“I’ll be here for a bit longer today. I’m staying for a couple of days before I need to go back to take care of a few things.”
He nods. “Good. I’ll have something for you to review tomorrow.”
Sixteen
As we’re walking away from the evidence table, Ava looks over at Xavier.
“I thought you had already talked to him,” she says. ”You said you told them I said hi.”
“I wasn’t talking about him,” Xavier says. “I was talking about the ghosts.”
I let out a long breath.
“Ghosts?” she asks. “Oh, my gosh. That’s right. You were here doing a paranormal investigation when you uncovered the murders.”
“No,” I clarify. ”I was distinctly not doing a paranormal investigation. I was here because a woman went missing. A real, live woman disappeared moments after appearing on camera on a live stream I was watching. That was why I was here.”
“I was doing a paranormal investigation,” Xavier offers.
I throw my hand up toward him. “There you go.”
I’m headed up toward the cabin where a little girl named Violet Montgomery disappeared, setting off the chain of events that brought me here. And that will never leave Dean’s mind. Now that we know what happened to her, I want to go over the area more carefully. While she didn’t have anything to do with the other deaths, her disappearance and the discovery of her body in a cave in an isolated part of the woods brought attention to this place.
Laura Mitchell was devastated thinking about the small child’s death, a sign that told me she wasn’t the one responsible for it. But Rodney didn’t seem to show as much concern about it. That tells me he was more calculating than his mother. While she never considered their actions wrong, and therefore wouldn’t have tried to think of ways not to get caught, Rodney did.
He might not have fully understood the magnitude of their actions, but I wouldn’t put it past him to be drawn to the cabin where Violet’s family was staying. It’s possible some of the answers we’re looking for could be connected to this space.
Ava stops a few yards from the cabin and stares at it.
“Wow,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It’s just… this is Cabin Thirteen.”
That makes my skin crawl a little bit, but I don’t show it.
“Yes,” I nod. “It is. One of them, anyway.”
“Exactly,” she says. “What are the chances you would have two cases that would bring you to different places with the same name?”
I immediately look over at Xavier. “That was rhetorical. She does not want you to calculate that.”
He nods and I can almost see the gears that were starting to churn in his head slow and stop.
“It’s so surreal to be here,” she says, looking around. “I know you were an agent for a long time before your first run-in with a Cabin Thirteen, but that was the case that brought my attention to you. That was what really solidified in my mind that this is what I want to do. That I could do it.”
“Weren’t you already in school by then?” I ask.
“Yeah,” I was. “That’s the thing. I started wanting to be in the FBI when I was much younger. It was something I thought about a lot. I really thought it could be an amazing life. You know, when you’re in elementary school and middle school and the teachers are asking you that whole, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ thing?” she asks. “Everybody is saying things like singer. Actor. Marine biologist.”
“That’s a big one,” I acknowledge.
“Right? I never really understood that. I mean, I get that dolphins are cute, but there’s a big jump between having sparkly ones on your notebook and wanting to study them intensively for your career. And yet, I’m the one they all looked at strangely when I said I wanted to be in the FBI. As if it was a completely ridiculous thing to consider. I can’t tell you how many guys said I couldn’t do that because I’m a girl,” she says.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I commiserate. “But why? Why would you want to do this? Do you have family in law enforcement?”
She goes quiet and turns her back to the cabin to look out toward the lake. “There was a case in my hometown. I was really young, but I remember hearing about it. My parents were watching the news one night and they started talking about this disappearance. It was the first time I ever heard about somebody being missing and I was fascinated. They tried to turn the TV off before I heard much of it, but I was hooked. I watched every news report I could and tried to find the newspaper to read. I had to know what happened.”
“What case was it?” I ask.
“A girl named Bethany DeAngelis. There’s a camp right outside my hometown. Or, there used to be. I guess it’s still there, but it hasn’t operated in years. Camp Pine Trails. When Bethany was just out of high school, she went to spend her last summer there as a camper. Her best friend woke up one morning and Bethany was missing. They found her bathing suit at the edge of the lake, but that was it. They couldn’t find any other trace of her. That sparked my interest in crime. I knew I wanted to find people who did terrible things to other people.”
“I know the case,” I tell her. “Fifteen years later her best friend went back to the camp because someone wanted to do a film adaptation of Bethany’s story.”
“Right,” Ava nods, looking over her shoulder at me and nodding.
Before I can say anything else, I notice Dean coming toward us.
“We should get going if we’re going to meet Allison Garrett on time,” he says.
I glance down at my phone.
“I didn’t realize how long we’ve been here,” I say. “Do
