Summit Lake

by Charlie Donlea

  “I hear you,” Jack said. He stood from the bed and grabbed his duffle bag. “Ready?”

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Jack dragged the two duffle bags that represented everything he owned in the world down the stairs and crammed them into the trunk. He threw Becca’s bag into the backseat and made one last pass through the apartment, taking the TV in his arms and leaving everything else that didn’t stand a chance at fitting into his Volvo.

  Last month, Brad’s parents had been through the apartment to collect their son’s belongings, leaving nothing but memories and an empty bedroom. Jack and Becca paused before backing out the doorway, TV cradled in his arms, and tears welled in Becca’s eyes. They each looked up at the I-beam that ran the length of the kitchen. The last five weeks brought many scenarios into their minds of how things could have gone differently. Jack could have skipped his flight the day Brad confessed his love for Becca, stayed with his friend when Brad needed him most. Becca could have told Brad everything during one of their late-night talks and defused the bomb ticking in his mind. They could have told the truth from the beginning, when Gail and Brad returned for senior year. Jack could have taken that key from Brad and told him how stupid it was to steal a test, and together they could have weighed more seriously the consequences of getting caught. Maybe those things would have prevented the year from unfolding the way it had. Maybe nothing would have changed.

  Becca and Jack finally walked down the steps, leaving the apartment door wide open. Jack tossed the television into the backseat and they each climbed in and waited for the old Volvo to turn over. The engine finally caught and they pulled slowly from the parking lot. Two hours later, Washington, DC, was an absent thing in the rearview mirror, and only dark highway was in front of them, like their lives, illuminated by the Volvo’s headlights for only a short stretch, black and unknowing beyond the immediate. They drove without fatigue through the night, with very little conversation, until the sun filled the mirrors the next morning and stretched the Volvo into a long shadow that glided over the highway in front of them. About the time their names were being called back at graduation, they crossed the Mississippi River.

  Two days after they left Washington, DC, Becca and Jack ended up in Wyoming. They purchased a tent and a campsite at the Yellowstone conservatory and found their lot in the Bay Bridge Campground where they pitched their tent and slept for twelve straight hours. They spent two days wandering small hiking trails under the high blue sky. That first night at their campsite Becca and Jack sat and stared into the orange flames of the fire, thinking of Brad and the way everything ended.

  They talked until the sun set and darkness fell over the valley. They climbed into their tent and snuggled next to each other in the sleeping bag. Besides the things they couldn’t control and were powerless to change, Becca and Jack decided the worst they had done was fall in love and keep it to themselves. They could live with that.

  Becca would start her first year at George Washington Law in the fall, and she would meet new people and make new friends. Law school was off the table for Jack, and his future less certain. Word spread of the stolen exam and his rejection from Harvard Law, which did not bode well for his prospects of finding a job in DC. Though he had not dwelled on it much, being preoccupied with guilt and remorse, now under the starry night in Yellowstone National Park, Jack contemplated how his life had changed from a few short weeks ago. And when he allowed himself to consider his future, it sunk in that taking the blame for the stolen test may have affected his life more greatly than he originally considered.

  The night grew cold and Becca and Jack pulled the sleeping bag over their heads and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 22

  Kelsey Castle

  Summit Lake

  March 13, 2012

  Day 9

  “You told me to figure out why her secret was a secret. So I did,” Kelsey said as she sat with Commander Ferguson in the small breakfast place on the lake. “I know why Becca got married.”

  They sat at the bar sipping bitter coffee while the commander picked at a stale donut.

  “I’m listening.”

  “She was pregnant.”

  The commander stopped his picking, looked around the diner to make sure no one was paying attention to them. “Where did you come up with this theory?”

  “It’s not a theory,” Kelsey said in a hushed voice. “According to Michelle Maddox, the county medical examiner who did the autopsy, it’s a fact. Becca’s blood work was positive for hCG, the hormone produced during pregnancy.” Kelsey pulled a sheet of paper from her purse and laid it on the bar in front of Commander Ferguson. It was a printed page from the autopsy report describing the internal exam and Dr. Maddox’s discovery of a female fetus presumed to be in the fifth gestational month.

  “Son of a bitch,” Commander Ferguson said, lifting the page from the bar and squinting at the words.

  He looked at Kelsey with the droopy eyelids and congested face of a man who drank and smoked too much. “Should I bother asking how you got hold of an autopsy report I haven’t seen yet?”

  Kelsey sipped her coffee. “You should not.”

  The commander shook his head slightly and offered a hint of a smile. After a moment, his face relaxed in a stoic stare as he considered this new information. “So she got knocked up, then ran off and married the guy real quick?”

  “It’s plausible. Might explain why the family is trying to cover things up. A prominent father who is quasi-famous with his law firm and getting ready for a run at the bench doesn’t want it known that his unmarried, pregnant daughter was raped?”

  “I thought we were saying she was married.”

  “Secretly married. Maybe worse for a prominent attorney that his daughter ran off and eloped. But I need some help. These are all important parts of the puzzle, but alone they don’t get me any closer to figuring out who broke into the Eckersleys’ house that night.”

