The Suicide House

by Charlie Donlea

  Gwen’s eyes opened widely. “I have an idea. And I think it might be brilliant.”

  The others stared at her with glassy eyes.

  “Tanner has thirty minutes on us,” she said. “Let’s get rid of Gorman’s journal as planned. But instead of hiking it all that way out to the house, I’ll drive! We’ll get there in a quarter of the time. We might even catch him!”

  During the school year, students were not permitted to have cars on campus. But during the summer session, the rules were lightened and vehicles were permitted.

  “Let’s do it,” Gavin said with a smile.

  Gwen grabbed her keys and Mr. Gorman’s journal, and they all snuck out the back of Margery Hall and into the night. They stayed in the shadows, like they had the last time they had snuck to Teacher’s Row. This time, though, the effects of the marijuana had them relaxed and confident.

  They made it to the path that ran behind the duplexes and found their way to number fourteen. It brought back memories from the other night. They crept to the back wall.

  “We should leave it on the front steps,” Gwen said.

  Gavin nodded. “Give it here. I’ll do it.”

  Gwen handed him the journal. Gavin pointed at the kitchen window, where light spilled out into the night.

  “Take a look,” Gavin said. “Tell me when it’s all clear.”

  Gavin snuck to the edge of the duplex and waited for the signal. The others slowly raised their heads above the windowsill. They saw Mr. Gorman. His back was to them, and he was stirring a pot on the stove. They all ducked down quickly, too high to notice that they were close to being spotted. Gwen waved at Gavin, who took off around the building, dropped the journal on the front stairs, and rang the doorbell.

  By the time Gorman answered the door, Gwen and her friends were halfway to the student parking lot where her car waited.

  * * *

  Charles Gorman stirred the pasta as it boiled on the stove. He shook salt into the pot just as the doorbell rang. He checked his watch and wondered if it was Gabriella, wanting to tell him what she had planned to do on Monday when an assembly had been set up for students and faculty. He knew she was nervous.

  He put the spoon down and headed to the front door. When he opened it, his front porch was empty. He walked outside and looked up and down Teacher’s Row. The front porch lights of other duplexes glowed in the summer night, but the sidewalk was empty. When he looked down at the stairs, he noticed it. His journal lay on the second step. He quickly picked it up and riffled through the pages. It was all there. He looked again up and down the path before heading back inside.

  He took the pasta off the stove as he sat at the kitchen table and read through his journal for ten minutes. Then, when he was satisfied nothing was missing, he stood and walked into his office. He removed the periodic table wall hanging and spun the dial of the wall safe. He placed his journal inside, closed the safe, and replaced the wall hanging. Then he reached for his phone to call Gabriella.

  CHAPTER 76

  THEY STAYED IN THE SHADOWS UNTIL THEY REACHED THE STUDENT parking lot. Gavin climbed into the passenger seat, and the others crowded into the back. Gwen jammed the key into the ignition, made sure to keep her headlights off, and then tore out of the lot. Once they were past the entrance of the school, she clicked on the headlights to bring Champion Boulevard to life and then pressed her foot to the accelerator. If they hurried, they could catch Tanner.

  Five minutes later, she pulled a hard right onto Route 77. It was inky black, so she turned on her high beams. They concentrated on the green mile markers as Gwen raced along the empty road. The first was eleven. It flew past in a blur but brightly reflected the car’s headlamps. A minute later they saw mile marker twelve as they bore down on it. Then they waited as the dark night filled the windows, looking—hoping—to see mile marker thirteen. They knew they were close.

  They were so concentrated on looking for the next marker that none of them saw a thing, but they all heard the thud. It sounded like a baseball bat smacking a plastic garbage can filled with water.

  Thump.

  Gwen slammed on the brakes, screeching the wheels as the car fishtailed to a stop. No one moved for several seconds. No one breathed. Then, finally, they slowly turned and looked through the rear window. A heap of something lay near the shoulder of the road, barely visible through the dark night. The mound didn’t move as they stared and waited.

