“That’s not for us to worry about,” Larry said. “There will be an investigation. The district attorney will be involved. It’s your job to present the case, remember. The DA takes it from there.”
Larry was addressing Stevie like she was an actual detective, someone who could go to the DA. Stevie hid her smile by turning toward the door to the morning room. It was partway open. She could see Germaine hunched over her computer, typing feverishly. Hunter was asleep on the sofa. Nate was draped over the nearby chairs. They had all made it through the storm together.
“What’s your guess, though?” Stevie asked.
“I think you’ve made a compelling case,” Larry said. “You located a body. And I’m going to help make sure every single thing you said is fully explored. I’m coming out of retirement for this.”
“You are?”
“It’s not every day that you get handed a solve on a triple murder and find a body that’s been missing in the case of the century,” he said. “Now that Alice is known to be deceased, her case has to be looked into. No statute on murder.”
“I have some thoughts on that too,” she said. “But—”
They both heard it at once. The approaching helicopter.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and bring them in.”
The winter sun felt good on Stevie’s face as she stood under the portico. She had to hold up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare as it bounced off the snow. It was too difficult for the helicopter to land. It hovered above the lawn and got quite low; four people in uniform jumped out into the snow. Two looked to be police, and the others were EMTs with large red medical bags. The sound roused the others. Vi and Janelle reappeared, hand in hand. Nate, Hunter, and Germaine came out of the morning room. David emerged last, pushing open the door of the ballroom and pulling a sweater over his head. The group clustered by the door as the EMTs and police conferred with Larry on the drive.
The large door was left open as the visitors brought their things inside, sending a brisk arctic breeze into the hall. They were back in the world now. Things were moving. David came and stood alongside Stevie. He dropped a casual arm over her shoulders, and she leaned in against him and tucked her head into the crook of his arm.
“Guess we’re going home,” Nate said.
“We’ll always have this weekend,” David replied, stretching out his free arm to pull Nate into the embrace. Nate sidestepped quickly.
Stevie’s attention was drawn to the balcony above, where something appeared to be going on. Mark came out of the Peacock Room and hustled down the hall. Someone was pounding on a door, demanding to be let in.
“Charles!” Dr. Quinn yelled. “Charles, open this door.”
“What’s happening?” Janelle asked, coming over.
Larry and the police began hurrying up the grand stairs, taking them two at a time. There was a cracking noise, followed by something that sounded like a heavy sack being dropped down a chute. Whatever it was, it went past the back of the murderer’s fireplace. Larry ran into the Peacock Room, then ran out to the balcony to shout to the EMTs, who were still downstairs.
“Basement!” he yelled, rushing to the stairs again. “Basement, follow me, now! Now!”
The group of students watched this mutely.
“I don’t think Charles is going to jail,” Stevie said quietly.
27
“WHAT A STUPID THING TO DO,” DR. QUINN SAID. “WHAT A STUPID thing.” For the first time, Dr. Quinn looked rattled.
The EMTs had gone down into the basement, because that was where Charles was, behind a wall. Pix had gone to help them because she was the closest thing to a medical professional from the remaining faculty, and because she had experience getting things out from difficult places. Everyone else from Ellingham was gathered in the morning room, because it was still the warmest room in the building.
“That passage was sealed,” she said.
“He was going in and out of the bathroom all night,” Mark said. “I assumed he was nervous. He must have been loosening the nails with a penknife or something.”
“But we all know about that passage and why it’s nailed shut. The stairs it connects to have been unstable for years. The ones below them are gone completely. What did he even think he was doing? That if he made it down the first flight he could jump to the basement? A whole floor? Get out that way?”
“He decided to take a chance,” Stevie said.
Larry, who was leaning against the wall, nodded at Stevie. It was Larry, after all, who had said from the very beginning that people had accidents when they went into the passages.
Pix came back up from the basement and stood in the doorway. Before, there would have been a conference away from the students. They were well beyond that now.
“How is he?” Dr. Quinn asked.
Pix shook her head.
“It was a very bad fall,” she said simply.
Stevie couldn’t help but hear the echo of Truly Devious: A broken head, a nasty fall . . .
Over the next few hours, more people turned up as more vehicles were able to access the school. There was a steady flow of uniforms. Things were photographed and recorded and bagged and sealed. Everyone in the group was interviewed, but not for long. Then two individuals in dark suits with large winter coats over them appeared. They did not fit in with the other officials.
“Oh good,” Nate said, looking out the window. “The Men in Black are here. Time for the brain wipe.”
David looked out as well.
“I think that’s my ride,” he said.
Sure enough, the two suited persons were at the door of the morning room within the minute.
“We’re from Senator King’s office,” one of the men said. “We’re here to take you home, David.”
“So soon?” David replied. “Gosh, I guess he really does love me.”
The quip felt forced. Stevie found herself reaching up and grabbing David’s hand, squeezing it hard.
“Are you with law enforcement?” Vi asked.
“We work for the senator,” one of the men replied.
