“No more talking to this guy at his house.” Kole fixes Axel with a hard look before turning to Riley. “Now, he comes to ours.”
The three of them are in the bullpen at the BHPD; the lighthouse isn’t set up for interrogations. It isn’t busy. Most day shift investigators work Monday through Friday until 3 or 4 p.m., with the exception of two who work a rotating schedule—as though criminal activity can be forced into the hours of a normal workweek, and two detectives are enough to manage the unruly overflow. When he first came upstairs from Patrol, Axel snorted at the ridiculousness of it, but over the years, he has come to understand how futile their jobs are. The way crime surges in this city, command might as well tell them to mop up Lake Michigan. It’s never going to happen, just like crime is never going to ebb. Honestly, who cares when they do it?
The emptiness of the bureau strikes a chord of melancholy. He remembers when this place was teeming with hungry investigators, hunting killers and searching houses. It wasn’t all that long ago. The budget cuts coupled with a hostile landscape drove a lot of people—from white shirts to patrolmen—into early retirement, and a current hiring freeze keeps new recruits from coming in. The fact that the police haven’t even had a contract in three years doesn’t add any lipstick to the pig, either.
Cutler answers on the second ring. He’s on speakerphone. Kole’s voice betrays none of the seething animosity any of them feel toward him as he asks him to come in for an interview. “Some new information has come to light about some of your students,” says Kole. “We think you could help us work through some stuff, maybe put this whole thing to rest.”
It isn’t a lie. Not yet.
They do want to interview Cutler about his students—particularly the dead ones who happen to be the same girls involved in the rumor.
Kole ends the call, then slides his phone into his back jeans pocket. He leans against the wall, feet crossed at the ankles, as casually as though he’s waiting for a pizza to arrive, not a murder suspect.
“What’s the plan?” asks Riley.
“Switch interview.” He says it so confidently that Axel has to wonder how many times the sergeant has done this, especially in his detective days. “We lure him in here with an interview, let him get comfortable, then we surprise him with an interrogation and get him really uncomfortable.” His eyes light up at that last part. Breaking people is his forte.
A realization strikes Axel, sharp as a needle. It fills his veins with a cold sensation as it sinks in. What if it’s true? What if Chloe’s daddy issues ran so deep, she sought out a relationship with her older male teacher? What if he got her pregnant, and she’s been hiding this whole time, waiting until it’s safe to come out and explain?
Oh Jesus.
She’s only fifteen. But it would explain the baggy clothes. The change in her mood. Her sudden disappearance. It’s the first time the scenario has entered his mind and it’s so plausible, he almost faints. He leans forward and lowers his head. His chair scrapes across the floor. With his elbows pressing into the tops of his knees, he clasps his hands across the bridge of his neck. A shiver runs up his spine. Riley presses her hand flat against his back, smooths it up and down.
“You all right, Winthorp?” Kole’s voice grounds him, pulling him away from speculation and transporting him back to the here and now. The nausea starts to lift. Axel lets out a deep exhale and straightens up. He nods.
“The good news,” says Kole, “is you’re not invited to the interrogation. Riley and I will take the lead.”
Axel nods again. It’s for the best. If he were in the same room as Cutler, he would lunge at him and strangle the living daylights out of him. A cross-collar choke would do the trick. He imagines himself shooting his left hand into Cutler’s shirt collar, then crossing underneath with his right, and using his forearms to squeeze the life out of his carotid arteries. He’d be rendered unconscious in ten seconds, brain-dead twenty to thirty seconds after that.
The fantasy is sickly satisfying. He wonders if the sergeant can see the movie playing behind his eyes, because Kole fixes him with a piercing stare that warns simply: don’t.
It’s just after 2 p.m. when Cutler comes upstairs. Riley leads him to Interview Room #1, apologizing in advance for the harshness of it. “Our soft interview room’s occupied,” she lies. Cutler says that’s fine, because what else is he going to say? Axel sits behind the two-way mirror. He watches Cutler take a seat at the stainless-steel table. It’s bolted to the concrete floor, after a previous person of interest picked it up and threw it across the room.
