Dead of Summer

by Sherry Knowlton

  Afraid that she’d be caught in the crossfire if there was shooting, Alexa managed to wriggle farther into the field and turn to lie on her belly in the weeds. Pain from the cramp in her thigh had become unbearable. She knew that she was suffering from severe dehydration.

  “Why would you think Alexa Williams is here?” Quinn asked. “I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

  She could hear the anger in John’s reply. “Don’t lie to us. Earlier this evening, Alexa texted a friend that she was here with you. The friend became concerned when she couldn’t get an answer to her return texts and calls. So she contacted us.”

  “Thank you, Melissa.” Alexa whispered. The stalk of plump thistles in front of her blurred. When she opened her eyes, she could focus enough to hear John’s voice but only snippets of what he was saying.

  “The timing . . . confirmation from Interpol . . . women in Paris.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Quinn’s haughty tones were crystal clear.

  Cannon said something about “Thai Police and Bangkok.”

  Alexa struggled to remain fully conscious. Her head was pounding, and her body shook with chills. She needed liquids soon or she’d be in serious trouble.

  John’s voice penetrated through the fog. “So, Hutton, it’s over for you. Things will go better if you cooperate with us. Take us to Ms. Williams. Now.”

  Alexa could hear Quinn’s deranged contempt when he spat, “You’re too late. Alexa had to die for Nan Ton Pho.”

  “No. I’m alive,” Alexa whimpered, but no one heard.

  Out on the lane, Quinn screamed at the top of his lungs, “Artists must be sacrificed to their art.”

  Before he’d finished his sentence, gunfire erupted. Alexa thought Quinn fired first, and the police returned fire in full force. She burrowed deeper into the meadow and covered her head. She’d come too far to be killed by a stray bullet.

  When silence fell, Alexa opened her eyes and took three slow, measured breaths in an attempt to clear her head.

  Ears ringing, she belly-crawled toward the road. Sticks and thorns stabbed at Alexa through her thin pantsuit. She ignored the pain and clawed through the thick brush until she reached the edge of the weeds. The pungent, smoky smell of gunfire hung in the air. Ahead of her, Quinn’s body lay motionless on the lane in a pool of blood. She couldn’t see any of the policemen.

  She felt no sadness over Quinn’s death. He had terrorized her. He had murdered countless others. She totally believed his accounts of killing many women—on his own and with his father. Even in his last moments, he’d died a pretentious asshole, shouting a self-aggrandizing quote as he committed suicide by cop. Alexa was glad the bastard was dead.

  Her thoughts turned to John, worried that he’d been killed or injured by Quinn’s barrage of gunfire. Alexa tried to stand but didn’t have the strength to rise. She couldn’t put weight on the leg with the cramp. Gasping in pain, she collapsed. Seconds later, John and another policeman walked into her narrow frame of view. The two men approached Quinn’s body, guns drawn, and determined that he was dead.

  “Help. Help,” Alexa rasped. “I’m here. I’m not dead. I’m not dead. I’m not dead.” Feebly, she grasped a stalk of sumac between her bound hands and shook it. But no one came.

  A series of chills wracked Alexa’s body. Dimly, she knew that if she didn’t get hydrated soon, she would black out and might not be discovered. She wasn’t going to let that asshole Quinn win. Gathering her last remaining shred of energy, Alexa used her bare elbows to drag her battered body onto the lane.

  “Alexa. My God. I knew that bastard was lying.” John rushed over and dropped to the ground, cradling her in his arms. The other cop yelled for an EMT.

  “My God. You’re bleeding. What did he do to you?” John’s tears wet Alexa’s cheeks as he cut the rope from her bound wrists. “He said you were dead.”

  “Another few minutes and it could have been true. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you and your posse. I need water. Water,” Alexa whispered as she breathed a long sigh of relief. Two medics came running toward them with a stretcher.

  “What the fuck was Hutton talking about? Nan Ton something?” John’s tone held notes of anger, concern, and confusion.

  Just before Alexa passed out, she mumbled, “Wait until you see the barn.”

