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“It was the summer of nineteen eighty-one. I got a call to investigate a death out at Camp Montague. It was a suspected suicide but with a twist. A bunch of photos had been found around the body—photos of naked children, all identified as kids enrolled at Camp Montague. The kids were first-year recruits, all of them between thirteen and fourteen years old. The photos were taken on an old Polaroid camera—state of the art back then—the kind that spits out a photo as soon as you take it. Pretty disturbing stuff. I spoke to the kids identified in the photos and they all told similar stories: Jerry Lolland came to their cabin late at night and lured them back to his own cabin.”
“Lured them how?”
“Told them he needed to speak with them privately about something urgent, and that they’d get in trouble if they didn’t go with him. Remember, these kids were young and impressionable, and were likely scared and homesick the first time they went away to summer camp.”
“Truly vile,” Alex said.
“Yes, a predator in the true sense of the word. At any rate, Lolland got the kids back to his cabin and sexually abused them. Part of his routine was to take photos of them.”
“The photos might be the link to the case I’m working. They were found around Lolland’s body? As in, he was looking at the photos when he killed himself?”
Detective Crew took a sip of his drink. “The working theory at the time was this: Lolland succumbed to his guilt and shame, piped the barbecue gas line into his room, sealed up the windows, and laid in his bed to die. Pulled out all the photos of his victims over the years, and laid them out as his confession, of sorts.”
“But now you believe something else happened?”
“I’ve always believed something else happened. I just couldn’t prove it. Could never even pursue it due to the sensitive nature of the case.”
“You don’t think Lolland killed himself?”
“No, I don’t. But the problem with detective work is that what you think and what you can prove are different things.” Crew lifted his drink. “It’s the reason so many detectives are raging alcoholics.”
Alex smiled. “I thought that was a cliché saved for bad television.”
“Maybe it is. I guess I can only speak for myself.”
Detective Crew finished his drink and flagged down the bartender.
“If Jerry Lolland didn’t gas himself, then how did he die?”
“Oh, the gas killed him, that’s not up for debate. I saw the gas line with my own two eyes. He died from asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide poisoning. But it’s not the cause of death that I’m questioning, it’s the manner. Suicide was listed on the autopsy as the formal manner of death. I’ve always believed it was homicide.”
The detective’s drink arrived and he took a sip.
“The problem was that I could never prove who killed him, even though I was damn sure I knew who it was.”
Alex swallowed hard. She remembered Lane Phillips’s guess from the day before: If my profile is correct, whoever killed your family also killed Jerry Lolland. And that means the killer was one of Jerry Lolland’s victims.
CHAPTER 61
Wytheville, Virginia Wednesday, May 31, 2023 7:35 p.m.
JACQUELINE JORDAN HAD KEPT CLOSE TABS ON ALEX SINCE FINDING HER at the office late the previous night. In a rare moment of panic and irrational thought, she’d even driven to the girl’s Georgetown condo with the thought of ringing the bell and allowing Alex to invite her inside, where Jacqueline would have finally tied up the loose end that had been unraveling for ten long years. But that impulsive moment passed, and Jacqueline opened her mind to other, better options to solve the problem of Alex Armstrong.
When Alex left Lancaster & Jordan that afternoon, Jacqueline had followed. When Alex pulled onto the highway out of DC, Jacqueline stayed at a safe distance as she trailed Alex through the mountains. It didn’t take long to understand where the girl was headed. Of course she was going to Wytheville. Of course she was tracking down everything she could about Jerry Lolland and Camp Montague. Buck had turned the girl into a fierce investigator, and Alex had uncovered enough clues that Jacqueline knew it was only a matter of time before she arrived at the truth. As she drove, Jacqueline considered the irony that things would finally end at the same place they had started.
After hours of driving, Alex slowed as she entered the town of Wytheville and turned into the parking lot of the Shady Side Motel. Jacqueline continued ahead but doubled back to spot Alex’s car parked in front of room 109. She pulled to the shoulder and waited, tapping the steering wheel and contemplating her next move. The slow-building anxiety began to overwhelm her as Jacqueline remembered the night she’d gone to Alex’s condo to discuss the Matthew Claymore case. It was then that she had seen Alex’s evidence board. Now, as Jacqueline sat in her car on the side of the road outside a cheap motel, her mind flashed with images from Alex’s board: Roland Glazer, Dennis and Helen Quinlan, Byron Zell. During her brief inspection of the curious evidence board, Jacqueline had also seen the photo of a lone fingerprint. She knew the print was hers, left the night she’d entered the Quinlan home and touched Alex’s window after her latex glove had split.
Ever since that day at Alex’s condo, Jacqueline had started to put in place a plan to take care of the girl. Things had been drastically accelerated since the previous night, and Jacqueline knew her current thoughts were clouded by panic and fear. The idea that this girl would expose the truth was more than Jacqueline could tolerate. The idea that Alex would shine light on it all—starting with the abuse Jacqueline had endured in the dark cabin at Camp Montague where Jerry Lolland had forever changed the course of her life—was too much to rationally sort out. Jacqueline’s secret would be revealed for the world to see, and there was only one way to prevent it.
Her nervous tapping on the steering wheel turned to pounding, and in a tantrum-like outburst she pressed her foot to the accelerator and spun gravel as she turned into the motel parking lot. She parked two doors down from Alex’s car, grabbed her bag of supplies from the passenger seat, and burst out of the car. She walked straight to room 109, her breathing erratic and her pulse pounding in her ears. If the door was unlocked, she’d simply walk into the room and get it over with. If not, she’d knock and push her way in when Alex answered. Neither were perfect solutions, but Jacqueline had an overwhelming need to quell her anxiety. She needed to quiet the voices that were telling her it was now or never to put this threat to rest.
She’d taken only a couple of steps toward room 109 when the door opened. It startled her, and before her body understood the commands from her brain, she turned away and walked in the opposite direction. She heard a beep from a car being unlocked by a key fob, and then the opening and closing of a door. When she finally looked over her shoulder, she saw Alex driving out of the parking lot.
Jacqueline hurried back to her car and followed Alex into town, where she watched her park on the street and then walk into a bar called the Sly Fox. She was tempted to go inside to see what Alex was doing there, but it was another impulsive thought that Jacqueline quickly pushed aside. In a small town like this, walking into a corner bar was like announcing your name over a loudspeaker. People took notice, and the last thing Jacqueline needed was anyone noticing her that night.
She was happy that her rash decision to force her way into Alex’s motel room had been derailed. Jacqueline breathed deeply as she sat in her car and tried to calm herself. She had a plan and needed to stick to it. She knew where Alex was staying, and a stealth approach would be the best way to handle things. It was poetic, really. Alexandra Quinlan would end her life ten years after the tragedy that had befallen her family, in a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere.
CHAPTER 62
