“You familiar with the Van Laar family?” Denny asks.
She’s heard the name, she says. (She hasn’t.)
“Remember a news story about a boy who disappeared in the mountains? Twelve or fourteen years ago, this was,” says Hayes.
Judy would have been a child. But reminding people of her youth seems sometimes to offend them, and so she says, “Yes, I think so.”
“Well, the interesting thing there is,” says Hayes, “they caught the guy who killed that little boy. Sick fellow. But he’s dead now. So, another kid goes missing from the same place. Who dunnit this time?” He looks at Judy and winks, as if telling a joke.
• • •
The land they pass becomes more and more rural. With her appointment to the BCI, Judy has been transferred to Troop B, headquartered in the Adirondacks at Ray Brook. This would be fine—preferable, even—but for the fact that Judy, two weeks into her new position, is still living with her parents in Schenectady; and this means a daily commute that borders on the impossible.
It’s two hours from her house to Ray Brook. But the transfer was the only way she could break in as an investigator, she has explained—repeatedly—to her parents. One day soon, she’ll convince them that she should find her own place, closer to work; but none of Judy’s siblings have ever moved out prior to marriage, and so for now Judy thinks it best not to rock the boat. For fourteen days, instead, she has set her alarm for four a.m., and dealt with the howls of her brothers when the beeping begins at that time.
“Here we are,” says Hayes.
They pull down a long driveway. On the left is a group of old farm buildings, seemingly no longer in use. A sloping lawn breaks into view, and suddenly they’re facing a house that looks like something out of one of her history textbooks in school.
She can feel Hayes’s sideways gaze on her as they pull in. Reading her.
What Hayes doesn’t know is that Judy is used to being around rich people. Starting at twelve years old, she worked—first off the books and then on—at the Iroquois Golf Club, where her father is still head of the janitorial staff. She washed dishes and then bused tables and then waited tables. Even today she sometimes gets a call from Chick Janowicz, the general manager, to cover a shift when someone is out sick. And every December she works the elaborate Christmas party for cash. Everyone in the Luptack family does: even her mother.
Hayes parks the car at an odd angle on the lawn. A few local troopers are already on-site. Four EnCon vehicles are present too, unoccupied: forest rangers, probably already out in the woods, conducting an initial search.
Hayes regards them for a beat. Then asks: “What’s your guess?”
Judy looks at him.
“Take a guess. About what happened to the girl.”
“Oh,” says Judy. “I’m not sure.”
“Runaway’s my guess,” says Hayes. “Girl this age goes missing it’s almost always a runaway.”
Judy is silent.
“She’s prob’ly got her thumb out on a back road as we speak. Just hope we find her before a bad guy does,” says Hayes.
Then, without waiting for Judy, he gets out and sets off in the direction of the nearest trooper, a portly man with sandy eyebrows, and reaches for a handshake.
• • •
Judy hesitates. She gets out, turns in a slow circle, taking in the house, the lake on its far side, the woods all around. To the south is some sort of organization, a children’s school or camp: she can hear high-pitched shrieks and laughter coming from that direction.
When Denny Hayes returns, he gives her the facts of the case.
It’s the Van Laars’ daughter who’s missing, he says. Thirteen-year-old girl from the same family whose son went missing over a decade before.
Her name, says Hayes, is Barbara Van Laar; she was attending the camp on the grounds; she was last seen asleep in a bunk in her cabin the night before.
The brief statements the troopers have gotten have yielded no theories or leads. Everyone seems surprised by her disappearance. No one has any idea where she might have gone.
Complicating everything, he says, is the fact that another camper is now missing: Barbara’s bunkmate, a girl named Tracy Jewell, who has no connection to the family. This one was last seen just a couple of hours prior, on a walk from the cabin to the commissary for breakfast. Her parents have been alerted; they’re driving this way.
In light of these two disappearances, all the campers are now gathered in the Great Hall, with two troopers assigned to that post. Their parents are being called, one set after another, and instructed to come and retrieve their children. But with ninety-one families and only two landlines, the process is taking a good deal of time. In the meantime, no one is allowed into or out of the Great Hall without showing ID. If necessary, any campers whose parents can’t reach Camp Emerson today will sleep there, all together, overnight.
“You know the family’s against it?” says Hayes.
“Against what?”
“Having the parents come to pick the campers up. Two kids gone missing, two separate incidents. Including their own daughter. And they’re talking about finishing the session. Not wanting to cause any unnecessary alarm.”
• • •
Judy thought she’d be shadowing Hayes for the day, but she ascertains quickly that his plan is to split up, get statements separately. Cover more territory that way.
“You can bring people into the car to conduct interviews,” he says. “For privacy.” Then he points down toward the camp. “See that building in the far distance? Long flat building? Trooper I spoke to says there’s a good place for interviews in there. Says the Van Laar parents are already down there. That’s where I’ll be, if you need me.”
He turns back to her. Winks.
“But you won’t need me. Right?”
“Sure,” says Judy. Hayes pats her once on the back. Already she is growing very weary of the casual touch of the men around her, even when—as in Hayes’s case—it seems more paternal than lascivious. He inclines his head toward her.
“Listen, honey,” he says, in a whisper. “I’ll handle the tough stuff. The Van Laar girl’s friends and counselors. The parents—if there’s anyone to watch, it’s them. You’re in charge of the folks up here at the house. The minor players, you know what I mean? Don’t be nervous.”
She wants, badly, to step sideways. To move far away from him. Instead she nods.
“You remember what to do? You remember your training?”
Judy nods.
“Good luck,” says Hayes, and strides down the hill toward the summer camp.
• • •
Outside the house called Self-Reliance, Judy Luptack contemplates the iron knocker, in the shape of a fly. Three times, she lifts and drops its thorax, feeling oddly squeamish about touching it.
After a moment a woman comes to the door. A maid, perhaps.
The woman takes her in for a beat before speaking. “May I help you?”
Judy speaks aloud, for the first time, the words she has been trained to say: “I’m Investigator Judyta Luptack. I’m here to assist in the search for Barbara Van Laar.”
• • •
Inside the main room, a dozen people stand and sit in small groups. They aren’t like the rich people she knew from her work at the golf club—those were generally older men and women who dressed in stiff formal clothes and sat up very straight in their chairs.
