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“I found out it was so much worse than that. This man was completely vilified. The town turned against him, violently, and wouldn’t hear a single word of reason. He had a little boy, and he and his wife started receiving threats about him. Everybody was completely convinced he was the murderer. He had killed everybody at the camp and taken Mary Ellen. They thought she was being hidden somewhere in his house and actually broke in and ransacked the place. Of course, they didn’t find her. She was tied up under the dock, dead for years. But it didn’t convince them ofanything.
“All it did was make them angrier. It just made them come up with more stories, more outlandish rumors about him. They started talking about him being a rapist who had come to Cherry Hill after escaping prison. They said he had already killed before and all the bodies were buried under the house where he lived before moving to town. He had been living in Cherry Hill for most of his life by then. But nobody cared. He was strange, and in the early ‘60s, strange meant bad. It was to be feared andeliminated.
They managed to run him out of town. After that, he and Reginald became blended in the stories and memories of the murders. People believed Benoit was the one who did it and that he kept coming back and stalking the town. They thought he was actually the one living out in the land at the far end of the camp rather than Merriweather, who by then had been questioned several times and wasn’t considered asuspect.”
“But why?” Sam asks. “He was strange, too. Garrison talked aboutthat.”
“He was strange in a different way. He kept to himself. But that was the way his entire family had been for generations. They were here before Cherry Hill was. Generations ago, all that land belonged to them. They farmed part of it, but most of it was just kept as woods. The people who wanted to build the camp bought the land from Reggie’s great-grandfather. But nothing really changed for the Merriweather family. They still lived their own lives, quietly and away from others. They were strange, but according to the mindset of the time, at least they had the decency to keep their strangeness tothemselves.”
“I feel like not a lot has changed in that way sometimes,” Samremarks.
I think of Xavier and my heart aches. Inod.
“From what I could find out about Benoit, he moved his family away from Cherry Hill, but he never stopped obsessing over the murders. He was determined to find out who was actually responsible and clear his name. He wanted everybody to know the truth, and for the person who had destroyed the lives of so many people, including his own and his family’s, to pay for what they did. He completely immersed himself in his own investigation. He came back to Cherry Hill a few times and was not welcomed kindly.
“All of this was apparently too much of a strain on his marriage. They divorced just a few years later. The last record I could find of Benoit was his death certificate. He killed himself after Reginald Merriweather confessed. His entire life had been wasted. Everything was gone. He’s the fourteenth victim of thatmassacre.”
“What happened to his son?” Samasks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Even Jacob didn’t know anything about him. He thinks it’s possible they changed his name after they left town to try to protect him. I’m assuming when the wife left Benoit she took their son with her. There’s nothing else about her, either.”
The phone rings and I get up to answer it. It’s DetectiveGarrison.
“I wanted to let you know that Miranda Hughes is being released from the hospital in a few hours. She’s going to be doing a live interview for the news in the morning,” he tellsme.
The tone in his voice tells me he feels the same way about it that I do. Media interviews with victims are not something we as investigators look forward to when a case is still as active as this one is. We don’t know what she’s going to say or how they will twist and manipulate herwords.
“I need another chance to talk to her before then,” I tell him. “I’m coming back. Make sure they keep herthere.”
“Emma,” Sam says when I get off the phone. “You just got home. It’s after six. Can’t it wait untilmorning?”
“No. I need to talk to her about everything before she gets in front of those newscameras.”
Holden descends on me as soon as I walk out of the elevator.
“What’s going on here? Why isn’t Miranda allowed to leave?” he demands.
“I need to speak with her first. Keeping her here is the easiest way to make sure I would know where she was and be able to get to her thisevening.”
“Speak to her about what?” he presses. “You already talked to her the other day. She told you everything sheknows.”
“You weren’t in the room with us. How would you know that?” Iask.
“Because I know her. I know the type of person she is. And I know that she wouldn’t hold information back when it’s this important. She told you what happened. And you haven’t done anything about it. Why hasn’t that guy beenarrested?”
“There is more to an investigation than just taking somebody’s word and arresting a person based on it. You have to let us do our job,” I reply. “Now, if you will excuse me, that’s what I’m going todo.”
I walk around him and go down the hallway to Miranda’s room. She is dressed and sitting on the bed, a frustrated, anxious look on herface.
“Why won’t they let me go?” she asks. “The doctor said I’m fine and can gohome.”
“And you can,” I say. “But I just need to talk to you about your interviewtomorrow.”
Some of the color drains from her face. “How did you know aboutthat?”
“When there’s going to be a news segment about an active case, the media alerts the investigative team as a professional courtesy,” I tell her. “It ensures we can be there to monitor what’s said and ensure nothing is released that shouldn’tbe.”
“And you get to decide what should be said?” Holden asks. “You’re the ones who are just sitting around while a murderer is at home doing god-knows-what and probably planning his next massacre. You would rather trust his word than the word of his victim.”
