Vanishing

35.

Detective Reyes

Present Day

"Come on, Mrs. Dawson. Relieve yourself of the secrets already. Don't you want to help your son? These kids you watched grow up?" Altman sighs.

I feel his pain.

"First of all, you need to understand that I love my children. I swear I do." She whispers, clenching her eyes shut. "I did what I had to do to protect them. Both."

I am not sure where this is going so I hit the recorder in my pocket and lean forward.

"I have no doubt that you love them. You got her help. Correct?"

"I tried. Dr. Phelps came so highly recommended. We tried everything. For years. At first, when she was ten. It was not so bad. She was changing. That awkward phase between kid and preteen. But I started to notice things. At first, I thought I was imagining it."

"Something happened that made you seek medical help." Altman adds.

"Yes." She shudders.

"What was it?" I press.

"I was putting laundry away and I went into Cynthia's closet. All the way in the back there was this poster. She had made it I could tell. It had a picture from a magazine of a bride. Whatever right? She is a ten-year-old girl. She had glued her head on. So what? Harmless."

My stomach cramps. I do not like where this is headed.

"When I shoved the clothes aside, I fell backwards. Shocked to my core. Because the grooms head was my son." Her voice breaks then. Her body shuddered. "After three visits with Doctor Phelps, he diagnosed her as manic schizophrenic. He broke it down for me, but I already knew what it meant. We got her on meds, and everything went back to the way it was supposed to be. I swear it." She breathes.

"For how long?" I ask cocking my brow.

"For three years everything seemed fine. She was happy and she was not openly ogling her own brother." She grits out the last part. "Or she was hiding it better. I do not know anymore."

"But something else happened?" Altman sighs. Clearly running out of patience.

"That camping trip. Since she turned thirteen, I could see her mask slipping. I tried to sneak her meds into her food, but she always knew. Doctor Phelps said being a manic schizophrenic makes you paranoid so either way she did not eat what I gave her. Which in turn meant no medication."

"Why did you allow her to go?" I grit out. My jaw is aching from how hard my teeth are grinding.

"She promised." She whispers hugging herself. "For five years I dealt with this issue by myself. Do you know what that does to a person?" She seethes.

My eyes widen. This is worse than I thought.

"Your husband and son don't know?" I spit standing up.

"Of course not! They deserved a normal life."

"What happened that night?" I sigh pacing the kitchen. I listen to the clock ticking down. We are running out of time. They are running out of time.

"I went upstairs to put laundry away. Story of my life. But I found a journal. And I read it. And I knew she was planning something terrible. I had to do something. I functioned as any other parent would in my situation."

"You went to the campground." Altman concedes. Eyeing me like I am a caged animal.

"I had no choice!"

"Theres always a choice!" I boom making her flinch. "You made the wrong one to protect a secret. And now there are six lives in danger. What? Happened?"

"I had been texting her with a fake number. I was trying to scare her into behaving, but it was not working. Months I tried." She shakes her head. "When I got there, I saw her traipsing through the woods ready to do ungodly things to those girls. I made a noise, and she followed it like I assumed she would. For such a brainiac she was not bright." She sighs.

"Then?" I press.

"I hit her with a shovel. Once, she screamed and fell to her knees. Twice she was trying to crawl away. Three times, she was out. I thought she was dead, so I buried her. I never understood how you never found any blood or a body. I never thought that she would have lived!" She screams.

"Let us go. We need to get to that cabin. We are running out of time."

She does not hesitate to follow us to my car. I gun it as Altman calls for a chopper. She knows she needs to be there for this. She knows what exactly her daughter wants, and she is the only one that can tell us how far from stable Cynthia Dawson is after ten years in hiding and seclusion. I just hope to whoever is listening that those kids are okay.