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When they arrived, the team split up—two officers heading to question Frederic at the resort, the other two deployed to the police station. But when the latter cohort found the station without power and abandoned, all Koh Sang police having left long before to join their families for the storm, they decided to patrol the island. When they heard the gunshots coming from Frangipani, it took the officers only minutes to descend on the courtyard.
The police arrested Doug and Greta on-site. Doug resisted, of course, surrendering only after being struck unconscious by the butt of an officer’s gun. Greta went much more willingly.
She admitted to everything, starting with her relationship with Alice, which Cass had somehow discovered. I reached out to Alice again on Instagram after everything happened, and she filled in the gaps that had been missing. Greta, twenty-three, freshly graduated with a master’s degree in education, had been one of Alice’ssecondary school teachers when she was only fourteen. Alice explained how Greta had groomed her, ultimately blackmailing her by threatening to report the relationship to her parents until Alice agreed to accompany her on a trip out of town. Greta never told Alice where they were going, and once they’d left the country, it was too late for Alice to get away. Greta kept her passport under lock and key, forcing Alice to play house with her on this island thousands of miles from home. But last month, in the chaos following Jacinta’s murder, Greta must have become less vigilant, giving Alice the opportunity to find her passport and escape.
Alice told me that she never reported Greta once she returned to Sweden. Despite everything that Greta had done to her, Alice couldn’t bring herself to hate her. In fact, in some strange way—despite working extensively with a therapist on this point—Alice still loved Greta.
But Alice knew her silence could cost others. So she kept tabs on the Permanents and the other individuals joining them, like me. When she saw the photos I was posting with the group, she sent me those Instagram messages as a sort of warning. She wanted me to know of the connection between Jacinta and the Permanents, but as soon as she did it, she felt conflicted, as if she had betrayed Greta. So she didn’t respond to my subsequent messages and tried to ignore the guilt that gnawed at her until she saw the news of what happened at Frangipani.
When the police confronted Greta with Alice’s account of what had happened, she confessed. To all of it. To taking Alice, murdering Lucy, and helping to cover up the other deaths.
But Greta and Cass weren’t the only ones who came here to get away from what they’d done. Koh Sang is—or was—a place people go to hide, after all.
Logan was a prime example. After his death, the Scottish media tripped over themselves to be the first to expose the information they had dug up on him. Logan’s brother, Alec, had died in Logan’s car, but only after Logan rammed the car into a tree while driving drunk. Most of Aberdeen believed the crash was deliberate, intended by Logan to kill—or at least injure—his brother, who had been hooking up with a girl Logan was interested in. Logan skipped town without a word to anyone while his charges for drunk driving and Alec’s death remained pending.
And Doug. Doug of the small town of Bendigo, Australia, whose real name was actually Michael Williams. Who had an outstanding warrant for the rape of an underage girl and was suspected of having been involved in several other sexual assaults.
Doug refused to admit it, of course, just as he denied his involvement in covering up the murders of Jacinta and Lucy. He denied murdering Daniel too. He maintained his innocence even after the police found a burner phone buried under his mattress, filled with the messages he’d sent to Daniel setting up the fatal meeting in that Kumvit alley.
Doug was quick to shove the blame on everyone else: Logan, Greta, even Neil. But after days of beatings and God knows what else at the hands of the Thai police, he finally confessed to killing Daniel. And he explained how this all started.
He told the police about Logan and Jacinta’s affair. When Jacinta found out that Logan was in a relationship, she threatened to out Logan to Cass. Somehow, Logan calmed her down and convinced her to take a morning hike with him up to Khrum Yai. Just as the sun began to rise above the Gulf of Thailand’s glittering surface, he pushed her and watched her body tumble to the rocks hundreds of feet below.
When people began to question Jacinta’s death, Logan recruited the other Permanents to help him. They were each willing to do whatever was needed to avoid unnecessary attention. Doug confirmed that Greta took care of Lucy by drowning her at the Full Moon Party. And finally, Doug admitted that Daniel had attempted to blackmail him with the video, trying to get enough money so that he could escape permanently, never having to return to London. Doug arranged to meet him, but rather than turning over the cash, Doug took Daniel by surprise, slitting his throat with a knife he’d taken from the dive shop.
The saddest part was that Daniel was innocent of the sexual assault crime he had been convicted of in London. No doubt seeing an opportunity for her fifteen minutes of fame, Daniel’s ex-girlfriend came clean to one of the UK’s trashier tabloids, explaining how she had accused Daniel of assaulting her only after he had abruptly ended their relationship.
I didn’t get all the answers I wanted—for instance, who broke into my room the day I published the post. But given all that Doug’s done, I can’t help but lay that crime at his feet as well.