  “Well,” the commander said, twisting his coffee cup on the bar. “First, you have to remember no one broke into that house. There was no sign of forced entry, which means a recent GWU graduate and current law student was either too ignorant to know not to open the door for a strange man while alone at her family’s vacation home, or she knew the person and allowed him to freely enter the house.”

  “Okay,” Kelsey said. “So Becca disengages the alarm and opens the door. For whom? She was married and pregnant, but who the hell killed her?”

  “Couple angles there off the top of my head.” Commander Ferguson took a sip of coffee, then looked around again. The diner was mostly empty. “Maybe your source was wrong about the marriage. Or maybe the Eckersley girl was wrong about the guy’s intentions. Maybe she wanted to get married and in her mind thought whoever got her pregnant wanted the same thing. She goes around telling people this, or at least tells your source. The only problem? The guy doesn’t want to marry her. Doesn’t want a kid either. And there’s one way to fix that problem.”

  Kelsey lifted her chin. She’d thought of a similar scenario, although not phrased quite so bluntly. It was a good theory, but one with missing characters. And they were going about this backward. You typically find a suspect and then look for motive, not the other way around.

  Commander Ferguson let out one of his horsey laughs as he watched her wrestle with possibilities. “No one said this stuff was easy to figure out. But as you move along on this case I want you to remember something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In my experience, you can fit the person who does something this terrible to a beautiful young woman into two categories. The first is someone who hated the victim.”

  “I’ve considered that,” Kelsey said. “And so far I’ve been unable to come up with anyone who might have hated Becca Eckersley. The girl had no enemies.”

  “So that brings us to the only other category of person who might do this.”

  “Which is?”

  “Someone who love
d her.”

  Later that night, after her visit with Commander Ferguson, Kelsey sat in her suite at the Winchester and tapped her computer. She was at the small dining table, which was covered with research material on the Eckersley case. A pegboard was propped on a chair and decorated with photos of the Eckersleys’ house and Kelsey’s handwritten flow charts of Becca’s movements the day she died—from the campus of GWU in the morning, through the mountains to Summit Lake, to Millie’s coffeehouse, and finally to the Eckersleys’ stilt house. Times were written at each location to keep things straight in her mind.

  She went back through the information she received from Commander Ferguson. Within an hour, the other chairs were covered with stacks of paper she organized in a system coherent only to herself. She came across travel information for Becca—an outline of her movements in the months leading up to her death. Becca started law school in August, six months before she was killed, and the police had tracked her to only three trips outside of DC in those months. The first was in November when she ventured to Greensboro, presumably going home for Thanksgiving. The next were airplane records to Green Bay, Wisconsin, over Christmas. The last trip out of DC was her drive to Summit Lake the day she was killed.

  Kelsey started in Greensboro, cross-referencing credit card receipts and ATM records with the Eckersleys’ home address. Definitely a trip home for Thanksgiving. Next she moved to the Green Bay trip. What was in Green Bay that would make Becca go there over Christmas break? A guy, Kelsey concluded. What else would take a twenty-two-year-old student away from her family over Christmas?

  Kelsey spent another hour poring through Becca’s phone records, looking for any calls made to Wisconsin area codes. None. Although over a three-day period that covered Christmas, Kelsey found one call per day to the Eckersleys’ home number in Greensboro that routed through a cell tower in Green Bay. She was close, but she needed a name or phone number or address or something to track.

  On her computer she pulled up the 1L class of GW Law—nearly one hundred names. She deleted the females and settled on fifty-two male students who attended law school with Becca Eckersley. Painstaking research told her only three were from Wisconsin, and none from Green Bay. She hunkered down for three more hours and looked into the other male students in the L2 and L3 classes. Not one was from Green Bay. She even looked briefly at profiles of the attorneys in William Eckersley’s law firm, running briefly with the gossip group’s theory that Becca might have been involved with one of her father’s colleagues. It was a short run, though, since none was from Wisconsin.

  She put her notes from GW Law to the side and looked further back in Commander Ferguson’s records. During the summer after Becca graduated college, she was noted to have been on a private jet belonging to Milt Ward, a Maryland senator. Kelsey licked her finger and paged through some notes. Milt Ward was all over the news.

  “Why was a senator from Maryland flying you around on his private jet?”

  Feeling she was on to something, she grabbed another stack of papers and started to dig. But a knock on the door interrupted her research. She looked at the clock. 11:18 p.m.

  Through the peephole she saw a man dressed in a suit with his tie loosened and crooked.

  “Miss Castle,” the man said, knocking again. “My name is Detective Madison. I saw your light on, so I figured you were up.”

  Kelsey pulled the door open as far as the chain would allow. “Yes?”

  “Good,” the detective said. “You’re still awake. Can we talk?”

  “About what?”

  “Becca Eckersley.”

  “Can I see some ID?”

  “Of course.”

  The detective removed his badge from his hip and handed it through the slot between the door and frame. He also offered his driver’s license.

  “I’d be happy to talk down in the lobby if you’re more comfortable there.”

