Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Eleven

The weekend away was the reset most of us needed. The first day, I had wanted to turn on the radio or the television every few hours to see if anything had happened. But Courtney was taking care of me. She would not let me obsess over it.

And I would not let her obsess over the many things that were threatening to undo her.

The cabin was indeed a mansion. It was styled as a log cabin, but it featured a hot tub and sauna, a movie room, and a playroom with a pool table, pinball machines and video games. There were a lot of things to distract us.

On Sunday morning, as we were packing up to go, Courtney let me turn on a radio. We'd not gotten a call from Lindsey, so we were left with the impression that things were okay again and that the planned ten o'clock pickup time stood.. But I said I needed to be sure.

At the top of the hour, the news started with an update on the nation-wide manhunt: there had been verified sightings out west only yesterday. Police were closing in. It was a matter of time.

"See?" Courtney had said, slapping my arm.

She ran to tell everyone else. I sat on the bed in one of the guest rooms and cried.

When we got back to camp on Sunday morning, there was no time to get reacquainted. The kids were scheduled to arrive right behind us after lunch. We scrambled to pull together our programming plans. Tracy and I sat at a picnic table outside the dining hall and looked at the schedule Jay and Lucy had handed us nearly the moment we had gotten back. He'd given me a sly, shy smile as he did so, and my stomach did that pleasant swooping thing.

As the first of the boatloads approached the dock, and I waited ready to help, Lindsey came up behind me.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"I think so. They're sure he's gone? What happened?"

"Apparently they searched the island top to bottom. They found where you said the camp was. It was gone, but they could see that it had been there. There was no trace of him, or a dog. And I guess later they found that stolen canoe abandoned all the way across the bay."

"And now they think he's gone west?"

"They seem pretty sure."

I nodded. "Okay."

"Really? You're okay?"

I nodded. "And you?" I asked.

"I'm going to lose my job when this gets out," she admitted, then smiled widely. It did not reach her eyes, but it would be enough for the campers.

The big boat was pulling up, and we scrambled to help them dock and get the campers and counsellors and all their stuff out of the boar. Sam was waiting with the ATV and trailer to haul luggage, and Bruce took the boat out immediately for the next batch. He would do that for three hours, until everyone was there.

The counsellors looked somewhat shell-shocked, but the campers were brand new, knowing nothing of the past month, and were screaming and excited for two weeks in their favourite place on earth. It was almost enough to fix the hole in my heart that I only just realizing was there.

* * *

The second session ran smoothly. Gradually, the exhaustion in all our faces was replaced with something like joy. Except for Lindsey. Members of the board arrived mid-session for a tour and certainly to grill Lindsey and Mark. When they left, Lindsey looked defeated. And from that moment, I rarely saw the two of them together anywhere.

Tracy and I were permitted to run our night time nature experience again, to great success. No more drowned girl sightings.

The girl, in fact, was not found at all, and though none of us talked about it, it remained a blemish on the summer. The police had moved on, moved further out into the open bay where the current might have taken her, and we saw them and their boats only on occasion for the next two weeks.