by A J Rivers
"No, Emma. I was there. Each one of those four years."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I slowly sink down into the chair across the desk from him.
“You were here?” I ask.
“Every year,” he says. “I was either here at the campground or at the park. The year Violet died and each of the three years after it.”
“How is that not in the case files?” I ask.
“Because I never came forward,” he says. “They already didn't believe me when I told them what I knew the first year. They suspected me of being involved right from the beginning.”
“Not all of them,” I say.
“No, but enough of them. I was there, but I found out about the disappearances and deaths after and realized I couldn't remember what was going on for parts of those days. I knew I was there. I knew what I did before and after. At least for the most part. But I can't remember hearing about anybody going missing. Or seeing any police. It's all blank.”
“Dean,” I say calmly and quietly, but he isn't going to stop.
“Emma, could I have done this?”
“Don't ask something that ridiculous,” I say.
“It's not ridiculous,” he snaps. “Maybe the detective was onto something when he was suspecting me. He could see something in me.”
“That's not in you,” I tell him. “Dean—"
“I am Jonah's son,” Dean cuts me off, his eyes flaring. “It is more than in me.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Listen to me, Dean,” I break the silence. “You have to think about this. When Violet was murdered, you were only thirteen years old.”
“That's plenty old enough,” Dean says. “You should know that. Look at some of the prisons and ask murderers how long they've been in there. I guarantee you'll find some who were twelve, thirteen, fourteen when they killed for the first time.”
“But they aren't you. And it's not just your age. You were almost taken. You were almost a victim of this kidnapper. How can you possibly think that you might have had something to do with it when he grabbed you?”
“Did he?” Dean asks. “You read the case file. You read the reports from the police who first responded after those people found me at the bottom of the embankment. I told him what happened, and they examined my injuries. All they could say was that my shirt looked as if it had caught on a tree, and then I fell. Did somebody grab onto me, or did I imagine that? Did my mind make that up to cover what I had just done? There was so much blood on me, Emma. I wasn't that badly hurt.”
“Violet didn't have any wounds on her,” I say. “She was decomposed, but there was still enough flesh on her that it would have shown. There would have been blood on her clothes or in the cavern. There was nothing.”
“So, maybe it wasn't Violet,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“The shoe. That shoe did not belong to her. That shoe belonged to a much older child. Like the one I saw and described, then wiped out of my mind. Nobody knows what happened to her.”
“She wasn't reported missing,” I say. “No child of that age or description was reported missing anytime during that summer. It was just Violet. Whoever you saw and described probably ended up right back at her camp with her parents.”
“Then why did I hear her screaming?” Dean asks. “There's no reason I should have known where that cavern was. I've got chunks of a memory that are missing. I can't even tell you who I was with those last three years. I just know I was there. I know I was at the park.”
“I thought you started your journal after that,” I say. “How would you know if you were there?”
“It's not in the journal,” he says. “I’m talking about the night of Ken Abbott’s investigation.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “What about that? If those bones were real, somebody put them in that cavern. And you were nowhere near this park then. You were meeting with that client.”
Dean picks his phone up from where it's sitting on the desk in front of him and hits a few buttons. I hear his voice mail click on.
"Hey, Dean, this is Philip Buckman. I thought we were supposed to meet tonight, but I'm not seeing you anywhere. Please give me a call or send me a text to let me know if I got the night wrong or if I'm just missing you. Talk to you soon. Bye."
I stare at the phone in his hand, trying to make sense of what I just heard and searching desperately for words to say to him.
“I got to the meeting place over an hour after I was supposed to meet him. You did the drive a couple of days ago, Emma. You know Harlan isn't very far from Hollow River Mountain.”
“What's in your journal for that night? What does it say you did?” I ask.
“It has a note about the meeting with Philip. Then there's a note about us watching the special. It says Arrow Lake Campground. There's an hour missing," he says.
“Dean, I have never known you to have complete blackouts. They haven't been affecting you. Why would they suddenly be showing up now?” I ask. “Don't you think there could be another explanation?”
“I don't know why they came back,” he says. “I have short little memory lapses pretty frequently. But nothing that impairs my functioning or puts Xavier in danger or anything. It's been years since I've had any that lasted for long. But I had two in the last couple of weeks, including one that night.”
“Have you talked to anybody about it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “I got in touch with my old therapist. He reminded me to journal and to cut down on my stress. The more stressed and anxious I am, the stronger and longer the lapse. It got really bad after I was injured and discharged.”
“Where do they come from?" I ask.
“The therapist thinks I might have witnessed something traumatic when I was young, and my brain wanted to block it out. It learned to click off when I was under a tremendous amount of stress or emotional distress," he says.
“How did you possibly get through boot camp and serve in the special forces? That is nothing but stress,” I wonder.
