The Suicide House

by Charlie Donlea

  He was aware of the possibility of a letdown. He was aware that during his years at Westmont Prep, he had likely made The Man in the Mirror initiation a bigger event than it actually was. Now, nearly a decade later, it was possible that what he found at the abandoned house would not live up to expectations, to his embellished thoughts of what transpired out in the dark woods at midnight each summer solstice. The whole excursion might not fulfill his fantasies. But he could make those fantasies come true. He was no longer a scared teenager. Rules no longer bound him. He could do anything he chose once he made it out to that house.

  It was June 8. He had thirteen days to perfect his plan.

  PART IV

  August 2020

  CHAPTER 32

  THE BEDSIDE CHAIR WAS LIKE GRANITE, SO RORY HAD OPTED TO sprawl in the sill of the bay window, which at least had a cushion. She sat with her back against the side, her legs straight out in front of her, and combat boots crossed right over left. Always right over left, never the reverse. Her mind would not allow it. The window was to her left, and the pond and fountain four stories below were visible but ignored as she read. In her lap was Lane’s notebook that contained his initial research into the Westmont Prep Killings. Included in his notes were the preliminary profile of Charles Gorman and another profile that listed the likely characteristics of the person who had killed the students.

  The profile of Gorman depicted a reserved science teacher who excelled at chemistry. An introverted man with tendencies to be shy in public situations outside the classroom, he had always complied with the rules and never earned a serious mark against him—neither at Westmont Prep nor the public school where he taught for more than a decade before landing in Peppermill. Gorman had come from a traditional family, which was still intact. His parents were married, both retired teachers living on pensions and residing in the same Ohio home where they raised their three children. Gorman was the middle child, and by all accounts—according to Lane’s research—had had a normal childhood. No incidents of violence in grade school, high school, or college. No red flags indicating he was a man on the brink of snapping into a fit of rage or plotting a terrible massacre.

  Charles Gorman was single, and Lane’s research had uncovered only one curious area of Gorman’s past that had piqued his interest. This was marked in the notes by three red stars and two slashes that underlined the heading Relationships. A former girlfriend at Gorman’s previous place of employment had reported him to the school’s HR department after they had ended their eight-month relationship. The report stated that the female colleague, a civics teacher, felt “uncomfortable” by Gorman’s continued attention and insistence that they work things out. After a meeting with HR and a teacher’s union rep, the case was resolved and nothing more happened between the two parties.

  Gorman left the school at the end of the term and started at Westmont Prep the following year. The woman’s name was Adrian Fang. Lane had also underlined her name twice, which meant that he had intended to speak with her to further his profile of Charles Gorman. Lane had also listed the names of Gorman’s two siblings and parents as sources to speak with.

  At the bottom of the page, Lane had listed his contacts inside Grantville Psychiatric Hospital, where Gorman was currently being cared for. Rory dog-eared the page and then turned to the next.

  THE BOARDING HOUSE SLAUGHTER was scrawled at the top in all caps. The profile that followed included characteristics that Lane believed the killer of the two Westmont Prep students possessed. The sketch depicted an organized killer, based on the scant evidence that had been found at the scene. Besides the bodies, the killer had left no fingerprints, fibers, or footprints at the scene. A disorganized killer, on the other hand—someone who flew into a fit of rage and killed out of reaction rather than calculation—typically left a crime scene littered with evidence and oftentimes offered a poor attempt at sterilizing the scene. The bloodbath at the boarding house, Lane surmised, was preplanned and carefully carried out by a skillful predator.

  The only sloppiness discovered within the staged crime scene was the trace amount of blood that belonged to neither of the two victims. DNA had been taken from all the students and faculty, including Charles Gorman. The unidentified blood at the scene belonged to none of them.

  WHOSE BLOOD WAS AT THE SCENE? Lane had written in all caps.

  Adding to the theory of an organized killer who had carefully plotted the murders was the manner in which each student had been killed—one by a single slash that severed the right jugular, and the other by a wound to the throat, severing the trachea and causing asphyxiation. The absence of defensive wounds on either victim’s hands or arms suggested an element of surprise. The original attack had occurred inside one of the rooms of the house, and then one student had been dragged outside and impaled on the wrought iron fence. Lane surmised that this represented a symbolic act of revenge.

  This person was likely, Rory read, someone with a troubled past and an abusive childhood or broken family. The fact that no female students had been injured suggested that perhaps the killer had ill feelings toward men, perhaps his own father. That there was a female student present but uninjured at the scene made feasible the idea that the killer was close with his mother, or at least had a strong maternal influence in his life. Lane made two observations here: The killer either lived with his mother during adult life and had an unnaturally intimate relationship with her, and by default was unmarried, or had lost his mother at a young age or through a traumatic event that caused him to develop an unnatural and inflated memory of his mother as a deity that other women could not live up to.

