by Lisa Jackson
For a second no one said a word. Stunned, they just looked at her as the tide pool, like a living thing, grew larger, then shrank with the incoming and retreating ocean.
Much as she wanted to, Annette couldn’t backtrack now. “It was dark of course and raining, and so . . . so I’m not sure.”
Jo-Beth pointed at her. “You just said—”
“I know, I know!” Annette regretted mentioning it. “I think . . . I mean, it could have been Elle or someone who looked like her or . . .”
“Or what?” Reva demanded, dark eyes flashing.
Annette screwed up her courage. “Or . . . or her ghost.”
“Oh, for the love of God!” Jo-Beth groaned. “We don’t need this kind of drama or crazy talk, okay?” She shook her head. “I mean, I expected something like this from Jayla, but not you. So, don’t even go there.”
Sosi looked concerned. “Let her speak. What do you mean? What did you see?”
Annette set her jaw. “It was just after lights out and I had to pee. I didn’t want to, because it was raining like crazy, but I . . . I left my cabin and headed toward the bathhouse when I thought I heard something.”
“In the bathhouse?”
Annette shook her head. “It was before I got to the turnoff for the latrines. I’d just reached the fork in the trail. And there, up ahead, on the main path was a girl, I think, in white, like a long dress, running. Away from me.”
“Say whaaat?” Jayla said, her eyes as big as saucers.
Reva shook her head. “Around eleven?”
Annette nodded. “She was far enough away that through the rain and the dark and the trees, I couldn’t be certain, but I followed for a few steps and then she was gone.”
“Gone?” Sosi repeated. “Did she see you?”
“Don’t know.”
Jayla asked, “Like she disappeared? Vanished? Poof?” She snapped her fingers. “Into thin air?”
“Yeah,” Annette admitted. “Like I said, a ghost.”
“Jesus. You’re serious, aren’t you? A damned ghost. Holy shit.” Jo-Beth actually laughed, a deep cackle that seemed to echo through the cavern.
Annette took a step toward Jo-Beth. “I saw her!”
“And you know it was Elle?” Jo-Beth didn’t bother to hide her disbelief. “Even from a distance?”
“I said I think it was her.”
“Or a ghost through the rain and the trees on a dark night,” Jo-Beth mocked.
Sosi said, “You have to tell them. The police.”
Jo-Beth rounded on her. “Why?”
“So they can find her!” Sosi declared.
“You think this could help? Look, Annette isn’t even sure that what she saw was a girl, let alone Elle! What do you think the cops would say if she started talking about ghosts?”
“I just don’t know!” Annette said, her voice rising an octave, and she noticed Bernadette visibly cringed. She was used to Annette’s hysteria, her need for attention, her lies, Annette knew, but tonight she was only saying the truth. “Okay! Forget I said anything!”
“We will,” Jo-Beth agreed sternly, and looked from one worried face to another. “We,” she said, “all got together last night and we didn’t see any girl, or ghosts or anything. We met by the flagpole and we all said we were worried. We tell the truth about yesterday, okay? Keep it simple. Tell the cops when the last time you saw Elle was, but then we all went to bed, made sure the kids were asleep, and met to try to figure out what had happened to her. That’s it.” She eyed everyone. “We were back in our bunks by eleven.”
“Why even say we met?” Sosi asked. “Why not say we all just went to bed?”
Jo-Beth’s mouth tightened. “Because someone might have seen something, okay? One of the guys, or Mrs. Dalton, or a camper might have woken up and seen that her counselor wasn’t in bed. Who knows? This way we cover our asses.”
“Jo’s right,” Reva inserted. “If we admit we were out, it’ll seem like we’re coming clean, that we’re not perfect and not pretending to be.”
“Right.” Jo-Beth was insistent. “So let’s do it.”
Bernadette asked, “What about Monica? Where is she?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Jo-Beth said. “She’ll go along.”
“How can you be sure?” Bernadette wasn’t convinced.
