“What did you find?” Rory asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe nothing, but... probably something.”
Ryder reached into her purse and pulled out the Indianapolis Star articles she had written about Marc McEvoy, the South Bend man who had gone missing the previous summer. Only after Brianna McEvoy had pointed it out did Ryder realize that Marc had gone missing on June 21, 2019—the same night as the Westmont Prep Killings.
“I’ve been working this case, off and on, for the last year,” Ryder said. “Marc McEvoy, twenty-five-year-old father of two from South Bend who disappeared last summer. Supposedly left on a business trip to Texas and never returned. His car was found at the South Bend airport, but no one’s ever heard from him again. Come to learn that he had no business trip scheduled to Texas. Police found no foul play, guy had no enemies, and the best anyone can tell he wasn’t sleeping around.”
Rory nodded slowly. “What’s it got to do with the Westmont Prep case?”
“McEvoy disappeared the same night as the killings. A couple of months after he up and vanished, his wife went into the basement and found a bunch of press clippings he had hidden away with his baseball card collection.”
Ryder pulled more articles from her purse and added them to the others on the table.
“The guy’s wife showed these to me today.”
Ryder pushed them across the table.
“A few of these were written by you,” Rory said, scanning the headlines and byline.
“Yeah, I’ve done a lot of research on the Westmont Prep case, and the school in general. Looks like Marc McEvoy was obsessed with a game the kids were playing called The Man in the Mirror.”
Rory nodded as she scanned the articles. “Detective Ott.” Rory looked up at Ryder. “He ran the investigation into the Westmont Prep Killings. He told me about this game. Said these kids took it to a whole new level.”
“What I’ve discovered over the past year,” Ryder said, “and what I’ve written extensively about on my blog, is that it takes a lot to get invited to play. Not many students know exactly what goes on because so few have firsthand knowledge. And those who do tend to keep the details to themselves. It’s like a little clique inside the school.”
“Like a secret society.”
“Right. But instead of a skull and crossbones, it’s mirrors and spirits. Brianna McEvoy knew all about it. Marc was a Westmont Prep alumnus, and he told her about the game. About how he never made it into the club. She said he shrugged it off when he mentioned it, but she could tell he was troubled by whatever happened when he was at Westmont.”
“Kids can be assholes.”
“No doubt. Brianna seemed to think McEvoy might have still been bothered by the rejection, but she had no idea he was so obsessed with it.”
“Obsessed how?” Rory asked.
“Brianna McEvoy learned that Marc had put in for two personal days from work the week he disappeared. He wanted his wife to think he was on a business trip, and he wanted his work to think he was taking personal time off.”
“To do what?”
“No one knows. But Brianna McEvoy is worried it had something to do with the Westmont Prep case.”
Ryder saw something change in Rory’s expression. She kept her eyes on the articles. The woman rarely made eye contact, but she did now, looking up suddenly from the newspaper articles.
“There was unidentified blood at the scene,” Rory said.
Ryder blinked as she worked to register what Rory was talking about. “At the boarding house?”
Rory nodded. “The police kept it away from the media because it’s the one piece that never made sense. Three DNA profiles were found at the crime scene. One that matched Tanner Landing. One that matched Andrew Gross. And one they’ve never been able to ID.”
Ryder leaned over and stared at one of her headlines.
South Bend Man Goes Missing. No Clues in Sight.
“Marc McEvoy?” she asked in a drawn-out voice as she looked back at Rory.
“We need to get a sample of his DNA.”
“We already have one,” Ryder said. “His information was added to the NamUs database.”
“The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System,” Rory said.
“Correct. It includes his DNA profile.”
“I have access to the DNA profile of the unidentified blood. We can run it through the NamUs website and look for a match.”
“When?” Ryder asked.
“Right now. The information is at my rental house.”
They both stood and hurried out of the café.
Westmont Prep
Summer 2019
CHAPTER 82
GWEN AND HER FRIENDS CLIMBED FROM THE CAR AND STOOD IN THE beam of the headlights. Each of their shadows crept along the pavement and flanked the body that lay in the road—a heap of wilted limbs and broken bones that didn’t respond to Gwen’s soft voice when she called out to ask if the man was okay. Finally, Gavin walked over and crouched down next to the body. He listened for a breath and watched for the man’s chest to rise and fall. After a minute he stood up and walked back to the group.
“I think he’s dead,” Gavin said.
Gwen, already a wreck, began to moan as she cried. The others took instinctual steps backward. Gavin ran his hand over his mouth and up his cheek, where he nervously scratched the area behind his ear.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s, uh... let’s think this through.”
“We should call the police,” Danielle said.
Gavin held out his hands, the index finger on each raised while he thought. “That’s what we should do. But let’s think about what happens if we do that. We’re all stoned. Gwen’s driving under the influence. We just... killed a guy. If we call the cops, we all go to prison.”
“It was an accident,” Danielle said. “She didn’t mean to hit him.”
