by Lisa Jackson
A car drove by the front of the house, spraying water from a puddle on the street that ran between Jayla’s house and the park.
“I really don’t remember much.”
“It won’t take long,” Kinley cut in. “And I assure you it’s in your best interests.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s always best to have the press on your side.”
“My side of what?” This was starting to sound like a snow job, and it was feeling awkward with her standing on the porch so long.
“The story. The truth. Justice.”
“Should I start waving my American flag?” Jayla said. The reporter or whatever the hell she called herself was beginning to seriously bug her. “Look, I gotta pick up my sons from school and basketball practice, so I don’t have much time.”
“It won’t take long, promise.”
Jayla didn’t like it, but she wanted to get rid of the woman quick-like. She recognized the glint of determination in Kinley’s eyes and didn’t want her husband to come home to some kind of twenty-year-old freak show. “Fine. But I’ve only got ten minutes.”
“Great!” Kinley’s smile widened. Jayla had barely gotten out of the way and didn’t have a minute to second-guess herself before the woman slipped into the house, boot heels clicking across the marble of the foyer and past a center table, where a huge bowl of potpourri gave off the scent of magnolias. Past the foot of the stairs she walked unerringly into the living room. “Nice view,” she said, glancing out the bay window to the park beyond.
“We like it.”
“Anyone would.” Kinley eyed the columns separating the living room from the foyer and staircase, then surveyed the coved ceilings, bay windows, and an antique fireplace located on the far wall. Flanked by bookcases with beveled glass doors and crowned by a thick mantel supported by ornate corbels, the fireplace was the focal point of the large room. “And this house—spectacular.”
Jayla knew that, had known it from the moment she and DeMarcus had bought the place from his parents. Three stories of an old Portland Victorian overlooking Laurelhurst Park. The place was old and creaky sometimes, and Jayla was half-certain there were ghosts haunting the attic, but she’d kept that mostly to herself. Her belief in the spirits trapped here on earth was a major bone of contention between her and her husband, a man of science.
Jayla asked, “So what is it you want to know?”
Without being invited, Kinley dropped onto a corner of the sofa that faced the fireplace. “I’m doing a series about what happened at the camp that year, the last year it was in operation. If it turns out the body, or partial body, that’s been discovered is one of the women who went missing that night, it’ll be a much larger story than I originally imagined. I’m talking to everyone who was there.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small recorder, then her phone. “So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to record this interview.”
Jayla didn’t like the sound of that. “I thought you were just going to ask a couple of questions.”
“I am. Really. But I want to be as thorough as possible.” She placed the phone and recorder on the glass-topped table in front of the couch, pushing aside a vase of pale roses. “Please, come in. Sit down.” She actually waved Jayla toward the nearby sofa. “You can sit there, the recorder will pick up your voice.”
“I really don’t have much to say. I told the police everything I knew.”
“Twenty years ago. Okay.” She fiddled with the phone and recorder, pressing buttons so that the red light on the recording device was burning bright. “Interview with Jayla Williams Robinson at her home in Portland.” She rattled off the address and date before smiling at Jayla.
“You said you were at a meeting that night, the night after Eleanor Brady disappeared.”
Slowly, Jayla dropped into a side chair. How much could she divulge?
“At the cavern below Cape Horseshoe?” Kinley prodded, and Jayla felt her insides turn to jelly. They’d had a pact. Was it still in force? Now that someone might really be dead?
“I was there.”
“So you left your campers alone, unattended, and met with a group of other counselors?”
“Naomi, er, Mrs. Dalton was still there. She had taken over Elle’s cabin and we all figured since she was the reverend’s wife and all, y’know a real adult, the girls would be fine. And Nell was supposed to be there. She was the . . . the junior counselor, in the same cabin as Annette Allen . . . er, Annette Alsace.”
