The Girl and the Cursed Lake (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 12)

by A J Rivers

  He knew if he didn't see it himself, he would never allow himself to believe it.

  "And you are confident it's her?"

  "That's what it looks like, sir. But…"

  The young rookie’s voice trailed off and the detective looked over at her.

  "But?"

  "But there isn't much left."

  Fitzgerald pushed faster, his strides getting longer as he climbed up the moss-covered rocks toward the dark mouth of the cavern. It was small and set back into the rocks. The area was already separated from the more well-traveled areas of the park. It wasn’t easy to get to, or even visible from the hiking trails.

  Not many came this way. Those who did were unlikely to notice the cavern. It was something a person needed to know about in order to find it.

  And someone had.

  He got to the threshold of the cavern and looked inside. At first, he could only see the investigative team, their backs turned to him as they examined something at their feet. One glanced over his shoulder and noticed the detective. Nudging the investigator beside him, he nodded back toward Fitzgerald and stepped out of the way.

  The detective's breath pulled heavily on his lungs with each step further into the cavern. It wrapped in a tight band around his chest and slid up to the base of his throat.

  The shoe they’d found wasn't Violet's. Carrie had told him that. She’d insisted.

  She was right.

  Violet was wearing pink sandals.

  They clung around bones stretched taut with mottled, blackened tissue. If he closed his eyes, he could see her the way she should be. She was sitting on the dirt floor of the cavern, her back against the wall. A rock on the ground beside her propped her legs up. It looked almost as though she’d had them pulled up close to her chest and they’d slid down as she fell asleep.

  Her head sagged down, and one hand was turned over on the ground beside her, her palm up as if she was reaching for someone. The detective wanted to hold it, to comfort her.

  But there was no comfort for Violet, now.

  The investigators moved out of the way and he crouched down beside the little girl. There was little left of her face. All that was there was a skull with matted brown curls. He could see her tiny white teeth where her lips should be. Lips tinged blue and chilled with sweetness.

  "Any sign of the cause of death?"

  "No, sir. Not yet. The body is too decomposed to make any initial evaluations right now. We'll have to wait for the findings of the medical examiner."

  "Violet," he said.

  "Excuse me, sir?”

  "Her name is Violet. Not the body."

  "I'm sorry, sir."

  He turned and walked out of the cavern, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he went.

  "Get me Carrie Montgomery."

  Three years later…

  * * *

  “How many of them?”

  “Four.”

  Detective Fitzgerald walked over rocks his boots hadn’t touched in almost a year. That wasn’t long enough. He’d never wanted to see this place again. It had been three years since the first time he was called here. Three years since he’d spent two brutal hot months scouring the woods and ending up in a tiny, hidden cavern, where his heart was torn out and still remained.

  He’d never wanted to come back after that day. But he was dragged back. Even when she was gone, even after they had taken her away and tucked her in for a final time. He’d seen her one final time before the lid closed over her. A sweet white dress covered most of the ravages of time and nature. A pink blanket to keep her comfortable. A teddy bear to keep her company.

  Now he was back walking through the same cold steps of that case. Again.

  "How old?" he asked.

  "One eighteen, two nineteen, one twenty."

  "Shit. Technically, they're adults. So, they get to wander off whenever the hell they want to and nobody can say anything about it," the detective muttered.

  "But you don't think they just wandered off," the officer pointed out.

  Detective Fitzgerald glared at the woman for a few seconds. She wasn't young and tender-skinned the way Officer Davis had been three years ago. That had been his first experience with a case like that. His first brush with the heavy, miserable feeling of not knowing. Then his first time being dropped, crashing into the excruciating reality that they were not superheroes.

  Detective Fitzgerald had known that for a long time. It didn't stop the fury or the feeling of failure. It didn't give the closure he still so desperately needed. Even when Violet and her teddy bear were laid to rest, it wasn't over. There was still someone who knew what her eyes looked like the last second she saw anything. Someone knew the last word her voice formed, and what her breath sounded like when it left her lungs for the last time. Someone knew the last thing she smelled, the last thing she touched.

  They might even know the last thing she tasted. There wasn't enough left to check the contents of her stomach. The detective hoped it was the sweet blue ice pop. But only Violet knew her last thought. And that was where he would never really get closure. Even if he could find the killer, he would never know what Violet was thinking in those last seconds. He would never be able to reassure or comfort her.

  That was a feeling he was all too familiar with. It was something he’d never learned to live with. He learned to live in spite of it.

  It would never go away. But he knew it would lessen some when he could put a name to the person who’d done it to her.

  And who might have done it again.

  "Just as none of the other ones did. When was the last time they were seen?"

  "Five days ago. The youngest one is still living at home, and apparently told his parents he was going on a road trip with his cousin and a couple of buddies. They were supposed to be hiking on the other side of the park. His mother checked in with him a couple of times, but the day before yesterday, he stopped responding."

  "The day before yesterday? They haven't heard from this kid in almost three days, and we're just now finding that out?”

