40. The Confession

40

C hance and I were awoken by shrill police sirens.

Haphazardly pulling on clothes, I stopped Chance. "We can't go out there together."

His shoulders fell, but he knew I was right.

"I'll go ask what happened. Just give it a few minutes before you come down," I instructed.

"Nobody would believe that you'd wake up earlier than me, let alone be able to get ready faster," he argued half-heartedly.

I rolled my eyes before slamming the apartment door behind me.

Down on the front lawn, students, faculty, and staff were starting to wander out and congregate, wondering what could have possibly happened now. Some of the staff were trying to corral the students back into the dorms, but were less than successful with the worried and curious teenagers.

I clocked Jolene's car in the staff lot. I knew if I could find her, she'd know what was going on.

I'd felt increasingly guilty for pulling away from Jolene, but the more things had progressed with Chance, and certainly when the shit had hit the fan with the police, it had been easier to avoid her, rather than lie to her. There was a huge part of my life that I couldn't share with her, and just because it was to keep her safe didn't make me feel that much better about it.

It didn't take me long to find Jolene. Her despairing wails coming from the entrance hall, carried through the air like a portent of death.

The police officers surrounding her, attempting to calm her, almost stopped me, until her face lifted and her gaze met mine. "Violet!" she cried, pushing past them to run to me. Her face was red and blotchy from crying. Her sky-blue sweater sported fluffy clouds, with sun rays poking out of one side and a rainbow sprouting from the other. It couldn't have been more contradictory to her mood.

I soothed her hair as she cried on my shoulder, looking around to the police officers for some kind of clue as to what had happened, but they were useless.

"He's dead," she moaned, clutching onto me tighter.

"Who's dead?" I asked softly, not wanting to upset her further, but wanting to understand.

"The headmaster." She sobbed. "He—he shot himself."

My eyes widened, searching the police officers for confirmation. I found only pursed lips and averted gazes, which told me enough.

"I'm so sorry, Jolene," I soothed her back and let her continue to cry.

"I found him in his office. There was—it was everywhere."

"It's okay. Everything's going to be okay."

I soothed her like that for a while, until the police felt comfortable interrupting to ask her for a statement.

"I'll wait for you," I told her, when she was hesitant to leave. "I'll find some tissues."

She nodded, sniffling, and followed the officers outside.

While searching for tissues, I couldn't help but overhear a couple of the officers talking. "Can't believe the old asshole took the easy way out after what he did," one said.

"At least he had the decency to leave a suicide note confessing to all of it. Too bad he didn't explain how he killed the girls they found last month, but at least the families will get closure."

A suicide note?

Something about that didn't feel quite right to me. Winston was so prideful, I wouldn't have thought he would end his life, but if he felt the police had enough on him to make an arrest, I suppose he'd be capable of anything. After the grooming allegations, which were already causing quite the stir, though nothing had been substantiated, maybe the thought of a trial and prison sentence felt inevitable.

The suicide note, on the other hand…I wasn't so sure about.

If Winston really had killed himself, he would have known that it would have pointed to his guilt, but I couldn't see him having the kindness to offer the closure the officers spoke of to the girls he had abused, to Chance, or the Marshall family. If anything, I could see him denying things until the very end and deciding to take matters into his own hands, versus letting a court of strangers decide his fate.

It wasn't until much later that I was able to find Chance and tell him about everything. He'd discovered the reason for the police presence on his own, but he'd known better than to seek me out.

"He confessed?" Chance's brow furrowed as he paced around my room. We'd been in the lounge less and less; it hadn't provided the same sense of safety and privacy that it had once offered.

"I know. I was surprised too."

"The Winston I know wouldn't have confessed. He would have refuted everything. But I also never thought he'd take such drastic action to end things." Chance leaned against the window, peering out into the darkness of the courtyard.

"Jolene told me the police have been by to talk to him a lot in the last week. If he thought they were close to arresting him—I mean, what he did to all those girls—Daniel had all the evidence on his drive. The police had been served everything on a silver platter. They would only need to substantiate it." I thought aloud. "I could see him deciding to end things instead of living the rest of his life in prison, labeled a predator."

Chance nodded. "You're right. But the confession still feels wrong. He was a prick. He wouldn't have cared about any of those girls, or Daniel. We never could figure out a motive or opportunity for the Marshalls. And nothing about Claire…Maybe we were wrong and it really was an accident…"

"So let's say he didn't leave the note or kill himself, or both. What happened then? He's been our primary suspect this whole time, even though we couldn't figure out how he'd managed to kill the Marshall girls while he was on a plane." We were clearly still missing pieces. Or maybe we had all the information we needed, but we couldn't see clearly.

"If there's somebody else involved, they've been completely off our radar." Chance sat down on the edge of the bed. "Can we make a list of all the faculty and staff that have been here for everything?"

"It'll be a long list." I sighed.

Two weeks later and we still hadn't gotten anywhere.

Although the Portland Press Herald had somehow gotten ahold of Winston's confession and published it.

All of it's true. The girls, the Marshall twins, and the young reporter. I have no other recourse. I'm so sorry to those I have hurt. This world will be better off without me in it. I'm sorry, Janice. You didn't deserve any of this. None of them did.