Jo-Beth smiled, her teeth visible in the bluish light. “She has more to lose than anyone. So come on. Now, let’s go. Before anyone figures out we’re missing. Besides, if you haven’t noticed, the water’s rising. We’d better get out of here before we all drown.”
Jo-Beth didn’t wait for a consensus, just figured everyone would follow her from the cavern and they did, keeping close, shutting off their flashlights, heading back to the campground with their weak-as-crap story. No, make that weak-as-crap lies.
And that was the story they’d kept to all these years.
CHAPTER 24
Averille, Oregon
Now
Lucas
Desolate.
That was the word to describe the campgrounds, Lucas thought, walking around the rec hall, now boarded and locked, but once filled with campers, counselors, and workers, voices and laughter rising to the ceiling. He remembered the smells coming from the kitchen where that old grouch of a woman made the most amazing dishes, everything from piroshky—fried buns with meat fillings—and cabbage rolls when she was feeling a longing for the mother country, to baked salmon and fresh crab, or spaghetti and pizza. The cuisine had been eclectic and not exactly kid-friendly, but there had been enough work and exercise at the camp and no snacks that even the pickiest eaters had dived in at mealtime, complaining mightily but filling their bellies.
Music had been a staple at the camp, with Naomi playing traditional hymns on the piano in the rec center, and a ragtag group of campers and counselors playing guitars and harmonicas, the braver or more gifted ones singing hymns or, on occasion, pop songs approved by the reverend. Back then, Jeremiah was in control of every second of every hour of every day.
It wasn’t a surprise that the counselors—teenagers who loved to rebel against any kind of authority—ignored the camp rules when they could, especially after “Lights Out,” when night stole across the land.
He walked past the kitchens and along a path to the stable, now empty, once home to a small herd of horses and donkeys, animals the campers could ride but had to care for. He felt a bit of nostalgia that he immediately tamped down. Things weren’t always bad here, he knew. Hadn’t he met Bernadette on this very scrap of land, and hadn’t he fancied himself falling in love with her that summer?
And Elle had disappeared, probably died. Possibly because of you. And you were involved with your stepmother, remember that? Around the time you were supposed to be with Elle and before you and Bernadette got together. Nonetheless you and Naomi had a brief and very hot affair.
He rubbed his jaw, felt a day’s worth of whiskers, and told himself not to think about Naomi. That she’d seduced him didn’t matter. He’d been all too eager to tumble into bed with his father’s second wife. He wondered what some shrink would say about that? Was it retribution for Naomi turning Jeremiah’s head while he was still married to Isabelle? A divorced parishioner, Naomi had sought solace, comfort, and advice from her minister and Jeremiah had willingly complied. No matter that Isabelle was still his wife and that in comforting the young divorcée, he’d crossed a moral line—well, make that several moral lines.
So Lucas’s parents had split and his mother had died a few years later, after hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail, trying, she’d told him on her deathbed, to find herself, to reinvent herself after being married to a pastor for nearly ten years. She’d broken her leg and several ribs in a fall and had been life-flighted to a hospital. As it turned out, she’d developed an infection that had raged and eventually, after nearly a week of antibiotics and hospital care, her heart had stopped and she was dead before she turned forty.
Jeremiah, in all
of his hypocrisy, had visited her three times and invoked prayers over her.
Now, thinking about that bleak period in his life, Lucas fought the anger that always fired whenever he thought of his mother’s last days. Would he have wanted his mother to stay with Jeremiah? No. But it pissed him off to no end thinking that Isabelle probably died unhappy and lost.
His jaw slid to the side as he looked toward the cluster of buildings that had been the heart of the campus, not only the rec center and kitchen, but the office and suite above, where his father, wife, and their daughter had lived. He and his stepbrothers had been relegated to the bunkhouse when the campers weren’t on-site, and to individual cabins if there was a need for extra counselors. That summer, twenty years ago, when he’d met Bernadette, he’d been living in the bunkhouse, alone, David and Ryan having been assigned to cabins, and Dusty, the hired hand, was living in an attic space above the stable. He glanced upward now, squinting at the bit of sun filtering through the clouds. A window was cut into the weathered siding, the only window to the room that had been carved into the hay mow.
