The Suicide House

by Charlie Donlea

  He didn’t bother to say good-bye to Norton but nodded to Donny on his way out. He placed the box in the back seat of his car and pulled out of the parking lot. The files represented the case that had woken him up at three in the morning the previous summer. He hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since.

  He wondered if things would change soon.

  CHAPTER 50

  RORY SAT IN THE THREE-SEASON ROOM OF THE COTTAGE. THE Kiddiejoy doll lay on the desk in front of her with the gooseneck lamp pulled close to illuminate the doll’s face. The repaired area of the ear and cheek—which Rory had expertly reconstructed with papier-mâché and cold porcelain clay—had now set and was ready for sculpting. She went to work with her Foldger-Gruden brushes, using the tipped handles to carve tiny grooves that would become the detail of the ear cartilage. For this, she worked without a reference photo. All she needed had been stored in her mind when she researched the doll, as if the image of what she hoped to achieve was sitting on an easel in front of her and doused in spotlight.

  Rory methodically progressed through the brushes, moving from dull to sharp and ending with the needlelike pine tip that easily carved through the clay. Her concentration was so intense that her vision tunneled and she barely remembered to blink. Each fine groove she created required the repetitious precision of an artist and the focus of a surgeon. The callings of her mind to repeat and perfect, which she stowed during the hours of her life not spent restoring dolls, were purged at her workstation. Here, those disruptive thoughts were useful and needed.

  When she completed sculpting the ear, she moved to the edge of the mouth and whittled a perfect seam at the corner of the doll’s lips. She finished by reconstructing the outer canthus of the left eye. It was detailed work that took hours. After carving the last notch, she slipped the brush into her breast pocket, blew away the residue, and finally sat back in her chair. Like theater lights slowly brightening at the conclusion of a film, Rory’s vision widened. The doll was structurally back together. The texture and color were off, so the next step would be sanding smooth the areas she repaired and then glazing the porcelain with an epoxy coating to erase the lattice of cracks. Finally, she would polish and paint the surface, which would bring the doll back to its original beauty. There was still much to be done, but after only three sessions she had made great progress.

  The slamming of a car door broke her concentration. When the doorbell rang, she checked her watch. It was one P.M. She’d been working uninterrupted for three hours and had lost track of time. Pulling the gooseneck lamp to the side, she laid the Kiddiejoy doll back into the travel box. She found her glasses and fumbled them into place, then pulled on her gray windbreaker to match her jeans. She buttoned it up to the top clasp near her neck and pulled on her beanie cap. Her combat boots covered her feet and completed her battle gear. On the way to the front door, she grabbed her rucksack and threw it over her shoulder. Lane was napping upstairs, and Rory decided not to interrupt his sleep, which the doctors had warned would come in long spells while his brain healed from the concussion. She opened the door, and Detective Ott was waiting on the porch.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  Rory nodded. Today she would walk through the crime scene—the abandoned boarding house tucked into the forest at the edge of the Westmont Prep campus, where two students had been killed one short year before. She knew what was coming. She knew what waited there. It was the same thing that waited at every crime scene she analyzed—the souls of those who had lost their lives. Rory’s goal was to feel them and connect with them so that eventually she could communicate with them in her own subtle way. Her connection with the victims was not a physical one, and her communication was not verbal. To those lost souls Rory made one simple promise—to lead them to a proper place of rest where peace and calm would be found.

  This far into her career as a forensic reconstructionist, Rory Moore had never broken a promise.

  CHAPTER 51

  SHE SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT AS DETECTIVE OTT DROVE THROUGH the streets of Peppermill. Rory had never been comfortable in the presence of strangers, cops or otherwise. Airplanes and cars, in particular, were places of unrest. Perhaps a touch of claustrophobia added to her unease, but mostly it was her lifelong displeasure with another’s company in such close quarters. Years ago, Lane had quickly broken through her walls to become the only man other than her father she allowed to physically touch her. So now, as they drove, Rory felt a familiar tremor in her chest. It was a signal that the proverbial IV line that offered a constant slow-drip of anxiety directly into her circulatory system had been opened a notch wider.

