Summit Lake

by Charlie Donlea

  Jack had his doubts during these celebrations. He camouflaged them with fake smiles and imitation bravado. He knew as spring dawned on the east coast, so, too, did something Jack thought might wake someday. He was surprised it took so long. He expected it when they returned from Christmas break, and not even the dissolution of the strongest friendship he had ever been part of could entirely distract his internal radar from what was coming.

  No one knew how it leaked, or who leaked it, or in what fashion it trickled down to those who shouldn’t have discovered it. But Jack didn’t need an article in the paper or a campus blogger detailing the events that brought on Milford Morton’s suspicion. What was meant for the four of them had spread to at least a few people who Brad hoped to impress, and those few slipped it to a few more, and a few more after that, until eventually 74 of the 122 seniors who sat for the final in Milford Morton’s Business Law course had a copy of the stolen exam.

  Once out of the bag, the proverbial cat ran wild around campus. The investigation and the details it uncovered spread like spilled ink on a thirsty cloth—so thick and dark that only some serious work, and probably penalties, could erase the sort of graffiti a scandal like this would leave on the walls of the university. Someone needed to take the fall, shoulder the blame, and jeopardize their future—as an example for other kids who made such poor decisions, but mostly to show the world of academia that GWU was an outstanding university that did not tolerate such betrayal of standards.

  The faculty knew the right questions to ask and the proper buttons to push to make students talk, especially those with law degrees and political futures on the line. Not to mention prominent parents hoping to avoid public embarrassment. Jack understood now why it took until March for this to break. As law school acceptance letters trickled in, they would be used to make the right kids talk. By the time tulips readied to bud and the grass began the nourishing process that would bring it back to green, a poisonous trail very opposite to spring’s transformation ran its way to Brad and Jack’s doorstep. The president of the university called and asked to see each of them at three o’clock that afternoon.

  They had not spoken since Christmas, but their current predicament got them both quickly over the awkwardness.

  “My father’ll kill me when this comes out,” Brad said.

  He and Jack sat on the hood of Jack’s beaten Volvo, which was parked at the bank of the Potomac. They watched a big tugboat hauling sand from Maine crawl past. It was still too cold for recreational boats, and the water was mostly an empty canvas glistening with the midmorning sun of early March.

  Brad put his face in his palms. “We just screwed up our lives.”

  Jack heard the despair in his friend’s voice, saw it in his eyes when Brad finally looked up with welled tears hanging on his eyelids. “Here’s the deal,” Jack said, staring straight ahead at the Potomac and the tugboat that moved over its surface. “I broke into Morton’s office by myself. I took the exam alone and distributed it. Over seventy other kids saw the exam, you’re just one of them. Nothing more. They’re not going to kick seventy seniors out of school; they want one person to pin this on.”

  Brad slowly raised his hands. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m taking the fall for this.”

  “No, that’s not happening.”

  Jack laughed. “It’s gotta happen. It’s either me or you. Trust me on this, Brad. The kids they talked to have pinned this on us with nail guns. The dean sat them down, laid out their acceptance letters or their financial firm offers, and then made an offer himself. What do you think they did? Stayed quiet? Please. They threw us under the bus to save their own asses. There’s no reason for both of us to go down.”

  The tug let out a long, low whistle, and a mile downriver a drawbridge began to separate.

  “Listen,” Jack said. “This has nothing to do with Becca or what happened over break, okay? The truth is I’ve got nothing going on. I’m a poor kid from Wisconsin who really doesn’t give a shit if Harvard retracts its offer. That was for my résumé, not because of any great love I have to be an attorney. There are dozens of other schools that would gladly take a Harvard reject, and I’ve got no psychotic father to answer to. I want to write speeches someday and a blemish on my transcript isn’t going to prevent that. Running for senator, maybe. But not writing for one.”

  “Jack, I came to you with the key. I solicited you to come with me to get the test.”

  “And I’m a big boy. I said yes. I wanted the adrenaline rush of breaking in. And I’m taking the fall, Brad.”

  “You didn’t even use the test. I mean, that’s what Becca said. You didn’t even use it and you want to take the heat for stealing it?”

  “It wasn’t about the test, Brad. It was about the adventure. And I stole the damn thing just as much as you did.”

  “I don’t know, Jack.”

  But Jack did know. His friend would take the offer. Brad knew, too. The rest was just a game, a way of accepting through the backdoor—not really wanting such a thing but only taking it because it was offered so sternly.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Brad said.

  “Say yes when Penn asks you into their law program. Or Harvard, but I know Penn is your first choice.” Jack jumped off the hood of his car. “And say yes again when ol’ Jackie Boy comes begging for a job in a few years.” Jack pulled open the driver’s side door. “Come on. Let’s get our stories straight before we see the dean.” As they climbed in the car, Jack grabbed the steering wheel and looked over at Brad. “You know they say the crime is not what brings people down.”

  Brad smiled. “Yeah, it’s the cover-up.”

