She worked steadily for two hours, purging her stored anxieties, discharging pent-up thoughts of redundancy, and dispelling the constant urge to repeat activities she had recently completed. When finished, she placed the Kiddiejoy doll back in the travel case, careful not to disturb her progress. Then she locked up the cottage and headed to the hospital feeling lighter than she had hours earlier.
* * *
Lane’s eyes were open when she walked into his hospital room. They were wet and bloodshot from the medicine that dripped from the IV bag.
“Hey,” Rory said.
“This wasn’t how I planned to get you down here.”
Rory smiled and put her hand on his cheek. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“What a shit show,” Lane said before grimacing.
Rory saw a Styrofoam cup next to the bed and handed it to Lane, who sipped from the straw.
“Throat feels like gravel.”
“What have the doctors told you?”
“Haven’t seen them yet, but two detectives were here when I opened my eyes.”
“Yeah, I’ve already talked to them.”
“My throat wasn’t cooperating, so I wasn’t able to tell them much. I wasn’t able to ask any questions either. Christ, Rory, what happened?”
“I guess waking up in a hospital bed leaves a lot of blank spots.”
Rory took a seat next to the bed and filled Lane in on everything from her trip to the auction in Miami, to her decision to come down to Peppermill, to her tracking Lane to Mack Carter’s rental house and the fire she found there. That Mack Carter had died in the explosion and subsequent fire and that Detectives Ott and Morris were suspicious about the circumstances, to say the least.
“I thought all night about how mad I would have been at you if you had died.”
“There’s the warm and fuzzy woman I love,” Lane said, and then sucked ice water through the straw.
“How’s your head?”
“It hurts.”
“Can you use it?”
Lane nodded.
“Good. I read your profiles on the Westmont Prep killer. We need to talk.”
CHAPTER 35
THE DAY AFTER LANE OPENED HIS EYES, ON A SUNNY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, he was discharged from the hospital. The subdural hemorrhage was clearing and his lungs were functioning at 80 percent efficiency. He had a list of restrictions, limited mostly by his concussion, that included driving a car, riding in one for more than a mile or two, computer use, and reading. He left the hospital with the suggestion of sequestration in a dark room with no stimuli until his headache passed. Lane agreed to everything and signed the discharge papers. He would have signed just about anything in order to get out of the hospital bed. Rory helped him now as he shuffled up the driveway at the cottage on Winston Lane. Lane glimpsed his reflection in the car window. His head was dressed in white gauze.
“Good Christ, I look like Phineas Gage.”
Rory took him under the arm. “The bandages stay on until the staples come out. It’s probably better that we’re trapped in Peppermill. It’ll be easier to control you.”
They walked up the steps to the front door.
“What do you think of the place?” Lane asked. “I told you it was cute.”
“I like the Dark Lord in the fridge. How’d you manage that?”
“I stopped in Munster and talked with Kip, told him what I needed it for and that I was willing to spend a fortune to procure a few bottles. My head is starting to pound. Maybe I’ll have one to quiet the drumming.”
“Not a chance,” Rory said.
She helped him onto the couch. The Foldger-Gruden brush she had used earlier on the Kiddiejoy doll poked from the breast pocket of her shirt.
“I see you found the brushes,” Lane said as he sank down.
“I did. I’m sure those cost you a fortune, too. These have been discontinued for two decades.”
“You can find anything on the Internet. It just depends on how much you want to spend.” Lane adjusted himself. “All of it was money well spent, with the deliberate and transparent purpose of bribing you to stay for a day or two.”
“You’ve got me for more than a day or two, Dr. Phillips. We’re stuck in Peppermill until you’re cleared to drive a car. Or ride in one, for that matter. Doctors said at least two weeks.”
Lane laid his head back on the couch cushion and closed his eyes. “If you were anxious to leave, you’d load me into your car and speed back to Chicago, potholes and all. We’re playing by the rules and staying in this little town because you’re caught on the Westmont Prep case.”
