CHAPTER 43
RORY TOOK DETECTIVE OTT’S EMPTY GLASS INTO THE KITCHEN AND poured him another Dark Lord. She poured one for herself as well.
“Thanks,” Ott said when Rory handed him the glass of dark stout expertly topped with a thick head of foam.
“I’m getting the sense you didn’t come here tonight to question Lane.”
“No, I came for something else,” Ott said, staring at Rory. “And I came alone for a reason.”
She wanted to look away, as she normally would when someone forced eye contact. But tonight she didn’t. Tonight she held the detective’s gaze because she knew what he had come for.
“Yeah,” she said. “I noticed your little pit bull was absent.”
“Morris is a good detective, but he’s young and green and he goes strictly by the book.”
“But you bend the rules?” Lane asked.
“When I need to.” Ott continued to look at Rory. “Full disclosure. After I spoke with you at the hospital, I recognized the name and did some research. Then I called your boss back in Chicago. Ron Davidson and I have a little history together, and he was pretty convincing when he told me you’re good at what you do. I know the state guys down here have worked with you and Dr. Phillips through the Murder Accountability Project.”
MAP was the company Lane had created to identify serial killers. He had developed an algorithm that tracked specific characteristics of homicides from around the country and found commonalities between them. When enough markers showed up, a hotspot was created and further analysis was done to see if the tags the algorithm picked up on pointed to a single person committing the murders. To date, MAP was responsible for uncovering a score of serial killers, and the software was being developed and licensed to police departments throughout the United States.
“Your work in forensic reconstruction is legendary,” Ott said. “And frankly, I could use some help. I need someone else to take a look at the Westmont Prep case and come at it from a fresh perspective. I need someone who’s able to piece together unsolved cases and find what others have missed.”
Ott straightened his shoulders and expanded his chest. “I’m a proud man and a good detective. I believe I did everything I could with the Westmont Prep case. But if another kid goes out to that house and jumps in front of a train, I’ll crumble.”
The nape of Rory’s neck was wet with perspiration and her lungs caught for a moment until she commanded them to expand.
“I’d need access to everything,” Rory said before she knew the words were in her thoughts. “If I’m going to help you, I’ll need it all.”
Ott nodded as though he’d already considered this.
“I’ll need to see the crime scene firsthand. Walk through it in person.”
Rory didn’t mention that walking in the footsteps of the dead was her way of gaining access to the victims whose souls waited for the closure she might provide. She had her own methods and her own philosophies when it came to breaking down a homicide that she had never tried to explain to others. She knew only that her routine allowed her to look at what everyone else had seen, and think what no one else had thought.
Ott nodded. “I can make that happen.”
“And I’ll need the files on the case. Not just what you want to feed me,” Rory said. “Not just what you’d give the public. If you want me to find something you might have missed, I’ll need everything you have. On the school, on the kids, on Gorman. No holding back.”
Ott ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek as he considered this.
“Officially, as far as the public is concerned, we have our man. If my investigation into Mack Carter’s death tells me otherwise, so be it. But as of right now, the Westmont Prep case is closed. The Carter case is being treated as a suspicious death, and my department is looking into all available leads. That’s how my chief wants it, and I see his reasoning. If we were to formally reopen an investigation into the Westmont Prep Killings, dominos would start falling. Besides public fear that a killer is among us, there would be legal repercussions. Lawsuits from the victims’ families. Lawsuits from Gorman’s family. Heads would roll, and mine would be one of them. But off the record? Something about this case stinks, and I need help figuring out what it is.”
Rory looked at Lane to make sure he was on board, but even before their eyes met she knew he was. It was why he had come to Peppermill to begin with, and why he had originally tried to convince Rory to join him. It was why he had stocked the fridge with Dark Lord and had created a replica of her home office in the three-season room.
“The true-crime nuts who followed Mack’s podcast are going to have their own theories about what happened,” Lane said.
“Yeah, well, nowadays everyone with an interest in crime thinks they can do twice as good as the detectives with half the information. The amateurs can create all the theories they want. Two-thirds of what those fools think they know is flat-out wrong, and the other third is inaccurate.”
“Still,” Lane said, “Mack’s podcast had a big audience. People are going to be talking, especially now. Other reporters may even show up to finish what Mack started.”
“Which is why I’m here tonight,” Ott said. “I’m trying to get in front of this thing. See if I can figure out what’s going on before the B team shows up and blows this thing up. You two on board?”
Rory adjusted her glasses and noticed that her right leg was vibrating, causing the eyelets on her combat boot to rattle.
“When can you get me your files?” she asked.
CHAPTER 44
ON A CRAPPY MONDAY MORNING, RYDER PULLED HER CAR TO THE curb outside the South Bend house belonging to the wife of the man who had disappeared more than a year ago. It was one of the leads listed on the shit list her editor had handed her the Friday before. The story was not new to her. Ryder had done her research on the mysterious case of the father of two who left one day on a business trip and never returned home. Ryder had originally written about it on her blog the previous year—Local Man Goes Missing Without a Trace—it was exactly what her blog was about. The true-crime fans who followed her were eager to chime in on unsolved cases and chase leads that the police and detectives had given up on. Any nugget of evidence the citizen detectives turned up that might aid in solving the mystery was considered a success.
