Page 30 of Her Last Refuge

But then a thought occurred to her—and when it did, a smile came across her lips in spite of everything. She thought of a conversation she’d had with Paige a few nights earlier. Paige had been walking her through some of her methods for when she got deep into looking into her true-crime research rabbit holes. She had mentioned a particular website more than once—an older archive site that specialized in scanned microfilm and small-town papers the major engines tended to miss. Rachel had only been partially listening because sometimes listening to Paige go on about the latest true-crime scenario she was involved in was too much like work.

She nearly texted Paige to ask what the website was, but then it came to her. It came worming out of her memories the way old, forgotten song lyrics sometimes did. Her smile widened as she typed it in. The site was very basic and had an anonymous feel. She couldn’t access it without an account, so she set up a dummy account with a disposable email address she’d created years ago specifically for things like this.

Once she was in, she found the user interface slow and outdated but easy enough to navigate. She typed Garner’s Mill, VA 1971 into the search fields along with the three last names she had been tracking. A spinning wheel popped up for about five seconds, and then she got her results.

The first few headlines were about the town council, but the fourth one in the list made her stop and she legitimately felt a chill course through her. The headline was rather simple, though grim. Tragic Drowning Rocks Garner’s Mill, Lifeguards Under Fire.

At first glance, the headline seemed to have nothing to do with their case. But the gut reaction she had to it was too hard to ignore. She clicked it, somehow knowing this was it…this was the right direction.

The article was from June 24, 1971. It told the story of how thirteen-year-old Danny Alcott had drowned at the Garner’s Mill community pool on June 21st. The article was brief, the kind of piece a small local paper ran when the facts were still incomplete. Three lifeguards had been on duty that afternoon: Ruth Malone, Cecilia Harrison, and George Tremaine. Rachel felt her mouth drop open a bit as she read the names.

The Alcott family later filed a negligence suit, but the case never advanced. A young defense attorney named Howard Pelham had represented the lifeguards. A follow-up piece published two months later—and conveniently linked from the original article—quoted his closing argument in a single clean line: no one can prove anything.

“Oh my God…”

“What is it?” Novak asked.

“I’ve got it. Right here.”

She turned the laptop to Novak again and watched as he read the full text of the original article, his eyes going wide as he clicked to the secondary one about Pelham. Neither of them spoke for several seconds. The pastry shop sounds continued at a distance—the soft clink of a spoon against a cup, the low murmur of the nurses leaving, the distant hum of the refrigeration unit behind the counter—but the room itself seemed to completely dissolve around them.

“That is the exact line,” Novak said at last. “The same words Howard used with Yates.”

“And Ruth asking for forgiveness. Cecilia was the third lifeguard. So the killer is clearly connected to that drowning somehow.”

“And George Tremaine is still unaccounted for.” Novak pointed out.

Rachel scrolled through the remaining paragraphs of the article. The drowning had been ruled accidental. The lawsuit had been dismissed without a full trial. Danny Alcott was thirteen years old when he’d died, and the paper mentioned a younger brother who had been present at the pool that day, though the boy’s name was not given in the article.

The link between the three victims was no longer theoretical. The motive sat in the open, essentially coming to them with open arms. Someone still cared about Danny Alcott. Someone had waited more than fifty years and then begun settling the account with the same careful staging each time.

“We have the connection,” Rachel said. “And we have the reason. Now we need to find out who is still willing to kill for it. And my money says the smartest place to start looking is with this younger brother.”

Novak gave a quick nod as he closed his laptop and began gathering the empty cups and crumpled napkins. Rachel shut her own machine, slid it into her bag, and stood. The morning outside the windows had brightened only slightly, the gray holding steady. But with coffee, her cinnamon roll, and this new promising lead, the day seemed much brighter than that.

“We get back to the field office,” Rachel said. “I say we run full records on the Alcott family, any surviving relatives still in the area, and every piece the Garner’s Mill paper ever printed about that summer. We also need a current address for George Tremaine before someone else reaches him first.”

“You drive, and I’ll call ahead to have someone get a headstart on all of that.”

They exited the shop and stepped into the chilly morning air. They had a motive and a link between the victims and Rachel knew that was usually enough. Now all they needed was the killer’s name—and she felt confident it would be closely linked to a boy that had been pulled dead from a pool fifty summers ago.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It wasn’t yet 8:00 in the morning, so the field office was still mostly quiet when they arrived. The bullpen held only a handful of agents at their desks, early birds who had come in to get a headstart on work. On the way over, when calling ahead to get their research started, Novak had briefed Anderson. His only instruction had been to keep him updated the moment they had a name that could be moved on. Rachel and Novak headed to the smaller conference room on the second floor where a pair of intern bureau admins had already got them logged into the database with the relevant search criteria pulled up.

“Need anything else,” one of the interns asked. He looked to be maybe twenty years of age and filled with an eagerness to please that Rachel could just barely remember.

“No, we’re good for now,” she said. “But thanks for this.”

She and Novak claimed seats at the table, and Rachel wasted no time returning to the Garner’s Mill newspaper archives. The earliest pieces on the drowning had given them the basic outline and the names of the three lifeguards on duty. She moved deliberately through the follow-up coverage that appeared in the weeks after the negligence suit was filed. She came across another article that mentioned Danny Alcott’s younger brother having been present at the pool that afternoon. The boy was eight years old. According to the reporting, the brother had tried to get an adult’s attention when he realized his brother was in trouble, but the people around him had mistaken it for him just goofing off; no one had taken him seriously. Too many children were already shouting and laughing in the water, and an eight-year-old’s alarm had been easy to dismiss as more of the same noise. But just like the first article, it did not supply the boy’s first name. Probably for privacy concerns, Rachel assumed.

She continued to dig and found another brief write-up. This one had been published after the lawsuit had been dismissed, and it was the first time the grieving brother had been named.

Roy Alcott. The writing was brief and clinical, as if the story had lost its steam now that the drama was over and the boy had been viewed as having been properly mourned. It confirmed that Roy Alcott had been at the pool with his brother and that he had given a short statement to the sheriff’s office. And based on all follow-up material Rachel was able to find, it seemed that after the fallout—of having the Alcott parents try to sue the pool and each of the lifeguards—the Alcott family had left Garner’s Mill within the year.

“Roy Alcott,” she said. “He was eight years old in 1971. That puts him at sixty-four now.”

Novak was already entering the name into the Bureau databases. “Let’s see what the current records show.”