He looks at her, calculating.

“That was two questions,” he says. “You have to choose one.”

“Fine,” says Judy. “The first.”

Slowly, he nods.

“I have been,” he says.

“In the vicinity of her home,” says Judy.

“Yes.”

Judy opens her mouth to speak, but Sluiter holds up a finger. “My turn to ask you a question,” he says.

She says nothing. Watches.

“Are you a virgin by choice? Or because no one wanted to fuck you?”

Before he finishes the sentence, the door behind her opens. She turns: Hayes and Goldman and Captain LaRochelle.

“Wait,” says Judy, but already they’re speaking over her.

“Thank you, Investigator Luptack,” says Captain LaRochelle.

Sluiter glares at them, his face darkening.

“We weren’t finished,” he says.

We weren’t finished. Judy wants to say it too—to yell it out—but she understands that her job, now, is to comply with the order being given silently to her by LaRochelle’s firm gaze.

Reluctantly, she stands up from her chair.

Goldman gestures to the door; he accompanies her out.

Behind her, she hears Sluiter’s voice, his tone unreadable, hovering between mocking and earnest.

“Investigator Luptack,” he says. “You did a good job.”

•   •   •

Outside the interrogation room, Judy’s whole body goes limp. It takes all of her strength not to let herself sink to the floor.

“All right there?” asks Goldman, concerned.

“I could have gotten him to say it,” says Judy. “I could have done it.”

“I know,” says Goldman, consoling her. “I do. They just—weren’t certain if what he was saying was useful anymore.”

“I could have gotten there,” says Judy.

He raises a hand as if to pat her back, and then thinks better of it. Clears his throat.

On the other side of the two-way mirror, now, Judy watches as Jacob Sluiter angles himself away from Hayes and LaRochelle. As he folds his arms, like a petulant child, over his torso, even as the investigators begin to speak.

Louise

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Four

Since Louise returned home yesterday, her brother Jesse has been nowhere to be found.

Louise’s mother doesn’t have a clue where he might be.

“How long has he been gone?” Louise asks, increasingly panicky.

“Oh,” her mother says, “no more than a day. I think I seen him in the kitchen yesterday.”

He’s eleven, Louise wants to say. But if she has to live with her mother for a time, she’s going to do everything she can to keep the peace, to keep herself calm by simply not engaging.

•   •   •

At noon, just as Louise is finally about to walk to the center of town to inquire there, Jesse walks through the front door, stopping short when he sees her in the kitchen.

“Where were you?” Louise asks him—willing herself to speak calmly.

“At my friend’s house.”

“What friend?”

“Neil. You don’t know him.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I did!” says Jesse, indignant. “I told Mom. I told her Neil’s mom’d pick me up and drop me off, too.”

Louise stares at him. Without shifting her gaze, she calls into the other room: “Mom, did you know Jesse was at his friend Neil’s last night?”

A pause.

“I guess I did know that,” says her mother.

Louise drops her head. Jesse grins in satisfaction.

“I’m sorry,” says Louise. “I worry about you.”

“I know you do,” says Jesse.

She opens her arms, and he walks uncertainly toward her.