  Epilogue

  But, now I’ve only memories and the

  whisper of your name.

  —Levi Bloom

  “THANKS FOR COMING WITH ME. And for driving.” Susan put down her cell phone and looked at Alexa. “Your dad says he and Scout are doing just fine without us.”

  Alexa didn’t take her eyes from the road. Even after a four-hour drive, she wasn’t totally comfortable with her mother’s big Range Rover. “Big surprise. Scout loves Dad like crazy. And vice versa. I think we turn here. Does this say Hurd Road?”

  “Yes. Look. There’s a sign for Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. This is it.”

  Alexa pulled into a parking lot by a big timber and glass museum. The trees on the grounds blazed bright orange and red in the October light. “Why don’t they call it the Woodstock Museum?”

  “Something about rights to the name.” Susan climbed carefully out of the car and looked around with uncharacteristic indecision. “I’m still not sure what I’m doing here.”

  “I think you’re looking for closure,” Alexa offered as she joined her mother. Raising her eyebrows in amazement, she laughed. “Listen to me. I’m always accusing Melissa of sounding like Dr. Phil. Now here I am talking about closure.”

  “But you’re not too far off, dear. I do think I’m looking to complete the circle that started for me here at Woodstock.”

  Alexa and her mother walked slowly into the museum’s foyer. “We can rest whenever you want, Mom,” Alexa cautioned.

  “I’ll be fine, dear. It’s taken me awhile to recover from the bullet wound, but I’m almost fully healed. You’re the one I’m concerned about, Alexa. You spent most of your summer getting knocked about in one way or the other. That whole terrifying experience with Quinn Hutton was only about six weeks ago. I will be forever grateful to Melissa for alerting the police.”

  “I still get nightmares, but physically I’m fine. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about all those other women who didn’t make it out of Quinn’s temple of horrors. What a twisted SOB. He called them ‘disposable women.’”

  Alexa took a deep breath. “Enough of that.” She backed away from that dark memory. “Mom, today is for you. To revisit Woodstock with a fresh perspective. To lay your ghosts to rest. To remember Willow.” Alexa held the interior museum door open for her mother to enter.

  They spent nearly two hours wandering through exhibits about the sixties and the Woodstock Festival itself. There were quite a few videos of the actual concert, some of them little more than home movies. Susan laughed at the school bus painted in psychedelic colors. “That’s a nice reminder of the Hog Farm’s buses.”

  Susan spent a long time at the exhibit that told the tales of people like her, who had been to Woodstock. After they read a smattering of the many stories, Alexa remembered the scrapbook she’d seen in her mother’s attic.

  “What happened to the group you went with, Mom? Of course, I know about Jack and Quinn. And Aunt Nina is an interior decorator in Boston. What about the rest?”

  “Well, Robbie fulfilled his potential. We always said he was as smart as a rocket scientist. Turned out he was exactly that smart. After getting a graduate degree at MIT, he went to work for NASA.

  “I think the sixties were a little too wild for Cheryl. She married someone in Lancaster—a banker, I think—settled down, and had a bunch of kids.

  “I’m not completely sure what happened to Phil. He flunked out of college and got drafted. Although he survived Vietnam, he picked up a heroin habit over there. After the war, I opened up a Life magazine with an article on treatment of addicted veterans. There was Phil in a full-page photo
about the treatment program. I don’t know if he kicked the habit or where he ended up.”

  “And your boyfriend, Ben?”

  “I told you that we broke up not long after Woodstock. Turned out that Ben wasn’t quite the guy I wanted him to be. I saw him at a class reunion sometime in the nineties. He was living in Boca Raton, Florida selling real estate.” Susan pursed her lips in disapproval. “He had one of those leather tans and dressed about ten years younger than his age. It was a little pathetic.

  “And, of course, you know what course my life took after Woodstock. It seems so long ago since I was Sukie: braless and in braids, with the whole world to explore.”

  “Dad still calls you Sukie. And you’re certainly still exploring the world. I think you’ve changed a lot less than you think.” Alexa squeezed her mother’s hand.

