Ted’s speech felt pressured. He couldn’t believe how quickly he could tell a story he’d suppressed for thirty years. It poured out of him either in the manner of a nervous twelve-year-old or a good old southern Hoosier with a couple beers in him.
“Lloyd mighta been in a costume from one of those dumb space movies from back then. His head was nothing but a screen and a hat. Scared the crap outta everybody. Especially Bud, who was right there next to him.”
“Okay. So Lloyd was drunk and scaring people. That I believe. What happened then?”
“Bud tore into him, kicking and screaming. Then Lloyd did something, you know, to defend himself, which I couldn’t blame him for. Either took a swing or kicked. Sump’m. And Bud went flying. After that, Bud got back up and attacked again.”
“My God.”
“By then, Lloyd was out-of-his-mind mad. He picked Bud up and threw him.”
Karen gasped.
“And then, good ole’ Hoss… you know those two hated each other’s guts?… right when Lloyd threw Bud, Hoss punched Lloyd, smack in the mosquito net. Real hard.”
Karen nodded, her eyes wide open. It looked to Ted like she was all in.
“So then,” Ted said, “Lloyd hit Hoss back. So hard in the side of the head… Hoss spun all the way around and fell face down. Then Lloyd just...” Ted’s wavering voice faded away for a moment. “Lloyd picked Hoss up and carried him over to the fire. Swear to God he was gonna throw him in.”
“Dad said Lloyd had a gun over there. The investigators found it in a bag. I overheard Dad telling Mom he thought Lloyd was going to shoot himself that night.”
“I gathered that from your letter and the newspapers they sent Dad from Traverse City. Lloyd seemed pretty bent on taking some of us with him.”
Ted’s speech slowed, became more measured again. “He was going to throw Hoss in that fire, Karen. I knew it, Buck knew it. And when Hoss regained consciousness, he knew it, too. I took off running, but I didn’t get there in time.”
~~~
Frank woke up with a start at around seven and went home to shower. It was still holding-pattern time. He’d learned nothing between two and seven in the morning and rolled back in around nine. Splashing some dispatcher coffee into a cup, he walked back to the cubicle.
“Morning, Frank,” Todd Maddox said. “Good to see you taking your time today.”
Frank opened his mouth for a sharp retort that didn’t come.
“Guess who owns the home in Lake Ann,” Maddox said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Who?”
“Man named Roger Dinwiddie.”
“You call the address?”
“Sure did. No answer. If Mr. Dinwiddie’s like most Midwesterners his age, he’s liable to be in Florida for the winter.”
“Another dead end, then,” Frank said, sitting at his desk and looking at the envelope holding the knife. He sipped from the styrofoam cup.
“Maybe. But Ted’s young love. This Karen? Writes him a letter from that address, right?”
“Sure.”
“And the letter’s return address says L-L-S,” Maddox said, “which, from the typewritten story might stand for Loon Lake Sloth, right?”
“Okay.”
“Check this out.” Maddox handed over a fresh copy of the author’s latest Loon Lake Sloth book.
Frank almost dropped the book when he saw the author’s name.
“Looks like Ted’s old flame is the author,” Maddox said.
Frank turned the book over, where the About the Author section included her picture. “So this is the girl, Karen?”
“Can’t be sure, Frank. A good defense attorney’d gum up the courts calling evidence like that circumstantial.”
“I’ll take my chances. Nice work, Todd.” He thought about Karen’s uncle. Lloyd. Looking at this woman’s professional photo, you’d never suspect her uncle used to make passes at her. What a person can hide behind a smile, he thought.
“‘Karen Dinwiddie,’” Frank said, reading the back cover, “‘is the author of six previous’ blah, blah, blah ‘books. She is currently at work on a new novel,’ blah, blah, and ‘she lives in northern Michigan.’ May take a little time to narrow down where she lives, and her number’ll be unlisted.”
