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He gives me a questioning look. “Tell you aboutmyself?”
I nod, going over to sit in the armchair that is the one other piece of sitting furniture in the room.
“That note we found in your desk at the camp sounds like someone trying to threaten or even blackmail you because of something they know about you. Something you would rather no one find out. They said they know who you really are. So, I’d like to know, too. Tell me who you reallyare.”
“Hey, Dean. How’s your case going?” I ask when I call from the police station later.
Before he left, my cousin gave me an itinerary of where he was planning on going and the hotels where he would stay so I could call if I needed to. It doesn’t always work out that easily. Sometimes his cases get more complicated than he planned for and he ends up on a completely different track than he thought. When that happens, he calls me and tells me where he is.
“It’s going. Is Xavier doing okay?”
“He’s fine,” I tell him. “He’s actually helping me out with the investigation I just got involvedin.”
“What case?” he asks.
I realize I haven’t spoken with my cousin since everything broke.
“Did you hear about the murders at the summer camp in Cherry Hill?” Iask.
“Yeah. That’s seriously messed up,” hesays.
“Moreso than you know. Cherry Hill is right near Sherwood. The detective asked for cooperation from the Sherwood department because there’s some overlap of jurisdiction and some of the campers were from Sherwood. The lead detective knows Sam and knows I’m his wife, so he asked if I’d helpout.”
“What about your case with Jeffrey?” he asks.
“He’s handling it. At least for now. I’m still kind of working on it in the back of my mind, but this is more pressing right this second,” I say. “It’s a seriousmess.”
“How many was it?” he asks.
“Sixteen. Eleven of them were campers. One is stillmissing.”
“Holy shit,” hewhispers.
“That about sums it up, yeah,” I say.
“One of the news reports I heard said it’s happening just like it happened before. What does thatmean?”
“There was another massacre at the same camp twenty years ago this summer. Thirteen people were killed and one of them, a girl, was missing afterward. Her body wasn’t found for ten years. They said it was a masked man with a hatchet. And all the witnesses this time around have said the samethings.”
“Do you think the two incidents could beconnected?”
“It’s hard to say. I’ll admit it’s eerily similar. This time, more people were killed. But two of them were a couple in a house a couple of miles away. And the missing girl this time wasn’t a camper, but one of the counselors. There are so many similarities, but we’re trying to figure out the connections and who could be responsible. There’s no evidence. Just a couple of really twisteddetails.”
“Likewhat?”
I tell him about Merriweather and his strange, sudden confession mere months before his death, and Detective Garrison’s doubts about his actual responsibility for the crimes.
“I’m having Xavier talk to him,” I say. “He might be able to detect something about Garrison that will explain why he feels thatway.”
“That’s a goodcall.”
“Then there’s the camp director,” Isay.
“The campdirector?”
I fill him in on the note and the odd disappearance of the newspapers.
“That’s actually why I’m calling you. I need your help. No one has heard of the home for unwed mothers. I don’t even know where it is. Can you do what you do and see if you can find it?” Iask.