  “What’s that?” Jack asked, pointing at a torn envelope on the kitchen table and a letter next to it. They were in Becca’s apartment.

  “Cornell,” Becca said.

  “Yes? No?”

  Becca nodded.

  “What the hell?” Jack said in an excited voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m too worried. It came a couple days ago, but we have all this pressure on us with the Morton thing and I haven’t felt like celebrating. And now you’re about to see the dean to confess to something that wasn’t your idea. It’s not a good idea, Jack.”

  “First, it’s already been decided. Second, holy shit! You got into an Ivy League school!”

  She took a deep breath. “Still think I’m staying at GW. I’m here, I’m familiar with the area, I’m comfortable. And to be honest, if I’m serious about joining my father’s firm, there’s no difference between GW Law and Cornell. Maybe some snooty client will only want an Ivy League grad working for them, but unlikely.”

  “Really? Well, it’s good to have options.”

  “Plus, who knows, Jack? We don’t know what’s about to happen with all this. I cheated on a final exam and if that gets out . . . I guess I don’t have to say it. Which is why I don’t think you should do this, Jack. Yes, you stole it. But you didn’t even use it. Why are you taking all the blame?”

  “There’s no other way for it to work, Becca. Brad’s not taking the blame by himself, okay? That’s just not how he operates. And if neither of us owns up to this, you know what happens? The blame starts to spread. Guess where the first stop will be after Brad and me?”

  Becca looked away.

  “Guess.”

  “Me,” Becca said.

  “Correct. You, and then Gail. Wanna know why? Because every kid who cheated knows Brad and I stole the test. Brad couldn’t keep his mouth shut. And they know you and Gail had the first look. And if the university puts pressure on those kids, they’ll tell the dean and the president and anyone else who asks exactly what they know. So it’s either me or all of us.”

  “Why not Brad?”

  Jack laughed. “Come on, Becca, that’s not going to happen.” Jack stood up. “Supposed to talk to the dean at three, so I’ve gotta go. Congrats on Cornell.”

  Becca stood u
p and wrapped her arms around his waist, placing her head on his shoulder. “Good luck.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Tell me when good things happen to you from now on, okay?”

  Becca nodded her head as she silently cried on his chest.

  CHAPTER 18

  Kelsey Castle

  Summit Lake

  March 11, 2012

  Day 7

  During the past week in Summit Lake, intrigued by the story she was chasing and captivated by the girl who was killed, Kelsey found an oasis from her own trouble. But back now, since walking through the Eckersleys’ home, was a repeating loop of vague memories and foggy images of the morning she was attacked. Of the man she could not place, a masked face she could not identify. Kelsey spent many hours over the last month pulling those memories into sharper focus, arranging them in chronological order and working to piece together the events of that day. It was as if her mind wore an electric collar, though, and could go only so far without hurting itself. Kelsey could get to a particular point in her memory and then go no further. Part of it, she knew, was that she didn’t want to go further. Didn’t want to see the details of that morning, or to relive the horror. Some part of her believed she could bury those memories and let them decompose. Another part knew it couldn’t be so easy.

  Placed on the other side of the crime—victim instead of investigator—she hated the process and the procedure and the fact-gathering. She despised the detectives’ questions and connotations about what she wore that morning and whom she was seeing outside of work and how she conducted herself at the office. Never coming straight out and announcing their suspicions, Kelsey knew damn well the detectives were asking if she was a promiscuous woman who flirted with colleagues and wore inappropriate clothing. They didn’t have the courage to ask her if she might have brought the whole situation on herself, but after a couple days of questioning Kelsey knew what they were suggesting. She was relieved when they left her alone and went out to futilely look for the man with no face and no name and no chance of being caught.

  Then, Kelsey turned off her phone and locked her front door and didn’t leave for a month. In the weeks off from work and while disconnected from the world, Kelsey succumbed one afternoon to researching what she’d been through. Poring through reference material and making sense out of volumes of information was how she figured things out in her career, and so she tried the same thing in her personal life. She bought a bag of self-help books from the bookstore that dealt with the healing process women go through after assault. She read them all in a three-day span made of little sleep, loads of coffee, and leftover Chinese.

  After her reading binge, she took comfort knowing that all the emotions swirling through her mind and her body were not unique. Others shared her pain. The books suggested she would feel loneliness and isolation—and she did. Some of it was because Penn Courtney had not allowed her into the office for a month, but it was also from refusing to walk out her door for fear of what waited. Anger and resentment toward men, too, she read, would be part of the process. And though there was no bitterness in her heart or mind, Peter Ambrose was the first man she’d been around and her bizarre dream the other night of Peter running down the dock in front of the Eckersleys’ house made Kelsey question herself about trusting a man. She allowed herself this emotion.

  Nighttime would be especially difficult, the books told her. Her nightmares proved this. But she took pride in the fact that when she wasn’t sleeping, the dark hours of night were her favorite time. It was when she watched old movies and finished the novels she was reading. It was a time when she knew the rest of the world was asleep and only then was she comfortable relaxing, knowing she wasn’t missing anything.