  “What was it?” Gwen asked, her voice shaky and her hands tightly grasping the steering wheel. She was still facing forward, the only one who refused to look at whatever lay behind the car.

  Gavin took a deep breath. “Probably a possum.”

  “That’s way too big to be a possum,” Theo said. “Maybe a deer?”

  Gwen finally turned her gaze from the windshield and looked at Gavin through the dark space between them. Then she twisted the steering wheel and made a three-point turn. The car rolled slowly toward the heap, all five of them hoping to see a deer. Hoping to see any sort of animal. But the closer they got, the better the headlights illuminated the pile on the shoulder.

  PART IX

  August 2020

  CHAPTER 77

  BRIANNA MCEVOY HAD LOST HER HUSBAND A YEAR AGO. SHE REFUSED to believe Marc was dead; it was a thought she could not consider. But this far along, the thought was hounding her more than ever before. In the first days after Marc had gone missing, she met with detectives regularly to receive updates. They’d located his car at the South Bend airport, where Marc had parked for his business trip to Texas. But detectives quickly learned that Marc’s company had no itinerary that sent him to Texas, or anywhere else, the week he disappeared. In fact, Marc had requested two personal days that week. Brianna had been stunned to learn of her husband’s deceit.

  The detectives were receptive for the first few weeks, but once they had ruled out foul play, trying to figure out what had happened to her husband and where he was became less vital.

  When Brianna called at the beginning of the investigation, the detectives answered. Twelve months later, they responded only after she filled their voice mail with a string of messages. When they did call, it was to take swings at why her husband had disappeared. The detectives had uncovered some embarrassing debt that led to the theory that Marc had ducked out of town to hide from bill collectors. Brianna knew this was ridiculous. And the theory that Marc might have run off with a mistress was equally preposterous. He rarely went anywhere besides home and work—a small consulting firm with five other employees—three of whom were male, and the other two were women in their sixties.

  The latest development had been the addition of Marc’s name to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs—a nationwide information clearinghouse that listed the tens of thousands of Americans who go missing each year. The detectives had added all of Marc’s information to the website, including the DNA sample Brianna had provided. They didn’t have to tell her the purpose of this. She understood. If an unidentified body turned up somewhere, a coroner or medical examiner could run the DNA through the NamUs database for a match.

  Brianna knew the detectives were simply running through their checklist of the usual suspects and situations. She also knew that had she been completely forthcoming with the things she had discovered about her husband, the detectives might have made more progress on finding him. At this point, though, honesty was not an option, and the police were not the ones who would help her.

  She descended the basement stairs and opened the cabinet where Marc kept his baseball card collection. She removed the three cases and laid them on the bar. She unsnapped the button on the first case, unfolding the wings of the binder to reveal four columns of neatly lined baseball cards. On top of the cards were the loose papers she had stumbled across the previous fall, three months after Marc had disappeared. Across the top of the page was written The Man in the Mirror. Several articles were included in the stack of papers, all having to do with the strang
e ritual that took place twice a year at Westmont Preparatory High School—once in the winter during the shortest day of the year and again in summer during the longest. The previous year, it had been June twenty-first. The same day Marc disappeared, when two students had been killed at the school.

  Brianna had spent the last several months wondering if the two events were connected, too scared to mention her findings to the detectives for fear that Marc would somehow be linked to the Westmont Prep Killings. She decided the mystery had gone on too long. Although she was still not ready to tell the police, she was prepared to tell someone else.

  She pulled the card from her pocket and stared at the reporter’s name.

  CHAPTER 78

  AS SO OFTEN HAPPENED IN HER LINE OF WORK, THINGS HAD GONE from quiet to chaotic in a moment’s notice. Just a week before, Ryder had been demoted to the trenches of the newspaper business, her YouTube channel had been censured, and her blog was all but gone. Then Theo Compton’s mother had called to ask for Ryder’s help with a troubling secret she believed her son was carrying. Rory Moore’s call had followed, solidifying the idea that Theo may have, in fact, been killed rather than having committed suicide.

