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“They’ve had to bring Lisa to the hospital. She’s sedated at the moment, but they say you can talk to her in the morning with her parents present,” hesays.
It’s not ideal, but I can understand it. That girl has been through something truly unimaginable tonight and if I was her parent, I would probably make the same decision. Sometimes I have to force myself to think outside of my training and remember the humanity of witnesses. Lisa needs to rest and feel protected right now. I can only hope she’s able to give me details when I talk to her tomorrow. Someone capable of what has happened tonight won’t stop, and she may be the only one with the information we need to stop themourselves.
“Sir?”
Garrison turns toward a younger detective who walked up to him from the other side of the parkinglot.
“Yes?” he responds, then seems to remember Sam and I don’t know the members of his team. He takes a step back and gestures toward him. “This is Detective Mark Chance. He’s helping with the investigation. This is Sheriff Sam Johnson from Sherwood and his wife, Agent EmmaGriffin.”
Chance looks at us with the kind of expression common to very young members of homicide teams. It’s a defensive, almost aggressive look, like he doesn’t understand why we are here and wants us to know he doesn’t need us. That alone is the mark of a detective still so green he can’t be fully trusted to handle a case on his own. With a case like this, you take all the help you can get. Multiple crime scenes, a staggering list of victims, and so far only one witness doing the talking. At this point, we need sheer manpower. Eyes up, boots on the ground, and ears open. Check your arrogance and entitlement at the door. Your pride has no place here. When others who are older, more experienced, and more skilled than you show up, you thank them and let them work.
He’ll learn. He has no choice but to. The question is which direction that learning will take him. Either higher up in the department, or into another career where he won’t be constantly tested.
“Can I speak with you for a moment?” Chance asks, lowering his voice into a stage whisper.
“You can speak in front of them,” Garrison tells him firmly. “I’ve asked for their help. With the camp located between Cherry Hill and Sherwood, there could be jurisdiction issues as well as victims belonging to both towns. It’s better if we work together. Sheriff Johnson has agreed to provide man hours and help the investigation and Agent Griffin needs no introduction. Pardon the phrase, but we’re lucky as shit to have her here and you’ll show both of them, as well as anyone they bring in, as much respect as you’d show me. Do youunderstand?”
Chance bristles, his shoulder blades pulling together until they almost touch. His chin lifts as he holds tight to a breath, like he‘s keeping his mouth firmly shut around words he very much wants to say but knows he can‘t, and is just waiting for them to dissolve away so he can open it again.
“Yes, sir,” he finally manages to getout.
“Good. Now, what isit?”
“All structures have been secured. The team is still sweeping the woods and the rest of the grounds, but the officers supervising the survivors are bringing them up to the frontnow.”
“Where were they found?” Iask.
“The dining hall,” Chanceresponds without looking in my direction. “They were gathered up by the counselors and the campdirector.”
“Have any of them been questioned?”
“No,” Garrison says. “I gave instructions to keep them quiet. No questions. Notalking.”
It’s a strategic move meant to stop people who might be involved from sharing information and working on their stories to ensure they are the same, but also to help prevent the damage of rumors spreading through the group until it’s difficult to discern what actually happened and what has been seeded into vulnerable thoughts until the terrified, confused people convince themselves they saw, heard, or witnessed things they didn’t. Every one of them needs to be questioned and it’s vital that they give us their actual account so we can do the daunting task of piecing the night back together.
But there’s also an element of torture to the instruction that will just further the intensity of this experience for everyone who lives through it. Not being able to speak means not being able to comfort each other. It means not getting the basic reassurance of hearing familiar voices and knowing other people are alive. That they themselves are alive. It means having to sit in silence and wait for the sounds outside. There’s violence in that kind of anticipation. Pain in the act of waiting and wondering. The officers being there will provide some strength, but not enough. They won’t all get through this. The body count will keep rising even after tonight.
“Have them all brought to the station. We’ll need to contact their parents to let them know what’s happening. But I want to talk to all of them. Get them blankets, food, coffee, whatever they need, but don’t let them talk to each other and keep them at the station until I release them,” Garrison tellshim.
Chance nods his acknowledgment of the order and walks away again. The lights in the distance have gotten close enough to reveal themselves as officers carrying flashlights as they lead the group of campers and counselors from the dining hall up to the parking lot. Two other officers come up behind, creating a framework of light aroundthem.
They move at a diagonal that brings them closer to the place where Chance went. Several cars are already waiting there, but it’s going to take more than that to transport them. From what I understand about the camp session, there were thirty campers, six counselors, and the camp director here for the week.
Almost like it’s in response to my thoughts, a bus rolls slowly up the drive and stops at the edge of the parking lot. “Camp Hollow” is emblazoned across the side against a background of trees and a shimmering lake. It’s the camp bus I’d thought of when first looking at the parking lot. There’s something ghostly about its appearance here now. I can’t see the driver. I can only imagine it’s one of the officers. No one at the camp would be in any kind of condition to drive right now.
As the officers with the flashlights lead the group to the bus, I notice they are all looking down. It isn’t a coincidence. They were told to do that so they wouldn’t see the bodies still in the places where they fell, or any of the other aftermath of that horrible night.
When everyone is loaded inside, the bus does a wide turn and goes back down the driveway. There are a few seconds of cold, still silence before the investigation goes into actionagain.
“Can we see the camp?” Iask.
Garrison nods. “Yes. Do you haveflashlights?”
Sam and I both take out our lights and turn them on. With his beam shining down on the ground in front of us, the detective starts down onto the grounds. I look at Sam out of the corner of my eye. I wonder what he’s thinking and feeling being back here. It’s been a long time. There are still memories and difficult emotions. Even though the first massacre happened when he wasn’t there, tragedy like that happening in a familiar place can feel like betrayal.
It reminds me of when the memories of my mother’s murder came back to me. She died when I was just a little girl and the chaotic nature of my existence at the time meant the details of her death were a mystery to me for many years. I knew she was gone. I remembered that she died during the spring, because the sight of jelly beans made me sick to my stomach and want to cry for years afterward. But I superimposed memories from other times in my life onto her death. I was confused as to exactly where we were living and what we were supposed to be doing. I didn’t know how she died or what happened after. I remembered walking through blood, only to find out later I was remembering the death of another woman, Dean’s mother, when I was yearsolder.
When I finally unraveled it all and got the answers to the questions I’d been asking my entire life I discovered she was brutally shot to death in the back room of a house in Florida I desperately loved. When it wasn’t my grandparents’ house in Sherwood that came to mind when I heard the word “home,” it was that white house deep in the woods in Florida. Marble floors that amplified the sound of footsteps and the click of the gurney wheels. A curved staircase where I sat, staring down into the foyer as her body went past.
