Mrs. Muldauer—brown-haired, bespectacled, nearly as tiny as her son—looks nervous. “May we come along?”
“Of course,” Judy says. “Come on in.”
Hayes stands outside the Director’s Cabin, serving as a guard while Judy works.
Inside, Judy pulls forward a downtrodden sofa that’s been shoved against a wall; she offers this to the family, and pulls up a hard folding chair to face them. As he sits between his parents, Christopher’s legs stick straight out into space.
Judy takes out her notepad and pen.
“What brings you here today, Christopher?” she says.
He’s silent. He looks down at his knees.
“Go ahead,” says his father.
Nothing.
“How old are you, Christopher?” Judy tries.
Nothing.
“Twelve? Thirteen?” she says. She smiles a little. Joking.
“I’m eight,” he says, in a voice so low she can barely hear it. “I’m the youngest camper at Camp Emerson.”
“Did you like camp?” Judy asks.
“No, I hated it,” he says. Above his head, his parents glance at one another.
“Chris,” his father says, refocusing him. “Can you tell the lady what you told us? She has other things to do.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Muldauer,” says Judy. “Christopher can take his time.”
And he does. Thirty seconds pass. A minute.
“Is there a reason you don’t want to tell me what you told your parents?” asks Judy.
“I don’t want to get them in trouble,” he says.
“Your parents?”
“My friends.”
There is pride in his voice as he says it. This is a boy, Judy understands, who doesn’t have many of those.
“Who are your friends, Christopher?”
“Barbara and Tracy,” he says, so quietly she isn’t certain she heard him right.
“Barbara and Tracy?”
He nods.
“Christopher,” says Judy. “The most important thing right now is finding Barbara and bringing her home. If she did something bad, we can address that some other time. But anything you can tell us will help us to keep Barbara safe.”
A pause.
“We all went into the woods together,” says Christopher.
“When?”
“For Survival Trip.”
He explains it to her. Lists all the people in his group. Explains how their campsite was laid out.
“We were there three nights,” says Christopher. “And I have this problem that keeps me awake. So two of the nights I saw Barbara go out of the tent she was sharing with Tracy, and it looked to me like she was walking into the woods. But then a weird thing happened.”
“What was it?”
“Well, she turned around,” says Christopher. “I watched her. Her flashlight would go off and it was like she’d wait awhile, out in the dark. And then a while later, her flashlight would go back on, and she’d walk back in our direction. The first night I thought she’d just gone to pee or something. But she walked past our campsite, all the way past it.”
“Where was she going?”
“Into T.J. Hewitt’s tent,” says Christopher.
“T.J.? The camp director?”
He nods.