The words felt hollow, rather than vindicating. The fact that he hadn't even mentioned Daniel by name got under Chance's skin. He hadn't named a single person other than his wife. After reading the note, I felt more confident than ever that it wasn't right.

He wasn't sorry. I didn't believe him.

Chance had taken leave to attend Daniel's funeral, after the body was finally returned to his family. I'd wanted to go, to be there with him, knowing he'd have to face his father, who would likely mourn in front of the media, though Chance would know it was a ruse.

But it was because of the media that I couldn't go. The events at Montgomery had become national news since Winston's death. Dozens of true crime podcasts and documentaries were no doubt being written as I lay in my bed alone, awaiting Chance's return.

The one saving grace was that there was only a week until spring break. Before everything had spiraled, I would have begged Chance to stay at Montgomery with me, holed up in the lounge and in bed. But with all the pressure of external forces bearing down on us, the idea of going somewhere, just the two of us, felt like a much-needed reprieve.

So when Amanda had called to offer us her penthouse apartment in New York for the week, as she would be conveniently vacationing in Europe at the same time, I'd put aside my initial reaction to decline any extravagance.

"Think of it as a gift," she had stated her case before I could dissent. "And if you can't accept it, then it's a gift for my brother, and you're simply his plus-one."

Hard to argue with that. So I hadn't.

While Chance was away, I found myself spending more time with Jolene. It felt too lonely in my room without him.

Jolene had been more reserved since finding the headmaster. I couldn't blame her. It would traumatize anyone. I think she was also having a hard time coming to terms with everything that was emerging about the headmaster. She hadn't exactly liked him, but she had worked for him for so long, it would have been hard not to have some sort of feelings or connection to him.

Over lunch one day, Jolene seemed ready to talk about everything that had happened, and I was glad to be the shoulder that she could lean on.

"I didn't want to see it for a long time." Jolene picked at her food. "But I think maybe I knew something was wrong. Of course I'd heard rumors, and when he was younger, he was good-looking and charismatic.

"He liked having student aides when I first started, but they never did much around here. He hadn't asked for one for a while though." Her gaze was clouded, focused over my shoulder, as if recalling a distant memory. "But now all these little things make sense. Now I see him for who he was and what he was doing.

"When the police started coming by more often, I knew something was up, and he did too. Lots of frantic phone calls to all of his buddies to see if someone could pull strings to get him out of it. But it was too big, it was over their heads, the papers had already latched on. I guess he only saw one way out." She paused and looked at me, observing me for a moment as she prepared to say what came next. "Does it make me a bad person if I'm glad that he's gone?"

I shook my head. "No. It doesn't."

We both ate in silence for a while.

There was a moment, before the headmaster had died, that I wondered if Jolene had perhaps been Daniel's source. She had the means and the connections to have gotten him in touch with past students.

But talking to her about what had happened, I felt she was being honest about not knowing. And Jolene had always worn her heart on her sleeve. I liked to think I would have known if something was going on with her. Sure, everyone had their secrets, but Jolene was such an open book. I no longer thought it a possibility.

"I'm still sorry you had to find him like that."

She smiled up at me, the sequin flowers on her sweater twinkling with her movement, reflecting the overhead lighting.

Unable to help myself I said, "I'm still confused about how he was connected to the bodies they found in the carriage house."

"I figured they were also his victims." Jolene shrugged. "They probably threatened to expose him and he thought it would be worth the risk to shut them up. Just like Daniel."

I swallowed the knot in my throat. I wanted to mention that he had been out of the country when the girls had gone missing, but I wasn't supposed to know that, as it had come from the police file we'd stolen from the headmaster's office.

"How has Headmistress Jones been treating you?" I switched topics. The former deputy headmistress, Marilyn Jones, had easily slid into position as the interim lead for the school. In an effort to assure parents and donors, she had begun to crack down hard on any infractions and was tightening up the ranks across the board, looking for any areas where Winston had been lax.

Jones had always struck me as a practical leader. If she could stop the enrollment from hemorrhaging, I was sure she'd be offered the position permanently. I thought maybe with someone like her in leadership, we'd start to see positive changes around Montgomery. At the very least, a little bit more gender diversity, or diversity in general, and less tolerance for the boy's club mentality that had tainted Montgomery for its entire existence.

There was a lot of work to do, but she didn't strike me as someone who would be afraid of work. On the contrary, she seemed like someone who would embrace it, and usher Montgomery into the next phase of prosperity.

"She's great." Jolene beamed. "She doesn't make me stay late. I guess it could be a Department of Labor violation, and she doesn't want to take any chances."

"That's good." I smiled.

"I like that she follows the rules," Jolene offered. "She's predictable. I don't have to guess around her. And she's nicer to me than Winston was. She doesn't curse at me, or admonish me in front of people."

"I'm sorry you had to put up with that." I frowned. While I'd often witnessed Winston's poor treatment of Jolene in the time I'd been at Montgomery, she'd always seemed to let it roll right off of her. If I'd known it had bothered her, I would have tried to say or do something about it.

"It's okay. It's over now."