The interest in the missing South Bend man died, however, after news of the Westmont Prep Killings stole the cover of every Indiana newspaper. As gruesome details of the school crime scene trickled in, interest grew until the entire nation started following the case. In just two days, the twenty-four-hour cable news cycle was saturated with Westmont Prep stories. It was the lead on the network morning shows, and the queen of morning television herself—Dante Campbell—had even clicked her high heels through the once unknown town of Peppermill.
With the media overanalyzing every detail of the story, when the first break in the case came—the discovery of a teacher’s wall safe manifesto that described the specifics of the slaughter that had occurred at the abandoned boarding house—the news spread like wildfire. When that teacher, Charles Gorman, had then attempted suicide, coverage of Westmont Prep and the killings in Peppermill, Indiana, was wire to wire. The missing father of two from South Bend was forgotten. Interest in his whereabouts up and vanished, just like the man.
Ryder was as much to blame as any other journalist. She had jumped on the Westmont Prep bandwagon along with all her colleagues. The only difference was that Ryder had not so easily accepted what the police offered on the Westmont Prep Killings. When Dante Campbell and the other lords of the news media moved on to fresh stories and new outrages, Ryder lingered in Peppermill. She, and her followers, thought there was more to the story, and Ryder had spent the better part of a year chasing leads and uncovering inconsistencies in the case. Her hard work led only to Mack Carter landing his own podcast and stealing her story. Now, not only was Mack and his podcast gone, Ryder’s chance at discovering anything
more about Westmont Prep was slipping away.
She had thought long and hard about the best way to respond to her demotion. Her first reaction was to quit. Had she still been able to count on the income from her YouTube channel, she would have told her boss to piss off. But YouTube had shut her down, and it was unlikely she would see another dime from her channel. She needed her gig at the paper to pay the bills, and she was uncertain what sort of financial headaches waited for her from the pending lawsuit Theo Compton’s parents had levied. No matter how she figured things, at the moment Ryder Hillier was stuck doing the grunt work for other writers. That work started at a small home in South Bend and a missing man named Marc McEvoy.
CHAPTER 45
AFTER WESTMONT PREP DIED DOWN, RYDER HAD GOTTEN BACK TO her other stories. One of them had been Marc McEvoy. He was a twenty-five-year-old father of two who had left for a business trip one afternoon and had never returned. His car had been found at the South Bend International Airport, but he was never seen again. In addition to the blog posts she had done on the case, Ryder had also written articles for the Star that chronicled the mystery of Marc McEvoy. The articles had mostly been brief updates on the stalled case, and rehashing of old details, but never anything substantial or groundbreaking. Since the very beginning there had been little to go on. The man simply vanished.
With a lack of details, however, there is generally an abundance of rumors. They varied widely, from Marc McEvoy escaping a failing marriage, to his running off with his mistress, to his wife having killed him and disposed of the body. But Ryder knew women rarely killed for reasons other than passion, and to date there had been no evidence of her husband having an affair. It was also rare to find any suburbanite skilled enough at murder to pull one off so cleanly and precisely as to leave no evidence behind. The nut who had killed his wife and two kids a couple of summers before in Colorado was under arrest shortly after he agreed to a television interview, where he begged for his family to come home. His shifty eyes and stuttering sentences were tells even the worst poker players could pick up. After practically convicting himself on television, police searched his home. He left so much physical evidence behind that it took police no time to arrest him. Even a diabolical killer like Robert Durst had done a piss-poor job of disposing of his neighbor’s body after he killed him. After dismembering the body, he attempted to sink the body parts in Galveston Bay but failed to realize the black plastic bags into which he had stuffed the limbs would soon fill with gas when the extremities began to decay. Not long after he sunk the evidence, the bloated bags floated to the surface and littered the shoreline. It didn’t take long for an unsuspecting passerby to rip one open. Durst was arrested the next day. So the theory that Marc McEvoy’s wife, an elementary school teacher and a member of the church choir, had pulled off such a flawless homicide and had hidden the body for the past year was terribly unlikely. Ryder was working on the assumption that Marc McEvoy was still alive and out there somewhere. If she could find him, there was a chance she could salvage her career.
The only real news—Ryder was reluctant to call the information a lead—was the discovery that Marc McEvoy’s wife was attempting to collect on a million dollar life insurance policy. It wasn’t much, but it might be worth an inquiry. Ryder climbed the front steps and knocked on the door. A woman answered a moment later.
“Brianna McEvoy?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Ryder Hillier, I’m a reporter with the Indianapolis Star. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your husband.”
The woman crossed her arms. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m writing a follow-up article about your husband, and police released details about a life insurance policy.”
Brianna McEvoy rolled her eyes. “I’ve got two little girls and I’m trying to figure out how to raise them alone. I’ve got no idea what to tell them when they ask where their daddy is. Do you really think I give a damn what people think about a life insurance policy? He took it out three years ago. It’s not breaking news. I’m trying to collect on it because I can’t make ends meet on a teacher’s salary alone.”
