squinted as the camera adjusted to the light. The picture came into focus. A nearly empty room. Gray walls, gray floor. The camera was positioned behind two spotlights. Donne could see the tripods and big round head fixed on top of them. Beyond that was a chair. In the chair was a woman.

Donne leaned closer to the screen. He couldn’t tell who it was.

The camera zoomed in slowly. The spotlights were out of view. The woman wore blue sweatpants and a white tank top. She was slumped over. Her wrists were tied to the arms of the chair. Her brown hair had fallen in front of her face.

The camera pulled in tight on the torso of the woman. She was shaking and her arms appeared bruised. The bruises had occurred some time ago, however, because they had yellowed on the outside. The woman lifted her head and the hair fell away from her face. Her mouth was covered in duct tape. Her nose was runny. And her eyes looked directly into the camera.

Donne’s throat closed.

Jeanne Baker stared back at him, eyes wide at the camera, a tear trickling down the left side of her face. He could hear muffled screaming through the duct tape.

He said her name. He said it twice.

The screen went blank.

“No!” Donne shouted and grabbed the monitor. He shook it, as if that was going to help.

He clicked on the mouse, hoping the triangle play button would reappear. It didn’t. Donne didn’t know long he sat there clicking. It felt like only seconds. He didn’t stop until he heard the door open behind him.

He turned and saw Kate, two boxes in her hands.

“Hey,” she said. “I thought you might want to take a break from studying and help me with the invitations.”

“W
HAT’S WRONG?”
Kate put the box of invitations on the coffee table.

Donne blinked. “I didn’t expect to see you this morning.”

She smiled. It was the same smile she gave him the first time he opened a car door for her. The time he brought her roses at work. Each time, she’d smile the smile she was giving now and call him “the gentleman.” And then remind him it was the twenty-first century.

“Well.” She tilted her head. “I’m here. Let’s get stuffing.”

Kate waited for him just for a moment, as if she expected him to take the initiative. He didn’t move. It felt like he was stuck to his computer chair, as if the seat had iced over and caught his body with it. When he didn’t move, she pulled the first envelope.

“Got to do my mother first, right? She’d probably be offended otherwise.” She took an invitation, glanced over it, and then slid it into the pink envelope.

If this had been a normal moment, Donne would have laughed and asked why her mother even needed an invite. She was paying for most of the damn thing. They would have laughed, and Kate would have reminded him about tradition.

Not today.

“Kate, I—” He turned and looked at his computer. The web browser was still open to the blank video. He clicked it closed. “I have to study. I haven’t even started yet.”

She licked the glue of the envelope and sealed it. Put it on the coffee table next to the box. Donne leaned back in his chair and watched her stand up and walk toward him. Slowly, like the first night they made love. The smile changed now. No longer confused. Confident.

She put her hands on the arms of his chair and leaned in close. Her hair smelled like apple shampoo.

“You said you were going to get up early and work.”

“When did I say that?”

“When don’t you say that?”

She leaned in closer and her lips parted slightly. “You work too hard.”

“If I don’t, I won’t be finished with this.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

Before their lips could meet, Donne flashed on to Jeanne. Tied up in that chair. Her eyes wide. Screaming behind duct tape.

He tilted his head out of the way of Kate and stood up. She stepped back and brushed hair in front of her face, as if she was trying to hide it.

“What is wrong with you?” Her voice was the edge of glass.

“I told you, I have to study.”

She shook her head. “That’s not it.”

He stood up, feeling ice form in his chest. Someone must have turned the thermostat down when Donne wasn’t looking.

Jeanne—no, Kate—had her arms folded in front of her. Donne stepped in close to her, put his hands on her elbows. Squeezed gently.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m stressed. There’s a lot to be done. Finals. The wedding. We have a lot to do. You surprised me.”

“But you …” Kate shook her head. “You’ve been doing this a lot lately.”

Donne closed his eyes and took in a long breath. He kissed her on the cheek. “I don’t mean to.”

He wanted to explain, tell her about Jeanne. Tell her about the video. Tell her about the blood on his hands. All the blood. He should have done that a year ago. But it never felt like the right time. It still didn’t.

“Then why do you do it?”

“Did you take today off?” he asked.

“I have a meeting later this afternoon. Last-minute preparation for court. Took the morning off, thought we could stuff some envelopes and then get lunch.”

That sounded good. It sounded like exactly what he needed. But the walls felt like they were closing in on him. His mouth was dry and his throat was tight. He needed to go do something, anything, to try to find out what that video was about.