He wondered what had happened to Dustin Peters, who had left with his last paycheck, cashed in a bank in Roseburg, to the south on the I-5 corridor, and was never heard from again. The department had searched for him twenty years ago and hadn’t found hide nor hair of him. There had even been a question as to whether he’d ever really cashed that last check, as the handwriting on the back, the endorsing signature, seemed different. The presumptive theory, at the time, was that the check, along with Dusty’s ID, had been stolen from him.
Who knew?
The trail was not only cold, it had turned to ice, cracked, and disappeared.
Now, he saw headlights cutting through the trees and made his way back to the central parking area, where along with his Jeep, a van from the crime scene unit was parked between two cruisers and an SUV owned by the department.
Driving a county cruiser, Maggie Dobbs parked next to his Renegade and, spying Lucas, cut the engine and threw open the door. Holding up one finger in his direction, she stepped outside, cell phone to her ear. An autumn breeze tossed her hair in front of her eyes as she kicked the door shut, listened to a one-sided conversation, and approached him.
“. . . yeah, we got it . . . um-hmm . . . with him now.” She glanced up at Lucas and mouthed, “Locklear.” “. . . Don’t know for sure,” she said into the phone, eyeing the western sky, the horizon blocked by the buildings and ring of old growth surrounding this part of the camp, clouds moving to shroud the pale sun. “Yeah, we’re at the camp now. Okay. Got it.” She hung up and slipped her phone into a pocket of her jacket. “The boss.”
“I heard.”
“Why are we out here?”
Lucas had called her and asked to meet. “Because you think I’ve been ducking your questions.”
“You have.”
He inclined his head in acceptance. “I wanted to go over the files, reread the statements, see for myself where everyone who was involved ended up.”
“And did you?”
“Enough.” In truth he’d spent hours sitting at his kitchen table, the files spread before him, his laptop nearby and a cold beer close at hand. Maggie had done a great job at locating most of the people who had been here, had come up with their current names, addresses, phone numbers, employment as well as marital status, family members, and whether they’d ever had an arrest. He’d seen pictures on driver’s licenses and tried to match them to the campers and counselors, workers and visitors—to the people they once were, many of them kids. Including himself.
“Okay, back to my question. Why here? Couldn’t we discuss this at the office?”
“Sure. But I wanted to remember a little more clearly. Let’s go inside.”
“You’ve got keys?”
“Saved ’em.”
“And the locks haven’t been changed?”
“Not all of them, but I suppose if the place gets sold, as Jeremiah wants, the new owners will rekey the place.” He glanced around the older buildings. “Or, more likely, bulldoze it. Some investors are talking resort, golf course, the whole nine yards. Come on.” He led her around the office area and sitting room, where Deputy Hallgarth had interviewed him all those years ago, to the back porch that connected the rear sides of the kitchen, dining hall, office, and eventually rec center. The church and stable and barn were separate buildings, but these were connected.
Slipping a worn key from his ring, he unlocked one of the French doors to the rec center and stepped inside, where the air was dead, spiders had spun webs, and a layer of dust had settled over tables, benches, and chairs. He flipped on a switch and a few overhead lights gave off some watery illumination.
“You really want to talk here?” she said.
“Yeah.” He nodded, his gaze sweeping the grimy windowsills and the conversation pit where his father had held court, Naomi at his side. If he tried, Lucas could envision them standing at a dais, the counselors and their charges sitting on the built-in benches. Lucas walked to the pit and dropped onto one of the top benches.
“So,” he said, “my statement.”
“Do I need to record this?” Dobbs was already removing her small recorder from her pocket and set it on the bench between them.
“If you want. It doesn’t divert much from my original one.” She doubled up with her cell phone. That was Maggie—belt and suspenders all the way. She identified herself, the date and time, and space, then spoke his name and said, “Okay. Let’s go. Start with Eleanor Brady.”
“We had been dating, a couple, for not quite a year. I’d known her from high school,” he said. “But I broke up with her that week, the day before she disappeared.”
