With the chaos in the kitchen still settling—bowls rolling, stools bouncing—she felt the carpet of the family room under her feet. It gave her leverage and Becca used every bit of it to push him away, but her resistance only fueled Brad’s rage. He wrenched her head backward, ripping a clump of hair from her scalp as her feet left the ground and her body went horizontal. As she fell, Becca felt her head crack against the wood frame of the couch as he heaved himself on top of her. The pain in her head vibrated down her spine. Her vision blurred and the noise of the world began to fade, until his ice-cold hands thrust into her sweatpants. This snapped her back to consciousness. As the weight of his body pinned her down, she punched and clawed until her knuckles broke and her nails became thick with skin and blood.
When she felt her underwear rip away, she screamed a piercing, shrill cry. But it lasted only a few seconds, until his hands found her throat and crushed her voice into raspy gasps. He was vicious and possessed as he silenced her, his hands clamping with a powerful rage around her neck. She sucked for air, but it would not come, and soon her arms fell like deflated balloons to her sides. And though her body could no longer respond to the panicked calls from her mind, she still resisted by never breaking eye contact with him. Until her vision faded like her voice.
Broken and bleeding, she lay there, her chest barely rising with shallow breaths. She drifted in and out, waking each time he brutalized her in angry, violent waves. It went on for an eternity before he left her. Before he fled through the sliding glass door of the family room, leaving it wide open. As the cold night air filled the room and crept over her naked body, Becca’s eyelids fell to slivers. All that was left now was white halogen glowing in the doorframe, bright against the dark night. Becca lay motionless, unable to blink or look away had the desire come to her. It did not. She was strangely content in her paralysis. Tears slid down her cheeks and climbed the curve of her earlobes before dripping silently to the floor. The worst was over. The pain was gone. He was no longer on top of her, and his absence was all the freedom she wanted. His fists no longer pummeled her, and her throat was finally free from his crushing grip. His hairy thighs had stopped rubbing over her, and his hot breath was gone from her face.
On the floor with her legs splayed and arms like two broken tree limbs attached to her sides, she faced the wide-open patio door. The lighthouse in the distance—with its bright beacon calling out to lost boats in the night—was all she knew and all she needed. It was life and she clung to its swaying image.
Far away a siren bounced through the night, low at first, then gathering strength. Help was coming, although she knew it was too late. Still, she welcomed the siren and the aid it would bring. It was not herself she was hoping to save.
CHAPTER 44
Kelsey Castle
Summit Lake Foothills
March 15, 2012
Day 11
The cabin sat at the edge of the forest, and the dying evening light cast it in an ominous glow. A creek curled around from the back and cascaded over three tiers of staircase rocks before trickling into a large pond to the side of the cabin. Cattails swayed in a gentle breeze, and other than the gurgle of the water and a few bird calls, it was quiet and still this far out.
“It looks empty,” Rae said, staring through the windshield.
There were no lights on and no vehicles parked near the cabin.
With the passenger side door open, Kelsey shook her head, tapped her phone, and played the message one more time. She put her phone on speaker. Back in Rae’s apartment, Kelsey had spoken with Brad Reynolds’s father, who told her he and his son were not on speaking terms, and that Brad was no longer part of his life. But soon after Kelsey ended the call, and while she was attempting to reach Richard Walker, Brad’s mother had called and left a message. Kelsey and Rae listened to it again now.
“Hello? This is Diane Reynolds, Brad’s mother. You just spoke with my husband. Sorry for his rudeness. He and Brad are going through a rough time, that’s all. Brad is still very much part of our family. And he did know the girl who died. They went to school together, and I’m sure he’d be willing to talk to you about Becca. He’s staying at our hunting cabin about an hour outside of Summit Lake. If you see him, tell him we love him very much and that we asked him to call home.”
Kelsey and Rae listened once more to Mrs. Reynolds’s directions. They were sure this was the cabin. They climbed out and walked to the front porch. Kelsey took the three steps slowly. Dried and crumbled leaves, once bright and colorful, were now black and brittle and accumulating in the corners of the porch.
