39. Ransacked

39

T he weeks following our discovery of the bodies were sheer chaos.

Chance had been the one to call the police and explained that he had smelled something off and had gone looking for the cause of the odor, discovering the unlocked door, the trapdoor to the attic space, and subsequently, the bodies of Daniel and the girls.

They'd all been bludgeoned to death, and the bloodstains present suggested that it had likely happened up there. While the girls' remains were all but mummified after being hidden up there for almost thirty years, I had wondered why I hadn't smelled Daniel's body, and was too scared to bring it up to Chance, who had enough to deal with between all the police interviews and his grief.

However, one afternoon I heard some forensics investigators talking in the hallway outside my room while they were on a break, and they said that there was an ancient chest freezer in the kitchen area I'd seen in the video, that was miraculously still running after all these years.

"They just don't make 'em like that anymore," one of them had commented.

Whoever killed Daniel had placed his body inside the freezer, which was why nothing had seemed amiss throughout the summer. The fact that he had been so close, the whole time, was heartbreaking.

The police had located and opened up the elusive stairwell I'd long suspected had to be around. The entrance had been plastered over at the top of the stairs and looked like any other wall. I never would have found it. But in order to remove the chest freezer and a lot of other evidence, they'd gotten permission from the school to open it up.

Chance had to come clean about his connection to Daniel to the police, and even admitted that he'd pursued the teaching position at Montgomery to poke around, but had no luck. What he hadn't told the police was that I'd been there with him.

I hated having to lie, but the police didn't have any reason to believe I hadn't been grading papers alone in my room. And if we had told them we had been investigating together, it only would have had the wrong people asking the right questions, leading to reprimand, at best, or being let go, at worst.

Chance and I hadn't needed to worry about figuring out how to get Daniel's external hard drive, with all of his evidence and reporting work, to the police. The bright orange drive Bryce had mentioned had been found in the room, inside his backpack, completely unharmed. I guessed that whoever had hurt him, had no idea what it was, or that he had been carrying it on him.

I'd had to keep my distance from Chance for over a week while the police worked in the cordoned-off areas. Chance and I were allowed to stay in our apartments after the police searched them.

I hated that I couldn't be with Chance while he grieved, knowing for certain that Daniel was gone. When he'd told me before that he had felt it in his gut, I'd wanted to argue with him. Oddly, I was glad that I hadn't. He seemed to be taking things in stride. Perhaps feeling for months that Daniel was already gone had allowed him time to process and sit with his grief, so receiving confirmation was merely the conclusion he'd been awaiting.

The school was in disarray as they pulled anyone and everyone who had known Daniel in for interviews. Any faculty or staff that had been working at Montgomery at the time of the Marshall disappearances were interviewed for hours, asking what they remembered of the event.

Students were being unenrolled from the school left and right. What parent in their right mind wouldn't be terrified their child might not be the next victim of someone who was still on the loose?

Jolene had been inundated with calls from the press asking for comments from the headmaster and interviews with the faculty and staff. She couldn't disconnect the phone, but it wouldn't stop ringing, poor thing.

But perhaps the worst part was that the police had ransacked my lounge.

They'd torn apart everything, pulling books off shelves and leaving them in haphazard stacks, turning the gaming tables on their sides to search underneath. If the baby grand hadn't been so heavy, I suspected they might have done the same to it. There was a layer of fingerprint dust over every surface that the police just left, without cleaning up.

Jolene had even mentioned she had heard rumblings that the administration was considering building a public entrance to the lounge for the other faculty in the carriage house to use. The news sent me into an absolute spiral, although she couldn't find anything official that had been filed, or any review meetings scheduled.

After they'd cleared out the bodies and were satisfied with their search of the lounge, they had cleared me to use the space again, but the first night I'd gone back up there, even with Chance, who'd come to check in, not wanting to stay too long and garner any suspicion, I'd taken one look around the mess and started to cry.

Chance held me while I tried to come to terms with the idea that my secret and sacred place—our place—had been turned upside down by strangers. It was all too much. Daniel was gone, and there was nothing either of us could do about it.

The invasion was just one more thing on a long list that left me feeling violated and frustrated. I knew they were doing their jobs, although if they had done a better job of it the first time, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Still I didn't think it was necessary for them to trash the place. It would take me ages to reorganize the shelves.

"I'll help you. It'll be okay," Chance comforted me.

But I wasn't comforted. I was forced to sleep alone in my bed, unable to be with Chance. He'd stolen my heart, and I didn't feel right without it or him by my side. But until the police left for good and some of the commotion died down, it wouldn't be safe for us to sleep in the same room, like we had been since winter break.

I hadn't realized how quickly I'd gotten used to having Chance around all the time. I felt more content when I was near him. Things with Chance were just easy. I felt silly for having fought my feelings for so long.

We supported each other in a way that I didn't think I'd ever felt with a partner. The fact that we were both teachers also made me feel understood like never before. Maybe I should have been more open to making friends with the other faculty sooner, and I wouldn't have felt so alone.

When we felt safe enough to start sharing a bed again, I found myself dreading the mornings more than I ever had before I'd met him. And that was saying a lot, because I had never been a morning person and had feared the rising sun more than most. All I wanted was to feel safe and warm in his arms.

Instead we had to go about our lives at school as if we didn't know one another more than colleagues. But every time we passed in the hall or glanced at each other across the crowded dining hall, or in the great room, watching over the students, on cue, I would clasp my necklace in my hand, and he would place his over his heart, making eye contact, if it wasn't conspicuous, but often averting our gazes from each other entirely. It was torture. Until we could be reunited in the comfort and quiet of my room.

"Are you okay?" Chance asked me softly late one night, over a month after our grisly discovery, both of us on the verge of sleep.

"As good as I can be." I sighed, snuggling into his side. "You don't have to worry about me."

"I'll always worry about the girl that I love," he murmured, falling into slumber a moment later, his even breaths giving him away.

All I could do was stare up at him in the dark. It had been a slip of the tongue, but I'd heard him. He'd said it. My heart hammered in my chest, and I felt tears welling in my eyes.

But it was the last moment of peace I'd have for a while.

Because the next morning, Headmaster Winston was found dead.