  “We had two choices,” Ott said. “We could take the back way—the lesser known entrance that is accessible from Route 77. This was the route the kids took the night of June twenty-first. Or we could be more transparent and go through the front gates of Westmont Prep. Since I’m trying my hardest not to lose my job, we’re taking the transparent route. I told the dean of students that I needed access to the house and tracks that run alongside as a follow-up to my investigation into Theo Compton’s suicide. She agreed to escort us.”

  Rory nodded. “Probably the best way to do it.”

  They turned onto Champion Boulevard and pulled up to the two brick pillars connected by the tall wrought iron gate over which arched a concrete placard that announced WESTMONT PREPARATORY HIGH SCHOOL.

  Detective Ott stopped at the speaker, pressed the button, and held his badge out the window to be scanned.

  “Welcome to Westmont Prep,” a female voice sounded through the speaker.

  “Detective Ott to see Dr. Hanover.”

  A moment later, the iron gates opened inward, like two arms welcoming them in an embrace. Ott pulled into a visitor’s parking spot. Rory opened her door, adjusted her glasses and beanie hat, and then followed Detective Ott toward the main building with its four gothic columns standing sturdy in the afternoon sun. A man and a woman waited on the steps. Rory assumed they were Christian Casper and Gabriella Hanover, the co-deans of students. They stood next to a golf cart.

  “Dr. Hanover,” Ott said. “Good to see you.”

  “You, too, Detective.”

  They shook hands.

  “Dr. Casper,” Ott said, shaking hands again. “This is Rory Moore. She’s working as a consultant and will be assisting me today.”

  Dr. Hanover held out her hand, which Rory didn’t take. Couldn’t, really. She’d never been able to shake hands with strangers, or anyone else for that matter. Her brain was not wired to do so. She was not a germophobe and had no aversion to disease. Her reluctance to shake another’s hand stemmed from the same affliction that poured sweat down her back as soon as she closed the car door of Henry Ott’s car—her general displeasure with human interaction. The affliction could neither be explained by Rory nor be understood by others. It was simply how she had lived for forty years, and changing now was not possible. To change, Rory needed motive and means. She had neither. She preferred the awkwardness of rejecting a handshake to the convoluted thoughts and discomfort that came from accepting one. Instead, she adjusted her glasses, offered Dr. Hanover a brief moment of eye contact, and then nodded. Dr. Hanover finally pulled her hand away. Dr. Casper knew enough not to offer his.

  “Right this way,” Dr. Hanover finally said, pointing at the golf cart. “It’s a long walk otherwise.”

  Detective Ott and Rory climbed into the second row. Dr. Hanover drove, and Dr. Casper sat next to her. They wound through campus, passed the ivy-covered buildings, and eventually came to a tall red brick wall that ran a hundred yards in either direction before giving way to wrought iron that finished the job of cordoning off the woods on the other side from the campus.

  Dr. Casper stood from the cart and used a set of keys to free the padlock and open the passageway in the brick wall. Dr. Hanover accelerated through the opening before Dr. Casper closed the door behind them. Rory felt a quiver of foreboding when the door closed behind her, as if the
safety of the campus was gone and the dangers of the ominous forest waited.

  Dr. Casper climbed back into the cart, and soon they were bouncing along a trail that cut through the forest. They emerged a few minutes later, and Rory saw the house in front of them. The limestone exterior was visible only in small patches where the ivy had failed to grow. So overgrown were the vines that they looked more like camouflage than decoration.

  “We’ll wait here, if that’s okay,” Dr. Hanover said.

  “Of course,” Detective Ott said as he and Rory climbed from the cart.