As soon as the police dragged Doug and Greta to the station, they released a very bruised and black-eyed Sengphet. In exchange for the mishap and in return for Sengphet’s agreement not to report his predicament to the media, the Thai government agreed to transport his wife and young son to Thailand with the requisite immigration papers and to relocate them all to Koh Phi Phi, an island a few hours away.
Doug and Greta weren’t the only ones to be arrested on the night of the storm. By the time they arrived at the Koh Sang police station, Frederic was already there. He eventually admitted todoing everything in his power to cover up what was happening on the island. But the police also recently released a statement revealing that Frederic had been involved in a long list of financial crimes on Koh Sang and in Bangkok, where he was in the process of opening a second resort. Always one to save himself at others’ expense, Frederic was quick to hand over to the Thai National Anti-Corruption Commission a list of the Koh Sang police whom he had routinely bribed.
Alani escaped it all relatively uninjured—physically, at least. Lucy’s parents had flown to Koh Sang to recover their daughter’s body and to accompany Alani home. They didn’t blame her for Lucy’s death as she feared; instead, they told her how indebted they were to her for finding out the truth behind what had happened to Jacinta and for trying to protect their younger daughter. I met them too. The four of us—Lucy’s parents, Alani, and myself—spent several nights together on the beach as well as a few sunrise mornings on the summit of Khrum Yai, paying tribute to their daughters in the way they would have wanted.
I was released from the Koh Sang hospital ten days ago. My physical wounds are still healing; the doctors promised the stitches holding together the cut on my head would dissolve in time, and the bruises covering my legs have already begun to fade.
But a minute hasn’t passed since Cass’s death that I haven’t thought about her. I cling to our moment in the mud of Frangipani, her apology. I’m struggling to come to terms with the guilt I have for exposing her and the fact that she gave her life for mine. I’m not sure I ever will.
On the day I was released, I was able to see Cass one final time. With no next of kin in the United States and no will, Thai lawprovided for a state-funded cremation. Given the circumstances, the police made an exception and let me visit her the day before.
Lying on the gurney, with her eyes closed and her hair pulled back from her face, she looked like a child, remarkably like the photographs of Robin in the newspapers years ago. I stood beside her for several minutes, telling her everything I’d never had the chance to while she was alive. The apologies, the explanations, how much I had gotten wrong about her. Because there was quite a lot. Ever since I had arrived on Koh Sang, there had been a part of me, deep down, who knew Cass was a good person, even if I had tried my hardest to ignore it.
In the days following the showdown at Frangipani, a tenacious reporter broke the emotional story of what really happened in that hotel room in Upstate New York, correcting the years of lies painting Cass as the Hudson Massacre Killer. That reporter somehow got her hands on the statement Cass had made to the police back then, detailing the real story about what happened. The switched glasses, her sister’s heart condition, Cass’s self-defense.
And despite all the news stations villainizing her as a murderer in the wake of the incident, Cass never corrected them. She endured the claims, the ostracization, the pain, all by herself, as if she assumed she deserved it. She was stronger than I could have ever known.
As I stood there next to her body, between tearful sobs, I forgave her again for that night at the swim house and everything that happened afterward. I realized I had been using her as a vessel for my rage whenever the hatred I held for Eric overflowed. But she was just a girl back then. A girl with struggles I never knew about. And she more than made up for it in the end.
The sight of Koh Sang fades in front of me now. Despite everything, I can still make out people lounging on the beach, a handful of others on stand-up paddleboards. The tourism didn’t take a hit as everyone expected. If anything, the news has given Koh Sang a new, dark allure for backpackers.
It’s turned the resort into a place where everyone wants to stay.
I hear something behind me now, the sound of wood underfoot interrupting my memories. I feel the grasp of a hand on my waist and clench instinctively before my fleeting panic is replaced with pleasure from the touch of light kisses on my shoulder.
“Hey, you,” I say softly, teasing my fingers through his tousled hair. Neil snuggles closer, the scratchiness of his cast brushing against the side of my leg. His color has finally returned, a peachiness replacing the stark white in the gaps between his freckles that had stained his face for days after that night at Frangipani. After the arrests were made, the police rushed him to the makeshift medical clinic on the island. Until the electricity returned the next day, there wasn’t much the doctors could do other than wrap his gunshot wound to try to stop the bleeding.
In the end, a doctor splinted Neil’s leg and removed the bullet. He was lucky, the doctor reminded him repeatedly. The bullet missed any major arteries or ligaments and was easy to remove. He would struggle with walking for a while, but there would be no lasting damage.
