Through the Darkness, Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER 12

August, 2013

When the phone rang, Jack looked at the clock.  It was nearly eleven at night and he realized he had fallen asleep on Bo Buchanan’s couch.  On the third ring, he answered the phone. 

Starr’s voice came through on the other end.  “Jack, what’s going on?” his older sister demanded.

It took Jack a minute to clear the sleepiness away.  “Starr, are Jessica and Brody there?” he asked.

 “Yes, they just showed up at my apartment.  Jack, what’s wrong?” she asked again.

“Look, just come back with them,” he said evasively. 

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong,” Starr told him.  He could hear the panic rising in her voice.

Jack thought about how much he should say.  Finally, he merely said, “Mom’s going to need you.  I need you.”

That stopped Starr and she caught on to what he hadn’t said.  She turned to see her cousin standing there, concern on her face.  Then, Starr replied, “I’ll call you when we arrive in Llanview.”  With that, she ended the connection.  She turned to Jessica.  “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Jess shook her head.  “All I know is, it’s bad enough that Jack went to Uncle Bo.”

That, in and of itself, concerned Starr.  She had never known any male in her family to voluntarily go to the police for help.  “I guess I should pack up my things.  I have a feeling I’ll be home for a while.”

“Do you need help?” Jessica asked.  Starr nodded and the two cousins headed into the bedroom. 

While Starr was going through her closet and dresser, she asked, “Have you spoken to my dad?”       

Jess shook her head.  “By the time Brody, the kids and I got home, Uncle Todd had left town.  And we came home because my dad had some kind of public breakdown.”  She went on to describe the Man of the Year dinner and the fact that Clint was supposed to be honored and wound up causing a scene.  “Natalie said it all happened because Mom broke off the engagement to Dad, but, I don’t know, something’s not making sense.”

“That sounds more like something my father would do than Clint,” Starr mused.  “Oh, wait, he did go off the deep end when Mom turned down his proposal!”

“He really went after John, didn’t he?”

“He felt that John has messed up his and Mom’s reunion for arresting him.  When he found that picture of John and Sam Morgan, well, he got his perfect revenge,” Starr explained.

“And to think, it wound up being all for nothing,” Jessica replied.  “Uncle Victor was alive.”

“Has anyone found out where he was?” Starr asked.

“Mom tried to find out, but he hasn’t given many straight answers, other than Allison Perkins held him captive for a while,” Jessica informed her.  “But I think Tea tried to get him to open up. I’m sure Mom’s tried but he…he didn’t say much.”

The packing done, Brody took Starr’s bags and deposited them into the trunk of the rental car.  They headed back to the airport and boarded the plane home.  They sat for the first hour or so of the flight in silence before Brody queried Starr.  “Did you brother say anything else to you when you were on the phone with him?”

“No,” Starr admitted.  “All he said was Mom and I need him.”  Then she thought about the brief conversation.  “There was something about his voice…”

Jessica saw the shadow fall over Starr’s face.  “What?”

“He sounded,” Starr hesitated, unsure of herself, “he sounded scared.”

Starr suspected that Brody, once a Llanview police officer and a friend of Gigi Morasco’s, wouldn’t have agreed with Starr’s hypothesis.  But when she looked at him, she saw sympathy in his expression.  “I was watching him when we were all with Bo.  He seemed to be hiding something, but something that made him afraid.”

“And Uncle Bo, he seemed to be back Jack with everything, one hundred percent,” Jessica added.

Starr sat back, replaying the conversation with Jack in her head.  “It almost reminded me of when I found him and Sam locked in a closet, when Powell and Rebecca kidnapped Mom, Tea and Victor.  He was so terrified that time, he wouldn’t tell us what happened.  And that was what it seemed like earlier.”

“Well, whatever it is, Bo wants to tell the family all together,” Brody said.

Starr nodded gravely.  “And in my experience, that’s never good.”

As the plane drew nearer to Llanview, Jack was still in Bo’s office.  With Starr now on the way, they were going over a list of everyone who should be at Llanfair when the news was broken.  His mother and sister, of course and his aunts would be there, as would Cord, Jessica and Natalie and Tea and Dani.  Bo wanted to also include Matthew and Nora, because, he said, he suspected that whatever could be going on could also have spread to the Buchanans.  “Also, I think it’s best if the DA is there.  I also want her and the LPD to reopen any cases relating to Todd’s disappearance a decade ago, your Uncle Victor’s shootings, everything.  This isn’t something that just happened one to two years ago.”

Jack thought for a minute.  “What did happen to Todd all those years ago?  How’d he get into the position to be kidnapped anyway?”

He could tell Bo was going through his memories.  “Todd went up again Mitch Laurence.  It came out that he raped your Aunt Viki.  Somehow, Mitch got the better of him…and entombed him in your grandfather’s crypt.”