  Violence was likely part of this person’s past, either toward him or someone he loved. The trauma of this violence had been internalized, and later projected toward others. The Westmont Prep students may not have been the killer’s first victims. He may have killed before. The killer had to be physically strong, with enough bulk to lift a 160-pound teenager onto the fence. The likelihood that this person was male was overwhelming.

  Rory turned the page and saw that Lane had drawn a Venn diagram that included all the characteristics from each profile—that of Charles Gorman and that of the killer. The circles overlapped in the middle, creating an oval where the two profiles matched. Few characteristics were listed there. The oval included that the offender had knowledge of the abandoned boarding house and knew the students would be there on the night of the killing. The offender was likely someone familiar to the victims, perhaps with low self-esteem but with above-average intelligence. The offender was strong enough to overwhelm two healthy teenage men.

  Rory looked up from the notebook and gazed out the window. Her mind was churning with anxiousness, an uncontrolled urge to begin the redundant calculations needed to decipher the pieces of a crime. Charles Gorman matched Lane’s profile of the killer about as well as any random Westmont Prep teacher. She knew there was more to the story. An uneasy energy flushed through her circulatory system.

  Rory stood from the windowsill and walked over to the bed, placed a hand on Lane’s forehead, and leaned over so that her lips were close to his ear.

  “I need you, so you can wake up anytime now.”

  CHAPTER 33

  IT WAS A RARE OCCASION THAT RYDER HILLIER WALKED INTO THE HEAD-QUARTERS of the Indianapolis Star. She took most of her assignments by e-mail and submitted her articles the same way. Staff meetings demanded her presence twice a month, but otherwise she was a crime reporter who chased stories on her own and waited for the okay from her editor after she found one she liked. Usually her efforts were met with glowing praise. Her track record had granted her a long leash. Today, though, her editor was tugging on the other end. Her presence at headquarters was not the result of a staff meeting or an overdue deadline for which she needed to coax an extension. She was there because she was in a world of shit.

  The decision to post the Theo Compton video had been misguided, at best, and Ryder would admit that her motives were clouded
by the opportunity to beat Mack Carter to a scoop. Posting the video was her way of showing the world her victory. It had backfired in spectacular fashion. She’d invited Mack along that night because she figured if anything significant transpired out at the abandoned boarding house, Mack would have no choice but to include Ryder in his podcast. Of course, Ryder had no idea what waited for her there. She never thought she’d find the kid dead, but when she did she knew the mystery of Westmont Prep was deeper than anyone knew. The kids were killing themselves for a reason, and she was determined to figure out what it was.

  Without considering the repercussions, she had posted the video to her YouTube channel at 2:25 A.M., just after she finished her statement to the police. She figured she’d get in front of Mack’s podcast by beating him to the punch. For what it was worth, the stunt was quite effective. By six in the morning, the video had over a hundred thousand views. As her fan base shared it, the video garnered hundreds of thousands more, and eventually millions. Until it was taken down, along with her entire channel.

  If Ryder had been as well protected as Mack Carter, she would be in a much better position today than she was currently. Mack Carter had powerful lawyers and a network to shelter him. The higher-ups likely told Mack to stay as far away from the Theo Compton video as possible. But they still expected him to attack the angle. And he did, to enormous success. His podcast never linked directly to the video of Theo’s body but produced the hell out of Mack’s journey to the abandoned house after an “unidentified tip” had come through. Of course, they edited out Ryder’s phone call, instead spinning the story to suggest that it was Mack himself who had seen Theo’s message and decided to go out to 13:3:5. That there happened to be another reporter present at the house that night—described in the podcast episode as an “amateur sleuth”—was pure chance. That this amateur had made the ill-fated decision to record what they’d found by the train tracks was a problem that fell squarely on Ryder Hillier’s shoulders. Mack walked away clean. Better than clean, he walked away more popular than ever before. The fourth episode of the podcast was downloaded millions of times. But the genius in what Mack Carter had accomplished was that in order to distance himself from the video, he had to mention that it existed. Which he did, over and over and over again.

  Every time he had scolded the “amateur sleuth” for posting such a heinous video, Mack Carter knew he was inviting his podcast listeners to search for the footage. Even without direct links to Ryder’s blog or YouTube channel, she saw the uptick in web traffic and knew that Mack’s audience was searching her site for the video. Mack had received the benefit of the recording without any of the legal ramifications. It was, Ryder had to admit, a bit of marketing genius.

  “Shut it down,” her editor told her now as she sat in front of his desk.

  “It’s already down. YouTube prohibited the video and did their best to erase its existence. Took my entire channel down, and when they put it back up it will likely be demonetized.”

  “Not just the video,” her editor continued. “Shut it all down. Everything. No more Westmont Prep coverage.”

  “I’ve never done anything related to Westmont Prep for the paper,” Ryder said.

  She hadn’t. Her fascination with the Westmont Prep Killings was her own endeavor, and her blog and YouTube channel were separate projects that she chased on her own, never expensing a dime to the paper and never missing a deadline because of her work on the case.

  “And you never will,” her editor said. “That includes writing anything about Mack Carter’s death.”

