Chapter 15

Danny stabbed a finger over Cora’s picture and then swiped his hand across all six photos. They flew off the table, fluttering to the floor. I bent down to scoop them up, placed them back inside my bag, and I sat down next to him.

“What did you mean when you said you saw her?” I asked.

“The day those kids died, I was working on the chair, just like I said,” Danny began. “I was planning to sell it the next weekend at the farmers’ market. All of that is true.”

It just wasn’t the entire truth.

“What did you leave out of your story?” I asked.

He pressed his hands together. “I used to make furniture out of the wood I found in the area around the cabin. It’s the reason I rented the cabin in the first place. It was isolated and quiet, which I also liked. Anyway, I was finishing up the chair, and I realized I didn’t have the right size twig to finish the last part along the back.”

“Did you leave the cabin to get what you needed?”

“Not at first. It was getting dark out, and I’ve never liked being outside after dusk. Too easy to get yourself turned around in those woods. But as I stood there, staring at the chair, knowing it was so close to being finished, I just wanted to get it done. I decided if I hurried, I might be able to find what I needed. I grabbed a flashlight, and I headed out.”

In his previous statement, Danny had said he’d never left the cabin on the day of the murders, which seemed like an odd thing to lie about. If he was being honest with me now, there was no reason not to tell the police what he’d just told me. It didn’t implicate him in anything.

Which meant … there was something else—something that might implicate him.

“What happened after you left the cabin?” I asked.

“I’d gathered up three good pieces of wood. I figured one of them would get the job done. Problem was, it took me a lot longer to find them than I thought it would. So there was that. Then, when I was headed back to the cabin, I tripped. Thought it was a log at first. The three pieces of wood went flying out of my hands. It wasn’t until I stood back up and shined my flashlight that I noticed I hadn’t tripped over a log at all. I’d tripped over a woman.”

“What did you do next?”

“I bent down and tried shaking her. She didn’t stir. Seemed like she’d injured herself, like she’d tripped and maybe hit her head on something and then passed out.”

Dorothy joined us at the table and placed her hand on her brother’s arm. “Please don’t tell me you left the poor girl there.”

Danny’s breathing began to change.

“Listen, we’re not here to judge,” I assured him. “You were in a confusing situation. I’m sure it was difficult for you to decide what to do. I just want to know what happened.”

He nodded and said, “I shined the flashlight around the area, but there was nothing there, nothing to explain how she ended up on the ground. I turned the light back on her, looking over her body, and I saw blood. She was bleeding from the back of her head, but then I realized, if she’d tripped over something, she would have hit something falling forward. There had to be another explanation.”

I was glad he was talking, although he was unnerved about what he’d said so far. If I was going to keep him talking, I needed to be gentle, ease the truth out of him.

“You said she didn’t respond,” I said.

“Correct.”

“Did you know whether she was alive?”

“I tried to … you know, check her pulse. She didn’t have one as far as I could tell. I had no idea who she was or where she’d come from. And I didn’t have a phone back then, so there was no one I could even call for help.”

“You could have driven into town,” Dorothy said.

I wasn’t sure what Dorothy hoped to accomplish with her not-so-well-thought-out comments, but all she was doing was pushing Danny to stop talking.

“It would be confusing to know what to do,” I said. “I imagine I’d feel the same.”

I wouldn’t feel the same, but right now, I needed him to feel like I sympathized with the situation he had encountered.

“A minute passed, maybe two, and I decided to leave the girl and figure it all out when I got home,” he said. “I walked about twenty feet, and I found another kid. A guy this time. It looked like he’d been whacked in the head a lot harder than the girl had been. Blood was everywhere.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“What else, Danny?”

“I heard something, what sounded like a woman screaming somewhere in the distance. I listened for a minute, but I couldn’t figure out what direction it was coming from. I panicked. Someone else was in those woods, someone who was up to no good.”

Cora had said that she’d found Jackson right before she was attacked, leading me to believe they were the two people Danny came across that evening.