When Kole enters, he brings a bottle of water and sets it on the table in front of Cutler, pulls up the chair across from him. Riley sits to Kole’s left, farthest away from the mirror.
“Thanks for coming in, Mark. We really appreciate it,” says Kole. “Especially on such short notice.”
Cutler presses his lips into a tight seam. He’s wearing the same blue hoodie as yesterday. Axel matches the emblem on it to the one on his grandson’s hockey jersey. “Well, I’m kind of ‘off’ for the foreseeable future.” He makes air quotes, then clasps his hands, resting them on the surface of the table.
“Right,” says Kole. “I heard they closed the school for this week at least. Smart decision. Lots of kids up in arms about missing Homecoming or whatever it is goes on this time of year?”
“Homecoming was actually a couple weeks ago,” states Cutler, and Axel remembers that Chloe had chosen not to participate. Lydia Deetz would not have gone to a school dance where kids swayed awkwardly to basic bitch music and then ditched to guzzle alcohol at after parties only to wake the next morning with baby’s first hangover. Instead, she stayed home and watched horror movies with Fry, rolling her eyes at the caravans of kids who came to Belgrave Circle in their poofy Starburst-colored dresses to pose for pictures by the lake.
“My bad,” says Kole. “It’s been a while.”
Cutler lifts a shoulder. “To be honest, if Homecoming were yet to happen, I doubt the kids would care at this point if it got canceled. Especially the girls. They don’t want to be next.”
The statement reminds Axel of Sari Simons. Just two days ago, she sat in Interview Room #3 and confided her fear of becoming the next victim, and she was right.
“Do you think there is real danger to them?” asks Riley. “If you had a teenage daughter, would you let her out past dark these—”
“God no,” says Cutler prematurely. Overcompensating? “I’ve even warned my own daughter to stay indoors and she’s an adult.” He shakes his head. “It’s terrible what’s happening. Just…” He shakes his head.
“We can’t ignore the fact,” says Riley, “that the girls whose deaths or disappearance we’re investigating are all students at Monroe Academy. Have you noticed anyone suspicious? Someone hanging around school grounds or near the walking trail who perhaps shouldn’t be?”
Cutler doesn’t answer. His eyes move back and forth like he’s reading something. Finally, he looks up at Riley and Kole again. “You said ‘deaths.’ Have there been more?”
“Sari Simons was murdered Saturday night,” explains Kole. “Her body was discovered at the Compound—that haunted house complex on Pruitt. She was strangled and mutilated, similar to Madison Caldwell.”
If there was any light in Cutler’s eyes when he first entered the room, it’s gone now. “Jesus,” he breathes.
“What do you know about Sari?” asks Riley. “Was she a good student? A good kid?”
The sigh that Cutler heaves takes so much air out of him, he slumps in his chair. “She wasn’t bad, but … I’d be reluctant to characterize her as good.”
“Do tell.” Kole’s command is firm, though not unfriendly.
The seam of Cutler’s mouth splits apart. He wets his lips with his tongue. “I’m fairly certain she and Madison Caldwell started that rumor,” he says finally.
Riley tilts her head as though she has not the slightest inkling what he’s talking about.
“Care to educate Investigator Riley?” asks Kole. “She’s coming in media res. That’s a theater term, yeah?”
It’s a lie. Riley’s been on this case since the beginning, but this way, they’ll get Cutler to share his story for the record, and so they can start poking holes in it.
“In the middle of things,” translates Cutler. “Sure.” He exhales. “A few weeks ago … It was September. Yes, because school had just started and we’d just announced the cast for the play.”
“What play?” prompts Kole.
“Beetlejuice: The Musical.”
“Wholesome,” notes Riley.
Cutler smiles, despite himself. “We had a vote. The kids picked it.”
“They’re Black Harbor babies,” says Kole. “Disturbing and macabre is baked into their DNA.”
“Right,” agrees Cutler. “Chloe Winthorp was cast as one of the leads.”
“I hear she took it very seriously,” says Kole. “Her role.”
Cutler nods. “She did. Chloe was a method actor through and through. Even in other plays, when she got cast in more supporting roles, she never broke character. I worried about that a little with this one, but … I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to see what she was made of.”
“What do you mean by that, exactly?” asks Kole.