  She would be scared, the books told her, and it might take months or longer to walk down the sidewalk or to her car, or to jog the streets. Sometimes, these things would never again be possible. And this much was true—she was scared, there was no denying this. But running was her thing. Her passion. A private time when she reviewed cases and articles in her mind. When she was stuck on an article, the isolation of running allowed Kelsey to sort her thoughts. And if she ever felt overwhelmed or too close to a story, the miles were spent simply getting away from all those thoughts that ran through her head. Erase it all for an hour or two and come back refreshed. In the weeks just after the rape, though, the thought of running anywhere—let alone through the woods where the attack happened—was too much. But here in Summit Lake, Kelsey made a decision. She refused to allow her fear to take away what she loved so much. She forced herself to walk the town and jog through the canopied forest to the waterfall. The horror of that morning still coursed through her, but each mile took her a little farther from it.

  Most of all, the books told her, she would feel a sense of loss. Almost, although not quite, the experts wrote, like someone had died. And this was essential to the rebirth she would need to experience to fully heal. Perhaps this was the sensation that overwhelmed her in the stilt house the other morning.

  What she took from the self-help books was that everyone heals in their own way and at their own pace. Some reflect more than others on the things they encounter in life, and weigh those happenings differently. Kelsey finally decided she would pick which events shaped her life and defined her personality. This single, awful day would not be one of them. Simple as that.

  She wasn’t able to throw the books away, so she tossed them into the return bin at the local library and headed back to work the next day. A week later, she was in Summit Lake, on the trail of young Becca Eckersley, who had gone through the same thing as Kelsey but who was not so fortunate to wake up in a hospital bed the next day. Always a believer in fate, and a student of the persistent voice in her head that guided her and helped her find her way, Kelsey knew she was in Summit Lake for a reason greater than herself. For something more than the three-piece article she was sent to write.

  Night fell and by 8:00 p.m. the sky was alive with stars. Kelsey pulled the collar of her jacket against the lake breeze. She stood in front of the Winchester Hotel and watched a black SUV roll up. The passenger side window came down and Peter Ambrose was behind the wheel.

  She walked over and rested her elbows on the window frame. “You sure about this?” she asked.

  “It’s your story, so it’s up to you. But I’m a willing participant.”

  “Will you get in trouble?”

  “If we get caught, we’ll both get in trouble.”

  Kelsey looked down Maple Street at nothing in particular, then pulled open the door and climbed in. They were on a winding mountain road out of Summit Lake a few minutes later.

  “So tell me again where you got this information,” Kelsey said as they drove.

  “I put in a call to a pathologist friend of mine who works for the county. He knows about the Eckersley case—no specifics, only that it’s all very hush-hush. He and the other pathologists and technicians were told to stay out of the way of this investigation while the state authorities take over. Only the Buchanan County medical examiner has any privileges.”

  “That’s who wrote the partial autopsy report you got for me a few days ago?”

  “Correct. My friend tells me there’s something else going on with this case, rumors are wild and speculation is high.”

  “What are the rumors?”

  “Something’s being covered up. The ME is ready to resign over the secrecy and it’s causing major trouble down at the county building. It’s got everyone talking, and so when I put a call in to my buddy he was very happy to know someone was looking into this story.”

  “And how is he going to help us?”

  “He’s not—just in case anyone asks you. But I ended up with an access card to the county building and a password for the Eckersley file. I’m hoping if we have a look, we’ll find the full autopsy report. See what the fuss is about.”

  They took the winding roads out of the mountains for half an hour until they entered the town of Eas
tgate, where the Buchanan County Government Center was located. It was close to 9:00 p.m. when they pulled into the parking lot of a pizza joint. They found a booth by the window and ordered beers and a pepperoni pizza.

  Kelsey took a sip of her draft. “Why are you doing this for me? You could get in a lot of trouble.”

  “You’ve got me interested in this case. If something’s being covered up, I want to help you find it. Plus,” Peter said as he took a sip of beer, “if you can’t tell, I like you. You seem like a good person with the right intentions.”

  “Thanks. I just hope this doesn’t cause you any problems.”

  Peter smiled. “We’re not stealing classified government documents, we’re looking at an autopsy report that should be public record anyways. Tell me what you’ve found since we talked last.”

  “Where do I start? How about that Becca got married just before she was killed.”

  “To whom?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Aren’t there records?”

  “Not that I can find. It doesn’t make sense, but I’m sure about my source, so I have to figure that one out.”

  The waitress came over with a deep-dish pizza and placed a slice in front of each of them.

  “My working theory is that Becca eloped and was killed before a marriage certificate was filed, therefore leaving no record.”

  “No record, but a suspect.”

  “Exactly, if I can figure out who she married.” Kelsey took a bite of pizza. “Also, Becca kept a journal. One she wrote in—or at least read from—the day she was killed.”

  “Like a diary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t it mention the name of the guy she married?”