Return to The Quarry

Chapter Twenty

 "Okay," Laura said, trying to sort out the jumbled pile of thoughts that was her mind. "Timeline."

"Well," Anton began, "institutionalized guy fakes his own death." Anton worked the keyboard. "Yeah. The dates line up. Shortly after the escape and he was presumed drowned, he shows up here with an assumed name and is hired as a low-level security guard."

Kaitlyn folded her arms and leaned against an empty bookcase.

"I get that being here, he might have learned all about the closing of the hotel and the need to get in contact with all of us. But why would he then pretend to be the psychologist?"

Laura rolled her head from side to side, stretching her tense shoulders. "Why does he want to kill us?"

Before anyone could answer, something moved outside the building. They could hear the sounds of twigs snapping and hear the scraping of branches against the log exterior.

Anton practically tumbled out of the office chair.

"Jesus, hide!"

Laura and Kaitlyn followed Anton's lead, ducking down low and sliding into any little hole or gap in the furniture.

Laura backed herself into a small enclosed space made by a bunch of metal desks that were stacked as neatly as possible. The glare from the computer screen flooded over the gray carpet and underneath the legs of the bottom-most desk. In its feeble illumination, she saw a pile of discarded items, apparently forgotten where the cavity was situated. Mostly a landslide of unused manila folders, partially used reams of paper, and cans of compressed air in varying degrees of usage. But one item in particular laying across the top of all of this caught her attention and held it.

It was the lid of a copier paper box full of bits of cut paper and printed materials. Something about it looked out of place to her and held her gaze.

In the cubicles, nothing stirred. The only sound was the faint whir of the fan inside the desktop computer's CPU. No sound from outside. In that moment of calm, Laura inched over to the cardboard lid and soundlessly lifted some of the contents out, starting with a small stack of papers. Careful not to make a sound, Laura leafed through them, squinting in the computer monitor's glow at the text. It was clear that they were legal in nature, but a quick skim of contents made it clear that they dealt with one particular topic.

Insurance claims. Specifically claims against the insurance policy for deaths on the property from its time as a summer camp. Laura did not know some of the names of the victims, but some jumped out at her. Kaylee Hackett. Chris Hackett. Another set of documents were from the local police department and mentioned the deaths of Eliza Vorez and her traveling caravan. And then another name. Silas Hewitt.

Hewitt? Laura thought. I remember the FBI said his last name was Hewitt, not Vorez.

Subsequent pages of the pile turned up an official looking packet of papers from the medical examiner. Laura could feel a cold sweat break out on her brow at the sight of the familiar North Kill Police Department logo at the top of the document. She willed it out of her mind and continued reading. When she saw that the date was 2021, she nearly dropped it. Still, she read on.

Apparently, the body of the young man recovered from the broken cage in the woods was identified by fingerprints and dental records as being Silas Hewitt, a man who had gone missing from a different psychiatric hospital in New Jersey back in 2015. Hewitt, described as being a young man in his late teens or early twenties (his birthdate was uncertain) with albinism and mild intellectual disabilities, had gone missing one night and was never seen again.