  Now, on Saturday morning, she hung up the phone with Marc McEvoy’s wife and wondered how the hell a missing person’s case out of South Bend could possibly be related to the Westmont Prep Killings. The only thing she knew for sure: The Westmont Prep case was alive and kicking. New life had been breathed into it, and if Ryder played her cards right she would be part of finding the truth. She started her car and headed to South Bend.

  CHAPTER 79

  DWIGHT COREY DROVE THE RENTAL CAR OUT OF THE HOTEL PARKING lot on Saturday morning. Lane was in the passenger seat.

  “I like this,” Lane said. “You and I have never been on a road trip before.”

  “I was on your book tour a couple of years ago,” Dwight said as he merged onto the Sanibel Island causeway.

  “That wasn’t the same. We didn’t share a hotel room and you didn’t chauffeur me around.”

  “I promised Rory I’d watch you closely because your current mental state is worse than normal. That’s the only reason I shared a room with you. I know enough not to break a promise to her. You snore like a son of a bitch, by the way.”

  “It’s my lungs. They’re not clear yet. The coughing wakes me up.”

  “Really? You seemed to sleep right through it. I was up all night listening to it.”

  “Part of the job description, I guess.”

  “Maybe Rory was right to tell you to wait a few days. I honestly didn’t know how bad your condition was until I saw you.”

  “I’m good. And I owe her. I got her involved with this case for purely selfish reasons. There’s really nothing in it for her. I just know how her mind works. If I got her down to Peppermill, the case and all its mysteries would do the rest. And maybe I’m having one of those life-is-too-short moments after my close call, but I feel shitty about doing that to her. But now that it’s done, I can’t undo it. Rory won’t rest until she has answers. It’s the way her mind works. And now that she might’ve found one of those answers, I owe it to her to track it down whether I feel like crap or not.”

  Dwight nodded. “Damn. How hard did you hit your head?”

  “This is the new warm and fuzzy Lane Phillips.”

  “I think I like him. Is he going to give up steak and stop poisoning his coffee with sugar?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Just when I thought there was hope for you.”

  As late-morning sun glistened off the surface of the ocean, they sped across the long bridge that connected the mainland of Florida to Sanibel Island.

  CHAPTER 80

  LANE CLIMBED OUT OF THE RENTAL CAR AND INTO THE SHADE OF the palm tree Dwight had parked under. He pulled on his baseball cap to hide the ghastly looking laceration that streaked across the back of his head and then walked through the parking lot of Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille. It was just past eleven A.M. when Lane entered the restaurant and found retired detective Gus Morelli in a back booth. He was easy to spot with the place mostly empty. A sturdy-looking older man, Lane guessed he was in his late sixties. He had white hair, a silver goatee, and the chest of a man who lifted weights in his youth. If Merriam-Webster offered the definition of a retired New York detective, an image of Gus Morelli would be included next to it.

  The man stood up when Lane approached.

  “Gus Morelli.”

  “Lane Phillips.” They shook hands. “Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.”

  “I’m retired. All I’ve got is time. And this must be important for you to come all the way down to Florida on such short notice.”

  “It is. Or at least it might be.”

  Gus gestured to the booth, and Lane sat down. He noticed a file on the table. His name was printed on it.

  “Homework?”

  Gus smiled. “When I get a cold call from an ex-FBI profiler asking about an old case I worked, I tend to do some research on them.”

  Lane lifted his chin. “Find anything interesting about me?”

  “Lots. About you, and your partner.” Gus opened the folder. “I was a New York cop for more than thirty years, and I still have all my connections. I’m assuming you figured I’d look into you?”

  “I expected it.”