As for the screaming he’d heard, that could have come from Brynn or Aubree, in the last moments of their lives.

“After you found a second injured person, what did you do then?” I asked.

Danny hung his hand, shaking it back and forth and saying, “I ran. I ran as fast as I could back to my place. When I got there, I bolted the door, turned all the lights out, and I hid under the stairs all night with an axe in my hand, and my eyes glued to the front door.”

“Did you hear or see anything else during the night?”

“Not a thing. Not one thing. It was the quietest night I’d ever had out there. The next morning, I got in my truck, and I drove along the dirt road that led to some of the nearby cabins. I didn’t get far before I saw cops had swarmed Millie Callahan’s place. I thought they’d figured out what had gone on up there, and I wanted no part of it. I turned right back on around and got the hell out of there.”

“Just to be sure, you’ve never told any of this part of the story to the police before today, right?” I asked.

“Nope.”

We all sat in silence for a moment, taking in everything that had been said. Even Dorothy was speechless. Here was her brother who’d found innocent victims of a crime, and for fear of his own life, among other reasons, he left them there.

“I know what you’re all thinking,” Danny said. “I’m a coward. You think I should have been a hero, done more than I did. When I think back to the screaming I heard, I often wonder if I had the chance to save someone. I don’t know. But I could have tried.”

“Why didn’t you?” Dorothy asked.

“I’ve thought a lot about it over the years. The fear I felt was stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced before. I was terrified, worried someone would come after me like they’d gone after them. He was still out there. He could have been anyone.”

“So you did nothing,” Dorothy said.

Danny bucked out of his chair and jabbed a finger at his sister as he shouted, “Shut up! Just shut up! You have no idea what you’re going to do in a situation like that until you’re in it. Besides, it’s not like I saw anything that would have made a difference. If I had, it would be different.”

“Why tell me all of this now?” I asked.

He paused a moment, then said, “It’s not easy keeping something like this in for as long as I have. It’s taken a heavy toll. When I realized Cora was alive when I found her, and the guilt I’ve endured over that fact alone is almost too painful to bear.”

I thought back to the panicked look in his eyes when he’d opened the door and Dorothy explained who I was and why I was there.

“The way you reacted when I started questioning you earlier makes a lot more sense to me,” I said.

“Think about it. The case had gone cold, and I thought it would stay that way. Then you show up here with your questions, and I learn the case has been reopened.”

“And forensic evidence has come a long way since then.”

He pointed at me and said, “You got it. What if I left something behind when I tripped over Cora. A hair, or I don’t know … anything. I don’t see how I could have, but there’s this little part of me that’s saying, ‘What if you did?’”

Being at the crime scene right after the murders happened made him a viable suspect. If it turned out Silas was able to place him there through a piece of old evidence brought in for reexamination, I understood why Danny wanted to get out of town.

“I meant what I said before, about not pressing charges,” I said.

Danny looked at Giovanni and then me. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“You need to go down to the police station and tell them what you just told me.”

“What are they going to do when they find out I lied?”

Good question.

I supposed it depended on what they thought when he gave them a new statement, and whether they chose to believe it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll go to the department with you and talk with Chief Foley. I’ll go over the conversation we had today, and I won’t mention the part about you pepper-spraying me in the face.”

Not yet, anyway.

“Why would you leave it out?” Danny asked. “You don’t even know me.”

“I gave you my word. I need to ask … is there anything more, anything you haven’t said?”

“No, you know everything now.”

“Good.”

I rose from my seat, blinking a few times to relubricate my eyes, which hadn’t stopped stinging all the way yet.

“Wait,” Danny said, and I turned back to him.

“What is it?”

“What if I tell them everything I just told you and they don’t believe me? What if they think I lied then and I’m lying now?”

“I know it’s hard, Danny,” I said. “But have a little faith in the justice system, and believe me when I say they’re not interested in catching the wrong guy. They’re interested in catching the right guy, and if the right guy isn’t you, there’s no need to worry. Now, I’m done here.”

And with that, I walked out the door.