She hesitates. She’s never actually told any of her new colleagues how far she commutes, and she’s worried that revealing the gravity of the situation will make them worried about her ability to do her job.
She settles on an answer: “Schenectady. But I’m in the process of moving.”
Denny whistles. “Schenectady? No wonder you were falling asleep in there.”
“I wasn’t—” Judy hears the defensiveness in her tone. Starts over. “I’m all right. I’ve never needed much sleep.”
Denny looks skeptical. “Okay.”
They walk in silence for a moment, and then Judy asks Hayes something she’s been wondering since their morning meeting.
“How’d McLellan get released before the counselor did? Louise?” asks Judy, and Denny says, “How do you think?”
Connections. Money. A lawyer father. Hayes has found out something else: in addition to serving as chief counsel for the Van Laars’ bank, McLellan Sr. is, in fact, the attorney who personally represented the family during Bear Van Laar’s disappearance in 1961.
Judy frowns. “Isn’t that unusual?” she says. “For a corporate attorney to get involved in a criminal case?”
Hayes shrugs. “People are legally allowed to be represented by whoever they want. I’ve seen some represent themselves,” he says. “The arrogant ones.”
Both of them look up, toward the great house ahead of them.
Then Hayes says: “Who do you like?”
“Who do I think did it?”
“Yeah.”
She thinks. “McLellan.”
“He’s my guess, too.”
She’d had less than an hour to look at the 1961 Van Laar files before Hayes arrived at the station, but it was enough to pique her interest on one point.
“I was wondering something,” she says. She stops, rephrasing. “Yesterday, when the investigator asked about Jacob Sluiter?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I looked through the Bear Van Laar files this morning, and I saw he was considered as a suspect in that case too.”
Hayes stops walking. Judy faces him.
“Just seems like a coincidence,” she says.
For a moment, Judy thinks Hayes is going to dismiss her. What was it LaRochelle said the other day? Don’t look for a zebra.
But instead Hayes sighs.
“It does,” he says. “I’ve been thinking that too.”
Then he says, “Between us? I’m the one who pulled those files on Bear. The ones you were apparently looking through. I’m the one who wrote his name up on that board. And I think LaRochelle’s completely wrong, completely out of line, to consider Bear’s case closed. All of us in that room—except for LaRochelle—are thinking the same thing.”
Judy looks at him.
“Why do you think LaRochelle’s thinking differently?” she asks.
“LaRochelle was a lieutenant on that case,” says Hayes. “He was the one who pushed the theory the family and the press ended up buying. Solving the Bear Van Laar case ended up being career-making for him. Led directly to his promotion to captain. He probably doesn’t want to see that work undone.
“Besides,” says Hayes. “The Van Laar family’s happy with the outcome on that case. As in, they think they got the right guy. They’re at peace with it, you know? It’s hard to go back on that.”
Judy nods. She gets it—sort of. But if she were the Van Laars, she would want to know the truth. She says as much to Hayes.
“They’re a strange family,” he says. “Too many generations with too much money. It addles the brain. You ever notice how the children of rich people are never as smart as the parents? Never as ambitious, never as successful? You gotta have something to strive for in life. What I think, anyway.”
They keep walking.
“You know,” says Hayes, “I’ll tell you something else. I don’t like that LaRochelle’s on-site every day. I should be the one running the show. And I’m not saying that out of ego. It’s just not good practice to have someone at his level running daily operations in a case like this.”
“How come?”
“Some of the guys at LaRochelle’s level are smart,” he says. “But they’re middle management now. Out of practice. Lot of ’em haven’t really worked cases in a decade. It might reassure the family when the big guns come in,” he says, “but it’s risky.”
Hayes turns back around, heading for the Command Post, where he’ll get to work organizing and numbering their leads.
Judy’s on her own to make her map.
Above her head, a helicopter is circling, its occupants scanning the terrain for any sign of life. To her right, a dive team is getting ready for a search of Lake Joan.
• • •