“So, that’s a no,” Vi said. “Which means you have no legal right to remove him.”
“Vi is right,” Janelle chimed in. “You have rights. You don’t have to go with these two if you don’t want to.”
David turned in surprise. He had not expected Janelle to have his back.
“It’s okay,” he said. “But thanks. These nice people will give me a minute to speak to my girlfriend, won’t they?”
The two men backed away from the door, and David ushered Stevie out into the hall, Stevie felt an urgency akin to panic. Her hold on his arm intensified.
“What do we do now?” she asked quietly.
“Well, my dad can’t actually chain me up in the basement. Probably. I mean, he is a senator, so he might get access to some kind of chamber inside the Washington Monument . . .”
“Seriously,” she said, fighting back tears.
“I don’t know. We both go home. And we figure it out.”
“Can your dad press charges?”
“I don’t know if stealing blackmail materials from what’s technically my own house is a crime, or at least one he would want to report. He’s going to make my life unpleasant, and he’s going to cut off my money, but that’s okay. I can get a job. It’s better not taking anything from him.”
He leaned down to kiss her, his lips warm against hers, his hand rubbing the nape of her neck. It was such an intimate moment, witnessed only by a dozen or so strangers, Larry, Dr. Quinn, Pix, and all her friends. As they broke their embrace, David said good-byes to the group.
Hugs were exchanged all around, except for Nate, who extended his hand for a handshake before saying, “Just . . . don’t . . . do anything. Ever.”
“Got it,” David said, saluting. “Let me get my coat and bag.”
When he had the coat and the scruffy backpack, Stevie walked with him out to where the snowmobiles we
re waiting. Stevie realized that she had started crying. She rubbed under her eyes roughly with the back of her hand.
“I have to go,” he said, wiping her face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch, Nancy Drew. I’m hard to get rid of.”
She reluctantly relaxed her grip on his hand.
As he walked off, he turned to her one last time and smiled, his looping, half-cocked smile. Then he opened his two-thousand-dollar coat. At first, she wasn’t sure why he was showing off the rich red lining. She had seen it—it was nice lining if you cared about lining.
But it wasn’t the lining he was trying to show her. It was the inside pocket, or, more specifically, something peeking out of the inside pocket.
It was a stick of dynamite.
TRAGEDY STRIKES AGAIN AT ELLINGHAM
Burlington Herald
November 11
In another in a series of tragic events, Dr. Charles Scott, the head of Ellingham Academy, fell to his death yesterday morning after gaining entrance to a sealed passage in one of the school’s buildings. The staircase was a remnant of a series of passages built by the school’s founder, Albert Ellingham, in the early 1930s. Dr. Scott accessed the passage after being confronted about his possible involvement with the accidents at the school that resulted in two deaths, and the house fire that claimed the life of Dr. Irene Fenton.
“Dr. Scott was a person of interest in a number of recent deaths both at the school and in the Burlington area,” said Detective Fatima Agiter of the Vermont State Police. “We believe the deaths of students Hayes Major and Element Walker, and the death of Dr. Irene Fenton of the University of Vermont, may all be connected. Investigations are ongoing.”
KING FACES DONOR BACKLASH
PoliticsNow.com
November 27
Senator Edward King has a money problem.
Over the last week, he has suffered the sudden and inexplicable loss of many of his major donors. The senator, who announced his presidential run last month, has lost the support of many of the backers who have made his candidacy possible. Recent reports have surfaced that the senator may have been keeping blackmail materials on his own donors in order to ensure their continued support.
“Complete nonsense,” said spokesperson Malinda McGuire, when asked for a comment. “The media bias against the senator is astonishing. Senator King will continue to fight for what he believes in: traditional American values, personal freedoms, and a return to responsibility. We look forward to talking about all these things on the campaign trail in the following months.”
IS THE TRULY DEVIOUS CASE SOLVED?
True Crime Digest
December 3
It’s been called the greatest mystery of the twentieth century. In 1936, Albert Ellingham was one of the most powerful men in America, his wealth and reach similar to that of Henry Ford or William Randolph Hearst. Ellingham owned newspapers, a movie studio, and dozens of other interests. But his personal passion was for education. To this end, he built a school in the mountains of Vermont and moved there with his family. On April 13 of that year, while out on a pleasure drive, his wife, Iris, and daughter, Alice, were abducted from a country road outside of the estate. On the same day, a student from the academy, Dolores Epstein, also vanished. In the following months, both Dolores and Iris were found dead—Dolores half-buried in a field, and Iris in Lake Champlain. Alice was never recovered. She was only three years old at the time of her disappearance.
Her father dedicated himself entirely to finding his daughter, using his considerable resources on the effort. Dozens of private detectives were sent around the country and the world. A team of 150 secretaries went through the letters and tips that came in on a daily basis. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, took a personal interest in the case. All of this was to no avail. Albert Ellingham died on October 30, 1938, when his sailboat exploded on Lake Champlain, most likely a victim of anarchists. He had been targeted before and escaped. This time, he was not so lucky.