  Rory didn’t wait for Detective Ott to take the lead. She walked toward the house, her gaze drifting back and forth, taking in the entire setting as if her eyes were recording everything that entered her pupils. Of course, her mind was doing exactly that. The full understanding of her subconscious processing might take longer, but the cataloguing was immediate. She approached the wrought iron gate where Tanner Landing had been impaled. The tip of the prong was six feet above the ground. She walked through the opening of the gate, into the front yard, and then turned around to look from the other side and get a different perspective.

  Detective Ott pulled a photo from the manila file he was carrying and handed it to Rory. Depicted on the eight-by-ten was Tanner Landing’s lifeless body skewered by one of the pickets of the gate. Rory analyzed the grisly photo, then looked back at the gate and the top of the iron spikes. At five foot two, the gate rose nearly one foot over Rory’s head. To drop a 160-pound teenager onto the gate took strength and height. But also time. The killer knew he had time. It was someone who knew the house and knew the area around it. Someone who knew what the students were up to that night.

  “When I arrived at the scene,” Detective Ott said, “it was obvious the Landing boy’s body had been dragged from inside the house. There was a trail of blood down the front steps, and blood was found within the dirt grooves that led from the bottom of the steps to this spot.”

  “So he was definitely first attacked inside,” Rory said.

  “Yes. In the front room just off the foyer.”

  Detective Ott handed Rory another crime scene photo. It showed smeared blood streaked across the hardwood floor of the foyer and doorway.

  “No footprints found in any of the blood or in the dirt?” Rory asked.

  “None. We found some fibers that made us believe the killer might have worn shoe coverings, like you’d see a service worker don before entering a house or walking on carpeting. But no definitive prints to pull.”

  “Organized,” Rory whispered as she stared at the photo.

  She looked back up to the spears of the gate.

  “Give me a time line. How quickly did this go down?”

  Ott handed her another picture, this time of Tanner Landing’s naked body lying on the metal autopsy table.

  “The medical examiner’s report stated that the wound from the gate penetrated just below the victim’s chin,” Ott said. “And continued through the bones of the face, anterior aspect of the brain, through the frontal lobe, and out the forehead. These wounds were determined to have been made antemortem.”

  Rory continued to stare at the autopsy photo. “The Landing boy was dying quickly from the wound across his neck but still alive when he was hung on the gate.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then it happened quickly,” Rory said. “Our guy didn’t wait long after the initial attack to perform the ritualistic hanging. Lane suggested that it was ceremonial—done specifically for revenge. Killing him wasn’t enough. He had to punish him.”

  “Pretty much lobotomized him.”

  “So far,” Rory said, handing the photo back to Detective Ott, “at six foot three, Charles Gorman had the height, strength, and motive to pull this off.”

  Rory turned away from the gate and looked at the abandoned and unkempt boarding house, with red ivy bearding the windows.

  “What were they doing out here? The kids. Why were they here that night?”

  “The best I’ve been able to piece together, the kids were participating in a game called The Man in the Mirror. From my research, it’s a ritualistic, cultish game played around the world. Mostly by teenagers, but the game has a big following of adults, too. Mostly overseas.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Spirits. Curses. And an entity that resides in uncovered mirrors, whose power can be tapped twice a year, on the summer solstice and winter solstice.”

  “And the killings took place last June.”

  “Correct,” Ott said. “On June twenty-first. The longest day of the year.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Players find their way through a forest to an empty house. The first to arrive finds the designated mirror, uncovers it, and whispers Man in the Mirror to their reflections. Doing so allows you to live the year in peace and in good standing with the spirits of the Man in the Mirror. Failing to find the keys and complete the loop of whispering into the mirror before midnight brings a year of curse.”

  “Christ. It sounds terrifying.”

  “I’ve done a lot of research,” Ott said. “The game is not new. There are many different versions, but it seems like the Westmont Prep kids took it to another level. This was definitely not the Ghosts in the Graveyard that I grew up with.”

  Rory continued to look at the house.

  “Can you show me the room where it happened?”

  “Yeah,” Ott said, grabbing keys from his utility belt. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER 52

  RORY WALKED THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR OF THE ABANDONED boarding house. The ceilings were tall, and the entrance foyer reached to the second story. A staircase with missing and broken spindles spiraled up to the second floor.