  Near the end, they came to an exhibit honoring key figures from the festival who had died. Many on the list were musicians like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. Susan shed a tear at a name near the top of the list: Greta Shapiro, Age 14; August 16, 1969.

  “Poor, poor Willow. What a tragedy that those animals killed her. I just wish that they were going to pay for her death.”

  “Quinn the Eskimo Hutton and Jack Nash will probably never step outside a jail again. They might not be convicted in Willow’s death, but they’ll serve decades on end for their many other crimes. Although Quinn’s demented ramblings to me wouldn’t mean a thing in a court of law, he basically confirmed that his father and Jack killed Willow.”

  Alexa shuddered. “Looking at all these pictures and videos about the concert and the hippies and the whole go-with-the-flow atmosphere, it’s hard to believe that Woodstock also spawned the monsters that Eskimo and Jack became. Cecily Townes’ homicide, Meg Wilson’s death, serial murder, sex trafficking, and God knows what other foul deeds.”

  After a picnic lunch, they drove down a small road through the grounds that had once housed the famous Three Days of Peace and Music. Susan pointed out the general area where she thought her group had camped. When they came to a grassy slope that formed a natural bowl, she described how it looked filled with hundreds of thousands of concertgoers.

  At the bottom of the hill, where the stage had been, they got out of the car. Alexa and her mom were the only two people there. They walked to a low concrete monument with a dove and a guitar that said, “This is the original site of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, held August 15, 16, 17, 1969.” A list of performers was included on two plaques.

  Susan placed a bunch of daisies on the monument. “Rest in peace, Willow.” When tears began streaming down her mother’s face, Alexa gave her some privacy and walked to the SUV.

  The sky was a brilliant blue, and the autumn breeze whipped Alexa’s hair into her eyes. With the photos in the museum still fresh in her mind, she tried to imagine rock music and the sound of half a million voices ringing through this quiet field.

  When her mom walked away from the monument, she had regained her composure. As they drove out of the museum grounds, Susan smiled. “I’m glad I came. This place is pretty commercialized, but it’s the twenty-first century. Practically everything is commercialized. The exhibits evoked some good memories though.

  “I feel as if a miasma has enveloped me for all these years about Woodstock. I could never get past Willow’s death, partly because I repressed so much of what happened.

  “In reality, Woodstock was pretty amazing. The three days of peace and music and mud and marijuana—it was a once in a lifetime experience. Despite everything that happened with Eskimo, Jack, and Willow, I’m glad I was there. I think I can finally put Woodstock in the proper perspective. It was a glorious, untamed mess that perfectly captured the mood and the idealism of that moment in time.” She turned to Alexa, her eyes brimming. “I feel like a shadow has lifted, and my hope has been restored.”

  Alexa left the new few seconds pass in silence in respect for her mother’s emotional statement. “Thanks for asking me to come along, Mom. This visit certainly gave me new insight on Woodstock. And about you.”

  A few miles down the road they turned into the late afternoon sun. Squinting, Alexa asked, “Mom? Can you look in my bag for my sunglasses?”

  A few seconds later, Susan handed Alexa a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses. When Alexa put them on her face, she couldn’t see through the dust. With a smile, she handed them back.

  “Can you clean these for me? I keep another pair of sunglasses in the rental car. I haven’t worn these since I left Africa. They’re covered in Samburu dust.” When her mother handed them back, Alexa pushed the sunglasses over the bridge of her nose and soared back in time to the moment of pure peace she’d felt that morning on the Serengeti. The scars from her encounter with Quinn Hutton receded with that memory of Africa.

  After a few miles of companionable silence, Susan grinned and opened up the center console. “Did I tell you that I have an album by Levi Bloom and the Flatbush Boulevard? I came across it in a secondhand record store in Philadelphia sometime in the seventies.”

  “Was that their only album?”

  “I think so. Earlier this month, I dug it out and had it transferred to CD. The group sounds a little like the Byrds, but with a heavier bass line.” Susan took a CD out of the center console and popped it into the CD player.

