“Catch who?” Aaron asked.
“You two are cops, right?”
“We are,” Jamie said. “Can we come in and talk to you for a minute? I’m Jamie and this is Aaron. Are you Kelli?”
She looked past them. “There’s no one else with you, is there?”
“No,” Jamie said.
The girl held the door open wider and stepped back to let them pass. She moved over to a bunk and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Where’s Mr. Sprague?” she asked.
“Mr. Sprague is with some other deputies,” Jamie said.
Kelli gnawed at her thumbnail. “Are they, like, arresting him?”
“Do you think we need to?” Jamie asked, her voice gentle.
Kelli burst into tears. Jamie moved to her side. Kelli leaned into her, sobbing. Jamie patted her back.
“If Scott has done something to hurt you or anyone else, we will arrest him,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about him hurting you again.”
Aaron sat opposite on another bunk, feeling helpless in the face of this child’s obvious pain.
“Aaron, could you get us some tissues?” Jamie asked.
He found a box of tissues on a table by the door and brought them to her. Kelli pulled out several and blew her nose.
“When you’re ready, could you tell us what happened?” Jamie asked.
“Yes.” Kelli’s voice was stronger than Aaron had expected, tinged with anger. She blotted her eyes and raised her head. “I want to tell you what happened. I want him to get everything he deserves.”
“We want that, too,” Jamie said.
“Mr. Sprague is a creep and a perv,” Kelli said. “He pretends to be all concerned about us campers but really he’s just waiting for a chance to grope one of us. I even fell for his nice act, then, a couple of days ago, he cornered me on the way back from evening assembly. He said he needed help with something in his office. The next thing he had me in there and he was trying to feel me up and stuff.”
“That must have been terrifying,” Jamie said.
“It was.” She looked at Jamie with pleading eyes. “At first I was just, too grossed out to even move. Then I kind of woke up and tried to fight him off, but he said no one would hear me. There isn’t anybody in that part of camp at that time of evening. Everyone is back here at the cabins, getting ready for bed.”
Fresh tears welled in her eyes. Aaron fought down a rage that squeezed his chest.
“Did Mr. Sprague threaten you if you told anyone?” Jamie asked.
Kelli nodded. “Yes. And not just me.” She bowed her head, her fingers shredding the tissue. “I have a little sister. She’s eight. She’s in Willow Cabin. Mr. Sprague said if I didn’t do what he wanted—everything he wanted—he would hurt her.” She began to sob again.
Jamie’s expression remained neutral, but Aaron sensed the anger radiating off of her. “Thank you for telling us,” she said. “I know it’s not something that’s easy to talk about. What happened tonight?”
Kelli sniffed and blotted her eyes. “He sent me a message this afternoon. He said I needed to wait by the bonfire and when he signaled, I was to meet him by the pit toilets—the one with the burned-out light. I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t let him hurt Emma.”
Jamie handed her more tissue and waited until once more her tears subsided. She looked at Aaron. “You’d better notify Gage.”
Aaron moved toward the door to step outside to make the call, but before he could open it someone knocked.
Declan stood on the top step, a plastic bag in one hand. “I found this on the ground by the pit toilet,” he said. “It might be the girl’s phone. It keeps buzzing, but I couldn’t figure out how to unlock it.”
Aaron stared at the phone. Flowered case, with a purple stick-on socket on the back. “That looks like Willa’s phone,” he said.
“What would Willa’s phone be doing behind the pit toilet?” Declan asked.
