16. Monday, October 23, 2023
Quinn
Quinn and his mom exchange a look across the island.
He’s been secretly mad at her since the night she blamed him for Polly and Lucy’s accident, but she’s the only other person in the room right now and so the only other witness to his dad’s weirdness.
She’s making her coffee to go in a travel mug while he finishes his bowl of cereal.
A few minutes ago, his dad went to get something in the fridge, and Panda, who was sitting beside it, nervously skirted away from him, almost tripping him.
His dad gently scolded the dog and then his mom said, “Be careful or we’ll be taking you to the hospital this time. ”
“Huh?” his dad had responded, a vacant look in his eyes.
“Remember when Panda was a puppy and we had to take Quinn to the hospital?”
“Ahh, yes,” he replied. “For stitches.”
“I broke my arm,” Quinn corrected him. “Falling into the kitchen chair.”
The vacant look remained in his dad’s eyes, but he snapped his fingers as though he remembered it clearly. “Right,” he said. “The stitches was another time.”
Quinn shook his head. “I’ve never gotten stitches.”
“That was Lucy,” his mom said. “When she was four.” They all paused for a moment, as they always did when somebody mentioned his dead sister. Then Quinn and his mom exchanged a look. His dad turned away from them both and put bread in the toaster.
The weird thing is that his dad used to reference the broken-arm incident all the time.
He joked that Panda had ruined Quinn’s chances at being an all-star pitcher when he didn’t make the school baseball team, and that Panda had ruined Quinn’s chances of being an all-star goalie when he didn’t make the school soccer team.
It was a family joke to blame Panda for anything that didn’t go right for Quinn, made funnier because Quinn was terrible at sports.
For his dad to have a brain glitch around it was odd.
Screwing the lid on her coffee mug, his mom says, “Want a ride to school instead of taking the bus?”
Quinn would rather take the bus, but she sounds hopeful and he’s tired of being mad at her. He also wants to talk about how weird the thing with his dad was just now. “Sure, thanks.” To his father he says, “You good, Dad?” and shoves his lunch bag into his backpack.
His dad turns from the toaster with a smile and a thumbs-up. “I’m great, buddy. Have a good day.”
His mom waits until they’re pulling out of the driveway to ask, “Have you noticed anything strange about your dad lately?”
Quinn shrugs. He struggles with his sense of loyalty toward his dad, the one he considers his true ally, but he has found him a bit weird recently.
“Confusing my broken arm with Lucy’s stitches was a bit weird,” he says.
“Agree. Especially since he was the one who was home when it happened and took you to the hospital. And the other day he seemed to forget about my shrimp allergy.” She’s quiet as she pulls up to a stop sign and waits for her turn to go. “It’s other things, too, though.”
“You mean like how nice he’s been to you lately even without you nagging him to be?”
She snorts. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She holds up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m very appreciative of the changes he’s made lately, but they just feel so out of the blue.” She pauses again, this time seeming to consider whether to say more. “Your nana, she seems different lately too.”
“Yeah,” Quinn answers, feeling no loyalty at all to the old woman. “She’s been a lot less crusty. And she doesn’t say as many rude things to you.”
His mom glances over at him in surprise. “You notice that? How critical she can be of me?”
He nods. “Sometimes.”
“Thank you,” she says. “Sometimes I think it’s all in my head.” She reaches out and gives his hand a quick squeeze, so quick he doesn’t even have time to yank it away. “And I’m sorry, about the night Dad got lost in the woods. I didn’t mean those things I said. I should never have said them.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever. I’m sorry too.” He means it but he hates saying it. “And it’s not in your head. The way Nana treats you. She can be a real bitch.” He braces for his mom’s scolding, but she laughs. Maybe everyone in his family is different now.
“Speaking of things being in your head,” he says, suddenly connecting some dots, “I know you told me not to listen to that podcast about the murders, but in one of the episodes that I listened to before you made that rule, Justine Gordon said she did it because they weren’t really her family.”
His mom shakes her head. “I don’t understand. Who did she think they were?”
