Free Mystery Dance: Three Novels by Scott Nicholson Page B

she’d be able to put a face with a name and start filling in the puzzle. She’d seen his picture in the Wells house when she’d had dinner there before her marriage, but both the boys had been adolescents then. Identical twins often developed different facial features over time.
    She was nearly to the door when another thought occurred to her. She knew little about Jacob’s past. Her probing had met a sullen wall that had no chinks. Sure, she knew Warren Wells had made millions in real estate, that his mother had died in a tragic fall, and that Jacob had disliked his parents. But he hadn’t opened up about his past and had left no paper trail. He didn’t even own a high school yearbook.
    She returned to the service window. The records officer was just settling back into her desk. Instead of waiting for the woman to return to the window, Renee pressed the button and asked for a search on Jacob Wells.
    The clerk’s eyes narrowed. “You with the newspaper?”
    “No, just a citizen.”
    “He’s done a lot for this town. Just remember that.”
    How could Renee forget?
    The woman sipped her tea as she operated the keyboard. She squinted at her computer screen and the printer on a filing cabinet beside her desk began scrolling out papers. She brought the stack of papers back to the window and slid them through the slot. “That will be eight more dollars.”
    Renee paid and flipped through the papers, her heart pounding. The names in the “suspect” line of the reports read “Jacob Warren Wells.” Her Jacob.
    Vandalism in the high school parking lot, suspect allegedly gouged the paint on a number of vehicles with a set of keys. Arson, suspect allegedly set some boxes on fire inside a hotel during a Christmas tree growers’ convention. Misdemeanor shoplifting and underage possession of alcohol, suspect allegedly stole two bottles of wine from a convenience store. Misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance, suspect allegedly caught smoking marijuana under the high school stadium bleachers. Obstructing and delaying a police officer, suspect allegedly gave his brother’s driver license during a traffic stop in an attempt at deception.
    Arson again, this time at the construction site of a building under development by Warren Wells. Charges were later dropped when the fire was attributed to “accidental causes.”
    The last arrest report was the most incredible, the most difficult to imagine. Cruelty to animals, suspect allegedly suffocated a cat by sealing it inside a plastic bag.
    “Is that the one you were looking for?” the woman said, watching her.
    Renee shook her head. This must be another Jacob Warren Wells. But the address listed on the reports was 121 White River Road, the same one Jacob had used the few times he’d mailed postcards home during college.
    “That was the other Wells twin, wasn’t it?” the records officer said. “The one who lost the child in the fire?”
    “It must be a mistake.” She didn’t push the microphone button, but the woman was close enough to hear her through the slot.
    The woman drew back from the glass as if offended. “We’re not perfect around here, but we can’t be wrong that many times.”
    “Jacob and Joshua,” Renee said, the papers like toxic freight in her hands.
    “You know what they say about twins,” the woman said, speaking off the record for the first time, eyes like wet beetles behind her glasses. “One of them always turns out bad.”
    Renee took her change and went outside, into a world whose sun was too brilliant to allow dark things to hide.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    “I sympathize with you, Jacob. Really, I do. If I could bend on this, you know I’d do it for you in a heartbeat.”
    The words were spoken with a practiced precision. Rayburn Jones tented his fingers and leaned back in his leather chair, his eyes like oil drops, bald head gleaming under the fluorescent lamps. The computer monitor to Jones’s left had an aquarium screen saver across