  Kelsey scrutinized the badge and knew it was legit. She’d talked to Commander Ferguson about this guy. Madison was one of the state detectives who had taken the case from the Summit Lake police force.

  “What’s so important that you’re knocking at my door at eleven at night?”

  “There’s been an important development.”

  Kelsey closed the door and unlatched the chain. “Here,” she said when she opened the door, handing the badge and ID back to the detective. “Something about Becca?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” Kelsey said. “The place is a mess.”

  Detective Madison walked into the suite and looked around at the cluttered research covering the table and chairs. “You have been busy.”

  “I’m here on assignment.”

  “So I’ve heard.” He walked over to the table and flipped a finger through some pages.

  “Please don’t touch my property, Detective,” Kelsey said. “Unless you have a warrant.”

  “I don’t,” the detective said, turning and facing Kelsey. “What are you trying to accomplish here?”

  “I’m writing an article about Becca Eckersley.”

  He glanced back at the table and chairs covered in papers and outlines. “A magazine article or a book?”

  Kelsey’s face stayed stoic. “An article.”

  “Why so much digging for a simple article?”

  “Becca’s is a complicated story.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “So what’s this development that has you out so late?”

  The detective smiled. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop poking around places you’re not meant to poke around.”

  “I’m a journalist writing a story, Detective Madison. Poking around is what I do. And since you guys are so secretive about the details of this case, I’ve had to put things together by piecemeal research.”

  “Piece things together however you’d like, but if you break the law you’ll pay the price.”

  “Asking questions in Summit Lake is hardly breaking the law.”

  “Agreed. But breaking into a government building is.”

  Kelsey didn’t hesitate. “Who broke into any buildings?”

  Detective Madison smiled again. “I’m working on that, trust me. But surveillance footage shows two individuals using a stolen access key to enter the Buchanan County Government Center the other night. The same card was then used to enter a private office and access classified documents.”

  Now Kelsey smiled. “Classified? Is Buchanan County, way up here in the mountains, responsible for some secret nuclear program?”

  “That’s cute. Where were you two nights ago?”

  “Detective, please do not come to my hotel suite and try to intimidate me.”

  “I’m simply asking a question.”

  “Which carries the implication that I somehow broke into this building you’re talking about.”

  “Did you?”

  “If you’d like to interrogate me, then arrest me and do it at the police station.”

  Detective Madison puckered his lower lip in contemplation. “When are you going back to Miami?”

  “When I finish my article.”

  “Oh,” the detective laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t think you’ll make it that long. Once I know for sure it’s you on that surveillance footage, I’m going to arrest you—if you’re still in Summit Lake. And I’m going to arrest whomever you were with. Do you understand?”

  “Not really, because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  The detective put a thumb over his shoulder. “And I noticed some of your research material is stamped with a Summit Lake Police Department seal. You steal that, too?”

  Kelsey didn’t answer.

  “No,” the detective said. “I bet you didn’t have to. Stan Ferguson probably gave it to you because he’s being a pain in the ass since he was asked to step aside. Leaking information to the media about an active investigation is a big no-no.” The detective shook his head as he walked to the door. “Have
a good night, Miss Castle.”

  He closed the door behind him and Kelsey ran to the peephole to watch him walk down the hallway and enter the elevator. She grabbed her cell phone and called Penn Courtney. She got his voice mail and left a curt message to call back. She also texted him and left the same message on his home phone. She grabbed her jacket on the way out of her hotel room. She made fast work of the five blocks to the coffeehouse, which she knew was long closed. She looked up to the second story. The windows were dark. Around back, Kelsey climbed the stairs and knocked softly on the door. When there was no answer, she knocked harder and the kitchen light finally blinked on. The curtains moved to the side and then the door opened. “What’s wrong?” Rae asked.

  “I need your help.”

  “Come in,” Rae said. Dressed in flannel pajama pants and a tank top, Rae shuffled through the kitchen with slippers covering her feet. “What’s going on?”

  “The lead detective in the Eckersley case just paid me a visit.”

  With sleepy eyes Rae squinted at the wall clock. “What time is it?”

  “Almost midnight.”

  “Why were the police at your hotel room at midnight?”

  “Because I think I’m in trouble. The guy’s name is Madison and he wanted to know why I was poking around so much.”

  “So tell him you’re writing a story. No crime there.”

  “Agreed. Except I illegally entered the county building the other night with Peter and looked at an autopsy report that was not made public.”

  “I thought that was a secret.”

  “Yeah, well, not quite,” Kelsey said. “I’m on a surveillance camera in front of the building.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The best journalists make the worst criminals. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

  Kelsey shook her head.

  “Okay. So don’t freak out just yet. What’s the guy want?”

  “Me to leave Summit Lake.”

  “How close are you on Becca’s article?”

  “Really close.” There was a long pause where Kelsey shrugged. “At least coming up with some ideas that don’t match anything the police are looking at. I just need some time to work things out. Commander Ferguson says the state guys are stuck on the theory of a drifter strolling through town that night and randomly entering the Eckersleys’ house.”