“Lydia Deetz is a dark character,” explains Cutler. “She’s deeply troubled, over-sexualized … Chloe wasn’t like a lot of the other girls at Monroe. She was fragile. Sometimes emotionally distant, other times overly emotional. Part of that comes with being a teenager, I get that. But there was more at play, too.”
“Such as what?”
Cutler is calm as he fixes Kole with a hard stare. On the other side of the mirror, Axel leans forward to better listen.
“I’m not a doctor, but I think she was dyslexic.” The word is a monolith that steals every molecule of oxygen out of the air. Its magnetic force pulls Axel to the glass, so he can study the subject who wields it. He’s never heard that term before in regards to Chloe.
“Dyslexic,” repeats Kole. “Is that, like, when people transpose their words and whatnot?”
Cutler nods. “It’s a visual processing disorder. People have difficulty reading and spelling. They might transpose similar sounding words or letters, like b and d, for instance.” He glances at Riley as though wanting her to validate his definition. She stands stoic, her gaze trained on him. “It can be stressful and anxiety-inducing,” Cutler continues, “resulting in social isolation, depression, and unhealthy obsessions. Especially if it goes undiagnosed.”
“Was Chloe ever diagnosed?” asks Kole.
Behind the glass, Axel shakes his head, although he can’t tell if it’s in response to Kole’s question or in disbelief. Chloe couldn’t have a—what did Cutler call it—a visual processing disorder? He and Rowan would have known about it. They would have gotten her help—
“No,” says Cutler. “I tried reaching out to her parents several times about it, though. I sent emails that went unread, I tried to set up a time to meet after school, but … well, I guess I got a glimpse of what Chloe’s life was like.”
“What do you mean by that?” Kole’s question is innocent enough, but it incites an angry edge to Cutler’s voice.
“They were never around.” He says it so simply, as though it’s a fact and not a teenager’s dramatization. “They left her alone a lot, and if they showed up to her events, they almost always left early. I know they’re homicide cops or whatever, but Jesus. The dead can wait a minute, yeah?”
Kole looks somber and Axel knows what he’s thinking. He’s thinking that they’re all guilty of it—of saying you’ll be somewhere and then getting yanked onto a scene instead. Of missing holidays and family get-togethers. Of eventually just ceasing to commit to anything that isn’t work, and yet having the audacity to get irritated or hurt when the invitations stop coming your way.
“She told you she was left alone frequently?”
Axel feels a twinge of amusement, knowing that this is where Kole turns it around.
“Yes.”
“And that bothered her?”
Cutler nods. “I know it did.”
“How do you know that?”
Cutler pauses, fixing Kole with a stare that grows colder with each passing millisecond. “Listen, I know that anything I say in this room can and will be shared with Chloe’s father. He’s probably sitting on the other side of that glass, watching this whole conversation.” He tilts his head toward the two-way mirror. “Just keep him over there and we won’t have a problem. But yeah, she did tell me her parents worked a lot. It was sad; I felt sorry for her. She used to tell me the only way they’d start noticing her was when she was dead.”
The last sentence is a barb in Axel’s chest. He remembers, as a child, his dad always being gone at the tannery. The loneliness and the frustration he often felt over him not being there, but at least his mom was home. Chloe didn’t even have that. Both her parents had chosen their careers over her.
As harsh as it is, he has to admit there’s truth to what Cutler is sharing. How many nights had he and Rowan left Chloe to her own devices? He always thought she’d just whiled away the time in her room, drawing or singing or watching TV. Apparently, she’d spent it missing them and sinking into a depression so deep, perhaps she couldn’t claw her way out.
And an unhealthy obsession. Hadn’t Cutler mentioned that?
“When would she tell you these things?” Kole asks.
Cutler sighs. “Whenever we were alone, I guess.”
The image of Cutler—a fifty-one-year-old man—alone with his fifteen-year-old daughter spikes Axel’s blood.
“I met with her twice a week before school,” explains Cutler. “We’d work on reading and writing. Specifically spelling. She was really self-conscious about that.” He shrugs. “I graded her papers differently than the other students, focusing more on the context and the ideas she was supporting versus her spelling and grammar. I thought I was doing right by Chloe, helping her this way, but in retrospect, I wonder if I hadn’t been adding fuel to the fire.”
