Courtney
I’m allowed to watch. I’m not in an observation room staring through one-way glass, like you see on TV. Instead, the interview
room is monitored by cameras and microphones, and I sit in someone’s empty office and watch the interview on a monitor, alone.
Ms. Dahl sits in a chair in the interview room. The room itself is small and bare, with what looks like a card table and four
chairs, only two of which get used.
Detective Evans sits across from her. “Tell me what you know about Daniel Clarke.”
Her jaw is set. There’s an edge to her voice as she says, “I thought I already did.”
“Tell me again,” Detective Evans says.
“I knew his mother,” she says. “She was my best friend ever since we were little kids. I helped him out after she died, because
I felt sorry for him, because he was one of those kids who got the short end of the stick, and because I didn’t do something
more to intervene when she was still alive. I always felt guilty about that. Helping Daniel out was my penance. His dad was
a deadbeat and his mom drank herself to death. She choked to death on her own vomit. But you probably already knew that, didn’t
you?”
He says nothing to that. He stares back, pensive, and then he asks, “What do you mean when you say you helped him out?”
“I gave him a job. I let him work at my resort, though he wasn’t ever gonna be employee of the month, but it was something,
a paycheck at least. I should have fired him more than once.”
“For what?”
“Not doing his job. Stealing things from the guests.”
“What do you know about the night Kylie Matthews disappeared?”
“I remember that night. At the time,” she says, “I didn’t even know the girl was missing. It wasn’t until the next day that
I found out who she was.”
“Who who was?”
“The girl that Daniel was burying.”
In the other room, I blanch.
Detective Evans says nothing.
“The night it happened, I was out walking in the woods after dark,” she says, going on to explain as she sags back in her
chair. “I walk before bed sometimes because I don’t sleep well, and I found that a little activity before bed helps me sleep.
When I came to the cemetery, I saw him. Daniel. He had his back to me. I couldn’t make out his face because he was looking
the other way and because he had some sweatshirt on, the hood pulled clear up over his head. But the sleeves were pushed up,
like this,” she says, pulling up on the sleeves of her own shirt, “and when the moonlight hit it just right, I could make
out his tattoo.”
“And that’s how you knew it was him?”
“Yes. I didn’t tell anyone what I saw that night.”
“What exactly did you see?”
“The girl. Her body. She was lying on the ground behind him. I couldn’t see her face either, but I could tell it was a body.
She wasn’t moving. I assumed she was dead.
Daniel had a shovel and he was digging. I watched him dig.
It went on for hours until he was short of breath and spent, but he went on digging with an energy and a determination I’ve never seen before or since from Daniel.
And then, when he was done, he threw his shovel down and he went to the girl.
He hoisted her limp body up onto his shoulder, and then he laid her down in the grave. ”
There is a sour tang in my mouth, a burning in my throat. I eye the garbage can in the corner of the room, wondering if I
might be sick, thinking of that poor girl and of Joanna Matthews sitting at home, feeling aggrieved that Kylie wasn’t back
from her friend’s house yet, and of Sam, waiting in his car for the train to pass. They had no idea what was happening to
their daughter in that moment.
Ms. Dahl’s gaze wanders around the room, locking eyes with the camera so that it feels like we make eye contact. “The next
morning I went back, hoping I’d imagined it. The place where he buried her was as plain as the nose on your face, the only
saving grace that no one but me ever visited that cemetery. No one ever said Daniel was smart. He didn’t leave the place very
tidy.”
“Did you think about going to the police and turning him in?”
“No,” she says. “Never. Daniel had it rough. Whatever happened between him and the girl, he didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“What did you do when you saw the way he’d left things, not very tidy, as you say?”
“I helped smooth out the dirt and I came back the next day and threw some grass seed down.”
Detective Evans says, “You understand, Ms. Dahl, that you’re also culpable for her death?”
“Failure to report is not a crime.”
“But you’re an accessory after the fact. Like you’ve just said, you helped hide the body. You helped cover up the gravesite.”