Kinley just stared at her for a second and Jayla felt like a fraud. Kinley had been one of the campers they’d left unattended, abandoning their responsibilities just as they had every night. As teenagers it hadn’t seemed such a big deal, but now, as a mother of two boys about the same age as the campers had been, Jayla felt major pangs of guilt. How had she been so selfish? So reckless? So damned irresponsible? And the rest of them as well.
“So you went to the cavern. Alone?”
“Yes.” She was nodding, remembering being pissed that she’d been dragged away from what she wanted to be doing by that Jo-Beth’s whims.
“And when you got there? Who was there?”
“Uh . . . not everyone, but . . . me and Sosi and the Alsace sisters, Bernadette and Annette for sure, and Nell showed up, later, though, when she wasn’t supposed to be there.” She frowned at how everything had turned upside down that night.
“Bernadette is Bernadette Alsace Warden, and her sister is Annette.”
“Yes.”
“No one else?”
“I don’t think so . . . No, no, wait. Reva was there. She came in and explained that Jo-Beth wasn’t going to make it, that she had cramps or something, and really, the whole meeting was Jo-Beth’s idea.”
Kinley nodded, her face impassive. “What about Monica O’Neal?”
“She never made it.”
“Anyone say why?”
Jayla shook her head.
“You’ll have to speak. The recorder can’t see you,” Kinley reminded.
“No . . . Uh-uh.”
“Did anyone ask?”
“Yeah, I think so. I think Bernadette . . . asked. Look, it was a long time ago and—”
“Did anyone answer?”
“No . . . I mean, I don’t think so. We met, Jo-Beth didn’t arrive. We all agreed to say we’d been together the night before, that no one had seen what happened to Elle.”
“So you lied?”
Oh. Dear. Jayla was starting to panic. “Yes and no.”
“You can’t have it both ways. Either you did or you didn’t.”
“The truth is, we were together, but not all of us all the time.” Oh, this was going badly. She’d ignored the calls from Jo-Beth, didn’t want to go back to dealing with the past, and yet here she was with a reporter, a damned camper who had been at Camp Horseshoe and was now in her home. She should’ve called Jo-Beth back, agreed to meet at the camp.
“So where, exactly, were you? Where was everyone else?”
“I went directly to the cavern. Alone. And then I went back to my cabin.”
Lie, lie, lie! Oh, Jayla, God is gonna punish you. And if DeMarcus ever finds out—
“Directly back?” Kinley seemed skeptical.
“Of course.” Jayla’s phone rang at that second, and she scooped it up, pressed it to her ear, and answered. “Excuse me,” she said quickly to Kinley, “my son.” She walked into the foyer while Kinley snapped off the recorder and phone. “Hey, honey,” she said into the phone as the recorded telemarketer told her about some fabulous cruise to the Bahamas that she’d just won. “Yeah. What?” She made a big show of looking at her watch. “But I thought you said practice lasted another half hour. Say what, Taye?”
The telemarketer was babbling on.
“Slow down, honey. What about your brother? Is Malik with you?” She paused. Then said, “What? Oh, for the love of God, Taye. No, don’t. . . You stay there. Got it?” A beat. “Do not leave! I’m on m
y way . . . Okay, okay! I said, I’ll be right there.” She hung up and, sweating bullets, grabbed her coat from a front closet. As she stuffed her arms into the sleeves, she said to Kinley, “I’ve got to go.”
“But I just have a few more questions.” The reporter made no move to pick up her devices.
“Sorry.” Jayla buttoned up, found the scarf in a pocket, and wound it around her neck. “You have to leave.”
“I can wait. You pick up your kids and I’ll go grab a cup of coffee or hang out here and—”
“No!” Jayla cut her off. “This interview is over.” She was firm as she walked to the living room.
“Then tomorrow—”
“Sorry. I’ll be out of town.” She arched her eyebrows and waited, standing over the coffee table as, reluctantly, Kinley finally grabbed her things, tossing both her phone and recorder into her bag.
“You really want to talk to me,” Kinley warned. “The police will be calling and they can railroad you. I can tell this story from your point of view.”
“My point of view? Why?” Jayla was really nervous now, but she held it together.