  “I’m the one who should write about Mack. I’m the one who was with him a few nights before he died. And his death has to be related to Westmont Prep.”

  “Stay away from it, Ryder. I’ve already assigned it to someone else. And if you want to continue to write for this paper, you’ll shut the side stuff down. At the very least, you’re grounded from side work until we learn the depth and weight of the legal ramifications from your latest stunt. And if you get formally charged and convicted of any wrongdoing, obviously your time here is over. For now, stay busy and stay invisible. No bylines until this other mess gets solved.”

  “No bylines? You’re taking my column away?”

  “Putting it on hiatus.”

  “Look,” Ryder said, trying to tame the conversation. “Mack Carter arrives in Peppermill and starts poking around a year-old case. Before long he’s dead. The circumstances around his death are terribly suspicious. I’m intimately familiar with the case he was looking into, and now you’re telling me I can’t touch it? I could do a piece for the paper that would be gangbusters. And if the Star doesn’t trust me, someone else will. Since when do you choose to back off a story?”

  “When I’m worried about the paper being the next entity to be sued. Our attorneys think the only reason we haven’t been slapped with a lawsuit already is because there are no direct ties between us and the Westmont Prep story. You’re hanging out in between, and the predators are waiting for a way to go after the paper. I’m not going to allow it to happen. You’re officially on the sidelines, no more discussion about it.”

  He looked at his computer and scribbled onto a loose piece of paper, which he dropped in front of her. The page held several names and addresses.

  “Here are a bunch of leads. A missing girl from Evansville. A convenience store robbery in Carmel. A melee at a preseason football game at Indiana U. A rape accusation at Notre Dame.” He looked back to the computer. “Oh, and a guy who was shot in the ass when he broke into an eighty-year-old lady’s house. Talk to that lady. I want her on the front page of the metro section.”

  Ryder looked down at the list of leads. At the bottom was the name of the missing South Bend man who disappeared the year before. She tapped it with her finger. “I’ve already covered the guy in South Bend. Nobody knows what happened to him. The story’s cold, and boring.”

  “Then heat it up.” Her editor waved her off. “Get me something interesting on all those leads. It’ll keep you busy for days.”

  “And then what? Chase these leads and do what with them? You said no bylines.”

  “Correct. You’re not writing a thing for a while. Bring your notebook back here, filled with research, and hand it off to another reporter to write the story.”

  “Are you seriously doing this to me?”

  “You did it to yourself, Ryder. You want to write stories for this paper again, then get to work in the trenches until your legal headaches go away. Consider yourself lucky to still have a job. No other paper would take you at the moment.”

  Ryder grabbed the leads, crumpling the page in her palm as she stood, turned on her heels, and left the office.

  CHAPTER 34

  RORY HAD LONG WONDERED ABOUT HER FASCINATION WITH PORCELAIN doll restoration. She used the obsession as an outlet for the pent-up thoughts of the mundane and redundant that worked to unsettle her life. She had used it to manage her affliction through her childhood. During her adult life, she had leaned on the diversion as a way to stay connected to her great-aunt Greta, who had first introduced Rory to the pastime of China doll restoration. In the process, Greta had saved Rory from a life of self-destruction. Despite these legitimate and admitted uses, Rory wondered, too, if she took solace in restoring antique dolls because it allowed her to fix the broken parts of them that she could never fix in herself. It was oxymoronic that her own faults and deficiencies were the very tools she used to mend the flaws and imperfections in the dolls. If channeled correctly, Rory’s shortcomings of obsessive compulsion and some spectrum of autism could be used to restore the dolls back to perfection. Despite that Rory had always been broken and could never be fully repaired, the dolls made her as whole as possible.

  She sat in the three-season room of the cottage and mixed a batch of papier-mâché. The smell brought back memories from her childhood at Aunt Greta’s farmhouse, where she spent the summers of her youth learning the old lady’s furtive formulas and secret
techniques that, when applied properly, could transform the wreckage of an antique German doll into a masterpiece. When the papier-mâché had the correct consistency, she took a small amount and went to work reconstructing the doll’s ear, where most of the previous porcelain had cracked and fallen away to leave a gaping crater. After creating a sturdy base, she dried the mâché with an electric heat gun. Then she pulled a batch of cold porcelain clay from an airtight bag, placed a large dollop in the middle of the papier-mâché area, and molded it roughly into the shape she desired. She used her tools to sculpt the porcelain into a new ear and cheek and then heated the porcelain to stiffen it. Opening her new set of Foldger-Gruden brushes from Lane, she removed one brush and touched its end to her finger. Each brush handle was made of pine, the tip of which doubled as a sculptor’s wand. The handles varied in sharpness, from blunt to piercing. Rory chose a blunt-tipped wand for the coarse work that was required during her initial sculpting of the porcelain clay. Later, she would use the sharper, more needlelike tips for the fine casting of the subtle features of the ear, cheek, and lateral canthus of the doll’s left eye.