“But we have our ways,” Maddox said, “and in your sluggardly absence this morning, I’ve taken the liberty to do a little digging.”
CHAPTER 51
“You didn’t get there in time for what?” Karen asked.
“I don’t know,” Ted said. “To try and stop it, I guess. Buck got there first. He was closer. Lloyd had a hold of Hoss, who’d started to struggle. Buck pulled his knife out of somewhere, jumped on Lloyd’s back, and… he slit his throat.
“Deeply, I mean. Lloyd bled out in almost no time. He dropped Hoss next to the fire. Then he fell in himself.”
Karen’s green eyes welled with tears.
Ted continued. “Burning sticks flew everywhere when Lloyd fell in that fire, and you know. The fire spread.”
Karen had nothing to say.
“Buck saved Hoss’s life, Karen.”
She blinked tears down her cheeks. “And you tried to stop Lloyd—”
“I’m so sorry, Karen.”
“And you were too afraid to tell the story.”
Ted didn’t expect a reaction of sympathy. Not for him, anyway.
“Hoss didn’t want to tell anybody. And to his credit, he essentially wanted to protect Buck. Or at least that’s what I’ve told myself all this time. Or no, that’s what I’ve wanted to tell myself all this time. I really think Hoss made up stories to make us want to protect Buck, and that all Hoss wanted to do was protect himself. But either way, I didn’t want to tell anyone, either. Not up here. I just wanted to go home and tell my dad.
“I committed a crime. My dad was prosecutor at home, and I heard him talk all the time about crime scenes, footprints, evidence. We left half a million footprints over there—which the huge rain that ended the drought washed away—but I made sure we didn’t leave anything else. We dealt with the bloody clothes, the clean-up, and everything. For the last few days of camp, we had to act like we didn’t know anything. None of the adults ever seemed to be suspicious.
“Then I went home. And as it turned out, I never told Dad.”
“Why not?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. But I’ve decided it’s because, at least back then, I thought I’d lose him like I lost Mom. I knew at the end of the summer, I was going to lose Zeke and Neil. And you. That was the way things were going to be, no matter what. But going home after all that and losing Dad?
“Look. I knew Dad wasn’t going to leave me. Not physically, anyway, but he might’ve left me in a different way.
“I knew I needed to tell him, but the more days that went by, the more it seemed like he and I had, you know, reset. It was like we’d always been before Mom died. I was happy he was happy. It didn’t take too much longer before telling him seemed impossible.”
Karen dropped her gaze to the ground.
“You’re the very first to hear it, Karen.” She didn’t respond. “You remember that long letter you sent me after camp? The one where you told me about Lloyd and what he did to you?”
She faced him again. “Vividly.”
“You put a certain passage in there that helped me think it was okay to keep the story to myself.”
Karen narrowed her eyes. “What passage?”
“‘As long as Dad’s here, I find myself not caring at all about Lloyd. He doesn’t deserve to be cared about.’ Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Her eyes reddened again, but only slightly.
“‘Maybe I’ll be able to forget about him altogether. For Dad and me, things are getting back to normal, and I’m happy about that, because I love him.’”
Karen scowled for a second but seemed to give up on fighting back a fresh wave of tears. She whispered dreamily, “I remember writing that.”
“I spent that whole summer thinking Dad wanted to get rid of me and started by sending me to camp. It was so nice to find out, when he came to get me, how wrong I’d been. He’d healed after Mom died. He was happy. My old dad. I guess after I got home, I was afraid to put him through what happened up here.”
“I can’t believe you remember that passage.”
“Verbatim. I used it like a mantra for a long time. Read it and memorized it and repeated it every day. Plus, I still read your letter from time to time.”
“You still have it?”
“Oh, hell yes, I do.”
She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “I guess it still rings true, doesn’t it?”
“You’d think so,” Ted said, “but it’s time—it’s way past time—to end the lie.”
“I’ve looked at it all differently, Ted. I always thought Lloyd’s death was my fault.”
