AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“When I was running across camp, he caught up with me. I’d just found a body up against a tree and I was so scared. Then Mike was right there. He said he sent Holden and Anthony to get the police, but they weren’t there. The police shouldn’t have taken so long to get there. And I hadn’t seen him at all yesterday. He didn’t even come todinner.”
“Was he wearing the mask when he caught up with you?” Iask.
“No. He must have put itsomewhere.”
“How about his clothes? Was he wearing the same clothes as when you saw him before? When he had hismask?”
She thinks for a second. “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to what he was wearing. I just saw the hatchet in his hand and his mask.” Her eyes go wide. “Oh, god. Holden and Anthony. What happened to them? The truck crashed. But where are they? Are theyalive?”
“Anthony didn’t make it,” I tell her. She lets out a whimpering cry, but I push past the sound to get everything out and keep the conversation going. We can’t get derailed. “Holden is alive. He helped Mike gather up the campers and counselors and get them into the dininghall.”
I’m almost at the end of the details I’d gotten from Garrison, the little bits he was able to tell me before going into the station and me heading here. I hope it’s enough to keep her going.
“He’s alive?” she asks, blinking a few times. “But if he was with Holden… Maybe that’s why he threw his mask away. He thought he was going to get caught and he wanted to start building astory.”
“Lisa, why don’t you just tell me what happened last night? The whole thing. Starting with the first thing that happened that you think might be important. We’re not going to make any guesses or try to figure anything out right now. We’re just going to go over everything you remember,” I say.
She nods and draws in a breath, letting it out slowly. I know she’s convinced of the director’s guilt. I can see the determination in her eyes when she talks about it. But it’s not uncommon for witnesses to horrific events to think they saw something they didn’t, or to apply attributes and details to what they saw based on other things that happen. It’s important not to be influenced by that. I’ll look into Mike and make sure he’s carefully questioned, but for now, I just want the straight facts.
“I guess the first thing would be going to the campfire,” Lisa says. “There’s one planned for every night of camp and all of us are supposed to be there. All of us. No exceptions. You can’t just say that you don’t want to go or that you have something else you want to do. The campfire is the end of the day and everyone is supposed to be involved. Last night, Anthony was telling ghost stories. He started talking about the camp and what happened twenty yearsago.”
“Had you heard those stories before?” Iask.
“Of course,” she says. “Everyone who grew up around here has heard them. It’s a big reason some of the guys even agreed to come to camp this summer. They liked the stories and thought it would be cool to say they went to the cursed camp. The way Anthony was telling the stories got to be a little intense and then one of the other counselors jumped out to prank us. It really scared a girl named Hannah and she ran away from thefire.”
I listen as she tells me about them hearing the screams from the cabins and being told to wait by the fire while the counselors went to find out what was happening. From there, the story gets more terrifying and her voice tightens, getting thinner and higher as her mind falls back into reliving her moments fleeing through the camp and coming face-to-face with the killer. I can see the pain etched in her face as she describes having no choice but to leave her friends behind, knowing they were at the mercy of the hatchet.
“You did what you needed to do,” I tell her in a moment of anguished silence where she looks down at the hands holding hers and shakes her head. “You savedyourself.”
“I should have stayed and helped them,” shesays.
“No,” I say adamantly. “You should have run. You should have gotten away and saved your own life. It’s noble and courageous to want to protect the lives of others, but it can also be just flat-out reckless and stupid. In this situation, that is exactly what it would have been. You getting away means you were able to call for help. You were brave enough to get yourself away from that camp and all the way to the house to look for help. You found the couple. You used the radio to get help. You saved lives because you did that. They might not have been the ones you were trying to save in that moment, but others lived because of you. Don’t for a second think you did anything wrong. And don’t for a second feelguilty.”
Lisa turns and tucks her head into her mother’s chest. Vanessa looks over at me with tears swimming in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she mouths.
I give Lisa a few moments and she sits up, wiping her eyes.
“Are you alright?” I ask. She nods. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she insists.
“Is there anything youneed?”
“No.”
“Okay. Let’s keep going. What happenednext?”
Sam is by the coffeemaker in the break room when I get to the station. He’s staring at the coffee brewing slowly into a stained carafe that has likely seen many fills of coffee this morning without a thorough wash in between. Not that it really makes all that much difference. The coffee doesn’t stay in the pot long enough to grow anything. And some officers I know are determined that coffee improves with age like wine, but on a shorter timeline.
“What have you got?” I ask, grabbing a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the machine in preparation of pouring myself a cup when it finishesbrewing.
“Not much,” he says. He leans down to give me a kiss. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I reply, smiling at him. “What do you mean not much? Did you finish talking to all ofthem?”
It seems unlikely they would have been able to get through the entire group in the amount of time I took speaking to Lisa, unless a lot of them left before being questioned. That would just mean having to figure out who they were and tracking them down to question them later. It’s a massive hassle and would waste a huge amount of time. I know realistically we’re going to have to accommodate a few of those conversations, but I’m hoping it’s not toomany.