His voice breaks and climbs an octave with the last four words. Axel almost feels something other than hatred for him, but then he remembers: Cutler is an actor.
“They thought you were giving her preferential treatment?”
Cutler sucks his teeth. “Yeah. And then they started talking. Or texting or Snapchatting, whatever. I guess that’s how kids communicate these days.”
“You’re talking about the rumor?”
“Yeah.” Cutler’s exhale is ragged. Clearly agitated, he slides his elbows across the table and scrunches his hair. It’s dark and strewn with silver, just like the Pumpkin Lady indicated.
“You mind filling Investigator Riley in on what happened?” Kole asks.
Cutler straightens. He bites his bottom lip before speaking. “Madison Caldwell and Sari Simons—two girls in Chloe’s class—planted Chloe’s shirt in my messenger bag. They took a Snapchat and put some text that said Daddy Issues on it and circulated it around the school.”
Riley takes a deep breath as though taking it all in. “Insinuating that you and Chloe Winthorp were having a … sexual relationship?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He opens his mouth to say more, but stops. His shoulders visibly rise and fall. He shakes his head. “If they had any idea how much trouble this caused me … My career. My marriage.” He pauses. His jaw hangs slack as though he can’t believe this is his life. “They found out about my wife. How we met when she was a senior in high school and I was her teacher. It was wrong, I get it, but … I was only four years older than her and we never dated until after she graduated. For Christ’s sake, we’ve been married for almost thirty years. But that doesn’t matter to people. All they care about is the headlines. The ‘drama.’” He breaks out the air quotes again.
“Who’s they?” asks Kole. “The people who’ve been digging into your past?”
Cutler turns his hands palms up. Even from where he sits, Axel can see the condensation they leave on the table. “Everyone, it seems. Now my wife won’t come home. She’s staying with her sister until this blows over. If it blows over.” He looks up at both Kole and Riley. “Do you know how isolating it is when no one believes you? I mean, fuck. You were the only person who did at first”—he gestures to Kole—“and then the others started coming around. Not everyone, but…” He pauses for a long time. “They called me Mr. Cuddler. Still do. I mean it’s like being back in high school, myself, again, with kids whispering behind your back. Some things never change, right?”
Axel knows the feeling. He’s spoken to correctional officers and guards who work in the jail. It’s like being in jail eight, ten, twelve hours a day, every day. They’re trapped inside those concrete walls right along with the inmates. Same goes for teachers. They’re right back in school.
“The nickname and the Snapchat and all that,” Riley picks up. “Could they have had anything to do with how much time Chloe was spending with you before class and at drama practice?”
“Of course,” admits Cutler. “And I’m sure a lot of it stemmed from that. But I also think it had something to do with the fact that Madison felt she should have been cast as lead in the play. She was lead in the last two productions. But, to be completely honest, her performance wasn’t up to snuff. And someone else deserved the spotlight.”
“Chloe,” says Kole.
Cutler nods, his expression somber as though him casting her as Lydia Deetz catalyzed all of this. Maybe it did.
“What do you know about Reeves Singh?” Riley flips the subject.
“Reeves?” Cutler blows out a breath. “He’s a soccer star. Been dating Madison Caldwell for a while now. Or … he used to.” He looks suddenly from Riley to Kole. “You don’t think he killed Madison, do you? And Sari, and…” His voice falls. Axel notes how he stops before mentioning Chloe’s name among the dead. Because she isn’t dead and Cutler knows it. He’s keeping her. This Reeves Singh stuff is all a filibuster.
“We just don’t want to rule him out,” warns Kole. “Guys kill their girlfriends all the time.” And then, realizing how laissez-faire he sounds: “Well, not all the time. But it happens. Unfortunately. He and Madison could have gotten into an argument before the play that night. Maybe he didn’t agree with how she was treating Chloe. She must have chastised her, yeah? Made her life miserable if she thought Chloe stole her part.”