  “As you said, they're adults. Apparently, she called in the first day but was told there was nothing that anybody could do. He's eighteen years old, he doesn't have to answer the phone for his mother if he doesn't want to,” she pointed out.

  There was a hint of attitude in the words that made the detective’s teeth grind against each other.

  “So, what changed? Why am I here?” he asked. “Maybe they are just walking around on the other side of the park.”

  The officer shook her head. “After they still couldn't get anything from him, his parents started searching through his social media. Apparently, he is pretty active posting about his life.”

  “How original and unexpected,” the detective said flatly.

  “He’s really into photography,” the officer said. “He likes to take pictures of everything that he's doing. He says it's how he connects with the world around him. The mother said he doesn't talk a lot. Doesn't communicate well. But he tells stories with his pictures. So, she started following the pictures. One of them had a cabin in it and she recognized it as…"

  Her voice trailed off.

  "As the one Violet Montgomery was staying in," Detective Fitzgerald finished.

  "Yes."

  The officer was holding out an enlarged printout of the picture and Detective Fitzgerald took it. He looked down into what he could only describe as a generic teenage face. It could be any boy. Just pick him up off the weathered wooden steps of the abandoned cabin and he could be put into any setting. A library. A shopping mall. Fast food restaurant. He was nothing more than the boy you walked past every single day.

  And that was what made the detective's stomach turn when he looked at it. The boy wasn't extraordinary. He wasn't anything that stood out. He might be a talented photographer. He might be smart and kind. His family loved him. His friends loved him. But there was nothing distinct about him.

  Which meant this was what h
e would be remembered for. Rather than a glowing memory, he would be remembered only as one of the four who trespassed into a shutdown campground and disappeared. He would likely never be seen again. Most of them weren't.

  Fitzgerald was long past the stage of optimism. He’d learned he wasn't the kind of detective who smiled at the families of victims and reassured them that everything was going to be all right. He didn't even tell himself that anymore. He made only one promise. He would do everything he could to find out what had happened.

  "Did you find anything in the cabin?"

  "The door was open and there appears to be a small amount of blood, but it needs to be analyzed."

  "Anything in the surrounding area?"

  "Nothing so far. Looks like some others have come this way, but not in the last few days."

  "And this is the last sign of any of them?"

  "Yes. Jason Zapinski posted that image at two forty-five in the afternoon. Twelve minutes before that, Gregory Zapinksi, his cousin, posted a picture of his feet on a trail, and the caption 'You're It'. The others hadn't posted anything since arriving at the park."

  The muscles along the sides of Fitzgerald's neck tensed. He knew what those boys were here doing. The same thing as the others. They weren't the first to come this year. They were just the ones who wouldn’t get to leave.

  More would be coming. It didn't matter to them that the trails were blocked and the campground closed. That was what brought them there. Not this year. Not again.

  "Lock this place down," he said. "I want surveillance around the entire perimeter of the campground. Every trail, every passage. I want eyes on every cabin and officers by the lake. No one comes near this campground. No one passes through it. No one even looks at it. And not a single person on this team is to breathe a fucking word of what's going on to anyone. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The officer hurried off to pass the information on to the others who were investigating the area, while the detective took out his phone to call for more manpower. When he put it away, he looked out over the lake and the sun setting behind it. It sent ripples of orange over the top of the water toward the empty stretch of sand and the stark wooden frame where the canoes once waited.

  At any moment, he expected to see one of the sleeping cabins that dotted the tree line to open up and campers to run out toward the old pier.

  He could almost still hear the laughter there.

  Chapter One

  NOW

  “Emma, if I was camping in Treat Hollow, your cinnamon rolls would be my sleeping bag.”

  “Thank you, Xavier.”

  “Treat Hollow?” Sam asks, reaching over me to run his finger across the bottom of the baking dish and scoop up a wayward glob of cream cheese frosting left behind when I took the roll to put on the plate in front of me.

  “Located on Snack Mountain, a territory of Candy Land,” Xavier explains.

  Sam contemplates this for a second, then gives half a shrug and nods.

  "I'd camp there."

  “So, Xavier,” Bellamy starts from where she sits at the kitchen table. Her own pan of cinnamon rolls is beside her and she's already made a sizeable dent in it. “This expanded universe Candy Land of yours. Is there a Wedding Cake Woods or a Charcuterie Chalet anywhere?”

  Her eyes slide over to me, and I shake my head at her.

  “As much credit as I'm going to give you for Charcuterie Chalet, I see what you're doing,” I comment. “Subtlety is not your best attribute.”

  She runs her hands over her round belly and sighs, looking down at it. “I can't even see my attributes anymore.”

  “There’s a couple of them everybody can see,” I point out.

  Her stretchy pink tank top is giving its all, but despite its noble effort, near-term pregnancy is winning out. The neckline of that shirt will never be the same.

  She makes a face at me.

  "Come on, Emma. It's been six months since you got engaged. As in, officially engaged. Can't you give me even a little bit of a hint about the wedding date?"

