• • •
A knock at the door interrupts them.
Anna, the conservator, stands blinking in the bright sunlight, exhausted.
LaRochelle, taking the last few drags on his cigarette, stands behind her.
“Anna, did you ever go home?” Judy asks her.
“No. I got excited.”
She turns and walks in the direction of the main house. Judy glances over her shoulder at Hayes, who glances at LaRochelle. Then the three of them follow her, trotting to keep up with Anna’s long strides.
• • •
With both Van Laar parents back in Albany, and most of the guests now gone, the house is almost empty.
Together, Judy and Anna walk to the pink room. Inside, the exposed mural is in plain sight.
Judy’s first reaction is to be surprised at the quality of the artistry. Barbara Van Laar could paint; that’s certain. The wall is covered with a set of icons Judy doesn’t understand: safety pins and flags and odd-looking faces with odder-looking haircuts. Music notes abound, as well.
A river makes its way from the upper left-hand corner of the wall to the lower right-hand corner.
Judy takes the whole thing in, scanning it rapidly to see if anything catches her eye.
“Do you see it yet?” says Anna.
Judy’s heartbeat quickens.
“See what?” says Captain LaRochelle, his head moving in quick circles as he takes the whole wall in.
“I don’t blame you,” says Anna. “The whole thing is overwhelming. But come closer.”
She walks to the river. Its waves, she realizes, are not just waves. They’re letters.
BVL + JPM, they spell.
The way that children, for decades or centuries, have memorialized their love.
• • •
“Barbara Van Laar plus John Paul McLellan,” Hayes says.
He’s asked for the Director’s Cabin to be cleared. As senior investigator, he has that authority. Now Judy sits opposite him in a folding chair, elbows on knees, gaze on ground.
“I think that’ll hold up as solid evidence,” says Hayes. “With any judge. We’ll start the process of getting a warrant for his arrest. The only question now is—where’d he stow the girl?”
“That’s not the only question,” says Judy.
“Oh?”
“The other one is: Did Vic Hewitt kill her brother Bear?”
Hayes looks at her. Then he slaps his knees and stands up.
“That’s your assignment, Judy,” he says. “Forget the grandfather, for now. Forget Jacob Sluiter. I’m on the lead desk, and that’s the lead I assign you. In the meantime, I’m driving down to the hotel McLellan’s staying in myself. I don’t trust these troopers to keep good tabs on him.”
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Five
She spends hours looking for any sign of either Hewitt. She goes back to Staff Quarters; she searches the commissary, where T.J. must be eating, to see if she can find her there. She asks the staff up at the main house; no one has seen her, and no one seems to know her well enough to speculate about where she might have gone.
Either that, thinks Judy, or they’re not talking.
• • •
At four p.m., just before the end of her shift, Judy is seated outside the Director’s Cabin, gazing at the lake, when the sound of a vehicle draws her attention.
It’s T.J. Hewitt, in her truck. She drives by without turning her head in Judy’s direction. Pulls to a stop out front of Staff Quarters, a hundred yards away.
Judy watches as T.J. brings a bag out of the vehicle. Then lets herself into the building.
Judy follows.
• • •
Inside, she finds the padlock on the door unlocked, and the door standing open. She knocks anyway.