“Correct,” Gavin said. “She didn’t mean to kill him, but he’s still dead. That’s called manslaughter. Involuntary manslaughter, if she’s lucky. But she’s stoned, so they’ll argue that it wasn’t so involuntary after all. You go to prison for that. If we call the cops, Gwen’s life is over. And so is each of ours. You think you’re going to college with something like this on your record?”
“Okay, okay,” Theo said. “Let’s not fight. Let’s just figure out what to do.”
“Look,” Gavin said. “It was an accident, just like Danielle said. We didn’t mean to do it. And what the hell was the guy doing out on a dark road dressed in black, anyway? If we were stone cold sober, we still might have hit him. None of us deserve to have our lives ruined because of an accident.”
“You’re not talking to a jury, Gavin!” Theo said. “What’s the friggin’ plan if we don’t call the cops?”
Gavin nodded as he thought. “Okay.” He shrugged as if what he were about to propose was the easy solution. “We hide the body. Take him down to the ravine and sink him in Baker’s Creek. It’s deep, and there’s a strong current. No one will find him. Then we all venture off to find the keys and get back to the house to meet Andrew. We go through with the initiation just like we planned.”
“Are you insane?” Theo said.
“Listen to me. If we decide not to call the cops—and I think we’re all on the same page about that decision—then we’re all going to need alibis for tonight. Someday soon, people will start looking for this guy. We all have to have solid stories for what we were doing tonight.”
“I’ll do it,” Gwen said, interrupting Gavin and Theo.
They all looked at her.
“I’ll put him in the creek. I hit him. I’ll hide him. You guys get going. Go to the house. Go through with initiation. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”
“I’ll help you,” Gavin said.
“What about your car?” Danielle said.
“I’ll drive it back to campus when we’re done,” Gavin said. “I’ll come back on foot. Hoof it. I’ll be late, but I’ll get
there. I’ll just say I couldn’t find my key.”
They all looked at one another in the dark of night. Their heads were buzzing from marijuana, their minds racing with confusion, and their heart rates rapid from shock. Then, one by one, they nodded. A plan was created.
Theo, Danielle, and Bridget set off down the shoulder of Route 77 to find the entrance into the woods that would lead them to the abandoned boarding house. When their friends were out of sight, Gwen and Gavin looked down at the body. Gwen took a deep breath to numb herself. Then she reached down and grabbed the dead man under the arms, feeling the tacky stick of his blood on her hands.
PART X
August 2020
CHAPTER 83
IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK ON SATURDAY EVENING WHEN LANE KNOCKED on the door of Gus Morelli’s condo—a stucco building splashed in the soft salmon and blue hues of Florida. He had taken the outdoor stairwell to the third floor and now stood on the gangplank. The door opened, and the retired detective stood in the frame.
“So,” Lane said. “How’d you do?”
“Come on in and I’ll tell you all about it,” Gus said, waving Lane inside. “I’ve got beer or soda.”
Lane reached for the back of his ball cap and felt the aching wound it was hiding. He’d love a beer right about now but thought better of it.
“I’ll take a Diet Coke, if you’ve got one.”
“Sure thing.”
Lane walked into the kitchen, which bled into a dining area and then a living room with furniture positioned around a television that hung on the wall. Beyond the living room was a screened-in balcony, the doors of which were wide open to allow the warm ocean breeze to rush through the condo.
“We can talk on the lanai,” Gus said as he reached into the fridge and grabbed a Coke and a beer.
The third floor offered a splendid view of the gulf with the beach running east and west. To the south, across the water, the buildings of Naples could be seen. The sun was angled off to the west, skipping its reflection along the water and stretching long shadows from those walking the beach.
Lane took a seat in one of the patio chairs. Gus sat across from him. The detective took a sip of beer.
“I worked the phone all day. My contacts came through and pointed me in the right direction. I took it from there. It made me feel like a cop again, and I think you’ll find what I stumbled across pretty interesting.”
“I’m all ears.”
Gus stood up. “Follow me. To get the full picture, we should probably start at the beginning.”
Lane put his Diet Coke down and walked from the balcony, watching as the retired detective limped for a few strides until he seemed to get his rhythm. They headed to a room off the living room. When Gus swung the door open, Lane saw a bedroom filled with boxes. The brown cardboard boxes lined the far wall and were stacked three high.
“What’s all this?” Lane asked.
“I’m a retired detective. Boxes follow me everywhere I go. I used to keep these in a storage unit up in New York. When I decided to finally retire, they followed me down here.”
Lane walked a little closer to the room, eyeing the scores of boxes. “What are they?”
“Cases from my career that never stopped whispering to me.”
“Meaning you never solved them?”
“Some are cold. Others bothersome.”
Gus pointed to a single box that rested at the foot of the bed. “This one is flat-out disturbing, and I was never able to let it go.”
Gus walked into the room and grabbed the box by the handles.
“I called it the penny case.”
CHAPTER 84
RORY AND RYDER SAT IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER AS THE HOUR-GLASS spun on the screen. They were in the three-season room of the cottage, and Rory didn’t bother explaining the makeshift corkboard that stood on the easel and displayed the faces of every dead person connected to the Westmont Prep case. Nor did she explain the antique porcelain doll that sat next to them on the desk, the finishing touches of which Rory had completed this morning.