Rory sat next to him. “The corkboard in the other room definitely has my attention.”
“And while I was sleeping peacefully in the hospital, you read through my profile of the Westmont Prep killer. What do you make of it so far?”
Rory shook her head. “Something about the case feels off.”
Lane opened his eyes and lifted his head. “Keep going.”
“My first thought is that Charles Gorman doesn’t match your profile of the killer. Besides some overlaps in geography and basic knowledge about the students, which would apply to any faculty member, Gorman doesn’t sound like he possesses many characteristics of the killer you described.”
“Let’s review what we know.” Lane pointed to his bandaged head. “I’m cloudy.”
“The crime scene,” Rory said.
“Isolated. Dark. Something someone could easily control, especially if he were familiar with the house.”
“No chance of anyone unexpectedly stumbling upon him,” Rory said.
This was how Rory and Lane operated in their professional relationship—freely and fluently, working off each other’s thoughts and oftentimes finishing each other’s sentences.
“Other than the students who were in the woods, there was no chance that unwanted spectators would see anything,” she said.
“Correct. And no chance anything would be caught on surveillance video. A very controlled environment,” Lane added. “Somewhere he could lie in wait. No defensive wounds on the vics means he surprised them. He was at the house when the two kids arrived.”
“Organized. Preplanned. He chose the location, he chose the method, he chose the weapon.”
They both paused a moment.
“Tell me about the killer,” Rory said. “Describe his mind-set and where this type of violence came from.”
“Well,” Lane said. “Let’s start with what we know about the victims. Both students. Both male. One was entering his junior year, the other his senior year. No drugs were found in either of their systems. The perp wanted them dead for a reason. The killings were not random. They were planned. What type of person would want to kill two teenagers? Someone with a troubled past. Someone with resentment toward men. The girl at the scene was unharmed. Assuming she encountered the perp and was allowed to live, the killer was likely close to his mother.”
“Your profile suggested a strong maternal bond,” Rory said.
Lane nodded. “Strong, but perhaps fractured in some way. The bond with his mother is unnatural. Maybe rooted in love, but one that has morphed to something abnormal and unhealthy. And a nonexistent or toxic relationship with his father. Either the father figure in his life was absent, for which the perp felt scorned, or his relationship with his father was abusive, for which the perp felt offended and resentful. We need to know more about the victims. Were they good kids? Were they bullies? Did they impact the perp’s life in such a way as to trigger his inner thoughts about his father?”
Another pause filled the room as each of them ran through scenarios.
“So,” Lane said. “We know what happened—two kids were killed at an abandoned boarding house. We know how it happened—they were ambushed and their throats were slashed.”
“But to figure out the why and the who,” Rory said, “we’re going to need to do a lot of digging.”
Rory’s gaze drifted to the three-season ro
om, where the photos of the victims were tacked to the corkboard. The two students who were killed and the three who had killed themselves. She wanted to go to the board now and stare at the photos. She longed for that feeling of intimacy to the lost souls that she conjured every time she reconstructed a homicide.
“The kids who are killing themselves,” Rory said. “Maybe they’re doing it to escape their misery. Maybe guilt is pulling them back to the scene of the crime, and death feels like their only option.”
“What are they feeling guilty about?”
Rory kept her gaze focused toward the three-season room.
“A secret?” she finally said. “Secrets have a way of eating people alive.”
“The Compton kid certainly had something he wanted to get off his chest when he talked with Mack Carter.”
“So, if we agree that the portrait of the killer doesn’t resemble Charles Gorman, and we work off the assumption that there is a group of students who know more about that night than they told the police, then it’s a logical conclusion that the students’ guilt stems from what really happened at the abandoned boarding house that night. And that guilt is pulling them back to that house and the train tracks to end their lives.”
