“Do—”
“I can’t stand here all night. My kids need me.”
He turned his back to me and strode toward a silver Lexus. I waited until he’d chirped the door open and then quickly let myself into my room. After placing the chain lock on, I nudged the curtain aside with my pointer finger and watched the car buck backward from its space and then practically tear out of the parking lot.
I wrenched off the cap from a bottle of water I’d stashed in the cooler and took two big gulps. Cody Blaine’s visit—the way he’d popped out of the shadows, the anger in his voice—had unsettled me, and my heart was still thrumming.
What had the encounter really been about? I wondered. A desperately concerned husband who didn’t like the way he was being portrayed,ora guy who was totally on edge because he’d bludgeoned his wife to death in the kitchen, dumped her body deep in the woods, and couldn’t handle having his buttons pushed?
I let out a deep breath. Right now I had no clue. But I didn’t like the guy.
After changing into a T-shirt, I grabbed my composition book and laptop, peeled back the duvet, and slid into bed. First, I scribbled my impressions of Cody while they were still fresh. Though I rely on those slim reporter pads for doing interviews, I find that when I’m on a story, jotting down observations in a marble black-and-white composition book with a number two pencil somehow manages to clarify my thinking and enables me to see emerging patterns.
Next, I clicked on the link for yesterday’s press conference. I’d already viewed it twice before I’d left the city, but I wanted to check out Cody’s behavior more closely now that I’d had a couple of interactions with him.
Though his confrontational attitude tonight hadn’t served him well, I still had to hand him an A for his performance in front of the crowd. He had positioned himself just to the right of the sheriff, and listened intently to the remarks, his face pinched in serious distress. After the sheriff concluded, Cody took a turn at the mic. He was composed, but you could hear the anguish in his voice, which broke more than once.
“Shannon,” he said. “If you are hurt or in any kind of trouble, we are here for you. And if someone has taken you, I want to say to that person, ‘Please, Shannon’s kids need her, and I need her. I plead with you to let her go.’”
There wasn’t a single red flag, at least from what I could see. In fact, his behavior was in stark contrast to the way Scott Peterson had acted in the days following the disappearance of his wife, Laci, back in 2002. I was still in college at the time, but the case had fascinated me and I’d devoured every detail.Peterson, I remembered, had betrayed no anguish, refused to be interviewed about Laci, and hadn’t participated in either the search efforts or the press conferences. It wasn’t a surprise to most of us who’d been following the case when it turned out he’d murdered her.
I leaned back against the wooden headboard, reflecting. Was Cody just a far better actor than Peterson? He certainly seemedsmarter.Even tonight, as he stood there with his boxer briefs in a twist, I couldn’t miss the air of sophistication about him. I would have to see how I felt as the days progressed—and more facts emerged.
Next, I reread Alice Hatfield’s stories about the case in thePost Star. Theyweregood, well researched and compellingly written, which wasn’t always a guarantee with a small-town paper. It would be smart for me to find a way to win her over and encourage an exchange of information going forward.
I checked the clock on my phone. It was after ten and Beau should have arrived in Bogotá by now. As if I’d somehow managed to communicate with him telepathically, my phone pinged with a text.Just landed. Clearing customs. Love you. Wc tomorrow when settled.
Love you, too. Miss you already,I wrote back, relieved to have heard from him. Though violence in Colombia had declined significantly since the Pablo Escobar days, street crime and muggings were still a problem, and I felt more than a twinge of worry.
My eyelids were drooping by this point, and after double-checking that I’d bolted the door, I turned off the light andwiggled down under the duvet. Though my thoughts were churning, I fell asleep quickly from sheer exhaustion.
By half past seven the next morning, I was at the local elementary school, a one-story redbrick building. Since I’d managed to arrive on the early side, I stood for a while in the parking lot, pretending to read content on my phone so I wouldn’t look too conspicuous. About ten minutes later, the drop-offs began, not only via family minivans and SUVs, but several school buses as well. Near the entrance of the building, people clustered briefly to chat—moms in jeans or tracksuits and little kids hoisting backpacks featuring images like the Little Mermaid and theJurassic WorldT. rex. I was looking for any woman dropping off a child who appeared to be between six and nine years old—the ages of Noah and Lilly Blaine—and who also had a friendly face. Buddy, an old crime-beat reporter I’d worked alongside when I was first in newspapers, always said that zeroing in on the right person to talk to in a crowd made him feel like a lioness eyeing the weakest gazelle in the herd.
Soon enough, I spotted her: a sweet, guileless-looking woman, probably in her mid-thirties, who had just emerged from a red minivan with a boy of nine or ten. The pair meandered up one of the cement walkways, and I followed behind, pausing when she bear-hugged him under the portico at the front of the school.
When another mom yelled, “Hi, Missy,” and she pausedto chat with her, I hung back. Two minutes later she began to retrace her steps toward the van, and I made my move.
“Missy, excuse me,” I called out as she crossed the grass. “Have you got a minute?”
She spun around, her face already set in a receptive smile, though her expression clouded once she realized that the words had come from a stranger.
“Someone told me you might be able to help me,” I said, reaching her. “I’m a reporter covering Shannon Blaine’s disappearance, and I’m eager to talk to a few of her friends.”
“Oh, gosh,” she said. “I feel awful about the whole thing, but I don’t really have much to offer. I barely know her.”
“Sorry, maybe I have you confused with someone else. Do you happen to know the names of any of her friends?”
“Um, she’s kind of private from what I’ve heard, and I don’t think she pals around with many other mothers. I mean, there’s her friend J.J., who the paper mentioned. You could ask her.”
“But apparently she’s still somewhere in the Adirondacks and can’t be reached.”
“Oh no, she’s back now. I just saw her up on the grass.” Missy swiveled her head toward the school and pointed her chin up. “She’s over there. The woman in the pink jacket.”
My heart already skipping, I followed her gaze until I spotted a woman with honey-colored hair standing under the portico, deep in conversation with another mother. So J.J. was back. And the word didn’t seem to be out yet in the press corps. I had no freaking clue why the gods were blessing me this way, but I wasn’t going to question it.
“Great, thank you, Missy. Have a good day.”
I turned but didn’t make a beeline toward J.J. quite yet, deciding that my best strategy would be to corral her in the parking lot so our exchange would be more private. I was close enough to see that J.J. was attractive, though not in the refined way Shannon was. She was fairly big-boned, the kind of woman you could picture not only riding a horse but also mucking the stall cheerily. She didn’t look very happy this morning, though I couldn’t blame her. Her friend was missing.