Rory caught her reflection on the computer screen and saw the outline of her glasses where they jetted from her temples. She adjusted them now as she waited for the results of the DNA search she and Ryder were conducting. Rory pulled her beanie hat lower on her forehead and was about to adjust the top button on her windbreaker when the computer went black for a moment, and then blinked back to life.
MATCH
Rory looked at Ryder.
“It was Marc McEvoy’s blood at the scene,” Rory said.
“Son of a bitch,” Ryder said, barely moving her lips. She turned to Rory. “Now what?”
Rory remembered the description and the details of the report. Trace amounts of unidentified blood were found both on Tanner Landing’s body and on the girl who was found at the scene.
“Now we talk to Gwen Montgomery,” Rory said. “And find out what she knows about Marc McEvoy.”
CHAPTER 85
GWEN MONTGOMERY CRIED AS SHE STARED AT THE WOMAN ACROSS from her. She looked around the room and took deep breaths. She had come here prepared to share her secret. Prepared to finally reveal the things she knew about the night Tanner and Andrew were killed. She had run through the events many times in her mind but had never spoken them aloud. Until now. She had come here to clear her conscience and dispel her demons. To finally reveal the truth about that night. To finally divulge what they had hidden from the police.
Gwen and her friends knew Mr. Gorman was innocent. They knew he hadn’t killed Tanner and Andrew. They had seen him that night when they peeked through the kitchen window. He was cooking at his stove. Gavin had rung the doorbell a moment later, and they all ran into the night, to her car, to speed toward mile marker thirteen on Route 77. The time line of when Tanner and Andrew had been killed made it impossible for Mr. Gorman to have done it. They all knew this. As rumors spread through campus, and as details about Mr. Gorman’s involvement in the killings trickled into the media’s coverage of the killings, they knew those rumors and details were incorrect. But to reveal this to police would require Gwen and her friends to lay out their own time line of that night, and they were scared that doing so would reveal more than they wanted the police to know—specifically, that they had hit and killed a man while speeding along Route 77 on the way to the back entrance of the woods that led to the boarding house.
When they made it to the house that night, they found Tanner impaled on the fence and ran for their lives. All but Gwen. She had tried to take Tanner off the fence. In the process she had covered herself in his blood. Tanner’s blood mixed with that of the man she killed, whose body she had rolled into Baker’s Creek. In the days that followed, she learned his name—Marc McEvoy. Mr. Gorman soon came under suspicion, and they heatedly debated whether they should come forward with what they knew or stay silent. They argued long enough for Mr. Gorman to take his own life. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. Their guilt smoldered until it lured Bridget first, and then Danielle and Theo to do the same thing. At least, that was what Gwen believed. Until now. Until she sat in this room and stared at the woman across from her.
She had come here to cleanse her soul. She could not live with her secret any longer. Now she was staring at the woman across from her and nervously fidgeting with the flattened penny between her fingers. She cried again and wanted to scream. But she knew it was pointless.
CHAPTER 86
BACK ON THE LANAI, THE CARDBOARD BOX SAT ON THE PATIO TABLE. Detective Morelli fingered through the folders until he pulled one from the box and opened it to his notes. As Gus paged through a file, he spoke without looking at Lane. He turned one page after another, shuffling through the notes as if looking through a forgotten childhood diary.
“I was called out to Oak Point Yard, a rail yard in the Bronx. Teenage kid versus train, and I was the detective on call. When I got there, it was a mess. The ME was already on the scene. The vic was in pieces, not much left of him after th
e train dragged the life out of him. When I arrived I talked with the parents. They were distraught, as you can imagine. But then I learned the vic’s brother was with him when it happened. So, of course, I wanted to talk with the brother. I wanted to get him alone so he couldn’t rely on his parents. But I could sense right away a weird dynamic between the parents and this kid. Then I heard that the family was fostering this kid. They had taken him in six months earlier.”
“How old was he?”
“The foster kid was fourteen. The kid who was hit by the train was sixteen.”
Gus took a sip of beer and turned the page in the folder. Lane got the impression that Gus didn’t need his notes. The retired detective seemed to remember the case as if he had worked it the day before.
“So, I managed to get the kid alone. He told me that he and his foster brother had been playing on the tracks and that they had done it a bunch of times before. Said they went out there to flatten pennies on the tracks.”
Lane’s forehead creased in concentration at the mention of the flattened pennies.
“The story went like this,” Gus said. “They’d each put a new penny on the rails, then back away and watch the train run them over. The night the brother got killed, they were doing the same thing. Only this time, the brother got too close to the tracks and the train hit him.”
Lane nodded and cocked his head. “That’s a tragic story.”
“Maybe, if it were true. But to me it sounded like a load of bullshit. First off, the kid said they’d done it many times before. So, you’d figure they get better at it with each time, not worse.”
Lane shrugged and pouted his lower lip. “Yeah, I see your point. But kids are dumb. They’re risk-takers. They think they’re immortal. I can see a kid getting too confident the more he goes to the tracks, and then getting overconfident. Getting too close.”
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