  Alexa grinned as the plaintive strains of the folk rock band filled the car.

  “The whisper of your name, oh yeah,

  The whisper of your name.”

  Afterword

  THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION, and my characters are drawn from my imagination. With the exception of the inestimable Doris Keck, proprietor of Keck’s Store, any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental. Of course, the artists who performed onstage at the Woodstock Festival are real.

  Some of my references are based in fact. The Woodstock Festival did take place in 1969. Much of my description of those three days of peace and music is drawn from my own memories, as well as contemporaneous and later news articles. However, the story of Woodstock in this work is fictionalized.

  Sex trafficking is a worldwide problem, and the statistics in the book are real. However, the organizations, networks, and story about sex trafficking in this work are fictionalized. There is no organization called RESIST. However, there are many fine agencies, both governmental and nongovernmental, that work to combat modern day slavery across the globe and to rescue the victims of human trafficking. Similarly, there are many reputable agencies, both public and private, that provide life-altering assistance to abused and neglected children.

  The quotes that introduce each of the Woodstock chapters are primarily sayings that were popular among hippies during the sixties and early seventies. A few of the quotes that open those chapters (and statements in the narrative) are announcements that were made onstage during the Woodstock Festival of 1969. Levi Bloom, his folk-rock band, and his songs exist only in my imagination.

  Many of the places in this novel, both in South Central Pennsylvania and Africa, are real. However, others exist only in the pages of this book. There is no child service organization in Pennsylvania named Children of Light. If you look for their headquarters on the South Mountain in Cumberland County, you will not find it.

  Acknowledgments

  I WANT TO THANK ALL the people who helped with Dead of Summer. First and foremost, my husband, Mike, who not only gave me feedback on the manuscript but also continues to support the hours I spend hunched over a computer in the world of Alexa Williams. The Knowlton/Kuehn clan gave me assistance and feedback on an early draft of the book. This group includes Josh Knowlton and Laura Stevens, Steve and Pam Knowlton, Dave and Nancy Knowlton, and Denny and Coe Kuehn.

  Once again, Trooper Jessica Williams of Troop H – Carlisle provided technical assistance on state police and other criminal procedure. Detective Sergeant Daniel Freedman of the Carlisle Police Department also provided clarification on procedures involving both missing children and homicide
investigations.

  Lorrie Deck, Director of the Statewide Adoption Network (SWAN) in the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, brought me up to date on the latest adoption laws and other Children and Youth policies and procedures. Thanks to Lisa Roscoe for arranging the connection.

  Dermot Groome, Visiting Professor of Law at The Dickinson Schools of Law, gave me an introduction to some of the criminal charges relevant to the book. He also shared his experience in fighting international human trafficking.

  Petra Wirth, a wonderful teacher of yoga and life, provided me with a good foundation in yoga—and technical assistance on that critical plot point of the Scorpion pose.

  Jesse and Tina Plengsri were my consultants in all things Thai. Dairy farmer Mark Fulton of Shippensburg, PA helped me on details around crop cycles and scary farm equipment. And Lelani Woods of the National Park Service provided information about police jurisdiction on the National Mall.

  Thanks to all of these people, and the crew at Sunbury Press, for their generous help in making Dead of Summer more technically accurate. If I’ve misinterpreted the facts, the fault is purely mine.

  About the Author

  SHERRY KNOWLTON IS THE AUTHOR of the successful Alexa Williams suspense novels, DEAD of AUTUMN and DEAD of SUMMER. Sherry (née Sherry Rothenberger) was born and raised in Chambersburg, PA, where she developed a lifelong passion for books. She was that kid who would sneak a flashlight to bed at night so she could read beneath the covers. All the local librarians knew her by name.

  Sherry spent much of her early career in state government, working primarily with social and human services programs, including services for abused children, rape crisis, domestic violence, and family planning. In the 1990s, she served as the Deputy Secretary for Medical Assistance in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The latter part of Sherry’s career has focused on the field of Medicaid managed care. Now retired from executive positions in the health insurance industry, Sherry runs her own health care consulting business.