It barely looks upgraded now, as we gingerly climb onto the small porch. There's a heavy lock on the door, but it must not have been secured after Ken Abbott searched inside, because it hangs open. I open the door and we step inside.
The first thing that hits me is the smell of neglect. It's a smell I'm familiar with. It's dank and humid. The mildew and the effects of nature are taking over again. Seeing the furniture still inside it is unsettling. This is the difference between closed and abandoned. It looks as though there was no planning, no preparation that took the cabin from a beloved vacation spot to a cast-aside testament to the horror this place saw.
I don't have the need to scour every inch of the cabin the way Ken Abbott did. I'm not searching for the paranormal. I want answers.
The inside of the cabin is dark, but just enough light comes through the broken shutters to let us navigate into the kitchen. The bag on my back holds a folder with the pictures of the scene from the day Violet disappeared and I pull it out so I can compare them to the way the place looks like now.
“When the police came after Violet disappeared, there were a couple of breakfast dishes in the sink and a bowl in the middle of the table. It had the tops of some strawberries in it. There wasn't any alcohol in the refrigerator. No signs of struggle. No knives or any other sharp implements missing,” I say.
“What about the bathroom?” Dean asks.
We make our way through the small living area to the bathroom. I look at it and then back through the rest of the cabin.
“It's so small,” I say. “Smaller even than I thought it would be.” I take out the picture of the bathroom the police took. “There's no medicine cabinet, so they didn't check for empty medication bottles or anything.”
I step into the bathroom and something strikes me.
“What is it?” Dean asks as I turn around a couple of times, repositioning myself to try different angles.
“This picture only really shows part of the bathroom. They took it from right outside the door. I didn't notice until right now that there's something pretty significant missing,” I say.
“What?” Dean asks.
Xavier pokes his head in.
“There's no bathtub,” he says.
I nod. “I could have sworn the report said the mother was rinsing the bathing suits in a bathtub. Didn't she say that?”
“This place was used for a few years after Violet disappeared. Maybe it was removed?” asks Xavier.
“No, that doesn’t make any sense. Besides, I don’t see how it would have even fit into this tiny room.”
“Could she have meant shower?” Dean offers.
“That doesn't seem like a very efficient way to rinse bathing suits,” I tell him. “I mean, I guess she could have been, but if she was going to rinse something, she would do it in the sink. Which means she would have been standing right in front of this mirror and could have seen almost the entire living area in the reflection.”
“But she said that she believed Violet was with Travis at the time,” Dean says. “If she was looking at that reflection and could see the living area, she would be able to see that Violet was in there, not with him. Which means, Violet wasn't in the living area. She really was out with Travis.”
I don't want to say anything yet. I'm still trying to piece the little bits together and there's enough missing that they aren't falling into place yet.
“Come on,” I say. “Let's go to the ranger’s house and get settled in.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Once we’ve gotten all of our things put away at the cabin, Dean leads us through the woods on the path he remembers taking the day Violet disappeared. There are still gaps in his memory, but as he looks around, I see recognition growing at the corners of his eyes.
“It's different,” he says. “The trees aren't the same. It's more overgrown. But this is where it was. This is where I was walking.”
“And you heard the man in the woods?” I ask.
“I saw him,” Dean nods. “Far ahead of me. Just a flicker of movement.”
I follow him as he walks further. He points out where he first saw Violet walk past.
“This is pretty far from the cabin,” I muse. “But she could have gotten up here. Which direction was she going?”
He thinks for a second, then points.
“That's in the opposite direction to the campground,” Xavier notes. “Where was she going?”
“There's a waterfall over there,” Dean says. “It's small but pretty. To a four-year-old, it would be pretty amazing.”
“Carrie Montgomery did say they had come to that cabin before. She had been going there since she was young and brought Violet every summer. She could have remembered seeing the waterfall,” I mention.
“A four-year-old is very unlikely to have the concrete thought and long-term memory necessary to retain how to get from the cabin through this type of wooded area to a waterfall,” Xavier says.
“And I doubt her mother would have brought her through this kind of terrain. Even if she did bring her to the waterfall, they would have gone down a path. Not through this dense section of trees where people don't seem to go very often. She must have just been lost,” I say. “She thought she was heading back to camp but was actually going in the opposite direction.”
“She was going the other way when I saw her the second time,” Dean adds.
“Show me where,” I say.
The walk from where we are to the