“Determination,” he says. “That's the only explanation I have. I was determined to do that for Violet.” He scoffs and looks down at the desk. “All these years I believed I was living a better life to atone for that little girl's death. And now…”
“Stop,” I tell him.
Dean shakes his head. “What have I done?”
I get up and walk to the other side of the desk so I can wrap my arms around him.
“Dean, listen to me. I know you didn't do this. You have carried the weight and the pressure of blame and fault your whole life, and this is what it's done to you. We are going to find out who did this. Now, let's get to sleep. It's been a long day. And it'll be another long one tomorrow.”
He exhales but doesn’t say anything. Just gets up, brushes his teeth, and goes to bed.
I sit on the edge of Dean's bed until he falls asleep, then I call Sam. I know it's late, but I need to hear his voice. He sounds groggy but happy to hear from me. I give us a few seconds of that happiness before I tell him about my conversation with Dean.
He's silent for several beats when I'm done.
“Sam?” I ask.
“I'm here,” he answers.
“What are you thinking?”
“It's a lot to think about,” he says.
“No, it's not,” I reply. “He didn't do this.”
“Babe, I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying it's a lot of strange details that are adding up. You yourself said that his description of that girl in the case file was really odd. Now you find out he was at the campground each of those four years? And that time is missing from the night of Ken’s investigation?”
“What about the other deaths? The other people who disappeared, before Violet? The ones who could be linked to these situations. He couldn't have committed all of these crimes. Some of those people disappeared or died when he was seven or eight years old. He couldn't have.”
/> “No,” Sam says. “But those are not verified links to these cases. In fact, some of them have other explanations.”
“Other explanations that haven't been proven,” I counter.
“Emma, I know you love your cousin. But you can't let yourself be blinded,” he says.
“Are you seriously saying this to me right now?” I ask. “You're asking me to consider my cousin, the only one I have, by the way, of serial murder? And not just serial murder. But beginning a killing spree at the age of thirteen?”
“I'm saying don't discount what he's telling you. And find out why someone might want him to say it,” Sam says. “I’m saying this just means we have to try even harder to get to the bottom of this.”
Chapter Thirty
I sit up for the rest of the night going over the cases again and again. I have to be missing something. There has to be something I didn't see the first time. Some sort of link.
As the night wears on, I put on the slideshow of the photo documentary Adrian Slatton worked on with the local historian. I quickly realize it isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I’d had the impression it was more about the distant past of the park and the campground. Instead, it's obvious that many years of work went into this project. There are images from summers over several years juxtaposed with images of what this area was like before it was turned into a national park.
One set shows lighthearted fun and frivolity, people trekking through the trees and experiencing the beauty of nature. The other shows grit and determination. Devotion to the mountain. A hard, but beautiful way of life. All those aspects exist together. Not just on the page, but in every day this park welcomes visitors. Those people are long gone, but they are far from forgotten. At least by the land itself.
Not everybody who walks along the trails or sets up camp understands the significance of the land itself. They might not realize that lives were put on the line in order to protect homes. Families resisted when the government came in and tried to clear them out. They struggled and pushed through almost unimaginable obstacles just so they could retain the homes and the lives they loved.
Signs of it are everywhere if you know where to look. Not the types of signs I always expect to see when I'm revisiting an old crime scene. Those are the formalities. The lip service made by the living to sound as if they haven't pushed victims out of their minds.
The signs of those people on the park are the actual lingering remnants of their days spent on the mountain. Bits of crumbling wood, difficult to differentiate from the trees on the ground. Houses sinking back toward the earth. Sets of stone steps that lead up to nothingness, because what was once there is now gone.
And of course, the graves dotting the mountain. Mostly simple and often impossible to read, but each with a history long forgotten, buried in the earth itself.
As I go through the images again, a couple of them stand out to me. I'm not sure exactly what they mean yet, but I file them away in the back of my mind. Something about them pulls heavily on my thoughts, and I know that means something. I look at them again and my tired eyes burn, telling me I'm not going to retain anything. But I look anyway.
By the time Sam gets there in the middle of the morning, I'm asleep on the couch, one hand still resting on the keyboard of my computer open on the floor beneath me.
I wake up to the feeling of his kiss and the smell of strong black coffee.
“You're here,” I smile, opening my eyes.
“I told you I was coming,” he shrugs, taking one coffee cup out of the carrier he's holding and offering it to me. “Did you forget?”
“No,” I say. “But I didn't expect you until later.”
“You sounded so upset last night, I didn't want to be away from you any longer than I had to be.”
“That's so sweet, baby, but I'm going to be fine," I tell him.
“I know you are. You always are. But maybe I'm not if I'm away from you.”
I smile and tilt my face toward him for another kiss.
“I'm glad you're here,” I say.
“I am, too,” he says. “How is Dean?”
“Not great,” I say. “This is really getting him worked up. He's scared and hating himself.”
