“Then the camp’ll go to Vic,” says Mr. Alcott. “Or more likely to his daughter, Tessie Jo.”
The kettle whistles. Judy looks up.
“But as I said,” says Mr. Alcott. “This is all rumor. Speculation. Which—as a history teacher—I should know better than to propagate.”
“I understand,” says Judy. “I’ll look into it myself.”
She stands. Thanks Mrs. Alcott for the tea. At the door, she turns back.
“I do have another question,” she says.
“Go ahead.”
“Vic Hewitt’s brother,” she says. “Charlie. What happened to him?”
“Oh, he died a decade ago, at least,” says Mr. Alcott.
“Two decades ago,” says Mrs. Alcott.
“Two decades ago. Before Bear disappeared. That’s right.”
“How did he die?”
“Natural causes,” says Mr. Alcott. “Nothing suspicious.”
“What did he do on the Preserve?”
Mr. Alcott frowns. “Now, I have to think about that,” he says. He puts his head down, as if trying hard to remember. “I guess—if I’m remembering right, I think he ran the farm. I think he oversaw the farm that supplied the main house with all its provisions, back in the day.”
“And he lived,” says Judy—though she already knows how he will answer. Where is he staying? she’d asked T.J., and T.J. had said: With his brother.
“He lived above the slaughterhouse,” says Mr. Alcott. “In a little apartment up there. That’s if I’m remembering right,” says Mr. Alcott, again.
Judy thanks him. Walks back toward her room, to get her car keys. And her gun.
Within five minutes she’s driving, headlights pointed north toward the Preserve.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Night Five
She’s never been on these grounds except in daylight. Now, the moon lends the long dirt driveway a different aspect. The pines on either side of it stretch like giants toward the sky. The farm buildings, in the glow cast by her headlights, look even more decrepit and decayed.
Judy pulls to the side of the driveway. Cuts her engine. Cuts her headlights, too.
She sits for a moment in the vast dark of the Preserve, letting her eyes adjust. This is the month of the Perseid meteor shower in the Adirondacks, and the sky is bright with stars.
• • •
She opens and closes the door to her Beetle as gently as she can. Opens the trunk to retrieve the flashlight from her emergency kit.
Then, holding her flashlight forward, she walks toward the slaughterhouse.
She approaches it the way she used to dive into cold water as a child. Quickly, confidently, without thinking too much.
If she stops and considers her actions, she knows she might falter.
Inside, she walks straight to the back, where a staircase rises toward the second floor. She ascends. The beam of the flashlight trembles slightly in her hand.
Halfway up, she pauses.
She hears something.
Voices, maybe: a man’s voice. And then, suddenly, music. She can’t make out the lyrics, but the music itself is old-fashioned, something she believes her grandparents might have listened to.
She continues up the stairs. At the top, in the beam of her flashlight, she sees a closed door. It’s held shut by a hasp and a padlock—the same kind she noticed on T.J. Hewitt’s room in the Staff Quarters building.
She hesitates for a moment. And then, carefully, she draws her gun.
With her other hand, she raps at the door.
“Mr. Hewitt?” she says. “Are you in there?”
The radio goes off.
“Mr. Hewitt,” she calls. “My name is Investigator Judyta Luptack. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Silence.