“No.” Hearing that made his chest hurt. “Why?”
“Because he went camping across the lake after he got fired. And I got him fired. I spent the last thirty years knowing, feeling in my bones, that at one time or another, Lloyd was going to kill himself because of me.”
Ted hadn’t ever considered that Karen might feel some guilt over the matter. She continued in her hushed tone.
“I took my own dad’s happiness as a reason to be okay with what happened to Lloyd. Same as you, I guess.”
“Karen,” he said. “All you did is slap him across the face when he deserved it.”
The sadness burned in his chest like never before. At twelve, Ted’s respect for her blossomed fully when he read about how she’d defended herself. He was proud of her. He’d loved her so much it hurt. Knowing he’d never see her again didn’t help things, either. He spent all those years trying to convince himself—before Kathryn, Zeke, and Neil, that is—his crime had no victims. But it was clear. Ted’s crime had victims. He just didn’t know Karen was one of them. It was time, Ted thought again, way past time, to finish the story.
“I’m going to tell the story today, Karen. It’s time to end the lie. But I have to get into Cabin Seven first.”
She studied Ted for a moment. “Why do we need to do that?”
‘We.’ I dragged her in. “Are you aware that I still haven’t told you why I’m here.”
She didn’t move. “I suppose you haven’t.”
“Somebody’s killing us, Karen.”
It was as though she’d forgotten that part of the story. “Why?”
“It has to be because of this Lloyd business. It’s a cover-up. They took the records from the office and—I can just about guarantee—the plaque from Cabin 7.”
Her piercing green gaze of skepticism returned. “Who?”
“I don’t know exactly who. But I’m pretty sure it’s because Buck is running for president.”
CHAPTER 52
Her mouth fell open. “That’s Buck?”
“Yep.”
Karen agitated quickly. “Can you give me one good reason not to go running to the police right now?”
“Yes. I sure can.”
“Tell me.”
“Run to the police right now, and you’ll get God-knows-who thinking you’re crazy. That’s the first thing. Second, they’ll pass the word around. I’m sure, by now, there’s a federal warrant out for my arrest. At least one, anyway. For crap I didn’t do, I hope you remember. But if they come and… apprehend me, and we still don’t know who was in this cabin in 1970, that record’s gonna disappear. I guarantee you that.
“Because if you go running to the police right now, you’re not gonna get just them. You’re gonna get feds, and because McDaniel Security is in bed with a lot of law enforcement?”—
“Oh, God,” Karen said with seeming revelation.
—“The last written link between the men who lived in that cabin’ll disappear. You see? Sometimes, the line between legitimate authorities and murderers gets pretty fuzzy. And I don’t know where that line is. That’s why I couldn’t just call the camp and ask for the records. I don’t know who they haven’t killed yet. And wouldn’t you know? The cabin’s right… over… there.”
She nodded with urgency and understanding.
“So here’s what I want,” Ted said. “I want to go in there. Take about five minutes. I know where the names are written down, even if the plaque’s gone.”
She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him toward Cabin 7. He walked with her. When they got there, she tried the door. Locked. Closed and forbidding, the door seemed to tell Ted it meant to stay that way. They went around to the north side of the cabin, to the window outside the counselor’s quarters.
Karen said, “My keys are in my purse, by the way. Up at the office.” She reached up and twisted the window screen’s stays. Ted marveled. Karen had involved herself and demanded action. He, on the other hand, was afraid to look at the door. That was the fundamental difference between what she and Ted had become. It was the difference between proactivity and regret. It was progress versus inertia.
“If you don’t think the plaque’s in there,” Karen said, “what record is left?”
“Graffiti.”
“Graffiti? Anything useful?”
“Yes. In the loft. Only I know about it. Names, nicknames, hometowns. McDaniel Security won’t know it’s there.”
Ted shot glances in every direction.
“Come on, Ted,” Karen said, pulling down the screen. “What’re you looking around for? You said nobody’d know to come here.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t trust anybody.”
