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The canoe splits through the fog sitting on the surface, revealing more of the choppy water as we venture further. It isn’t difficult to imagine something lurking down there when the water looks and feels like this. We row out a few dozen yards before turning around to face the camp again. From here, I can’t see anything beneath the dock. Even the rocks aren’t visible from here. All we see is the white mist billowing aboutus.
“How are you doing, Xavier?” Iask.
“I’m being one with thefog.”
“You’re doing great. Let’s move closer and see how long it takes for us to be able to see under the dock,” Isay.
It takes moving quite a bit closer for the rocks to become visible. They look like creatures hulking beneath the structure. The question is whether they are seeking shelter or waiting forprey.
“This close?” I wonderaloud.
“The weather is making a difference, though. If it was sunny out today, we would probably be able to see them more clearly. It would be lighter under the dock and we could see it from more of a distance,” Sam pointsout.
“That’s true. We don’t know what the weather was like the day, if we’re going to follow Garrison’s narrative, Reggie Merriweather happened on the body of Mary Ellen Conner. For that matter, we don’t even know what day it supposedly was. Are we to believe he found the body and immediately went to the police? Or did he find it and think about it for a while?”
“Does that matter?” Samasks.
“It all matters,” Xavier tellshim.
He has his eyes closed now and is swaying slightly back and forth. I can’t tell if it’s because of the movement of the canoe, or if this is part of him being one with the fog.
“It does,” I agree. “It’s the difference between compulsion and decision. To take on the responsibility of thirteen murders is not a small thing. If he found the body and immediately went to the police and said he did it, it could have been an impulse. Something inside him just snapped and he needed to do it. If he found her and then waited for a while, he was making a decision. He calculated what it would mean to take responsibility and how it would impact people, then decided he was going to do it thatway.”
“It’s two separate decisions,” Xavier says. “If he waited, he decided to take the blame for the murders, but before that, he decided not to tell the police right away that he’d foundher.”
“That’s true,” I acknowledge. “And there’s no explanation behind that. Why would he hideit?”
“He might not have wanted to take the blame at first,” Sam suggests. “He might have worried that they would think he did it if he told them where the body was or that he would get in trouble for being on the campgrounds when he wasn’t supposed to be. Then after he thought about it for a while, he realized that if they did blame him, it would be alright because it would provide comfort for thefamilies.”
“Detective Garrison described him as a half-cracked recluse. The way he talked about him doesn’t strike me as someone who is going to be afraid like that. He didn’t like people, but that didn’t mean he was afraid of them or would cower away from them,” I point out. “If he did find her and then waited to tell anyone, I think it’s more likely that it was because he didn’t want to lose the freedom he’d gotten when the camp was abandoned. In his confession, he said the tenth anniversary of the murders had reminded him of how hard the whole thing was for Mary Ellen’s family. That and knowing he was going to die is what made him want to come clean. He could have decided to keep it secret, then changed his mind because the anniversary date came.”
“But that would still leave the question of why he didn’t just let the detectives investigate the body,” Sam replies. “Yes, he felt bad for the Conner family and wanted them to find peace knowing what happened to their daughter, but just having her body back would have been a big step toward that. Then the investigation could have gone forward to find the actual person who did it. I can’t imagine anyone with a terminal illness wanting to voluntarily spend their last months alive in a prison rather than athome.”
Something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye and I look beyond the boathouse toward the woods. There’s movement in the trees.
“Someone’s here,” I whisper. “There’s someone in thewoods.”
Instant images of masked killers carrying bloody hatchets flood mymind.
“And this is how I die,” Xavier murmurs. “Well, at least it came with an ironic twist. That’snice.”
“Agent Griffin?” comes a familiarvoice.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. It’s justGarrison.
“It’s me, Detective,” I call back.
“Are you alright?”
“We’re fine,” I say. “What’s goingon?”
“Row in. There’s been a development in thecase.”
Getting out of the canoe proves more challenging than I remember, but it’s been about two and half decades since the last time I was in one, so I’m going to give myself some grace and forgive having to drag myself up onto my belly on the dock to get out.
I entrust Sam with getting himself and Xavier out without capsizing and head into the boathouse to leave my life jacket. As I set it down, my eyes fall on the balled-up sweatshirt and discarded sunglasses.
This is the worst part of any abandonedplace.
