Judy wills herself to keep her gaze straight ahead. If she turns it, she fears she’ll see Jacob Sluiter looking back at her.
• • •
They’re heading for the opposite bank of Lake Joan, to the small stretch of rocky land at the center of a bay that appears inaccessible by foot. Steep rocky outcroppings come up from the water and frame the inlet on either side.
On approach, it becomes clear that they’ll have to wade. There is no beach here, only boulders that impede entrance to the forest beyond. One by one, they disembark, holding each canoe steady as they go. Sluiter—hands bound together at his front, as if in supplication—must be helped out of the canoe by the burly guard assigned to him. As he walks toward the bow, body low, the canoe wobbles, threatens to tip. The guard opens his arms and Sluiter falls into them.
The forest beyond the rocks is brutally dense. Away from the shoreline, not much sunlight reaches the earth.
Walking in a line behind Jacob Sluiter, the terror of the North Woods, Judy scans the ground beyond his figure.
Earlier, on the phone, Sluiter had described what they’d be looking for: a cairn. A little stack of rocks, one atop the other, meant to mark a spot.
Now, Judy wants to be the one to see it first—if Sluiter’s telling the truth, that is, which remains to be seen. Part of her believes that he simply wanted a field trip: one last chance to see the outdoors before being remanded to a federal prison for the rest of his life.
After several minutes of bushwhacking, the quiet of their march is interrupted, at last, by the sound of Sluiter’s voice.
“Look up,” he says. They do.
They’ve reached the steep rock face they could see from shore. Ten feet above their heads, there looks to be a cavern, an open mouth of unclear depth.
“Look down,” Sluiter says, and bows his head. “There he is.”
At his feet, on the bare earth: a little tower of rocks.
A cairn.
Beneath that marker, says Jacob Sluiter, they will find the boy.
Louise
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Four
Louise stands in her childhood bedroom.
She’s been avoiding it. Last night, she slept on the couch. She doesn’t like to go in there, full as it is of the artifacts of her promise, of Louise Donnadieu at seventeen, the salutatorian of Central High, off on a full scholarship to Union.
Now, though, she’ll have to come to some sort of truce with the space: she may be here for weeks or months until her hearing.
She turns in a full circle and then begins to clear the walls of their adornments. Down come the National Honor Society certificate, the photograph of Louise in her cap and gown, shaking hands with her high school principal; down comes the last report card she ever received, filled with A’s and A-pluses.
She was the one who put them up. At fourteen, sixteen years old. No adult in her life ever cared enough to do so. Embarrassing, she thinks. Pathetic.
Her graduation photograph is the last to go. The girl in it is smiling, but her brows are furrowed, as if she’s seeing into the future.
Louise makes a pile on the floor of all the documents, then gathers them into her arms. She’s walking to the kitchen door to take them to the garbage when she hears Jesse speaking to someone outside it.
She picks up her pace.
“Who’s asking?” Jesse says, but Louise can’t hear the response.
Jesse turns to her, scowling: an expression that means it’s most likely a man.
He closes the door before asking.
“You know someone named Lee Towson?”
• • •
Three minutes later, Louise stands out front of her mother’s house, facing Lee Towson in the flesh. She’s made Jesse swear to stay inside; she’ll be damned if she has this conversation in front of an audience.
It’s only been four days since she stood opposite Lee in the hallway of Staff Quarters at the camp. It feels like a month. She can still hear Denny’s phrase in her ear: statutory rape. She looks down at the ground when she speaks.
“How’d you find me?”
“Phone book,” he says. “Not too many Donnadieus in Shattuck, New York.”
“But how’d you know I was here?”
“I’ve got friends in the area.”
She considers the implication of this. She has always disliked being gossiped about. But in a town as small as Shattuck, she guesses it’s inevitable.
“You know they’re looking for you?” Louise asks him.
“I heard that.”
“Where’ve you been?”