She gave him a look that said, Oh, really.
“Except you,” he said with narrow eyes. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” she said, mocking offense.
And Jason, the Trans Am kid. Ted trusted him. And the Williams family from Sparta, now that he thought about it. And Dad and Suzanne.
Ted took a hard blink. And Frank.
I trust Frank Bruska.
“You better trust me,” she said.
“I think I can do that.”
“I haven’t broken into a cabin like this since I don’t want to remember,” Karen said. “Come on over and cup your hands and make me a step.”
Ted bent to weave his fingers together into a makeshift stirrup for Karen to step in. She braced herself with a hand on his shoulder. Bouncing on one foot to get momentum and pulling herself on the window frame with the other hand, she managed to stand in his grasp. In no time, she pulled her foot out of his hands and stood inside the cabin, on the plastic mattress of the counselor’s bed.
Like another passing cold gust, the last thirty years came and went. Something told him, She’s here, Ted. It was just as well that the wind kept any Karen fragrance away from him.
She pushed away the burlap curtain and leaned out the window. “Put the screen back for me, and I’ll open the front door for you.” She may have had a little grin on her face.
CHAPTER 53
Ted replaced the screen, twisted the stays to hold it in place, and thought about the door. He would rather huff and grunt his way through the window, but he moved toward and up the stoop. When he stepped through the cabin’s front door, something—not anything like nostalgia—flooded him. He had never so strongly wanted to be right where he stood and so fearfully run at the same time.
“Welcome back, Ted,” Karen said as he walked in. She shut the door, locking it, and peeked through the off-white curtains. “I hope it tells you what you want to know.”
When the wind gusted forcefully, the cabin groaned and creaked.
If ever there were a haunted house, this would be it. The smell of untreated lumber filled every gap in his memory. The cabin’s main room took up most of the space and was about twenty-five feet square. In front was a narrow quarters for two counselors, one on each side. In the cabin’s rear, a row of sinks hung beneath a line of old windows. Two toilets and a shower had their own space to the right.
It was a shotgun
building design. The back wall was visible from the front door. The cabin had no flat ceiling, just a gabled roof above a repeating network of rafters, cross-ties and struts. Graffiti was everywhere, the way it should be in a camp’s cabin.
Above the sink and shower rooms, hidden in shadow, was the loft. And of course, festooning the support beams were seventy-odd years of plaques. The shield-shaped cuts of wood recorded the names of every boy who ever lived in Cabin 7.
Ghostly memories slithered through the space. Ted took a step into the main room. To his right, he noticed his wooden single bed had been replaced with a set of steel bunk beds. Just next to it was another set, the place Zeke and Neil shared. The horizontal wall beams had served as shelves for their books. In the opposite corner, in the top bunk, slept Hoss. Hoss Cartwright. His first name was Willis, or Wilfred. Hoss threatening the little kids. Hoss punching Lloyd in the face. Hoss washing Lloyd’s blood into Loon Lake.
The impact Hoss had on Ted’s life was incalculable. Friend and foe both, Hoss carried a great deal of charm and no apparent conscience. Ted’s favorite of Hoss’s statements, I don’t have all the answers, just most of ’em came to mind as a quote so broadly applicable that Ted couldn’t escape using it, from time to time, over the years. Hoss, the wordsmith. Hoss, the charming manipulator. Hoss, the junior sociopath of Cabin 7. Hardly a day went by that Ted didn’t think about him.
“Ted,” Karen said, pointing upward.
Ted returned to the present. There it was. Or rather, there it wasn’t. An unfaded section of strut board sat between two plaques labeled 1969 and 1971.
“I’m not surprised. It was the last record linking us to this cabin. As far as they know.”
“All right,” she said. “To the loft.”
“Remember when graffiti was banned?” he asked. “I remember somebody, not your dad, came to talk to us one night at dinner line-up. He told us no more graffiti.”
White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2) Page 21