“And he was taken out of it by Tomas Delgado?” Jack asked.

“It appeared to be that way.  Blair tried to free him, but she wasn’t strong enough to move the top of the crypt and by time she got help, it was empty,” Bo explained.  “Then next time anyone saw ‘Todd Manning’, he had another face.”

“Who was Victor,” Jack added.

“Well, at the time, we all thought he was Walker Flynn, then Walker Laurence, Mitch’s brother.  But he slowly revealed himself as Todd to Starr, Viki, even Kevin.  Your mother was the last to find out,” Bo went on.

“And all that time we thought Victor was Todd, Todd was being held prisoner somewhere in Louisiana?” Jack tried to figure out.  It was like Jack was finally putting the pieces together.  When Todd had come back, Jack had been the most resistant.  He had grown up with Victor, wouldn’t even give Todd a chance.  Hell, he’d even accused Todd of killing Victor.

“Jack, this is the most baffling case I have ever had.  Unknown twins, secret intelligence groups, you name it, this case seems to have it,” Bo tried to say.  “I’m confused half the time.”

Jack thought back to the letter he had received from Todd.  Too much time lost.  That was what he had said in it and the full impact of that was just hitting Jack.  And now the fact that he could lose…no, he wouldn’t think that. 

There was a knock at Bo’s door and Nora Buchanan walked in.  “You called me about something…” Her words died in her throat.  “So, what kind of trouble has he gotten into?”

Jack wanted to throw the district attorney a dirty look, but too much was weighing on his mind.  He saw Bo shakes his head and escort his wife out of the office.  Jack moved to the door.  He may have been un-Manning-like in his cooperation with the police, but damned if he wasn’t going to take after his father and eavesdrop.

“Ironically, Jack’s been helping, Nora,” he heard Bo say.

“Really?  Jack Manning, son of Todd Manning, bane of existence for this town,” Nora replied incredulously.

“Honey, there’s a lot going on.  I’m going to need you to stick around for a bit.  Jessica and Brody are en route back from LA with Starr Manning.  When she gets here, I want to get the Lord family together,” Bo told her.

Jack heard Nora beginning to say something, but stopping short.  “What’s going on?” she asked, a question Jack must have heard ten times today.

“I’m going to be reopening a number of investigations pertaining to Todd Manning…his kidnapping, the shooting of his brother, all of it.  There looks like there’s a conspiracy swirling around the Lord family and I think Todd and Victor are at the center of it.”

Jack couldn’t hear Nora’s response to that.  And then, they seemed to have been interrupted by Detective Castillo.  Jack jumped back and tried to look as casual as possible as the three entered the room.

“Jack, where did you get this picture?” Bo asked, showing him a print of the shot of Allison Perkins.

“When I was in the hospital system, I noticed it.  Look, I actually forgot about it when we all came to you about Natalie.  Sorry,” Jack said truthfully.

“So we can place Allison at the hospital recently?” Nora asked.

“These were from the night they brought Clint in after what happened at the Man of the Year dinner,” Bo explained.

“And you obtained them how?” Nora asked Jack.

Bo looked at the younger man and turned to his wife.  “He hacked the hospital’s security feed.”  Jack looked to Nora, whose eyes gleamed.  But before she could say anything, the door to Bo’s office flung open.

Starr, Jessica and Brody stood there, Starr’s face red.

Jack didn’t know why, but he ran into his sister’s arms and hugged her forcefully.  Starr returned the gesture.  When they had broken apart, Jack turned to Bo.  “I think…I don’t want everyone blindsided.  I think we should show Starr.”

Bo nodded in agreement as Starr looked from Nora to Jessica and Brody to Jack.  “Show me what?  Does this have to do with Dad?”

Bo didn’t answer her question, but pulled the chair closer to the computer.  “Jessica, Brody, maybe you should stay for this as well.”

All three, along with Nora, watched the screen as Jack tried to fade into the background.  He heard the conversation he had had with his father earlier in this never-ending day.  Just before Todd got up to answer the door, Bo paused the video.  “What I’m about to show you is…it’s graphic.”

Starr turned and looked to Jack.  He was near tears.  But he saw his sister straighten her back as she looked at Bo.  “Show me,” was all she said.

Bo nodded and hit play.  As the door opened on the screen, Jack had to close his eyes.  Watching once was bad enough.  He heard the crash, the stun gun hitting its target and his own voice screaming.  Then he heard the gasps from around the room.  When he opened his eyes, he saw Brody holding Jessica, who was crying on his shoulder and Nora’s face was even panic-stricken.  Then he heard the muffled cries of his sister and he went to her.

He took his big sister in his arms and held her as she cried.  He had always known how close they had been when she was growing up and when Todd Manning returned to the family, that connection held and grew stronger.  He knew she was devastated by what she had just seen.

And in truth, so was he.