She unlocked the screen and returned it to him. He scrolled through the history. No calls in almost a month, and before that calls to home and someone named Sara. “Who is Sara?”
“Her best friend at school.”
He had to scroll back two more weeks to find a series of text messages to Jared—a furious discussion of her parents’ anger and threats to tear the young lovers apart. Then a gap of a few days and an angry exchange in which Olivia said she was glad they broke up and she never wanted to see him again. That fit with the story Stella had told them.
He returned the phone. “Thank you for looking through these things. I’ll take you to the lodge now.”
“I can do that.” Scott Sprague crossed the cabin to them. Freshly shaved and wearing pressed khakis and a green Mountain Kingdom polo, he looked less haggard than he had yesterday. “I’m sure you have questions for me,” he told the Pryors. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”
“I have a question for you,” Aaron said. “Are you intending to keep the camp open while Olivia is missing?”
Scott looked puzzled. “I don’t think it’s wise to disrupt the children’s lives any further. While we don’t know yet what happened to Olivia, I’m sure she’s merely run away and will be found very soon. And I truly believe, despite this very unfortunate incident, that the children are safer here than almost anywhere. So far, the parents agree with me. Though any parent may remove their child at any time, none of them have elected to do so. I see it as a testament to their faith in me.”
Aaron didn’t want to point out the possible significance of the bloody shirt with Olivia’s parents there, so he merely frowned and shook his head. He didn’t think the sheriff could order a private business to shut down, though if he had been a parent in this situation, he would have been retrieving his child as soon as possible.
Aaron left the Pryors with Scott and was headed toward the parking lot when someone hailed him. He turned back to see Gary Reynolds jogging toward him. “I’m glad I caught you,” Gary said and stopped beside Aaron, a little out of breath.
“What is it?” Aaron asked. He braced himself for anger. Maybe Gary wanted to berate him for telling the sheriff about Rachel’s disappearance and Gary’s role as a suspect.
But Willa’s brother didn’t appear angry. “I’ve found something,” he said. “Something you need to see.”
“What is it?”
“Come look.”
He followed Gary across camp, around to the back of the mess hall to a small storage shed. “This is a shed where we keep extra canned goods, bottled water and stuff like that,” he said. “I came out here this morning to get a case of spaghetti sauce for the cook and saw someone broke the lock.” He stepped back so that Aaron could move in closer. The padlock whichhad fastened the door was intact, but the wood around it was splintered.
“I think they broke it with that crowbar.” Gary pointed to an iron bar that lay on the ground nearby.
“Is anything missing?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to touch anything until someone official got a look. But I know it wasn’t like this yesterday.”
Aaron nodded. Yesterday they had searched this area multiple times. Someone would have seen this damage. He took out his phone and snapped half a dozen photos of the door and the crowbar on the ground, then put on a pair of gloves. “Let’s take a look inside.”
He eased open the door and peered into the dark space. “There’s a pull chain for a light overhead,” Gary said.
Aaron tugged on the light. “Notice anything out of place?” he asked.
Gary shouldered his way into the small space. “That case of water wasn’t open last time I was in here.” He indicated a flat of water bottles, the plastic wrapping on one corner pulled back and three bottles missing. He moved farther into the space, toward the back. “There are bins back here where they store extra blankets and sleeping bags. The lid is off one of them and it looks like someone rifled through here. And there’s some backpacking equipment that hangs on the wall. There’s an empty spot where I think there might have been a pack. You’d have to ask the counselors what was in it.”
Aaron joined him and took more photos, then they both backed out of the building. “What time did you get to work this morning?” Aaron asked.
“My shift starts at eight. I got here a few minutes before, parked and walked up to the mess hall for a cup of coffee. The cook asked me to fetch the spaghetti sauce, so I got the key from her and came back here and found the lock busted. I saw youwalking across to the parking lot and thought I’d better have you take a look.”
Aaron nodded. “Thanks.”
Gary shifted from foot to foot, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. “Should I be worried?” he asked. “Willa says we should hire a lawyer. Should we?”
“I talked to your neighbors this morning,” Aaron said. “The woman across the street says your truck was parked at the curb all night. Her kid was sick with a stomach virus and she was up and down all night and she could see it out of her front window. She’s pretty sure Willa’s car was there, too.”
“So you’re saying my alibi holds up.”
“We had to question you. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t.”
“You guys in Vermont wasted a lot of time with me. They never found who killed Rachel.”
“No, they didn’t.”
