“There's no lack of that around here,” I say, looking pointedly at Ken.
“Say what you want about me,” he protests. “I didn't make up the stories of this area. Dismal Creek is one of them, but that's miles from here. I'm talking about right here at Arrow Lake. The deaths and the disappearances didn't start with Violet. Look into it. And tell me what you think about a curse.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“How were none of those cases mentioned as possibly being linked to the rest of the Arrow Lake disappearances and murders?” Sam asks later that night as I sit in the small patch of floor where I found the best reception.
“I mean, some of the links are pretty tangential. A lot of these people are either just suspected of being somewhere near Sherando Ridge, or there are other theories as to what might have happened to them. The ones who were definitely here were a little bit further away from the campground itself, or there are no conclusive dates as to when they disappeared. There were a few deaths that seem suspicious but could have also been animal attacks. It's not always easy to make links between cases.”
“I know that,” Sam replies. “It just seems that if there was a pattern of this type of situation, they would be paying better attention. They would have traced other incidents.”
“I agree,” I tell him. “And it seems they've started.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asks.
“I talked to Detective Fitzgerald a little more after looking into these cases, and he let me know that the station just received a call from another family reporting that they believe their daughter might have been killed in the area.”
“What?”
“Apparently their daughter went missing five years ago, and there's been no sign of her. No word from her. When her mother heard about the investigation and the bag of bones, it reminded her that before her disappearance, her daughter talked about possibly coming here with her friends.”
“But she didn't know if she actually disappeared from here?”
“Apparently not,” I say. “According to the report, she went out with a cell phone and didn't come back. The police took the girl to be a runaway, but the parents don't think she ran away.”
“What do you think?” he asks.
“That I have a lot more to look into,” I sigh. “Remember, those bones aren’t even proven to have actually existed. They were just talked about by a couple of paranormal investigators. No photographic evidence. They weren't on camera. As far as we know, they just made them up.”
“But if they didn't…” Sam says.
“Then, I don't know. It means somebody was out in the woods that night and moved them. But the question is, why were they there? Did whoever had them want them found? Or was moving them a frantic effort to cover them up?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“The guy Adrian Slatton who was staying in the cabin next to the Montgomery house is going to be at the station. We're going to ask him about the photography project he did. Evidently, it had a lot to do with the history of the area. I want to know if he knows anything about all of these mysterious deaths. Then we get to talk to Carrie and Travis Montgomery. Violet's parents.”
“Oh, wow," Sam whistles. “That's going to be a fun conversation.”
“Somehow, I don't think so," I say.
“I miss you,” he says.
“I miss you, too. Are you going to be able to come up here?" I ask.
"Hopefully I will in the next couple of days.”
"Good. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Goodnight.”
“We divorced four years ago,” Travis says.
“Okay,” I nod. “Did that have to do with your daughter going missing?”
“No,” he says. “Actually, the opposite. Carrie and I got so much closer after losing Violet. All we had left was each other, and we clung to that. I guess it just wasn't enough to sustain everything.”
“I heard somebody else mention there was some tension between you two that summer. Can you remember why somebody would say that?” I ask.
“That was early in our relationship,” he says. “We had a four-year-old child, but we hadn't actually been together even a year yet.”
“I don't understand,” I say.
“We had a one-night stand,” Travis says bluntly. “It wasn’t meant to be anything or go anywhere. I was leaving for a huge job opportunity when it happened. Don't get me wrong, Carrie was amazing then. She was beautiful and funny. We hit it off as soon as we met, and it was as if we had known each other forever. But we stayed friends. Then, right before I left, we were more than friends for one night. It was a great memory to take with me, but I figured that was it for Carrie and me. Until I came back to town and discovered she and I had a daughter.”
“Wow,” I say. “That would be quite the shock. And I imagine would put a lot of pressure on a relationship that was still new, in the greater scheme of things.”
“Absolutely,” he says. “It's as though we were trying to figure out who each other was, within not only our relationship but with our daughter. Sometimes it seemed as if Carrie was almost jealous of the time I spent with Violet.”
“And were you jealous of her, too?”
“Yeah, in a way, I guess I was. It's not as if I could really be mad at her for not telling me she was pregnant. Again, we weren't in a relationship. No matter how it seemed, we barely knew each other. We’d only been friends for a couple of months, and she