She turns away from the camera, looks back at him, says, “So arrest me then.”
Detective Evans offers to drive us back to the resort to pack up the rest of our things so we can go home. The investigation
is through. Sam Matthews confessed. He killed Emily and Nolan and he took Reese. He and Joanna then kept her in a basement
crawl space, which makes me wonder if the first time I stopped by their home unannounced, they weren’t doing laundry, but
keeping a close watch on Reese, who says she couldn’t hear anything from down there, not when the hatch was closed. My guess
is he never expected me to take him up on his offer of stopping by their house; he only said it to draw my attention away
from him as a suspect.
They’ll both go to jail, Sam for longer because not only is he charged with kidnapping, but with murder.
The necklace that Reese was wearing, the one I recognized in the Matthewses’ family portrait on their fireplace mantel, the
same one she had on in the photo Cass and Mae took of her that day by the pool on Elliott’s iPad, was made of beads to create
the dots and dashes of Morse code. It spelled out daughter. Sam and Joanna had given it to Kylie for her eleventh birthday. How it came to be in Daniel’s possession, no one knows,
but we can assume that at some point, he stole it. What we do know for certain is that that, coupled with Cass and Mae’s Facebook
post, is the reason Sam believed Reese was Kylie. It makes me feel sad for him, sad for all of us.
“I would appreciate that,” I say to Detective Evans, about the ride, “if it’s not an inconvenience.
” The kids and I don’t have a car here. Elliott has it.
He’s at the hospital with Reese because I didn’t want to leave her alone.
When I asked Elliott if he minded keeping her company, he said he didn’t, but that he wasn’t sure Reese would want him there.
I asked why. He was quiet at first; he didn’t want to tell me.
I kept pushing and eventually he told me how a couple nights ago, he took a walk when he couldn’t sleep and came across Reese and Daniel in the woods, which set off a chain reaction of events that caused hard feelings between them, but nothing that had to do with what happened to Nolan and Emily.
I’m not sure if we’ve made amends yet, he said, and I told him it might be a good opportunity for him and Reese to work through things, because right now, what
she needed more than anything was a friend.
While we were talking, I asked why he searched for the depth of Pearl Lake, and he told me it was for when he went fishing,
because he thought he’d have better luck where the water was deeper. Then he pulled his eyebrows together and asked back,
Why did you think I wanted to know the depth of the lake?
I couldn’t bring myself to say that it was because I thought he killed Reese. Because I thought he killed all of them.
Now Detective Evans shakes his head, looking as tired and defeated as I feel. “It’s not an inconvenience.”
He’s been solemn since he came out of the interrogation room, since he listened to Ms. Dahl confess to watching Daniel dig
a grave that night to bury eleven-year-old Kylie inside.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, but it’s so sparing, I don’t believe it.
“Kylie was a little girl. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. It’s understandable to be upset.”
He nods, his eyes not meeting mine.
“You ready?” he asks, reaching for his keys.
“Yes,” I say, and then to the kids, “Let’s go. Detective Evans is going to drive us back to the resort so we can get our things
and go home.”
“Home?” Cass squeals, suddenly looking up from her chair, her eyes wide. “Like home home?”
“Yes,” I say, though it lacks Cass’s same enthusiasm. “Like home home.”
We can go home now, back to our lives in Chicago, though I don’t know what that looks like anymore. It’s not the same. It’s
changed. Reese, Wyatt and Mae won’t be going to their own home. They’ll be coming to live with Elliott, Cass and me, the six
of us under one roof, all of us different than we were before we stepped foot inside these cottages. Not only will they have
to leave their home, but they’ll have to leave their friends and school too. Mae will have Cass, but Reese and Wyatt will
go to a school where no one knows them and where they know no one. Wyatt will be fine—he’ll make friends through baseball—but
I worry about Reese starting her senior year somewhere new, though maybe she will be happy for a fresh start.