  "If I did that, then I would be telling the secret to myself, and you know how much I hate spoilers," I say.

  "You're telling me you haven't even talked about a date?" she sputters.

  "We've talked about it," I shrug. "We just haven't chosen one yet. It's not like there's a rush. We're enjoying being engaged."

  I wrap my arms around Sam's waist and kiss him. He tastes like cinnamon and cream cheese frosting.

  "That is some fluffy non-committal nonsense right there," Bellamy says.

  I let out a short laugh and look over my shoulder at her. Her sass is definitely taking on more of an edge as the weeks count down to the baby’s arrival. But it never manages to have as much attitude as I think she intends.

  "Speaking of camping, have you seen this?"

  Eric had taken his cinnamon rolls into the living room as soon as I’d finished pouring the icing over them. From the looks of the pan on the kitchen table, he's been having to get pretty territorial about his food in recent weeks. Not that I'm going to get anywhere close to saying that to him or Bellamy.

  "You're just going to rewind all the way back to that point in the conversation, huh?" Dean asks with a laugh.

  "You think I'm getting myself involved in all that?" Eric asks. "I'm going to skip right over it."

  We pull Bellamy to her feet, gather up our cinnamon rolls and coffee, and head into the living room. Eric has the TV on and has paused it on a face that looks vaguely familiar. I can't exactly place it, but I know I've seen it before. I drop down onto the couch beside him, bending one leg up under me and resting the other foot on the coffee table.

  “Who's that?” I ask, ripping off a chunk of my roll to pop in my mouth.

  “That is Ken Abbott,” Eric says.

  “Ken Abbott, the paranormal investigator?” Sam asks.

  “Excuse me, the what?” I ask.

  “Paranormal investigator,” Dean says. “He and his team travel around investigating haunted houses and locations with rumors of paranormal activity.”

  “He's a Ghostbuster, is what you're telling me,” I say.

  “I don't know if I would say he actually busts any ghosts. They just investigate them,” Dean says.

  “Oh,” I say. “Because the difference is so distinct.”

  “They had a couple of specials on TV the last couple of years,” Eric adds.

  “They actually started a regular show a couple of months ago,” Sam chimes in. “It’s pretty good.”

  I look back and forth between them.

  “What is happening right now?” I ask.

  “Sam likes Ghostbusters,” Xavier says.

  “They're not Ghostbusters,” Sam laments with a wide gesture. “They're paranormal investigators. And the show is actually pretty interesting.”

  “Is that what you do when you stay at your place at night? Watch ghost stories?” I ask.

  “There has to be something to keep the mystery alive in our relationship,” he replies with a sparkle in his eye.

  “I think the last thing either one of you needs is more mystery in your life,” Bellamy points out.

  “Anyway,” Eric says. “What I'm trying to tell you is their team is going to be not too far from here doing an investigation next week.”

  “Not far from here?” I ask. “Where?”

  “Hollow River Mountain,” Eric says.

  “In the national park?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he nods. “They're going to investigate the Black Campground.”

  “Why do I feel as if you should be saying that while wiggling your fingers at me and doing a big booming laugh?” I ask.

  “Because he should be,” Sam says. “It's not the Black Campground. It was called Arrow Lake Campground. And it’s not exactly close. The mountain is several hours away.”

  “Was?” I raise an eyebrow. “It's not there anymore?”

  “It's there,” Eric explains. �
��But it's been abandoned for years. That's why they're going up there. Listen, they're talking about it.”

  He presses play, and I listen to the interview.

  “It's been thirteen years since the last documented disappearance,” Ken is saying.

  “Documented disappearance?” the interviewer asks. “Do you mean you think other people have gone missing at the campground, but nobody realizes it?”

  “I think that's completely possible,” Ken nods. “A lot of people cross through those woods when they want to be by themselves. When they want to start new lives. They go in thinking they're going to find something better. A lot of them never make it out.”

  “What do you think you're going to find there?” the interviewer asks.

  “I don't know. Anything is possible in a place like that. The deep history of the area. The blood of generations upon generations of people soaking into the ground. Disappearances and murders. Combined with the spiritual energy of water in that much abundance. It could be one of our most active investigations to date.”

  “Do you think it could be dangerous?”

  “Of course I do. I never go into any of these investigations lightly. We are facing forces we don't understand. While the vast majority of paranormal phenomena are harmless, the same can't be said for all of them. Anyone who has any experience with our work knows we have encountered terrifying situations. We've been physically attacked and injured. Not to mention the psychological effects. Both my fellow investigator Elsie and I have suffered spiritual attachments, and have had to seek expert help overcoming them," Ken says.

  "I can't believe what I'm hearing," I mutter.

  Eric elbows me. "Listen."

  "Why do you do it?” the interviewer asks.

  “Why do anything?” he asks, then laughs as though he thinks he's the cleverest person in the room before going dark and gloomy again. “Because we can. Because we must. Because we need to know.”