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“He must’ve been bleeding out by this point, right?” I wonder aloud. “Already lost one foot. The second is being hacked at. His cock is beyond repair.”
Nodding, Garret’s smile falls away. “Then I moved to his top end and took his arm off, about,” he points midway along his forearm, “here. Teach him to keep his hands to himself, even in the next life.”
And there it is.
I reach across and kill the recording. Because my instincts scream a million things, and not one of them says this guy is a monster.
Surprised by my move, Fletch drops his foot to the floor and leans forward in an attempt to catch my gaze.
“What is it you expect to come from all this, Mr. Mulroney? Off-the-record for just a minute, why are we here? What do you want from us?”
“Arch?” Fletcher hisses. “What are you—”
“Why’d you turn yourself in?” I forge ahead. “I mean, we might’ve caught you ourselves. The evidence might’ve led us to your front doorstep. But you hand it to us so easily?”
Quiet now, Garret folds his arms across his chest and shrugs.
“Why’d you commit this murder, Garret?” I ask plainly. “What did Paul McGregor do to you that was so awful, so criminal, that you would destroy him, and then happily do the time for it?”
“Archer?” Fletch growls. “Turn the fucking recorder on.”
“Why do you think, Detective?” Hardening a little, when he’s been mostly relaxed for days, Garret sits forward and meets my stare. “Use your investigative brain and try to figure it out.”
“Did he hurt you?” I study his eyes, the milky brown color and the glittery emotion that exists just beneath the surface. “Paul runs a summer camp every year. Him, with dozens of young kids, a few hours from home. He looks so pleasant in the media.” I tap the table with my fingertips. “Like a hero, almost.”
“Paul was no fuckin’ hero,” he snarls, losing a lot of the cool he’s kept since arriving. “And those camps needed to be shut down.”
“What happened there?” Catching on, Fletch asks the question we already know the answer to.
It’s obvious the moment you look past the shiny exterior the public sees, past the ‘too good to be true’ good samaritan that Emilie Elenora and those in the media have painted.
“Garret?” he asks again. “What happened at those camps?”
“It was like a game,” he spits out. “Those who behaved badly were punished… but those who behaved well were punished too. If you were too shy, he’d hunt you down and ‘help you’ come out of your shell. And if you were too loud, he’d find you and teach you to be quiet.”
“Garret…” Fletch murmurs. “What did he—”
“Do you need me to say it? Do you need me to say the fucking words out loud?”
“This isn’t being recorded.” I slide the device to the middle of the table and take my hands off. “This isn’t going into our reports. I just wanna—”
“Why not?” A single, devastating tear rolls along Garret’s cheek. “Why aren’t you making this part of the record?”
“Because I think Paul might’ve done horrible things to you and the other kids at Chapel Hill, and I want you to be able to say it. So I’ll know. So I can be sure my instincts are on point and I’m not projecting. The crime has been committed, Garret. The guy is dead, and you’ve turned yourself in, so we’re most of the way there. But I don’t ever have to tell the court thewhyif you don’t want me to. It doesn’t have to become common knowledge.”
“All the kids at that place,” his jaw trembles, “all the kids like me and Gage, we either don’t have parents, or the parents we had were crap. More often than not, those of us who did have parents, it was a single mom, since dads tend to bolt. That means Paul was like a dream come true to a lot of us. Maybe we didn’t say those words out loud, and maybe we wouldn’t admit it to ourselves, but kids like us tend to latch on to a father figure—especially when the dude in front of us is kind and successful and smart.”
He stops for a moment and looks from me to Fletch as tears sparkle on his cheek. “When I first went to camp, I thought McGregor was amazing. He was charismatic and fun. He was sensitive to our feelings.” Garret shudders at that. “He was like a best friend we had no clue we wanted. He wasn’t…”
He brings his eyes back to me. “He didn’t go fast. It wasn’t like he rushed us. But that’s what made it worse; the insidious way he crept closer and slowly blurred lines. If we seemed surprised or put out about anything, he’d back up and give an excuse for why our perception was wrong. He wasn’t sneaking into our room; he was checking in on us. He wasn’t perving while we showered; he was making sure no one was screwing around. He wasn’t touching our leglike that; he was checking that we weren’t too injured after falling off the skateboard.”
Desperately, Garret’s stare burns into mine. “The way he was so gentle, so slow about it, made it a million times worse, because we couldn’t tell if we were sane anymore.”
“He psychologically abused you,” Fletch sighs. “He gaslit you, and convinced you your reality was wrong.”
“He was so sneaky about it,” he rasps out. “Even after he…” He stops and swallows. “Even after it happened the first time, I couldn’t even tell if I was mad. Or sad. Or hurt. Or l-loved. Or…” He shakes his head. “I was losing my mind trying to understand what was real and what wasn’t. What was right and what was wrong. But then I found out he got Gage too. And this other guy we were friends with.”
“That made you angry?” I ask. “That he hurt your friends?”