  Gus opened the file and read from it. “Dr. Lane Phillips, professor of forensic psychology at University of Chicago and founder of the Murder Accountability Project. Ex-FBI profiler with the Behavioral Science Unit where you spent a decade tracking, studying, and writing procedure about serial killers. PhD accolades include the famous Some Choose Darkness dissertation, a handbook about the thought process and reasoning of serial killers that just about every homicide detective in the country has read. Best-selling author and talking head. Does that just about cover it?”

  Lane nodded. “The highlights, yes.”

  “And,” Gus said, turning the page, “partnered with a gal named Rory Moore, whom I’m told is one hell of a cold case specialist.”

  “She prefers forensic reconstructionist.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s modern-day BS. Back in my time, it meant she figures shit out that we all miss.”

  Lane nodded. “Means the same thing today. And yes, she’s pretty damn good at it.”

  “From what my contacts tell me, she’s got a hell of a solve rate on some of the oldest and coldest cases. This angle with the pennies that you called me about? It came from her?”

  Lane smiled. “I’m sorry to say that I’m not smart enough to have seen the connection myself. I’m just following up on it.”

  “Well, I have to admit . . . your phone call stirred a part of me I thought would sleep forever. I’d be fascinated to hear how this connection came about.”

  The waitress approached and took their orders. Two iced teas.

  “My partner and I are working on a case up in Indiana. The Westmont Prep Killings from last summer?”

  Gus pouted his lower lip and shook his head.

  “You haven’t heard about it? The case was widely covered last summer and has been in the news recently.”

  “I don’t follow the news,” Gus said. “I don’t subscribe to cable, and I haven’t watched the evening news in two decades.”

  “Ever read a newspaper?”

  “Every morning, but only the sports section. The rest is liberal bullshit or conservative nonsense.”

  “Internet?”

  “What’s that?”

  Lane smiled. Gus Morelli was hard-core old school. “Westmont Prep is a private boarding school in Peppermill, Indiana. Two kids were killed there last summer.”

  “Students?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At the school?”

  “On the edge of campus, out at an abandoned house where faculty used to live. The case was open and shut—one of the teachers snapped and killed the kids. At least, that’s the working theory. But there�
�s more to it than that. Over the last year, three students who survived that night have gone back to the house, specifically the train tracks that run past it, to kill themselves. Something isn’t adding up, and the lead detective who ran the investigation has asked my partner and me to quietly look into the case. When Rory dug into the files, she came across the penny connection that linked all the suicide victims and the perp. I used the MAP algorithm to see if there were any similar cases. It led me to you.”

  The waitress delivered the iced teas. Lane took a sip.

  “By the time I got ahold of you and headed down here, Rory had sniffed out another inconsistency. She’s wondering if the Westmont Prep kids didn’t actually kill themselves.”

  Gus slid the folder to the side and placed his elbows on the table. “Meaning?”

  “She’s still working that angle, but she thinks maybe the kids were killed. And somehow the flattened pennies found on each of them is a link.”

  “To the killer?”

  Lane raised his eyebrows. “I guess that’s what I’m here to figure out.”

  Lane saw Detective Morelli’s gaze shift off to the right. His eyes were focused on nothing in particular. Lane understood the detective’s momentary detachment from conversation to be the man’s mind working something out. Then Lane saw him pull a card from the file and scribble across the back of it.

  “This is my address,” Gus said. “I’ve gotta check a few things out. Stop by tonight. Seven?”

  Lane pulled the card across the table. “You got something?”

  “I might,” Gus said. “Give me the day to find out?”

  Lane nodded. “You got it. See you tonight.”

  CHAPTER 81

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON BY THE TIME RYDER MADE IT BACK TO PEPPERMILL. She’d spent exactly one hour with Brianna McEvoy before she jumped back in her car. Now she walked into the café where she and Rory had met the night before. Rory was sitting at the same table. She saw the woman adjust her thick-rimmed glasses, the tops of which touched the beanie hat she wore, as Ryder joined her at the table.