CHAPTER 36
GAVIN HARMS WALKED ALONG THE BOULEVARD THAT RAN IN FRONT of the school’s main entrance. Summer session was winding down, and his senior year would officially begin soon. The campus was empty. Those students who were left to spend their summer at Westmont Prep were holed up in their dorm rooms or in the library studying for finals. The campus was noticeably quieter than normal, even for summer. Enrollment had dropped after the murders at the boarding house, the first contraction in the school’s history. Westmont Prep had always been comfortably full, and enrollment had always needed to be capped, the overflow being placed on a long and doubtful waiting list. But since the killings at the abandoned boarding house the summer before, many students had simply never returned for fall session. Those who did promptly exited campus when the year was over, leaving summer enrollment scarce. June had marked the one-year anniversary, and Gavin was among only a score of students who studied through the summer. God forbid, he thought, his aunt and uncle allow him to come home for summer.
The sturdy balusters of the Westmont Prep’s prestigious library building rose up to support the pediment where the school’s motto was displayed: Arrive alone, leave together. Gavin had never bought into the saying. Not when he was a wide-eyed freshman, and not today when he was just nine months from graduating. He felt more alone now than ever before. But much of that sentiment came from his decisions over the past year. Much of it came from the secret he was harboring. A secret he was worried would stay hidden for only a short time longer. He had done everything in his power to prevent it from coming to the surface. He had done things he regretted, and things he wished he could take back.
Arrive alone, leave together.
He wondered if he and Gwen would be able to leave this place together, or if each of them would walk off alone and in different directions. He cinched his backpack tighter as he walked past the library and to his dorm. Inside, he locked the door and pulled up his laptop, where he looked up Ryder Hillier’s blog. Since Mack Carter’s podcast had been placed on indefinite hiatus, Ryder’s site was his only source for updates. He had heard that Ryder was in a world of trouble for posting the video of Theo’s lifeless body lying by the tracks. Theo’s parents were suing her, and with any luck her site would soon be shut down, too. Then Westmont Prep would be shielded from the world and, with any luck, everything in its past would fade from memory. The less attention the rest of the country paid to Peppermill, Indiana, the better. All Gavin needed was to ride out this latest storm, get through his senior year, and leave this place behind. Then things would be better.
As long as Ryder’s blog was active, though, Gavin would use it for updates. Today, however, she had posted nothing new. The message board was filled with conspiracy theories about the boarding house, the train that ran alongside it, the Man in the Mirror, and why students kept killing themselves. The latest theory among the true-crime fanatics was that the two Westmont Prep kids had died in a homicide-suicide scenario, with one killing the other, hanging him on the gate, then returning to the abandoned boarding house to slice his own throat. The other students who had returned to the house to kill themselves were following some coded message that was left behind. This theory had been refuted by the medical examiner’s report that determined that neither neck wound had been self-inflicted. Still, the true-crime nuts ran with it and shouted about a police cover-up.
All the eager and over-the-top theories about Westmont Prep were caused by the case being closed so quickly. When police found so much damning evidence against Mr. Gorman in the days after the slaughter, the public at large received few details about what was going on that night in the woods. The public learned only that a teacher had gone on a psychotic rampage and had killed two students after writing a manifesto about his sadistic fantasies. Then, as police closed in on their man, Mr. Gorman went back to the scene of the crime and tried to kill himself. Enough of the story had been left untold for the true-crime crowd to run wild.
Without Mack Carter’s podcast, Gavin checked Ryder’s blog every so often to see if anyone accidentally stumbled over a morsel of truth. To this point, no one had. Of course, Gavin knew next to nothing about the ongoing police investigation, or how much of the truth they had actually uncovered. For now, the authorities seemed content to stand behind their original conclusion about Mr. Gorman and his motives. But Theo’s suicide had started them off again on a quest to discover what they had missed. Gavin was worried they might find it.
