A trooper dozes lightly in a folding chair outside the Director’s Cabin, now the Command Post.
Judy puts her hand on the wrought-iron handle, depresses it, and opens the door before the trooper opens his eyes.
“Morning,” Judy says.
“Oh,” says the trooper, rousing himself. “Badge?”
• • •
Overnight, the Command Post has been better established. The existing furniture has been cleared to the sides of the room, or pushed into the kitchen; a few folding tables and chairs have been brought in in their place.
A large chalkboard on wheels is pressed against one wall.
On it, someone has drawn a chalk line down the middle. On the left of the line, at the top, is written Bear Van Laar. On the right of the line: Barbara.
For a while, Judy stands in the center of the place, turning.
The walls are decorated with small prints of dogs undertaking various humanlike pursuits: playing poker and hunting and courting one another. The pictures have wrinkled and withered from their long battle with the dampness of the lake-adjacent air. The whole house looks as if it was decorated carefully and thoughtfully thirty years before, and then never once touched. A time capsule from the Second World War.
The only framed image that isn’t dog-related is a map of the Adirondack Park. In it, someone has inserted a tack right where Self-Reliance sits, on the bank of Lake Joan, close to Hunt Mountain.
A filing cabinet—brought in by the BCI, she guesses—sits in a corner, next to a few crates of folders, paper, pens—and bankers boxes. Five of them. Labeled with words she can’t read from across the room.
Judy, alone in the Command Post, walks in that direction. Bends down.
Peter “Bear” Van Laar IV, reads the lettering on the box.
She lifts the lid. For the next hour, she reads the documents inside.
At the bottom are dozens of photographs. Several are of Bear from what must have been the year before his disappearance. Here, he grins from ear to ear, holding up a fish he’s caught; here, he looks off pensively into the distance, hand in hand with a woman Judy recognizes as his mother.
Against her will, Judy finds herself fighting tears, swallowing the tight knot forming in her throat. Something in Mrs. Van Laar’s expression reminds her of her own mother, who loves her children so fiercely that it sometimes feels like a weight.
At 7:50, Judy places the material back in order, puts the lid on the box, just before Captain LaRochelle enters the Command Post.
• • •
The first thing he does at morning briefing is point to the chalkboard—where both children’s names have been written.
“Who did this?” he says.
All of them glance at each other. No one owns up.
“Might have been one of the A-tour guys,” someone says.
Captain LaRochelle frowns. “Whoever did it,” he says, “don’t do it again.”
He picks up an eraser. Goes to work on the chalkboard. “We’re searching for Barbara Van Laar,” he says. “Bear Van Laar’s case is closed.”
Against her will, Judy’s eyes drift to the corner, where the bankers boxes full of evidence are resting.
On the now-clear chalkboard, LaRochelle begins to write.
Their prime suspect—still John Paul McLellan, at this point—is out on bail, awaiting his hearing for driving under the influence and felony possession of a controlled substance. Recognizing his status as a suspect in another crime, the judge in his case agreed to include a clause in his bail terms that prevents him leaving the county; he’s holed up at a local hotel until his next hearing.
Louise Donnadieu—whom John Paul claims was the one to ask him to dispose of the bag of clothing—is still in a holding cell in Wells, New York. Her bail hearing will be today. He’ll ask the magistrate in her case, as well, to consider when setting her bail the fact that she’s being looked at for Barbara Van Laar’s disappearance.
Lee Towson, the other person named by John Paul, has still not been located; a BOLO has been issued for his car in the states of New York and Colorado, where he is rumored to have gone.
The rangers haven’t yet located the unknown figure in the woods, the one reported by the camper named Tracy Jewell.
“Could have been a hiker, even,” says LaRochelle. “The girl wasn’t far from Hunt Mountain when the unknown person provided assistance. But we’ll keep trying to track him down.”
Judy listens, trying to be attentive. But her late night and early morning are catching up with her, and she puts her fist under her chin to prop it up. Denny Hayes, across the room, looks her way, and she sits up straight.
Next, LaRochelle details the results of the work that C-tour and A-tour did overnight. They’ve got another clue to the puzzle of who Barbara’s boyfriend might have been, he says: A Susan Yoder, the director of the Emily Grange School, said Barbara had a male visitor in her room. Got in trouble for it. A witness thought it was a boy from town, but Barbara wouldn’t say. The C-tour investigator who learned of this will pursue the lead.
“Next,” LaRochelle goes on, “who was it gave me the clue about the paint on the walls?”
Judy, mildly embarrassed, raises her hand.
“That was brilliant,” says LaRochelle. “Look at this.” He walks to a table where gloves and a box are laid out. Puts on the gloves, lifts from the box an object retrieved from the Albany house. It’s a sketchbook, he says. Most of what’s in it seems meaningless: doodles of hearts and music notes and moons and stars. But toward the end of it, there’s something interesting.
He lifts the sketchbook into the air, so they can see it.
There on the page is a surprisingly skillful rendering of a room with several pieces of furniture in it. A bed, a dresser, a nightstand. Behind the bed is a wall; on the wall is what looks to be a design for a mural.
Judy frowns, trying to remember why the drawing looks familiar. And then it comes to her: this is Barbara’s room, at Self-Reliance.
The room with the freshly painted walls.
Captain LaRochelle confirms this to the rest of the investigators. Then he says: “We haven’t noticed anything suspicious on the page I’m showing you. It’s difficult to discern what some of the pictures are, on this small scale. But our hope is that removing the pink paint in Barbara’s room will uncover something of interest.”
They’ve found a conservator from the Hyde Collection who’s coming to take a look, he says. Hopefully, they’ll be able to remove one layer of paint without damaging the other, underneath.
“Last thing,” says LaRochelle. Late last night, the BCI received a complete list from someone on staff of all the guests on the grounds, and a complete list from T.J. Hewitt, the camp director, of all the campers and staff. He holds up a stack of manila folders. He’s xeroxed these documents for everyone. Those who’ve already been interviewed have a check mark next to their names. The rest, says LaRochelle, will be talked to methodically, either in person or—in the case of the children who’ve already been picked up by their parents—over the phone. Today, every investigator sitting before him will be assigned one segment of the camp’s population to pursue.
He passes out the folders.
“I want good notes today,” he says. “Legible notes. I want signed statements, if you can get them. And I want fast work. It’s already been more than twenty-four hours since Barbara Van Laar went missing.”
He pauses in front of Denny Hayes. “Hayes,” he says. “You’re working the lead desk from now on.”
He gives the last folder to Judy. But when she looks at the papers inside, she can’t find her name next to any segment of either list. She wonders whether to say something. Before she can, LaRochelle speaks.
“Investigator Luptack,” he says. “Your job today is to make a map of the house and the grounds. And to label every structure and every room with the name of its occupant during the hours of Barbara’s disappearance.”
• • •