Detective Evans leaves the police station first. He holds the door open for us, and we follow him out of the building and
onto the street, where the wind has picked up, blowing trash and trapping it against the curb. In the distance, the sky darkens;
a summer storm slowly moves in.
We stop by the motel first. The kids and I run inside to grab what’s there, which isn’t much, just a couple bags that we never
fully unpacked. We drive to the resort next to get Emily’s, Nolan’s and the kids’ things from inside their cottage.
“Stay here,” I say to the kids, as Detective Evans and I step out, leaving them in the car with the windows cracked for air.
“We’ll only be gone for a couple minutes.”
We make our way to the cottage. After we get what we need, Detective Evans will drive us to the hospital, and there, we’ll
wait for Reese to be discharged. Then we’ll go home.
“What happens now?” I ask on the way. “Will you arrest Daniel Clarke for Kylie’s murder?”
“We’ll speak to him,” he says. “I don’t know that Ms. Dahl’s testimony is enough to convict him, but it should be enough to reopen the investigation.”
“What would you need to convict him?”
“Forensic evidence or a confession.”
“Do you think he’d ever confess?” I don’t know anything about Daniel Clarke. I don’t know what really happened between him
and Reese. I don’t know how close Reese came to being another one of his victims. But I’ll never forget what Mae said. How
Reese was crying. How she was scared. How he was hurting her. He deserves to pay for whatever he did to her.
He says, “No.”
“The other day you said you knew him.”
He turns to me and says, “I said he was a couple years younger than me in school. I knew of him.”
“What was he like?”
“Not the kind of guy you’d ever want your niece to date.”
We reach the cottage. I follow Detective Evans up the deck stairs and to the front door, steeling myself for what awaits us
on the other side. He presses the key into the lock. He turns the handle, swinging the door open, but this time, as we go
in, I try to see it the way Sam Matthews did. I imagine walking in and finding the girl who I believed was my missing child.
I imagine Cass here, with people who stole her, who kept her from me for five long years. I would have been out of my mind
and I would have done anything to have her back.
“What did Sam Matthews tell you about that night?” I ask as we stand there in the great room, my mind flashing back to Emily and me, all those months ago, planning this trip, wanting to go together so that our families could bond and for the shared memories.
It was Emily’s idea, but I was completely on board.
Reese, in particular, was getting older, and Emily worried that any moments of togetherness were fleeting; she would go to college soon, and if we didn’t take this trip now, the opportunity might be lost. Emily imagined Reese going somewhere far away and never coming back.
She planned everything, down to our meals and how we would spend our free time, because she wanted everything to be just right.
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I can picture it.”
“No,” he says firmly with a curt headshake. “Don’t do this to yourself, Mrs. Gray.”
Tears well in my eyes. “Don’t you think that what I imagine in my mind is so much worse?” I ask, biting down on my lower lip.
He’s quiet, thinking deliberately through his words.
“No. I don’t,” he says, and I feel the tears fall from my eyes, though I don’t bother to wipe them away. Detective Evans is
quiet. His face changes; he watches me, holding my eyes, the look in his empathetic. “I’ll just say this,” he says after a
minute, his voice soft and warm. “The medical examiner said that while Mr. Crane might have been taken by surprise, Mrs. Crane
had defensive wounds all over her hands and arms. She fought. She fought like hell for her family.”
I nod, my throat tight and my heart heavy. “That sounds like something Emily would do.”
We get to work, packing Emily’s, Nolan’s and the kids’ things so we can leave, and then, when we’re done, I follow Detective
Evans out of the cottage for the very last time.
Before we go, I turn back for one last look.
Standing in the open door, I close my eyes. I see Nolan and Emily in the kitchen, Emily with her Old Fashioned, laughing like
she was our first night here. I smile, hearing her voice and remembering.
I don’t know how long I stand there until I feel Detective Evans’s hand on my elbow, and I turn to him. “Are you ready?” he
asks, and I nod, fighting tears as we leave and make our way toward the car to go home.