“Have you looked into what he said? About his being in the park all those years?” he asks.
“Of course. I sat up all night looking into it. Nothing proves he wasn't, which isn't surprising. He was a young teenager. Essentially, I could find out he hadn't been arrested during those times. That's it. He has some old pictures scanned into his computer that look as though they're from here and have the right date captions, but that doesn't really tell me much.”
“Oh,” Sam says. “Speaking of old pictures. I have something for you. Your dad called yesterday, and I told him what’s going on and where you are. He was actually planning on coming to Sherwood.”
“He's back?” I ask.
“Yeah, he's at home. He says he'll come to see you as soon as we’re back. But then he scanned some pictures and emailed them to me. He made me promise to print them out and bring them to you.”
Just as Sam is handing me the stack of pictures, Dean comes out of the back area that has two bunk beds and a small bathroom. The first few make me smile and bring a nostalgic tear to my eye. But that disappears when I get to the last one.
Dean looks over my shoulder and rests his finger on the picture in front of me.
“That's me,” he says. “It looks like I'm down near the lake. But who is that?”
He points to the little girl standing beside him with her back to the camera, seeming to look toward someone calling her name. I separate the pictures and bring one of the first in the stack up to display beside it.
"That's me."
"You?" Dean asks, sounding as shocked as I felt when I first saw the picture. "Where did you get that?"
"My father sent them to Sam. There is a bunch of the park and me, then this one of us."
"I don't understand," he frowns.
"Neither do I," I say. "But I feel as if I've seen this picture before."
"Maybe your father showed it to you when you were younger?" Dean asks.
I shake my head. "No. Not this exact one. Something like it."
It doesn't make sense. I didn't know Dean existed until encountering him on that train. How is it that there is a picture of us together here at the campground? I grab my phone and continue to stare at the picture as it rings.
“Hey, sweetie,” my father says when he answers the phone.
“Dad, what is this picture?” I ask.
“Sam gave it to you?” he asks, not sounding at all as if there's something strange about it.
“Yes,” I say. “But I don't understand it. Neither does Dean. How is there a picture of us together when we were little children?”
“I never mentioned it because I didn't know if I should,” Dad starts. “But when Sam told me that the two of you were there investigating the murders and this woman's disappearance, I got to thinking about that day. I didn't know if I still had the picture, but I found it. I don't know if Dean remembers, but he used to go camping up there with his mother when he was a little boy. She loved being outside and feeling so free and safe. Do you remember going up there when you were little, Emma?”
“I remember camping. I didn't realize it was at this campground,” I tell him.
"It wasn't always," Dad says. "We went camping in other places, too. But we did occasionally go to Arrow Lake. One summer, while we were there, Dean's mother happened to bring him at the same time. The two of you migrated toward each other. We didn't even realize she was there until we saw you playing with him. It was as though you were drawn to each other.
“I took that picture, but your mother decided we needed to keep you two apart. We didn't even know that Jonah was Dean's father at the time. But she didn't want that kind of fusion between her career and her home life. She didn't want to put you at any risk."
“Thank you, Dad,
” I say.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it sooner. Seeing the two of you so close, it's nice knowing you always had that bond. Even when you didn't know it," he says.
"It is,” I say. “Look, Dad, it's really nice to talk to you and I'm glad you're home. I really look forward to seeing you when all this is over. But I’ve got to go.”
“Is everything okay?” he asks. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
“I don't think so,” I say, not knowing for sure which of his questions I'm answering.
Chapter Thirty-One
I end the call, then pull up a quick search. It takes a couple of tries, but I find what I'm looking for and my heart squeezes painfully in my chest. Taking a screenshot, I sweep the search off my screen, then immediately head for the office area and the case files. I dig through them, pulling out specific pictures and laying them out so I can take pictures of them on my phone.
“What's going on?” Dean asks.
“I need to see some things. Out in the campground,” I tell him.
“I'll get dressed,” he nods, bustling out of the room.
“What did you figure out?” Sam frowns.
“I'm not positive yet,” I tell him. “But something caught my eye when I was looking through this photography project, and I need to see it with my own eyes. I need to make sure I’m actually seeing what I think I am.”
It takes another twenty minutes for everybody to get ready to go, and I'm on edge by the time we head out of the cabin and into the waiting woods. The day is already hot. Oppressive humidity closes in around us. Sweat drips down my face and along my spine as we trudge through the thick sections of trees. One by one we stop at locations, and I compare images on my phone with what I'm seeing.
The more stops we make, the more the feeling in my stomach twists in knots. It's late in the afternoon by the time we get to the waterfall. Being close to the water cascading down the rocks and bouncing up in a fine mist is refreshing. I want to just stand there at the edge and close my eyes so the cool droplets can bring down the stinging heat on my skin and cut through the fog of humidity and exhaustion.