“Agent Griffin,” a voice calls up from down closer to the water.
I look and see an officer coming toward me.
“Hey, Calvin,” I say.
“Good to see you back in person,” he says.
I nod. “How is everything going?”
“We’ve found quite a few more items. If you want to take a look…”
He gestures toward the beach and I nod again. “Absolutely.” I glance back over my shoulder. “Dean, I’m going down to the lake. Where’s Xavier?” I realize I can’t see him and I look around, searching the shadowy spots between the cabins and under the evidence tents. “He didn’t bring all that equipment with him again, did he?”
“No. He went up to the cabin to say hello. Just in case there are spirits there. Because, as he said, you did not conclusively prove there aren’t.”
“According to him, it’s impossible to prove something doesn’t exist,” I say.
“Exactly,” he nods.
I head down to the lake and find more people. More tarps. More evidence tags. So much came up out of the water that night; it’s hard to imagine so much more still existing beneath the dark surface of the lake. At the same time, the water stretches on far into the distance and the lake is deceptively deep. We know Rodney and Laura Mitchell were killing for years. There’s no telling how much could have sunk to the bottom or floated further out from shore. We’ll do everything possible to find as much of it as we can. We’ll figure out who it belonged to and how it got there.
I spend the next several minutes going from station to station, looking at evidence on the tarps and talking with the investigators. They catch me up on the progress that’s been made in identifying remains brought up from the water and found in the surrounding woods. We know of several victims who haven’t yet been found among the bodies, and there are other partial skeletons we haven’t been able to connect to identities yet.
So we have to keep working. We aren’t done until everybody has a name, and every person we know was lost on this campground is found and brought home.
“What’s this?” I ask, crouching down to pick up what looks like a ring from the closest tarp.
“We just found that today,” Calvin tells me. “We divided the lake up into a grid and have been sifting through the silt trying to find any other remains or belongings. That came up just a couple of hours ago.”
“Was it attached to anything?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “And nothing came up with it.”
I look at the ring, turning it from all angles to examine the unusual insignia in relief on the round front.
“Do you know what it is? What this represents?” I ask. “It looks like an organization or a fraternity. If we can identify what it is, it might help to narrow down the identity of who owned it.”
“DeMolay.”
The voice beside me makes me jump and I whip my head to the side. Ava is beside me, looking over my shoulder at the ring in my hand.
“Excuse me?” I ask.
She looks at me, then points at the ring.
“DeMolay. That ring. It’s from the International Order of DeMolay.”
I continue to stare at her, those words meaning absolutely nothing to me.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s a fraternal group. Almost like a baby version of the Freemasons.”
“Is that actually an accurate assessment of what they are? If not, for the love of God, don’t tell Xavier you said that,” I say.
“Said what?” Xavier asks, coming down the beach toward me. “I said hello to them for you, by the way.”
Now is not the time to get into another discussion about the presence of long-dead campers in and among the cabins, so I move past it. Instead, I show him the ring.
“Oh, the International Order of DeMolay,” he says.
“Does everyone know about this thing but me?” I ask.
“I’m sure not everyone,” Xavier says.
“I didn’t,” Calvin offers.
“See?” Xavier says, gesturing toward him. “He didn’t.”
“Great. But here’s the question. How obscure is this group? Could this ring be linked to a victim?” I ask.
“Maybe,” Xavier says.
“Have you checked for an engraving?” Ava asks.
I hand the ring back to Calvin. “Research the organization. Find out if there are member lists and if you can access them. Look at rings from different years; find out if there are ways to differentiate the year that particular ring was made or given to whoever owned it. That should start narrowing it down.”
Calvin nods and I head back up the beach. Ava and Xavier come quickly behind me. Closer to the cabins, another tent and table are set up to hold the evidence found in the woods. It’s nearly covered with fragments of clothing, tiny pieces of bone, papers, and other miscellaneous objects. These are only what’s been found today or possibly the in last couple of days. It will be recorded and tagged here, then collected and sent to the lab for further investigation.
I talk to the investigator nearby. They’ve found some pieces of cloth that look as if they might belong to one of the boys who went missing a decade ago but who hasn’t been found. They’ve also found items that seem to belong to people of several different ages, but they can’t be absolutely sure to whom they belong, or if they even have anything to do with the cases here. This is a campground, after all. For all we know, teenagers might have sneaked in here at night over the years and left trace evidence.
It just makes our job that much harder.
Xavier and Ava come over and I gesture toward them.
“You probably remember Xavier,” I say. “And this is …”
“Agent Aviva James,” she says, sticking out her hand and shaking the officer’s. “FBI”
“Good to meet you,” he says. He looks back at me. “I have a few more things to process and then I’ll