“Brad Reynolds?” Kelsey called out. “Are you home?”
Kelsey walked across the porch and noticed the front door was open. She squinted her eyes and peeked inside.
“Hello?”
When she got no answer she pushed the door open. Blue, dusky light spilled through the windows and cast the interior in a grainy hue. The cabin was a cluttered mess. A couch by a fireplace and an ancient, makeshift television with bunny-ear antennae. A desk and a chair covered with scattered papers. Newspapers stacked everywhere. Kelsey cocked her head slightly when she saw it. The purse resting on the end table, with its Coach insignia and smooth leather, looked out of place in the dingy cabin.
Her instincts kicked in and Kelsey walked through the doorway and into the dark cabin.
CHAPTER 45
Brad Reynolds
Summit Lake
February 17, 2012
The night of Becca’s death
Brad stood over Becca’s motionless body, his chest heaving like an asthmatic. He stood while minutes passed, chasing his breath, not sure exactly what he had just done or what he should do next. He quickly looked around the stilt house, which was trashed from the mudroom to the kitchen to the family room, where he stood, like a mini tornado had spun its way through the house.
He ran to the kitchen and picked up Becca’s Coach purse from the floor. An envelope was next to it and he grabbed that also. There were other things he should do—unlock a door or break a window or go upstairs and take her mother’s jewelry—but the thoughts descended on him in an avalanche of panic. Instead, he ran with Becca’s purse to the sliding glass door, looking at her still, naked body once more before pulling the door open and running into the night. The cold winter air entered his lungs and stung his eyes.
He had parked his truck on a side street off Maple. After he ran the length of the dock, past all the stilt houses, he pulled up and began to walk. The last thing he needed was someone to remember a man running through the streets tonight. When he reached his truck, he grabbed the handle and looked up and down the street. He was alone. He pulled the door open and climbed in, throwing the purse on the passenger seat next to him.
Bringing his breathing under control, he started the truck and put it in gear. Five minutes later, he pulled out of the town center and drove the dark mountain roads that would take him back to his father’s hunting cabin. He turned on his high beams and his mind went blank. Before he was aware of his actions, and without being able to recall anything about the hour’s drive, Brad was taking the final switchback, the headlights illuminating the cabin as he approached.
His eyes were unblinking when he killed the engine. He sat for many minutes as the truck cooled in the night air, ticking every so often. Finally, he grabbed Becca’s purse from the passenger seat and walked through the beams of the headlights and into the cabin. Leaving the door open, the truck’s headlights spilled through the doorframe as he sat on the couch.
He held the purse close to his chest, clutching it like a child’s teddy bear. He blinked just in time for tears to roll down his cheeks. In front of him, on the wooden coffee table, were the items he had doted over before deciding to drive into town and see her. Pictures of Becca from school, when she wore cutoff jeans and a GWU T-shirt bunched and held with a rubber band at her side. A photo of the two of them at an Orioles game when Becca visited the summer after freshman yea
r. The notes she used to leave on his nightstand when she stayed the night and left before he woke. There were dozens of them.
B—See you tonight at the 19th. You’re cute when you snore.—B
The stolen Business Law test also rested on the table. In so many ways, that test was what sent his life spiraling. He had to know the truth. If she really needed him to steal it for her or if it was all a play. He had gone to the stilt house tonight to ask that one simple question. No more. He just wanted the truth.
He finally released his grip on Becca’s purse, unzipping it and looking inside. It was her, this purse and its belongings. It was Becca. A piece of her. It carried her smell and her being. He pushed the contents around with his hand and found her lip balm on the bottom. Uncapping the tube, he closed his eyes and inhaled. He could still conjure in his mind the taste of this lip balm from the night he and Becca kissed. He pulled out her law school ID. Staring at Becca’s image, he wanted to ask this girl he loved a thousand more questions. Wanted to rewind time and visit her again, make it a different ending.