With the death of Albert Ellingham, some of the pressure to find Alice abated, but there have always been people looking for her. Several others came forward claiming to be Alice—all of these were found to be imposters. Alice Ellingham remained one of history’s famous missing persons, like Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa, presumed dead, but with a question mark. All that was ever accepted about the culprit was that they sent a note to Albert Ellingham in the weeks before the kidnapping, a teasing riddle that warned of the danger to come. The letter, which was made of cutout letters from newspapers and magazines, was signed Truly, Devious.
Decades passed without any furtherance of the case, and then, starting last September, events began to move very quickly. Ellingham once again became the scene of tragedy, when two students—Hayes Major and Element Walker—died in accidents on the school grounds. Soon after, an adjunct faculty member of the University of Vermont, Dr. Irene Fenton, died in a house fire in Burlington.
But one student did not believe these things were accidents. She believed they were related to the disappearance of Alice—or rather, to a rumored fortune that would go to anyone who found the missing girl, dead or alive. Ellingham student Stephanie Bell, working with the school’s former head of security, uncovered the body of a child in one of the walls. The child’s remains are currently undergoing testing.
Bell made other significant discoveries, including physical evidence that suggests that the Truly Devious letter, long assumed to have been the work of the Ellingham kidnappers, had nothing to do with the kidnapping at all and was, in fact, a poorly timed student prank. This breaks apart decades of assumptions about the crime.
While the results of the tests and investigations are still pending, and while Ellingham Academy remains closed while the property is secured, it seems that this case may not be so cold after all. And with this most recent discovery, maybe now the spirits are at rest up on Mount Morgan.
AUDIO REVEALS EDWARD KING KNEW OF BLACKMAIL PLANS
A BATT REPORT EXCLUSIVE
DECEMBER 5TH
The Batt Report has obtained exclusive audio of Senator Edward King railing against an unknown person who destroyed materials the campaign appears to have been using to blackmail donors. The audio, embedded below, contains graphic language.
“He took the [expletive] flash drives,” the senator can be heard saying. “I had everything on those. We had all those [expletive] just where we needed them. That was everything we had to keep them in line. Now we have nothing. Nothing. They’re all going to back out. We’re [expletive].”
Stay with The Batt Report for updates on this story.
KING WITHDRAWS PRESIDENTIAL BID
CNN
January 2
Following two weeks of intense speculation, Senator Edward King withdrew his candidacy in next year’s presidential race.
“While it is, of course, a disappointment to withdraw,” he said in a prepared statement, “I realized the toll the campaign might take on my relationship with my family.”
Though the senator cites personal reasons for the withdrawal, Washington insiders have been whispering for weeks about dirty dealings in the King camp, including accusations that the senator may have been blackmailing several individuals in exchange for their financial and political support. Several weeks ago, a recording surfaced in which the senator can be heard yelling about the loss of “everything we had to keep them in line.” In the recording, he laid blame for the loss of this information on his son.
It was revealed that the senator had a son from a previous marriage. In a strange twist, that son attended Ellingham Academy in Vermont, which has been in the news recently as the scene of several tragic events, including the death of YouTube star Hayes Major. The senator’s son was also the subject of a viral video in which he was beaten on a Burlington, Vermont, street . . .
ELLINGHAM ACADEMY REOPENS
THE BATT REPORT
JANUARY 11TH
After a series of tragic events, Ellingham Academy, on
e of the country’s most unusual and prestigious high schools, has opened again for classes. Once famous for the 1936 Truly Devious kidnappings and murders, the academy was again in the headlines for similar reasons this past fall.
“It’s been an extraordinarily tough year,” said new head of school, Dr. Jennifer Quinn. “But our students have come together. They have supported each other. I couldn’t be prouder of them. They represent the true Ellingham spirit of community. We are thrilled to have the doors open again.”
Police have completed their investigation into the former head of school, Dr. Charles Scott, who was accused of causing the deaths of Hayes Major, Element Walker, and Dr. Irene Fenton. Police now have substantial evidence linking Dr. Scott to the crimes, including records of phone calls between Dr. Fenton and Dr. Scott, security footage from traffic and local cameras in Burlington on the night of Dr. Fenton’s house fire, and communications with banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, inquiring how to open private and offshore accounts.
“We feel confident that we have identified the culprit in this case, and that this person is deceased,” said Detective Fatima Agiter of the Vermont State Police. “The matter is considered closed.”
For her help in the matter, Stephanie Bell was recognized in the Vermont State Assembly and was invited to visit with the governor. The Batt Report will have interviews with Stephanie Bell about her investigations, and exclusive coverage of her findings in the Ellingham kidnapping and murder case of 1936. Stay tuned.
BILLBOARD EXPLODES
Pittsburgh Press Online
February 16
An anti-immigration billboard outside of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, exploded last night in what police are calling an act of vandalism. While the billboard was completely destroyed, there were no injuries and no damage to any other property. No cars were in the area when the explosion occurred around 4 a.m.
The Hand on the Wall Page 25