Hayes frowns. Then sighs.
“She didn’t tell you,” says Judy.
He shakes his head.
“Did you talk to the grandfather yesterday?” Judy asks.
“Couldn’t find him anyplace,” says Hayes. “Everyone gave me a different story about where he was.” He pauses. “You?”
“Not him, exactly,” says Judy. “But I’ve got a new lead for you.” And without waiting for him to respond, she describes her afternoon: the tip Mrs. Van Laar Sr. gave her. Her search for Vic Hewitt. The cane, the dentures. The empty bedroom.
“You can see for yourself,” says Judy, nodding in the direction of the hallway. “It’s right there.”
“What did T.J. say when you interviewed her? About where her father was?”
“That’s the funny thing,” says Judy. “She didn’t mention him at all, in the present tense. Just said he had been camp director until his memory began to fail. I had no idea he was still living in the Director’s Cabin.”
“Until he wasn’t anymore,” says Hayes.
“Right.”
Hayes thinks. “All right,” he says. “Forget what I said before. Your task for the day is to set eyes on Vic Hewitt.”
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Four
Camp Emerson, these days, is deserted of everyone except troopers and rangers and investigators. The counselors and campers and staff are all gone. The only employee who should, in theory, still be on the grounds is T.J. Hewitt.
But when Judy returns to Staff Quarters, to the place she last saw T.J., she finds the door to the room she was in not only closed, but locked with a hasp and padlock. Newly installed, by the looks of the wood shavings on the floor.
Despite the external lock, Judy still knocks at the door, gently and then firmly.
No response.
She spends the next several hours asking anyone she encounters if they’ve seen T.J., but no one seems to have—not since yesterday. Her truck, too, is nowhere on the grounds.
She is not a person of interest in this case—not officially, anyway. She has the right to come and go as she pleases. Still, the absence of both T.J. and her father feels suspicious—especially in the wake of yesterday’s conversations—and Judy has an unsettled feeling in her stomach.
At noon, she returns to the Director’s Cabin to find lunch. When she enters, Denny Hayes is hanging up the phone.
“Investigator Luptack,” he says. “You’re just the person I was looking for.”
“Me?” says Judy, and Hayes nods.
“I’ve got a favor to ask you,” he says—but he stops himself. “Any progress on Vic Hewitt?”
“No,” says Judy. “And now it seems like T.J.’s gone, too.”
A pause.
“I’ll get someone else on that,” says Hayes.
“Who?” Judy asks. And then, realizing: “What’s the favor?”
Hayes sighs.
“He wants to talk to a lady,” says Hayes.
“Who does?” Judy asks.
“Sluiter. Goldman did his best, but he got nothing. Sluiter wants to talk to a lady.”
“Okay,” says Judy.
“There’s one female investigator in the BCI,” says Hayes, delicately.
“Right.”
“I argued against it,” says Hayes. “I don’t know that it’s right to give him what he wants. And I have no idea what he might say to you. Could be all kinds of perverted garbage, for all I know. But it’s out of my hands. LaRochelle’s given the okay.”
“It’s all right,” says Judy. “I’m not scared.”
• • •
She’s scared. Two hours later, Judy stands outside one of Ray Brook’s interrogation rooms, gazing through a one-way mirror at Jacob Sluiter himself.
He’s tall and thin. Receding hairline. At fifty, now, his arms are ropy and his body looks spry; she can imagine that Sluiter in his thirties—the age he was when his original string of homicides took place—would have been even more difficult to overpower. A sparse beard looks as if it’s been growing in the whole time he’s been on the lam.