“She said that they looked like her family and mostly acted like her family, but she was certain that they were imposters. She said, how could she be guilty of killing her family when they weren’t really her family?”
His mom shivers and scrunches up her face in disgust. “She sounds certifiably crazy.”
“Well, yeah,” Quinn answers. “She ended up in a place for the criminally insane. They found her mentally unfit to stand trial.”
His mom pulls the car up to the curb in front of the school and puts it in park, turning to face him. “Sounds to me like you listened to the entire show.”
“Not the whole thing,” he says. “But it seems like stuff we should know.” She shakes her head, but he can tell from her expression that she agrees and isn’t that mad. “Especially when family members start acting like different people.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh my God, Quinn. It is not the same thing at all. I’m sorry I even brought it up. Please just forget it. And seriously, no more investigating the murders.”
Quinn lifts his backpack from the floor of the car and opens the door. “Does seem like a strange coincidence though.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says, swatting the air. “It’s not a coincidence at all. Now, go on before you’re late.”
He thanks her for the ride and gets out of the car.
Before he enters the school, he glances back to see her still sitting there, with the car in park, staring out the window.
He’ll find out later that his mom searched for the podcast. It wasn’t hard to find, all you had to do was type in the words mother kills entire family in Merrymont.
Alice
She broke her own rule, and binge-listened to the first four Justine Gordon episodes of Killing Their Own while driving between appointments, on her earbuds eating lunch in a restaurant, and in a parking lot when she should have been answering emails on her phone.
She saved the fifth episode for her drive home.
Cleo: I have a question for you listeners.
After what we’ve learned about the Justine Gordon case, do any of you out there believe that there’s something strange in those woods, or is Justine just batshit crazy?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Today we’re talking to someone close to the case who believes Justine Gordon.
Who believes there’s something else going on.
At the time of the horrific murders, our guest had only been on the police force for two years.
He arrived on the scene after the 911 call made by Justine Gordon’s older son.
He was one of the officers appointed with the task of searching the woods.
Our guest is still a police officer and therefore we will not be using his real name. His voice has been disguised.
Cleo: Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here with us today.
Tom: You’re welcome.
Cleo: Let’s dive right in, shall we? Tom, tell us about your experience in the woods surrounding the Gordon house. Explain to us what makes you believe that Justine Gordon may not in fact be criminally insane and that something truly evil lives in those woods, as she continues to claim.
Tom: [clears throat] We were called in to search for the older Gordon boy after his 911 call.
We divided the woods into a grid, and I was assigned one area to search.
It wasn’t long before another officer found the bodies of the father and the younger son.
They’d been buried not far from the main house, where Justine Gordon was explaining that the bodies belonged to imposters.
As soon as we found those bodies, our search for the missing eighteen-year-old boy kicked into high gear.
The clock was ticking to find him before he succumbed to the poison.
Cleo: Tom, that sounds absolutely horrific. Can you tell us what you found that day in the woods?
Tom: Another officer found the boy’s phone first. It was on a path about a hundred yards into the woods.
I was assigned a section of the grid deeper in the woods, where I came across a large rock face.
I noticed there was an opening in it, and I thought maybe it led to a cave.
I thought maybe the boy could have gone in there for shelter, trying to escape his mom.
I radioed to my team that I was heading inside, you know, just in case anything happened.
They told me to wait for backup, but time was ticking, you know?
So I went in. It was a pretty good size.
Big enough to stand up in. Conducted a quick search by the light of my flashlight, and that’s when I saw the pile of clothes.
A pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, the kind of clothes an eighteen-year-old boy would wear.
They were covered in dried blood and were torn up pretty bad.
I radioed to my team lead that I thought I’d found evidence of the boy.
He told me he was sending two more officers and a forensics team, and to wait outside the cave.
I couldn’t wait. I unholstered my gun, just in case, and continued my search.
That’s when I noticed another opening in the rock.
I crouched down and shone my flashlight inside and saw that it led to another cave.
It was a narrow opening, so I had to turn sideways, but I got myself through.
[clears throat] That’s when things got real strange.
Cleo: Tell us about that, Tom.