AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My father wasn’t mentally ill,” Jacob says. “He wasn’t a simple man who was stirred up by some kind of demon inside him. He was incredibly intelligent, quiet, introspective, creative. He loved nature and animals. He was very good to me and to my mother. He loved us and took good care of us. He was also a monster. I can accept that.” He walks over to a dresser where a jewelry box is sitting. “You know, of all the people he killed, the ones from the camp as well as all the other ones I’ve uncovered who I believe he killed, there’s only one who he ever felt anything badabout.”
“Who?”
“Mary Ellen Conner. He didn’t mean to kill her. She was the one accidental death I believe ever happened from his hands. That’s why he put her where he did. After he killed her boyfriend, Brad, she ran. He went after her and saw her fall. She cut herself badly on a tree limb that had broken. She ran toward the lake and he didn’t go any further after her. He went to the campersinstead.
“When it was all finished, he went to the lake to find her. There was a canoe in the water but no one paddling it. He swam out to it and found Mary Ellen unconscious on the bottom. She was soaking wet, like the boat had capsized and she’d lost the paddles but managed to crawl back inside. He brought her back here to try to take care of her, but she’d inhaled too much water. An infection in her cuts weakened her even more and she essentially slowly drowned, even though she was on dry land. She’d only had enough energy to get back in the canoe and then had passed out. She was dying when he brought her home. He put her beneath the dock because he knew how much she loved water. He believed even if she knew she drowned, she would have wanted to be there in the lake sheadored.”
“How do you know all this?” Iask.
“I have his journals. I found them about a year ago while I was going through the house. They’re difficult to read. Not just because of what’s in them, but because of the way he thought and recorded those thoughts. It’s not cohesive. Bits of it are told through sketches rather than words themselves. I spent a lot of time just reading through the entries and piecing together what he was talking about.
“He spoke about Mary Ellen a lot. He said he wanted to be able to keep an eye on her. He knew so much about her, so much had been told to him and he’d watched her while she was at camp. He didn’t want to bury her. He never buried a single one of his victims. That was for the mourners, he said in one of his entries. But he hadn’t murdered her. He was absolutely the cause of her death and he took responsibility for it, but it was different. Over the years he refused to feel guilty about keeping her hidden because of what he found out her family did.”
“What did they do?” I ask.
“You don’t know?” he asks. He makes a slightly surprised face and gives a nod. “Talk to the caretakers of the old cemetery, the ones who performed burials when there were no funerals. Ask them how many empty graves there are in the Connerplot.”
I take the chill that sends along my spine and file it away to unpack later. I need to know more about what happened here.
“Why was your father so wrapped up in Mary Ellen? Was he in love with her?” I ask.
“No,” Jacob says. He opens the jewelry box and takes something out of it. “But he knew someone who was.” He turns to me and puts something in my hand. It feels cold and heavy despite its small size. “Here. Maybe this willhelp.”
Iwalk into Garrison’s office without knocking. The sound seems to startle him out of his concentration on the papers in front of him.
“Agent Griffin,” he says.
“How did you know Mary Ellen Conner?” I ask.
He looks at me through slightly narrowed eyes and I can see the expression on his face shifting as thoughts roll through his head and he tries to come to terms with what he’s going to say.
“What do you mean?” he finally asks.
“Don’t do that. Tell me the truth,” I fireback.
Some part of him deflates and he looks at me with a mix of emotions in his eyes. Finally, he tells the truth. “I met her at a party in the spring of 1960. I’d just started college and the girlfriend of one of my buddies brought her to a party on campus. She was sobeautiful.”
My stomach turns. “She wasfourteen.”
“I didn’t know that then. She said she was seventeen. I believed her. She looked it. We were together for years after that. I knew she spent her summers with Brad, but I didn’t care. I had her the rest of the year. I didn’t know she…” He pauses and changes direction with his thoughts. “I didn’t find out how old she actually was until shedied.”
I can’t listen to any more right now. I reach into my pocket.
“Jacob Merriweather wanted me to give this to you. He said maybe it would help,” I say.
Detective Garrison puts out his hand and I drop Brad’s high school ring into it.
I approach Mike’s house with a different feeling than the last visit. I take the time to look around and really see his house, his neighborhood, this little part of his life. It clicks differently now. I’m still questioning him. I still don’t know exactly how I feel and the investigation is starting to seem like I’m juggling. But for right now, I just need to hear him tell me the truth.
He almost doesn’t open the door. The chain lock is still in place when it moves just a bit and he looks out through the crack at me.
“What?” he asks flatly. “Are you here to arrest me? Because if you aren’t, you need toleave.”
“I just need to talk to you for a second,” I say. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m not going to talk about Lisa or anything she said. I just need to knowsomething.”
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” he says and steps back so he can close the door.
“Who’s Casey Conner?”