Finally, he threw the lip balm and ID back into the purse and dropped it onto the end table. Ripping open the envelope he had taken from the stilt house, Brad unfolded the single page and immediately recognized her cursive. The letter was to Becca’s unborn child. Brad’s breaths were labored again as he read, his chest anvil-like. His eyes teared up as he sat on the couch and read the letter. The truck’s headlights continued to pour through the open cabin door while he sat rocking on the couch. Back and forth. Back and forth.
CHAPTER 46
Kelsey Castle
Summit Lake Foothills
March 15, 2012
Day 11
Rae grabbed Kelsey’s wrist as she started into the cabin. “Where are you going?”
Kelsey pointed with her other hand at the purse. “Come on. Something’s not right here.”
Together, the two walked into the cabin. Without the evening light they were both cast in shadows. Kelsey picked up the purse from the end table and looked inside. She pulled out an ID badge and there she was: Becca Eckersley, staring back at her. Kelsey could feel the stare, as though the photo taken long ago was a portal through which Becca spoke to her. She was asking for help and Kelsey would not deny her.
Rae was crouched over the coffee table now, staring at the scattered mess of photos and notes and school papers. Rae had seen Becca’s face plastered in the paper and on television often enough to recognize her instantly.
“Hey,” Rae said, pointing at the table. She looked quickly around the cabin. “This is freaking me out.”
Kelsey glanced at the photos on the table, then held up Becca’s law school ID. They both nodded at each other, not having to speak to let the other know her thoughts. Kelsey pulled out her phone and began to dial Commander Ferguson’s number. She stopped mid-dial and looked at her phone.
“What?” Rae said, whispering suddenly.
“No service.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Kelsey nodded, but then she saw the cellar door, cracked open and covered with photos. “Wait,” she said. “Look.”
Against Rae’s protests, Kelsey walked deeper into the cabin. An investigator to her marrow, Kelsey could not allow herself to leave. With the morbid fascination when one stares at a car wreck, Kelsey walked to the cellar door and pulled it open, marveling at the shrine that was there.
Stuck to the back of the door and to the wall that followed the stairs to the basement were hundreds of photos of Becca, all pinned dutifully with a single thumbtack and curled at the edges. Most appeared to be from college, with campus or dorm room paraphernalia in the background. Some were staged photos from yearbooks. Others were cut and pasted, zoomed in to isolate Becca’s face. A few were rectangles of only her eyes, staring out at nothing. Until now. Kelsey felt the stare again. Accepted it.
The notes were here, too, farther down the wall. The short notes that started with a single “B” and ended the same way. Scores of them tacked to the wall in a descending path that led to the basement. The stairs creaked as Kelsey took them, one at a time, staring at the photos and the notes as she descended into the basement. Halfway down the stairs, the dying light that spilled through the cabin’s windows was gone, so Kelsey used her phone to highlight the wall. The flash reflected off the glossy photos. As Kelsey scanned the shrine, the pictures became hypnotic. Toward the bottom of the staircase, she came across more disturbing photos. Not of a young student posing and smiling for the camera, but of a young woman unaware she was being photographed. In these shots, taken paparazzi-style, Becca was walking through campus, removing items from her car, leaving a doctor’s office. In several photos, Becca’s image was blurred as she jogged with headphones dangling, hair in a ponytail.
Kelsey stopped on these frames, the ones of Becca jogging. She ran her finger over one of the images, blocking from her mind those thoughts that tried to trespass.
“Jesus Christ,” Rae said, staring at the wall from several steps above Kelsey. She had come across several close-up prints of Becca sleeping. Eyes closed, hair matted. Some were full-body shots of Becca in bed, covers pulled down to her feet, wearing a tank top and shorts. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
But Kelsey was too far gone. From her years on the beat, she understood the work of a disturbed man. More than that, she was fascinated by it. Kelsey tapped her phone and took pictures of the wall. Of the photos and the notes. Of the purse she still carried and the ID badge. Of the cabin stairs and the way a deranged killer lives. She saw the privileged life of Brad Reynolds deteriorating before her, and in her mind she wrote the story.
