The case will be reopened. Everyone knows it, including LaRochelle.
• • •
After LaRochelle’s departure, Hayes turns to face the investigators left in the room.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” he says. “Why didn’t any of the searchers see it? A new patch of disturbed earth, just across the lake? Marked with a cairn, no less. Huge crew of people on-site for weeks. You’d think they would have searched the periphery of the lake first thing.”
“Maybe they were misdirected,” says Judy.
Hayes looks at her. “By?”
“The family, I guess,” says Judy. Then she turns to Investigator Goldman. “Was that the sense you got? When you were working the case?”
Goldman hesitates. Looks down.
“I did always have the strange sense that they didn’t want to find him. Yes.”
“You think someone in the family killed him?” Hayes asks.
But this, apparently, isn’t a claim Goldman is prepared to make. He goes silent.
“What if it was an accident?” Judy says.
“Then why let Carl Stoddard take the fall? More than that—why actively indict him?” Hayes says.
Judy looks around, pausing to see if anyone else will chime in. But for a moment, there is silence.
“How did Carl Stoddard die?” someone asks.
“Heart attack,” Goldman says. “He had a heart attack and died while in police custody, awaiting questioning.”
Judy is forming a theory.
“What if it was convenience?” says Judy. “What if it was just easier for the family to let everyone think it was Stoddard who did it? He was dead, after all,” she said. “They probably thought they weren’t hurting anyone.”
“All right,” says Hayes. “Maybe. But that would still mean they had something to cover up.”
Silence.
“Which was?” says Goldman.
Judy is looking at something on the wall.
“Judy?” says Hayes.
“Investigator Goldman,” says Judy. “Who was the person running the search for Bear?”
“Well, the family was,” says Goldman.
“No,” says Judy. “The person providing direction. The person actually overseeing the search.”
Goldman looks down at the floor, thinking. Then he looks up. “I think it was the former camp director, actually,” he says. “The father of the current one. Vic Hewitt was his name.”
For a moment, Judy goes silent.
Then she walks down the hallway, toward the bedroom she now knows to be Vic’s.
When she returns, she proffers the group photo she found to Denny Hayes.
“Look,” she says, pointing to the pencil on the back. Blackfly Good-by. 1961. She flips it again to its front side. “Look again.”
A small group of investigators gathers around, looking at the photo.
Everyone in the picture is formally attired, children and adults alike, in dresses and suits. The women wear small hats. Even in black-and-white, she can see their lipstick and mascara.
Only two people stand off to one side, dressed differently: T.J., a young teenager; and her father Vic. Middle-aged. Bearded. Wearing a fishing hat with a floppy brim, and a plaid shirt rolled at the elbows, and corduroys patched at the knee.
Judy puts a finger to the girl. “That’s T.J. Hewitt,” she says. “Right? Doesn’t it look like her?”
Hayes nods.
“Which makes him,” says Judy, and Hayes says: “Vic Hewitt.”
She moves her finger back toward the larger group. “I’d describe them as summer people,” she said. “Based on their clothes. But how would you describe Vic?”
Hayes looks at her. “A local,” he says.
He turns to an investigator. Hands him the photograph. “Take this to Jacob Sluiter,” he says. “Ask him if he recognizes anyone in this photograph as the man who buried Bear Van Laar.”