The woman took a step closer and stared Ryder in the eyes.
“Does it sound like a mother of two, who teaches in the community, would kill her husband, the father of her children, for a life insurance payout? My suggestion to the police and all you newspeople is to stop watching so much television and spend some time figuring out what happened to my husband.”
Ryder felt a draft over her face as Marc McEvoy’s wife slammed the front door. She remembered why she hated the grunt work of chasing leads. She stuck her business card into the crevice of the doorframe and walked back to her car. The crumpled page of leads rested on the passenger seat. Ryder closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. What a shit show. Just a few days before, she was happily writing about crime for one of Indiana’s biggest newspapers. She had a popular true-crime blog and a YouTube channel that was nicely supplementing her income. Now her career had gone to Hell. She was chasing dead-end stories and turning anything useful over to other reporters to write the story.
Her phone vibrated. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Ryder Hillier.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Hello? You’ve reached Ryder Hillier.”
A woman cleared her voice. “This is Paige Compton. Theo’s mother.”
Ryder raised her eyebrows and glanced around her car as if she’d just been caught doing something illegal.
“Hi.”
“I need to talk with you.”
“Mrs. Compton, I want to apologize for taking that footage of your son. It was irresponsible and so inappropriate for me to put it up on social media. It showed a complete lack of judgment on my part.”
There was a long stretch of silence, and Ryder thought the connection had died. She looked at her phone to make sure the call timer was still running.
“Also,” Ryder finally continued, “I want you to know that my newspaper had nothing to do—”
“I don’t care about the video,” Mrs. Compton said, cutting her off. “The lawsuit wasn’t my idea. My attorney was the one who suggested it. He said I should go after the newspaper because there was a good chance they would settle out of court. He told me I had to go after you first, but I’m not interested in any of that. No amount of money will bring Theo back. I’ll even drop the suit if you agree to help me.”
Ryder pushed the phone more firmly against her ear. “Help you with what?”
There was another long stretch of silence.
“Mrs. Compton? Help you with what?”
“Theo called me the night before he . . . died. He wanted to warn me.”
Ryder leaned forward in her seat, her eyesight focusing on a spot on the dashboard. “Warn you about what?”
“He and his friends had gotten themselves into some sort of trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
Mrs. Compton cleared her throat. “I don’t want to do this over the phone. Can we talk in person?”
“When?” Ryder asked without hesitation.
“Now, or as soon as you can get here.”
“Where is here, ma’am?”
“Cincinnati.”
Cincinnati was a four-hour drive. Ryder ran through a mental list of deadlines she needed to meet in order to keep her job. Chasing the Theo Compton story and the Westmont Prep Killings were not on that list.
“I can come this weekend,” Ryder said. “Friday.”
Ryder scribbled the address onto the sticky note, scrawling over the other leads she had been tasked with chasing. She underlined the address, scratching straight through Marc McEvoy’s name in the process.
CHAPTER 46
GWEN MONTGOMERY’S LEGS TWITCHED AS SHE DREAMED. SHE WAS attempting to run through the dark forest but could take only one or two steps before her feet sank into the thick mud. With great effort she pulled her
foot from the earth, creating a loud sucking noise in the process. Then she tried to run again. As soon as she transferred weight onto her foot, it plunged into the soft ground. Her progress was agonizingly slow until she finally reached the edge of the forest. There, she saw the boarding house. She felt the tackiness of blood on her hands and chest and longed to run inside and wash it off, to stick her hands under the rush of water from the kitchen faucet and let the blood stream from her hands and swirl down the drain. It would disappear then, and she’d never again have to think of its origin.
Suddenly, her feet were free from the mud, and she ran toward the house. Then she saw the wrought iron gate and the body impaled on it. The moonlight brightened the bloated and disfigured face of Tanner Landing, his eyes half open with the blank stare of death, the tine of the gate poking from the top of his head. She let out a guttural scream as she hurried to him and tried to lift him from the gate. His body was wet, and when she looked at her hands they were covered in more blood than when she had left the forest.
She called for Gavin. There was no answer. She called again and again until her efforts finally woke her. She sat up in bed and knew it was happening again. The flutter in her chest, the sweat around her neck and down her back, the inability to handle even the most routine stimuli. She startled when she heard two classmates laugh in the hallway as they passed her dorm room. Her breathing was shallow and labored as she rose from bed and stood in her room; a panic attack was imminent. She thought about talking with Gavin. He knew about the nightmares. Gavin knew everything. But his once-reassuring voice had lost its effect over the past few months. They were the only ones left, and they had travelled too far down this dark road. So far, in fact, that Gwen was unsure they’d ever find a way out. Or if the way out was what she truly wanted. To veer off this road now would not be joyous. It would lead to a different road that was far more dark and ominous than the current one. But this path they were on—the one they all had taken that night in the woods—was proving to not only be unhealthy but dangerous too.
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