Cutler nods. “She and Sari Simons both. They were relentless from what Chloe told me. Just picking her apart.” He fixes his gaze solely on Kole. “When her dad came to my house yesterday, and you found us out by my chicken coop, I was showing him one of my hens that had been pecked to death by the others. That’s what they did to Chloe. They pecked and they pecked and they pecked until she…” He swallows. “I was worried about her, let’s just say that.”
“You mentioned that people with dyslexia can develop an unhealthy obsession. Was that true for Chloe?”
“Acting,” says Cutler without a second of hesitation. “She told me it was her only way out of Black Harbor. And she was brilliant at it. So much so that it was a little scary at times.”
“What do you mean by that?” asks Kole. “What kinds of behaviors was Chloe exhibiting?”
“She started … hiding in plain sight, I guess. Wearing oversized sweatshirts that she could draw her knees up into and pull the neck of it up over her chin. I asked her once about it and she said she was getting into character for Lydia. She might have been telling the truth. Like I said, she was a method actor. But I just felt, in my gut, that something was off.”
Axel remembers. He’d confronted Chloe about her change of style and she’d given him the same response.
“What did they tease Chloe about, specifically?” asks Riley.
Cutler thinks for a moment. He tilts his head up toward the ceiling, eyes rolling so Axel can see the slivers of white under his irises. When he comes forward again, he plants his elbows on the table, tucks his thumbs under his chin, and talks over his knuckles. “Anything and everything,” he says, “from the way she dressed to what she ate for lunch. Her name. After the prank, they called her Chloe the Hoe-y.”
The investigators fall quiet and Axel knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Cutler is acting. He acts and he teaches kids to act, too. To pretend. How many kids has he coached through interviews like this? Had Sari Simons been acting? All this talk about Reeves Singh and the girls … it’s a diversion. He can feel it in his bones, in his blood that boils beneath his skin despite the chill in the room.
Cutler knew Chloe would be alone that night, going home to an empty house. He’d planned for Rowan and Axel to be gone, investigating the homicide of Madison Caldwell, because he’d killed her.
The jigsaw pieces in his head are finally fitting together. Finally, he has his answer. Cutler killed those girls, and he has Chloe.
“Can I tell you something?” Cutler’s voice bears the quiet edge of defeat. His mouth is slack, as though he doesn’t have the willpower to keep the words he’s about to say inside anymore.
“Please,” invites Kole.
“I didn’t kill those girls. And I never had sex with Chloe. Sure, she was cute, but she’s a high school kid.”
Axel feels the blood drain from his face and pool in his chest. His ears burn. Cutler’s into high school kids. He just admitted that’s how he met his wife.
“I know that,” continues Cutler, and it sounds almost as if he’s talking more to himself than to Riley and Kole. “I know I didn’t do any of that … but after a while, it doesn’t matter whether or not you did it. You begin to wear the allegations like a stain. A stain that looks an awful lot like guilt. And do you know the worst part?”
“What’s that, Mark?”
He lifts his gaze to meet Kole’s. “You start to doubt your own innocence.”
He’s lying. He killed those girls. He fucked Chloe. He’s probably still fucking her, wherever he’s got her kept.
And Kole and Riley are lapping it up.
Before his brain registers what his body is doing, Axel is out of his chair and bursting through the door of the interview room. He lunges at Cutler, and crossing his forearms over each other, sweeps them under his hoodie and pulls tight. Cutler’s face turns red, the whites of his eyes suddenly aflame. He tries to shout but only a gasp escapes; Axel has his windpipe in a vise grip.
Ten seconds and lights out.
“You lying son of a bitch!” he yells. “You have her! You have Chloe! Where the fuck is she?”
Nine … eight … seven …
Cutler punches him in the kidney, but Axel doesn’t let go. He can’t now.
Five … four … three …
The concrete is cold and unrelenting against his cheek. He cuts his teeth on it. Pain vibrates through his skull. There’s pressure on the back of his neck. From his peripheral vision, he can see Kole is on top of him, an arm bar across his neck and shoulders.
Cutler is on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. “I’m gonna sue you!” The promise is ragged, tearing from his throat. “I’m gonna sue the shit out of you!”
He keeps yelling, but Axel can’t make out any of the words. The floor feels good against his hot skin. He closes his eyes and lets consciousness drift away from him.