“Well, there’s talk that the head of the victim was severed from the body. No one’s saying that—”
“What?” Jayla interjected in horror. “No body?”
“Just a skull, other scattered bones, not yet identified as belonging to the skull.”
Jayla thought she might be sick.
“As I was beginning to say, no one’s saying yet that the head was cut off the body, but—”
“Oh, my God. Are you really in my house telling me this? Discussing some kind of dismemberment?” All of Jayla’s fears congealed while standing in the middle of her living room on her thick Turkish carpet. “I . . . I have to go.”
“There was talk that you had a bit of a problem back then.”
Jayla’s heart nearly stopped and she realized in that split second how fragile her hold on her life—her marriage, her children, this huge historic house—was, that it could all be snatched from her with one whisper about the past. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Some things went missing at camp.”
“You mean campers lost things.”
“I mean someone took them, and then there’s the missing knife.”
“What?” Jayla whispered.
“A butcher knife. Big one. Stolen from the kitchen according to the cook at the time. You remember her? Big Russian woman, Magda Sokolov? Went by Cookie?”
“Of course I remember her!”
“She reported a knife missing.”
“So?”
“Back to your problem.”
“You’re saying that . . . that I’m a thief? Is that what you’re accusing me of?”
“No accusations. I just know that you were accused of taking things, that you might have been dealing with kleptomania or something.”
“I have to go,” Jayla said again.
Kleptomania?
Or something.
“Now. My son Taye is waiting.” Jayla stood by the door and reluctantly, it seemed, Kinley strolled through the foyer, past the bowl of potpourri. Jayla opened the door for her and wanted to damn near push her through it.
The second Kinley was over the threshold, she shut the door firmly and locked the deadbolt with a loud click.
Then she made her way to the kitchen and out the back door, across the porch and breezeway to the detached garage. Once inside, she let out her breath, and though she wasn’t due to pick up either of her children for over an hour, she hit the button on the garage door and backed out. She wouldn’t put it past Kinley to follow her; there was just something sneaky about the woman that bothered Jayla.
She melded onto Cesar Chavez, drove twice around the traffic circle, then angled off and took back streets, heading west, keeping an eye out for Kinley’s little black car as she took the Burnside Bridge across the Willamette River, then turned onto a side street, where she parked and walked the two blocks to Voodoo Doughnut. Inside the funky brick building trimmed in a variety of colors, she waited in the inevitable line before ordering half a dozen odd-shaped and decorated doughnuts. All the while, as she stood beneath the chandeliers, she surveyed the crowd and the traffic through the window, her heart nearly seizing when she spied a black Chevy, only to realize the driver was an Asian girl who didn’t look old enough to be at the wheel.
“Calm down,” she told herself, then waited another ten minutes just to make certain she hadn’t been followed. Finally she headed back to her car, where she devoured two of the doughnuts without really tasting them. Get a grip. So a nerdy ex-camper reporter tracked you down and started poking around, asking about that summer. So what? Remember: You’ve got nothing to hide. Well, nothing anyone knows about. It’s over. Done. Ancient history. Even if that body turns out to be Monica or Elle, none of this is about you.
For a second she thought about the ghost she’d heard walking in her attic, the floorboards creaking, the old boxes and memorabilia and Christmas decorations moved from one area to the next. Could those ghosts be Elle? Or Monica? No—she didn’t even know that they were dead, and ghosts didn’t travel like that, right? Didn’t they haunt the area where they’d died? Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? But with ghosts, who knew?
She felt her skin crawl at the thought and picked up her cell phone. She didn’t know how she’d get away from her job at the hospital, where she was a nurse, but surely someone could cover her shifts. She worked twelve hours straight and had today and tomorrow off. She hadn’t wanted to go down to Averille, but now it felt imperative. However, if she was gone longer than two days she’d need someone to cover for her. DeMarcus and his sister would have to see to the boys.
Dear Lord, she didn’t need this now.
