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Donovan Scott: No! I just didn’t know what I wanted. And I didn’t want to go home yet.
Sheriff Tennison: Did you return to the beach later that night?
Donovan Scott: Why would I?
Sheriff Tennison: See, here’s what I think happened. You followed Darcy into the woods to try to make amends after the fight, and things got heated again. Maybe you pushed her, and she fell, hit her head, and didn’t get back up? I bet that made you scared, with you all set to join the Marines after graduation. The military won’t take a murderer. So, you hid her, went to the gas station to establish an alibi, then went back after the party was over and buried her. All you gotta do is tell me where she is, and this will all be over.”
Donovan Scott: I didn’t hurt Darcy. I love her. I wanted to marry her until that night.
Sheriff Tennison: You don’t still want to marry her?
Donovan Scott: She turned me down.
Sheriff Tennison: And that made you mad, didn’t it?
Donovan Scott: Why do you think we fought?
Sheriff Tennison: Mad enough to hit her? Did you take your baseball bat with you to the beach that night?
Donovan Scott: What? No! Jesus, I’d never do that to her or any woman. I’m a fuck-up, but my mom taught me better than that.
Now I’m going to stop the recording here because the interrogation goes on like that for several hours, with the sheriff throwing out theories, trying to wear Donovan down. But the kid never wavers in his story. It seems like he might even have a solid alibi, but the evidence found near Hidden Beach still raises too many questions.
One quick note: the blood Sheriff Jerry mentions did not actually match Donovan’s blood type—it matched Darcy’s—so the sheriff was either mistaken or purposely bluffing about that in hopes of getting a confession.
So, could Donovan be telling the truth? He sounds sincere enough, but we know from past cases that skilled liars often come off as the sincerest witnesses until something finally breaks through their facade.
But we also have to consider the possibility that Donovan is innocent and someone else may have been involved in Darcy’s disappearance. There were a lot of other kids on the beach that night. Is there another viable suspect we haven’t considered yet?
Join us next time as we keep digging for answers. Until then, I’m Alexis Summers. Stay curious, stay safe, and keep seeking the truth.
chapter sixteen
Ash Rawlings sank into his office chair and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back, and his shoulders relax.
Half his county was burning, and the other half just hadn’t caught fire yet.
He was running on fumes, and he didn’t see an end in sight. Cal Fire was losing the battle with the Double R and had called in smoke jumpers and hotshot crews from as far away as Alaska. Towns to the east and south had been evacuated, and he’d had to deal with two dipshit looters in Shasta Springs last night as the fire raged toward town. His overtime budget was maxed out, and his department was spread impossibly thin.
And, on top of it all, he had a flaming hot cold case sitting on his desk that he hadn’t even had the chance to look at. He could probably put it off until the worst of the fire threat was over, but he didn’t dare. He wanted to have something concrete before the story broke because, thanks to that podcast, it was going to be a media circus.
Groaning, he dragged his hands over his head and sat up, jiggling his mouse to wake the computer. He needed to go home, get some sleep, but even if he tried, he didn’t see it happening. He was too wired, so he might as well take the next few hours to go over the initial investigation into Darcy Cantrell’s disappearance—especially since he didn’t have much to go on for his own investigation yet. The fire had threatened the county morgue, so he’d had the body flown to San Francisco for an autopsy. So far, he hadn’t received results. He imagined she was low on their priority list since it was an old case, and they probably wouldn’t get much information from a pile of charred bones.
An uneasy chill tapped-danced down his spine at the memory of those bones being loaded into a body bag. The blackened skull with its blank eyes and macabre grin was going to haunt his nightmares for years to come.
That skeleton used to be Darcy.
A girl he’d known since kindergarten.
A girl he’d dated very briefly during one of her and Donovan’s many breaks. Those two had been off more than they were on. They were a toxic match, but something kept pulling them back together—until she disappeared.
Jesus. He really didn’t want to think Donovan had anything to do with it, but he’d been at that party on Hidden Beach. He’d been a year older than most of the kids there, graduated but still figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. Amanda, his girlfriend at the time, had dragged him to the party. He’d seen the explosive fight between Donovan and Darcy and heard Donovan’s drunken rants about how she’d “be sorry.” He’d watched Donovan storm off into the woods after her.
But was Donovan capable of hurting her?
No. Not the Donovan he’d once loved like a brother. He knew that without a shadow of a doubt, but he also knew alcohol changed people. Donovan’s father had been proof of that. Rooster Scott had been an affable, well-liked man when he was sober but was mean as a snake when drunk.
Donovan had drunk a lot the night of the party. He’d played multiple games of beer pong and flip cup, knocked back several rounds of shots. If he was anything like his father, it was possible he hurt her in a fit of rage while under the influence of all that alcohol.
