He's silent for several beats when I'm done.
“Sam?” I ask.
“I'm here,” he answers.
“What are you thinking?”
“It's a lot to think about,” he says.
“No, it's not,” I reply. “He didn't do this.”
“Babe, I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying it's a lot of strange details that are adding up. You yourself said that his description of that girl in the case file was really odd. Now you find out he was at the campground each of those four years? And that time is missing from the night of Ken’s investigation?”
“What about the other deaths? The other people who disappeared, before Violet? The ones who could be linked to these situations. He couldn't have committed all of these crimes. Some of those people disappeared or died when he was seven or eight years old. He couldn't have.”
“No,” Sam says. “But those are not verified links to these cases. In fact, some of them have other explanations.”
“Other explanations that haven't been proven,” I counter.
“Emma, I know you love your cousin. But you can't let yourself be blinded,” he says.
“Are you seriously saying this to me right now?” I ask. “You're asking me to consider my cousin, the only one I have, by the way, of serial murder? And not just serial murder. But beginning a killing spree at the age of thirteen?”
“I'm saying don't discount what he's telling you. And find out why someone might want him to say it,” Sam says. “I’m saying this just means we have to try even harder to get to the bottom of this.”
Chapter Thirty
I sit up for the rest of the night going over the cases again and again. I have to be missing something. There has to be something I didn't see the first time. Some sort of link.
As the night wears on, I put on the slideshow of the photo documentary Adrian Slatton worked on with the local historian. I quickly realize it isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I’d had the impression it was more about the distant past of the park and the campground. Instead, it's obvious that many years of work went into this project. There are images from summers over several years juxtaposed with images of what this area was like before it was turned into a national park.
One set shows lighthearted fun and frivolity, people trekking through the trees and experiencing the beauty of nature. The other shows grit and determination. Devotion to the mountain. A hard, but beautiful way of life. All those aspects exist together. Not just on the page, but in every day this park welcomes visitors. Those people are long gone, but they are far from forgotten. At least by the land itself.
Not everybody who walks along the trails or sets up camp understands the significance of the land itself. They might not realize that lives were put on the line in order to protect homes. Families resisted when the government came in and tried to clear them out. They struggled and pushed through almost unimaginable obstacles just so they could retain the homes and the lives they loved.
Signs of it are everywhere if you know where to look. Not the types of signs I always expect to see when I'm revisiting an old crime scene. Those are the formalities. The lip service made by the living to sound as if they haven't pushed victims out of their minds.
The signs of those people on the park are the actual lingering remnants of their days spent on the mountain. Bits of crumbling wood, difficult to differentiate from the trees on the ground. Houses sinking back toward the earth. Sets of stone steps that lead up to nothingness, because what was once there is now gone.
And of course, the graves dotting the mountain. Mostly simple and often impossible to read, but each with a history long forgotten, buried in the earth itself.
As I go through the images again, a couple of them stand out to me. I'm not sure exactly what they mean yet, but I file them away in the back of my mind. Something about them pulls heavily on my thoughts, and I know that means something. I look at them again and my tired eyes burn, telling me I'm not going to retain anything. But I look anyway.
By the time Sam gets there in the middle of the morning, I'm asleep on the couch, one hand still resting on the keyboard of my computer open on the floor beneath me.
I wake up to the feeling of his kiss and the smell of strong black coffee.
“You're here,” I smile, opening my eyes.
“I told you I was coming,” he shrugs, taking one coffee cup out of the carrier he's holding and offering it to me. “Did you forget?”
“No,” I say. “But I didn't expect you until later.”
“You sounded so upset last night, I didn't want to be away from you any longer than I had to be.”
“That's so sweet, baby, but I'm going to be fine," I tell him.
“I know you are. You always are. But maybe I'm not if I'm away from you.”
I smile and tilt my face toward him for another kiss.
“I'm glad you're here,” I say.
“I am, too,” he says. “How is Dean?”
“Not great,” I say. “This is really getting him worked up. He's scared and hating himself.”
“Have you looked into what he said? About his being in the park all those years?” he asks.
“Of course. I sat up all night looking into it. Nothing proves he wasn't, which isn't surprising. He was a young teenager. Essentially, I could find out he hadn't been arrested during those times. That's it. He has some old pictures scanned into his computer that look as though they're