“And why was that?”
“I fell in love with someone else, a new girl, one of the counselors, Bernadette Alsace.”
Maggie didn’t appear to be surprised. She had read through the case file, all of the witness statements, the reports by the officers, the newspaper clippings at the time.
Lucas went on. “That night, when everything happened, the night after Elle disappeared, I was in my bunk, for once. I was upset. Elle was missing and it wasn’t like her to just leave without telling anyone, at least not for good. She was”—He thought hard. Conjured up her image. Pretty, blond, model-thin, on the shy side. And a little offbeat—“unique, to say the least. Very serious. Though, yes, she would sneak out of her cabin like the rest of us. We were all so . . . irresponsible and self-centered. Young. Didn’t think anything bad could possibly happen.” He hesitated, glanced out the filmy panes to the empty yard outside. “We were wrong. Elle had always been moody, and our relationship had really changed. She wanted me to commit, to think marriage, and I . . . shit, I was what? Not quite twenty? I had a whole lot of living to do before I was ready to settle down. So we fought. A lot. And . . . and then I met Bernadette.”
“Bernadette Alsace,” Maggie clarified, as she swept the bench with her hand. “One of the counselors.”
“Right.”
“Her name is Warden now.”
“Yeah, married I guess.”
“Divorced,” she supplied, and his head snapped up.
“I know.” His pulse quickened at the thought that she was single and he mentally kicked himself.
“Go ahead.”
He drew a breath and then launched in, telling her everything he could remember. About feeling restless and leaving his cabin, about noticing the light burning in Dustin Peters’s room, about the fight with his stepbrother, David, and then about stumbling on Tyler Quade, bleeding, losing consciousness, falling facedown in front of him on the path, a knife protruding from his back.
“I sounded the alarm,” he admitted. “Ran here, woke up my dad, who called nine-one-one. It seemed like it took forever for the EMTs to arrive, when I think it was less than ten minutes. Tyler was in bad shape, barely alive. The whole camp was woken, and it was discovered some of the counselors weren’t in their bunks. I went
with Dad and Naomi to the hospital. While we were waiting there and Tyler’s parents were called, I talked to a deputy. Her name was Althea Jones.”
Maggie was nodding. “I read her report on the accident.”
“I had to talk to another deputy, Hallgarth, again, along with all of the other kids and counselors who were staying at the camp. It was easier than hauling everyone down to the station, I guess.”
“I read over his notes as well as Jones’s,” Maggie said.
Lucas nodded.
“And no one, not a soul, saw Monica O’Neal that night, the night after Eleanor Brady’s disappearance. O’Neal was around the day after Eleanor vanished. Everyone agrees that she was at the camp, with her campers, that she attended every meal, did her chores, prayer service, lowering of the flag, and was seen going into her cabin after lights out, or whatever you want to call it. Then, there was a group of female counselors who admit to being out of their cabins, that they met down at the cove, where Caleb Carter found the skull, but they all claim O’Neal wasn’t with them, that they waited for her, but she never showed up.”
“That’s the story they all stuck to.”
Maggie tilted her head to one side and surveyed him. “Did you believe it?”
“No one told me any differently. It was a mess then. Everyone gave their statements, the police were all over the place, investigating, and Jeremiah closed the camp.”
“For good?”
“Yes.” Lucas stared down at the bottom of the conversation pit, remembered his father saying a final prayer for Monica and Eleanor, asking God to keep them safe and lead them back to the camp. Candles had been lit, all the campers holding hands, the girls who had been in Elle’s and Monica’s cabins integrated into a larger circle overseen by Naomi.
“We all said good-bye here. Final prayer and all, the campers already packed, a few of them already gone as their parents had arrived to pick them up. It was all kind of surreal at the time.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I tried to say good-bye to Bernadette, y’know, because we had a thing, but she would have none of it. She blamed me for Elle’s disappearance. At the time, some of the girls thought Elle had committed suicide. Some of the campers swore they saw her, or her ghost, that week. It was in the statements.”