“Why do you think that is?”
“Either they don’t remember,” says T.J., “or they don’t care. I’m the one who comes around. I bring her extra food for the weekend, bring her books and records she likes. I drive down there anytime I can. I take care of her. No one else does.”
“While she was at camp,” Judy says, “how many times did you see her?”
“Well, every day,” says T.J. “I saw all the campers every day. I’m always around, you know. Always fixing something, planning something, whatever it is.”
“And at night?”
T.J.’s gaze goes back to the wall to the left of Judy’s head.
For some time, there’s quiet in the cabin.
“Investigator Luptack,” says T.J. “I think I know what you’re implying.”
T.J. scoots to the edge of the bed, puts her hands on her knees. Leans forward, looking directly at Judy now.
“I know what people say about me down in the town. Maybe they’ve even said it to you during your investigation.”
Judy keeps her face blank.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I dress a certain way, is what I mean. I talk and walk a certain way.”
“All right.”
“Barbara is like a little sister to me,” says T.J. “Prob’ly the closest thing I’ll ever have to a kid of my own, if you want to know the truth. I love her. But not in the way you’re implying.”
Judy lets T.J.’s words sit in the air as long as she can.
Then she says, quietly, directly: “We have an eyewitness willing to testify that they saw Barbara going into your cabin in the middle of the night. Every night.”
It’s the first time, as an investigator, that she has ever challenged someone she was interviewing.
It’s also the first time she’s ever bluffed; she has no idea whether Christopher will go on the stand. Whether his parents will let him.
For a moment, T.J. turns red; her whole face flushes, and then her neck, and then the top of her chest.
And then she stands. She walks across the room, kneels down next to her brown boots, begins lacing them.
“T.J.,” says Judy.
“I’m not dumb,” says T.J. “I know what it means when someone’s got a theory they’re working, no matter how wrong they are. And I also know I have no legal obligation to stay here and talk to you. So come back to me when you’ve got a warrant for my arrest.”
She stands up and walks out of the room.
Judy, increasingly desperate, stands too, and calls after her down the empty hallway.
“What’s your theory?” asks Judy. “Do you have a theory about where Barbara went?”
T.J. stops. Puts her hands on her hips. Turns, reluctantly.
“Can I tell you something?” she says. “Woman to woman? Something you’ll keep out of that notebook?”
Judy lowers it to her side.
“John Paul McLellan is your man,” says T.J. “I can’t tell you how I know that. But I do.”
Jacob
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
Overnight, he’d retraced his steps along the river, walking downstream this time. Toward dawn, it had begun to rain.
Normally he slept outdoors in daytime, but today he wanted the comfort of a home, a bed, a meal under a roof. And so at some point he found a promising house, apparently empty, and went into it.
He’d gone to the pantry first. Found it disappointingly empty, but for a large container of Quaker Oats that he cooked into a porridge on the electric stove.
Next he went into all of the bedroom closets. This, in his experience, was where people tended to keep their arms and ammunition, tucked on high shelves in bedroom closets, out of reach of children. And there they were: two double-barrel shotguns, three boxes of shells.
Too bad, thought Jacob. He would have preferred a pistol; the shotgun would be hard to carry. But it came with an ammo sling, which he loaded with the shells. Loaded a gun up, too.
• • •
It’s four in the afternoon, now, and he’s slept all day. He rises from the bed, loaded shotgun in his hands. And suddenly he hears the creak of a floorboard.
He stills.
As quietly as he can, he moves to the far side of the bed and gets down behind it. From there, he points the shotgun at the bedroom door.
He’s familiar with this position. It reminds him of hunting as a child.
The door swings open. Unswervingly, he fires—but no one has been hit. No one, apparently, ever intended to walk through the threshold of the bedroom.
Was it a trap? Jacob can’t be sure.
And then, from behind him, a voice says, “Don’t move.”
He freezes.
Through the open window by his head, a police weapon is pointing in his direction.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
She walks up the hill, her head filled with new information from T.J. to pass on to Denny Hayes.
