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“Yes,” Jonah says, giving his wife an anxious look. “There’s something we think you might need tosee.”
I nod and take one of the other chairs at the table. Caroline reaches into the large bag sitting on the carpet at her feet and takes out a large manila envelope. She holds it firmly between thin, trembling hands.
“I went into our son’s room today for the first time since…” she hesitates, her breath catching in her throat. I don’t push her. She needs the time to learn to say these words, to make sense of her new reality. “Since that night. I just wanted to be there. I wanted to be near his things and smell his pillow. I’m afraid it’s going to go away. That I’m going to forget how he smelled or what his voice soundedlike.”
“You won’t,” I tell her gently. “You won’t forget those things. I promise you. My mother was taken from me when I was eleven years old. I can still hear her voice in the back of my mind all the time. He’s still with you. Don’t ever forgetthat.”
She reaches across the table toward me and squeezes my hand with one of hers. It feels so tiny and fragile in mine. I wonder if she always feels this small or if she has just been diminished, dissolved away by her own tears and the pain crushing down on her.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Her hand falls away from mine and goes back to the envelope in her lap. She draws in a breath. She’s so thin and frail looking I imagine the air rattling around in her hollow chest. Her husband wraps an arm around her shoulders and holds her close.
“Go ahead and show her,” he saysgently.
“When I went into his room, it was a mess. It was always a mess. That’s just… teenage boys.” She sniffles and a hint of a smile comes to her face. Someday that smile will be back. But that’s all it is for now: a hint. “But I started cleaning it up. I didn’t want to move too much of it. I want it to stay the same as much as I can. I just didn’t want the dirty dishes and laundry to be there, too. When I moved a sweatshirt on his desk, I foundthese.”
She hands the envelope over to me and I open the brad on the back.
“Do you know what they are?” Iask.
She nods. “I put them in the envelope. There are quite a few of them and I didn’t want to lose any of them. I don’t know what they mean or if they are anything, but I wanted to make sure you saw all of them. I knew if they did mean something, you wouldknow.”
“Alright,” I say, trying to soundencouraging.
The envelope is thick and when I tip it forward, a stack of paper slides out into my hand. At first I don’t know what I’m looking at. It could easily be leftovers from a history or social studies class assignment on current events. But then I see a date and a headline and I know exactly what I’m holding in my hands.
Anthony is the one who’d stolen the materials from the library. Which means he is likely also the person who’d sent Mike that note.
Every fiber of my being wants to storm back to Mike Kirkland’s house and demand an explanation for everything I’ve found out. But I know I have to hold on for a little bit longer. I’m still waiting to hear back from Dean, and until I get the information about the note and what it could mean, I don’t want to confront him. If I was to go for him now, it would give him leverage. He would know we are nipping at his heels, but that we don’t have all the pieces in placeyet.
I’m trying hard not to jump to any conclusions yet. It gets more difficult with every new little detail that comes up. When I first spoke with Lisa and she insisted it was Mike who had come after them, I had trouble wrapping my head around it. I couldn’t imagine why that could happen. I was convinced she was only seeing what her terrified mind conjured up because he was there while she wasrunning.
Now that possibility has gone from seeming unlikely and even a bit outlandish to being the strongest potential explanation we have. Things keep falling into line and the deeper I dig, the more I find that makes Mike look extremely suspicious.
But it’s not concrete yet. There are still elements of it I don’t understand and that haven’t been sorted out yet. The suspicious behaviors are there, the lying, the opportunity. But there still isn’t a motivation. If it had only been Anthony who had been murdered, or Anthony and Holden because he was with him, I would be far more confident in this path.
That wasn’t the case. Anthony died alongside fifteen other people. He wasn’t even the first of the victims. The Barretts were the first to die, followed, presumably, by Miranda. It wasn’t until after Mike sent the two counselors to get help that Anthony faced his doom.
Anthony’s parents told me they didn’t know why their son had stolen those materials from the library, or what he’d found out about Mike. It devastated them to hear he was doing something so unscrupulous. Though they didn’t say it, I can imagine it dug into their hearts to know there is a strong possibility whatever he was doing with those materials and however he was using them against the camp director could very well have contributed to hisdeath.
Someone less experienced might immediately jump to the assumption that because Mike sent Anthony and Holden after the police, it means he couldn’t possibly be the one responsible. But that’s far from the truth. The reality is, people who have committed horrific crimes or who are planning such crimes often use diversions to cast blame elsewhere or buy themselves more time to follow through with theirplan.
It might not have been a plan at all. He may not have expected the two counselors to show up at his office looking for help. But that’s where I get tripped up. They heard Miranda’s screams and immediately went to see if she was alright. There was blood everywhere in that cabin. It would be virtually impossible for someone inflicting enough injuries on another person to cause that much blood to get out of it clean. Not to mention the fact that Miranda was nowhere to be found in the moments after the screams when the guys got to the cabin. Yet, when they went to the administrative building to get Mike, he was sitting calmly in his office and didn’t have any blood on him.
Holden did describe them rounding up some of the campers and other counselors and getting them secure before going to the office. It’s conceivable Mike could have stashed Miranda, alive or dead, somewhere close by but out of sight, gone to his office, changed clothes, and waited, appearing to be working and knowing that someone would inevitably find the cabin and come for him. But that doesn’t explain why he would want to kill the campers and counselors, and especially why he would want to start with Miranda. Even more, why he would want to hurt theBarretts.
The pieces that are missing are glaring. Without them, I can’t create a picture of what might have happened in his mind to lead him to something like this. It’s hard to look at someone so young and imagine them with the kind of intense hatred and fury it would take to allow him to commit these kinds of heinous crimes. A lot of people wouldn’t believe they could manageit.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on how you want to look at it, I know better. Unfortunately because I’ve seen so much horror. I’ve witnessed so many gruesome, indescribably terrible things that occurred at the hands of young, promising people. These are things that will never leave me. And crimes that left their mark on countless people. Fortunately because it means I can see through the fog of a young, attractive, wholesome-looking young man into what could actually lurk within. I’m not blinded by a person’s appearance or youth, but instead can look at them only for what they are in the greater scheme of a case.
And right now, Mike is right in the center of it.
Sam and Xavier let me know a few hours ago that they were heading home. Sam said he would come back to pick me up when I was ready. That’s a tricky thing to say to me. I very rarely consider myself “ready” when it means stopping my investigation or research for the night. I’d rather keep pushing until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore and then have the work waiting for me when I roll out of bed or wake up cramped on the couch with my hand still wrapped around a pen.
But I think about him and his far greater need for uninterrupted sleep than I have. He’s working hard on this case, but he also has to fulfill his duties in Sherwood. He’s having to rely on some of the officers in the department to hold things down while he’s assisting in Cherry Hill, with their reassurance that if anything big happens, they will call him and he’ll head right back home. Tomorrow he’ll drive his squad car to Cherry Hill and I’ll drive my own car so we have more freedom to move around to different aspects of the investigation.
I called him about half an hour ago, so he should be getting here soon. I gather up the materials spread across the conference room table and take a final look at the paper propped on the easel with our notes before leaving the room and heading for Garrison’s office. The door is standing partially open and I give a quick rap with my knuckles while leaning my head inside.