  “Back in the day,” Ott said, his voice echoing through the empty house, “this used to be where the resident faculty lived. There are eight rooms that were converted to private bedrooms with baths. The house was off the beaten path and offered privacy for the faculty.”

  He pointed to the large room to their right.

  “This was the community dining area, a large kitchen toward the back of the house, and here”—he pointed to the left, where a short hallway led to a closed door—“is where the library had once been located. That’s where Andrew Gross’s body was discovered.”

  Rory followed Ott down the hallway and into the room. Ott retrieved another photo from his file folder and handed it to her. A blood-speckled mirror stood in the center of the room, a painter’s tarp bunched on the floor next to it, and Andrew Gross’s body was in a heap in front of the mirror, a perfect circle of dark congealed blood around it.

  “The blood around Andrew Gross’s body is undisturbed, so he bled out here uninterrupted,” she said. “The Landing boy was dragged quickly outside and to the gate. He knew others were coming. He knew he had to hurry.”

  “Why skewer only the Landing boy?” Ott asked. “Why not both?”

  Rory continued to stare at the photo. “Not enough time. Or maybe he just wanted revenge on Tanner Landing. Again, there’s certainly a strong argument for Charles Gorman being our perp.”

  Rory continued to look at the photo.

  “What’s with the painter’s tarp?” she asked.

  “It’s part of the game they were playing. Mirrors need to be covered until the Man in the Mirror is summoned.”

  Rory shook her head and walked to the window, which was doused in spray paint dark enough to prevent a view to where Tanner Landing had been impaled.

  “No one else had been in the house that night?” she asked.

  “Not that we’re aware of. The other students were in the woods, and when they got to the house, they saw the massacre out front and ran back to campus.”

  “No foreign DNA found in this room?”

  “No. The only blood we found in this room belonged to Andrew Gross and Tanner Landing.”

  “The unidentified blood. It was found only by the gate?”

  “Correct,”
Ott said.

  “It was on the girl’s hands and chest, and also on Tanner Landing’s body?”

  “Correct. Gwen Montgomery had both Tanner’s blood on her, which was explained by her frantic attempt to remove his body from the gate when she found him, as well as a small amount of blood that we haven’t identified.”

  Rory turned from the window. “How did you get past the unidentified blood?”

  “I haven’t.”

  CHAPTER 53

  A DARK LORD SAT ON THE DESK OF THE DIM THREE-SEASON ROOM AT the back of the cottage. Only the desk lamp lighted the room. It was enough to allow Rory to read the box of files Detective Ott had given her after they finished the walk-through of the boarding house and an inspection of the area on the train tracks where Charles Gorman had attempted to end his life. This was the same location where three students had since succeeded. Rory was still processing the whirlwind day, her subconscious organizing and cataloguing all she had seen and learned. She had reinforced her discoveries by recapping her excursion to Lane when she arrived home. Now the cottage was dark and quiet. It was past midnight—Rory’s most productive hours were in front of her.

  She took a sip of stout. She had already been at it for an hour, having first read through Gorman’s folder to see everything Detective Ott and his police force had discovered about the forty-five-year-old chemistry teacher. She read about his life before Westmont Prep and about his eight years at the school. She read about the evidence Ott had used to secure his search warrant. Within Gorman’s folder was the manifesto he had written, which Ott had discovered in the wall safe of Gorman’s duplex on Teacher’s Row—three pages of cursive writing in which Gorman had described in vivid detail what he planned to do to Tanner Landing and Andrew Gross. It was a disturbing piece of work that shook Rory to the core. She had seen the crime scene photos—both earlier in the day when Ott had handed her select choices, and more tonight as she paged through the photos that accompanied the manifesto. It was chilling for Rory to lay out the photographs, one by one, of exactly what Gorman described in his manifesto. A handwriting analyst’s report confirmed that the cursive scribble of the manifesto matched samples of Charles Gorman’s writing.