Lake of the Dead by Susan Clayton-Goldner

Author:Susan Clayton-Goldner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, suicide, redemption, death of a child, stalking, child loss, parental devotion, child crime
Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing

Chapter Eighteen

After swinging by his office to pick up the search warrant McBride had obtained for the Hollingsworth cabin, boathouse and grounds, Radhauser printed out motor vehicle photographs of Madison Hollingsworth, James Collins, Edith Collins, Wallace Davenport and Tom Wilson. He asked McBride to research names, addresses and photos of registered Harley owners in southern Oregon, then headed home. A fine rain had begun to fall and the street was wet. Long, dazzling reflections of red taillights spilled over its dark surface.

As he drove, he debated whether or not to go back up to the cabin and collect evidence or wait until daylight. When his cell phone rang, he pulled over onto the gravel shoulder and answered. The darkness had swallowed the sky except for a bright wire of gold along the western horizon.

“Detective Radhauser. It’s Sully. You said I should notify you iffen I seen anything suspicious, so I come down to the 7-Eleven to call you again. I probably shoulda done it earlier, but I wasn’t sure. The more I thought on it, the more I figured you’d want to know.” He told Radhauser about the burned composition books he’d discovered in the barrel behind the Hollingsworth cabin and the empty liquor bottles he’d seen when he looked through the kitchen window. “Don’t worry. I didn’t touch nothin’,” Sully said. “I just looked in the windows. And didn’t get any of my fingerprints on the glass. I used a flashlight to look into the burn barrel.”

“Did you ever see Parker burning anything outside?”

“Yeah. It’s what most of the folks up here do with their trash. It ain’t like we got a weekly pick-up.”

“Do you remember the last time you saw him using the burn barrel?”

“I seen a fire still smokin’ out there early on Sunday morning. But there weren’t no one tendin’ to it. And Parker always stayed close by until the fire was completely out.”

Had the killers set the notebooks on fire before dragging Parker out into the lake? Maybe it was a way of torturing him. “It’s too dark to see much tonight, Sully. How about we both get some sleep and I meet you first thing in the morning?”

“I done slept away most of the afternoon. But now I can’t get Parker out of my mind. You got anythin’ for me to do in the meantime?”

“No. But I want you to stay away from the Hollingsworth place and wait for me.”

After he hung up, Radhauser sat, thinking for a moment, before he pulled back onto the road and headed toward his ranch in Talent.

As he drove, he became more and more obsessed with what really happened to Parker Collins. If the composition books were burned on Sunday morning, it couldn’t have been Parker who’d burned them. Besides, it was hard for Radhauser to imagine him destroying the books, given how careful the kid had been with his other writings. Did someone else burn them? And if so, why?

The torturing Parker theory didn’t hold up, given Radhauser now knew the boy was already dead when the notebooks were burned.

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