Nor ever, she supposed as she searched for Jo-Beth’s number, then texted: I’ll be there tonight.
What about the police? No doubt you’ll have to talk to them. Her head swam. Kinley Marsh, Jo-Beth Chancellor, or whatever her name was now, and the damned police?
Her blood chilled at the thought of talking to the cops.
But she would have to.
To end this thing.
She started her car and eased into the flow of traffic, making her way back to the Burnside Bridge and heading east where the cloud cover obscured the view of Mount Hood, some sixty miles or so distant.
Not that she could appreciate the sight even if the sky was clear. Not today. Not with her entire future at stake.
CHAPTER 21
Averille, Oregon
Now
Lucas
Caleb Carter was pissed as hell. At himself. What the hell had he been thinking? Bringing the police into the cove. Now the place was crawling with cops, and it would probably only get worse.
Mentally cursing himself, he drove to the south end of the old camp, to an old access road that was supposedly locked from the public. Years ago, he’d fixed that with a bolt cutter and new lock. He’d hidden the key under a rock near the gate post and came and went as he pleased, entering the private property at will.
Now, he drove onto the overgrown lane, parked at the gate, found the key where he’d left it, and, after wiping the little scrap of metal on his pants, slid it into the lock where, with a click, it released the chain, which slithered to the ground like a dead snake.
Then he drove through without bothering to lock up behind him. This trip wouldn’t take long.
He’d left some crab pots off an old bridge and wanted to retrieve them in case the police fanned out and increased their search for more body parts. He shivered involuntarily at the thought that more dead people or parts of dead people could be lying around, shallowly buried in this solitary stretch of land. He thought of the oysters and clams he’d dug in the soft sand near the ocean and how easily he could have found other body parts.
“Shhheeit.” He’d drag his pots from the spot they were hidden near the bridge and haul ass outta here, take whatever was trap
ped inside. Caleb wasn’t all that picky about the size or sex of the crabs he hauled in, despite regulations. He figured if he caught ’em, the little buggers were his.
Once inside the gate, he drove along the twin ruts that wound through thickets of pine and fir on a path toward the sea. Beach grass and weeds scraped the undercarriage of his vehicle and the gloomy sky seemed more leaden than usual.
Probably just his imagination.
He’d been more than a little spooked since finding the jawbone, and today the normal coastal weather seemed more oppressive, a bit of fog creeping between the trees, moisture collecting on his windshield. He needed to get in and get out. He didn’t consider himself a wuss by any means. Hell, he could beat anyone at arm wrestling down at Spike’s Bar and had taken a guy twice his size. And he never backed down from a fight, but he still didn’t like disturbing the dead.
Telling himself he was a fuckin’ fraidy pants, he parked in a clearing near the inlet, where a good-sized creek dumped into a small bay that opened to the ocean. He cut the engine and reached under the seat, pulled out a half-drunk pint of Jim Beam that he kept hidden in the frame beneath the cushion, uncapped the bottle, and took a quick, long slug. Then, his courage up a bit, he left the bottle on the passenger seat, grabbed his cooler from the back of the truck, then hurried through the dense, dripping foliage to the broken-down bridge that someone a generation ago had built across the stream, where it flowed into a narrow neck of the bay. He didn’t know how much time he had, but probably not much. Already there were reporters nosing around in town, too. Already some woman reporter from Astoria had left him a couple of messages that he’d ignored. Goddamned circus, that’s what it was. Pretty soon the whole camp would be crawling with cops.
Shit, he’d done it to himself by reporting the jawbone.
Better hoist up the pots and haul them back to the truck, then lay low for a while, wait for all the interest to die down, let life as he knew it here in the outskirts of Averille return to normal.
All in all, it was a big pain in the ass.
The trees opened up to the creek—almost a river, he thought—and the beach grass lining the shore. He headed to the trail, scared a couple of rabbits, and wished he’d brought his shotgun as one hopped into the brambles, its tail disappearing into a hole, the whole nest of salal and berry vines disappearing into the fog rolling in.