“See,” Kelsey said aloud, but she was clearly talking to herself. “He’s an organized asocial.”
“Oh, really?” Rae said. “He’s also a psychopath stalker. Now let’s go.”
Kelsey was still snapping photos. “Stalker, yes. Psychopath, no.” Kelsey slowly took the last two steps into the basement, videoing now as she moved slowly, trying to capture everything she could. “I see it all now. It’s all come together in my mind. See, Brad loved Becca, but she didn’t love him back. Becca loved Jack instead. Brad became obsessed.”
“Obviously.”
“No, it’s more than that. It’s more than an obsession. It’s called organized asocial. It’s the pattern of a killer. A particular type of killer. He’s smart. High IQ smart. Can be very personable and charismatic, but withdraws from society. Holes himself up out here in the foothills, where no one will bother him. Breaks bonds with his family so he can concentrate on his prize. Then, with nothing else to distract him, his obsession grows. It happened right here in this cabin. Grew until it overtook him. Until an image of Becca formed in his mind that never really existed. And this false image of her became his reality. These types of killers are unaware of their growing obsession. Until one day, with Becca’s image constantly surrounding him and all the memories of their time together eating away at him, he decides to see her. To talk to her. That’s what he told himself. He only went to talk. Went into that stilt house to ask her a question. But in reality, he went to kill her. To take her life so no one else could have her.”
Rae stayed in the middle of the stairway, refusing to venture beyond the safety of the open door a few steps away and the scant light that was there. Kelsey, still videoing, walked into the basement. Her phone like a lone star in the dark sky. The beam lit up a workbench covered with tools Brad had used to create his shrine. Scissors and straight-edged paper cutters. Photos of Becca waiting to be cut and pasted. A Nikon camera resting in an open case, various lenses set to the side. Newspapers, too, were stacked on the workbench. Some were discarded on the floor, large squares missing from them. To the side of the workbench, Kelsey found the isolated articles. They chronicled Senator Milt Ward’s plane crash. She snapped photos of them but failed to make a connection.
Against the adjacent wall was a small desk and chair. Kelsey played the light ove
r the surface to find handwritten letters. She picked one up and held it close. Dear Becca, was the heading, then a page filled with incoherent sentences and half thoughts. It was signed by Brad. There were ten sealed envelopes, all addressed to Becca. Stamped and ready to be dropped in the mail—had Brad ever mustered the courage to do so, Kelsey guessed.
Above the desk, tacked to the wall, were formal letters addressed to Brad. Kelsey took a closer look and realized they were rejection letters from Penn, Columbia, and Yale. She snapped photos of the letters. Then something else. Positioned perfectly in the middle of the desk was a white piece of paper. In ugly, block lettering a message was scrawled.
TO THOSE WHO COME FOR ME: MAY YOU KNOW MY HELL, AND NEVER ESCAPE THIS PLACE AND WHAT WAITS FOR YOU HERE.
Kelsey came back from that investigative place in her mind where she spent the last several minutes writing her article, seeing it clearly in the full arc from Becca’s acceptance to GWU through her death, and all the events in between that brought her to the stilt house just four weeks before.
“Rae?”
“Yes?”
“We should get out of here.”
“Thank God. Come on,” she called from the stairs.
Before the words were out of her mouth, headlights from a truck flashed through the cabin’s windows as it came down the narrow road out front. The lights spilled into the basement stairwell and lighted Rae’s face.
“Shit!” Rae said. It came out like a scream.
“What’s wrong?” Kelsey asked, running to the stairs.
“He’s here.”
“Come down here!” Kelsey said, grabbing Rae by the wrist and pulling her into the basement.
Outside, the truck skidded to a stop on the gravel.
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