There was a knock on the door, and Gavin quickly shut down Ryder’s site and closed his laptop. When he opened his door, he found Gwen in the hallway. Gavin still hadn’t gotten used to her appearance. Over the last year, since the night of the murders, Gwen had lost fifteen pounds from a frame that had already been petite. The result was gaunt cheeks and cadaverous shoulder blades. A straight-A student since birth, Gwen saw her GPA nose-dive during her junior year. More alarming than her appearance or her grades was her lack of concern. Gwen had not only lost her interest in academics but withdrawn from nearly everything in her life, including her relationship with Gavin. This was most dangerous of all. The further Gwen drifted from him, the less he knew about her actions. Now, more than ever, they had to stay together. They had to stay quiet. Just for one more year. Just until they graduated from Westmont and headed off to college. Then things would get better. The images from that night would fade. Their consciences would heal. They would forget. Their secret would be preserved, and their lives would return to normal.
For the first six months after the slaughter, Gavin had tried to save his relationship with Gwen. But he felt things slipping away. After Danielle’s suicide, things hit rock bottom, and now Gavin and Gwen talked only when necessary. Those times mostly consisted of situations like tonight, when Gavin needed to talk her off the ledge and keep her quiet.
Gavin motioned her inside and then leaned his head into the hallway to make sure she was alone.
“How do you feel?” Gavin asked as he closed the door.
“Terrible.”
“You need to eat something, Gwen. Seriously.”
“Theo’s mom texted me.”
“What did she want?”
“She said she can’t get ahold of you and that she wants to talk to us.”
“Don’t call her back,” Gavin said quickly.
“Gavin, her son died. She wants answers, and she naturally thinks we might be able to provide them.”
“What are we supposed to tell her? She’ll want to know what was going on. Not just lately, but last year, too. If we start telling people what we know, sooner or later one of us will say something we’re not supposed to. Is that what you want? Do you want the police to start asking us about that night again? Do you remember every single detail you told
them? Because they do. And they’ll want to know why you remember things differently now, a year later, than you did back then. And once we screw up our story, they’ll start poking around again. Do you want the police to start looking at what happened that night?”
Gwen shook her head.
“Then don’t talk to anyone, okay?”
“Fine,” she said. “Did you check Ryder Hillier’s stuff?”
“Yeah, nothing new.”
Tears welled in Gwen’s eyes. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
Gavin ran a hand through his hair. He stared at Gwen and worried that she wouldn’t make it through the year.
“Just calm down,” he finally said. “I’ll figure something out.”
Westmont Prep
Summer 2019
Session 4
Journal Entry: ASSISTED SUICIDE
I STAYED IN MY ROOM AFTER THE AMBULANCE TOOK MY MOTHER AWAY. Mrs. Peterson knocked a couple of times to check on me. I stayed silent, sitting on the floor with my back pressed against the door, until she finally gave up. I heard my father come home in the middle of the night, and I strained to listen to his brief conversation with Mrs. Peterson. I didn’t catch much. After the front door closed and Mrs. Peterson was gone, I hustled under my covers, certain that my father would come to give me an update. But he didn’t. He simply climbed the stairs and went to bed.
Eventually, I went back to my door and stared through the keyhole until I was sure he was asleep. Something brewed in my chest the night my father ignored me, not even bothering to tell me my mother’s condition. My father’s disregard ignited whatever was smoldering inside of me, and in the days to come, when I learned that the mother I loved was gone forever, those flames burned like a wildfire and have never gone out.
My bedroom door squeaked slightly when I opened it. I knew what I needed and exactly where to find it. I had planned this out many times but had never managed the gumption to go through with it. Back then when I plotted, I did so with the promise that I’d proceed with my plan if my mother ever needed it. But it was just a fantasy. A blatant lie I repeated to fool myself. I had used this fictitious time in the future, when I would put an end to my father terrorizing my mother, as a way to ignore the cowardice that ruled my life. The con allowed me to deflect how weak and feeble I felt every time I stared through that keyhole and watched him beat her. It worked for a while. Too long, actually, because it had allowed him to abuse her for the last time.
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