“Yearbooks?” Mrs. Nordmeyer asked, putting down a clipboard.
Jeri smiled schmoozingly. “Yes.”
“Let me guess. Forty years ago, thereabouts.”
“We’re not the first ones to have asked,” Jeri replied.
“More like the fifth. CBS had a gal drop by. And NBC, CNN, Associated Press, and the police.” She pursed her lips. “Which would make you the sixth, not that it matters.”
“Do you keep yearbooks that far back?”
“Oh, yes. And much further, if you want them. We were the first high school in the city.”
She led us into a small room off the main office, full of boxes of documents or forms, old trophies, American and Nevada flags, dust, cobwebs, and three shelves of yearbooks spanning decades.
“These’ll be the ones you’re interested in,” she said, pulling four of them off the shelf. “Seventy-one to seventy-four, the years Jonnie Sjorgen and Dave Milliken were here.” She gave us an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to hold a driver’s license while you look at them. Mrs. Osmetti, that’s the principal, she insists on it.”
Jeri handed over her license, then we sat down at a table in a conference room beside the principal’s office.
1974, senior pictures in faded color. Jonnie was a roguish, good-looking kid of eighteen with an easy, confident grin and a devil-may-care lock of black hair curling over his forehead. Even back then he probably spent half an hour a day getting that curl just right. Under his picture was a lengthy caption: Senior class president, varsity football, track. Honor Society, debate club, yearbook staff, theater. Nickname, “Zonker.” Favorite expression: “Yo, dude.” Future plans: Harvard.
Harvard. In the footsteps of his old man. “Busy boy back then,” I said, “was Zonker.”
Jeri made a face at the name.
David Milliken wasn’t as pretty, but he had a serious face. He looked like a future district attorney. Varsity letters in basketball and tennis. Spanish club, chess club, yearbook staff, Honor Society. Nickname, “Spider,” favorite expression, “groovy,” an indication of how much times had changed since then. Nothing was groovy now. Future plans: Princeton.
Not a hint that these two would one day be found decapitated, or that one Mortimer Angel, who was wearing rubber pants and eating Gerber’s at the time the pictures were taken, would do the finding.
“Good-looking boys,” Jeri observed.
I grunted.
“Both of them were on the yearbook staff,” Jeri said, “so I’ll bet we’ll find lots of pictures of them in here.”
She flipped pages, found Jonnie grinning in the group picture on the Huskies football team. And another shot of him, obviously faked, catching a football.
“Interesting stuff,” I said.
Jeri thumped the pages with a finger. “These are the people who knew Jonnie back when. A few of them are probably still in the area.”
“Tracking them down sounds like a major pain-in-the-ass dead end, Jeri.”
“You never know till you try. It’s called investigation. You seem to be having trouble with the concept.”
“It just sounds tedious and not very likely to lead anywhere.”
“True. Not everyone is cut out for this line of work.” She gave me a significant look, then went back to the book. She found Jonnie in the debate team photo, giving the camera another wide, over-the-top grin. His teeth looked great.
Dave Milliken on the basketball team, an all-star, making a jump shot, lanky, number thirty-three.
King Jonnie in a tux with the homecoming queen, Sarah Jean Humbolt, a willowy, radiant blond holding roses, wearing a glittering crown and a blazing smile.
Jonnie in the school play, Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. He’d played the ghost of Christmas past. A boy named Donald Helm had been Scrooge.
Jonnie, Dave, and seventeen others in the yearbook staff photo, a horsing-around, laughing shot, eight guys, eleven girls. Jonnie was giving one of the guys a pair of rabbit ears.
Jonnie and Dave in a big varsity-sweater shot. Jonnie on the track team. Honor Society group photo on the front lawn of the school, with Jonnie and Dave, Sarah Jean, forty-odd others.
And that was the end of the book.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we study it,” Jeri said.
“Again?”
“What do you mean again? All we did was browse. Now we get to work.”
I sighed. My own yearbook lists me as a dumb-ass football player with plans for the NFL, nickname “Bullwinkle.” No Honor Society. Embarrassing if I thought anyone looked at that stuff these days.
Jeri shoved the ‘73 yearbook at me. “Here, make yourself useful.”
“What’m I looking for?”
“Names. Connections. Try to think outside the box, Mort.”
“Outside the box. Gotcha.”
I went through it. Jonnie and Dave’s junior year. Jonnie was still prominent, but not as much. A different yearbook staff had put it together. He’d been junior class president. Debate club, theater, lettered in his sports. One stray picture, taken in a crowded hallway, showed him with an arm over the shoulders of a dark-haired girl, but it didn’t give names. I found her in the junior class photos. Clair Albrecht. And I found Sarah Jean Humbolt, one year younger but still homecoming-queen beautiful.
“Clair Albrecht,” I said.
“Huh?”
I showed Jeri the relevant pictures. She found Clair in the ’74 yearbook. Dave and Jonnie’s senior year. Nickname “Shooey.” Future plans: junior college, marriage.
Marriage to whom, it didn’t say. It was likely she was figuring some guy would eventually ask, at which time she would naturally say yes.
Jeri turned a few pages. “Thought so,” she said, pointing to a theater photo. Jonnie, Sarah, Dave, Clair. Clair was smiling, leaning on Milliken’s back. He was in a crouch. Jonnie had a possessive arm around Sarah Humbolt’s waist.
Jeri turned to another
