“Okay, put it on the ground.”
He does so, carefully, just as he set the six-pack down the other night.
“Now take off your fleece.”
He gingerly takes off his fleece and holds it out.
“Toss it over.”
It lands at my feet. “Now, stay put. Don’t move your hands. Even a millimeter.” I pick up his fleece and shake it. It’s too light to have a gun or a knife. I advance until I’m only four feet away. He’s wearing a casual beige button-up made from thin cotton. It’s clear there’s no gun nudged into his waistline. At least, in front.
“Slowly turn around,” I order.
His trousers are a sort of lightweight pant, almost flimsy—the kind you use to keep cool when hiking. No gun.
“Okay, you can face me now.” Once he does, I gesture to his ankles. “Now slowly, and I mean it again, lift one pant leg at a time.”
“Isn’t this overkill?” But he bends down and lifts the left, exposing a wool sock partway up his tan, muscular calf. He raises the other. No gun. No knife. Alderson stands by, guarding.
I search the pack to find his laptop, several notebooks, pens, an extra long-sleeved shirt, and some jerky, energy bars, and trail mix in a separate front compartment.
“There’s a deputy in front and out back. Both are right here if you need them,” Alderson says. “We’ll be working on you-know-what.”
I know he’s talking about Ridgeway and Lasserio and getting to the bottom of this copycat business. I thank Alderson and tell Jeremy to follow me.
I take Jeremy inside and he sets up at my kitchen table while I make coffee. When I sit down, he asks for my permission to use his phone recorder and sets it between us.
I start out slowly, my stomach in a knot, but once I get going, it takes me only minutes to get through what happened to Sophie. He listens quietly, without interjecting and rarely asking questions, but I suspect he’s saving them up for when I’m done.
His fingers tap busily on his keyboard. It’s nerve-racking at first, but I get into a flow. I start with Missoula, with meeting Sophie, and move on to our walk by the river when we first met Josh and the gang.I describe the camping trip, the rape, the night in the woods, and the aftermath. “Sophie started using more and more as time went on,” I say. “Eventually, she took a fatal dose of fentanyl.”
Jeremy leans back and sighs. “Coping with rape through drugs,” he says.
I realize how fast I’ve been talking and how shallow my breathing has been. “Yes,coping. Or not coping.” My thoughts turn to Jess now.
“It must have been awful to watch your roommate go through that.”
“It was. And you know the thing I can’t get out of my head?”
Jeremy listens.
“She told me she was sorry. After the rape, after we made it out of the woods, at the clinic when she was getting checked over, she said she was sorry for flirting with Josh when she knew I liked him. She said it with such sorrow and sincerity, as if she thought she deserved what he did because she’d hurt me. I was speechless, it was so twisted. I mean, she felt guilty for taking him from me, but in an awful way, she’d done me a huge favor. I felt nauseous that I’d even had a crush on someone like him. I didn’t know what to say. I told her that she shouldn’t worry about that, but I’m the one who should have apologized to her. But I can’t remember if I did. I can’t remember if I told her I was so sorry for convincing her to go in the first place.”
Saying these words out loud brings home just how bruised and shamed I’ve been for so many years. Tears press behind my eyes, but I hold them back.
Jeremy sets his hand on mine, a sweet, comforting gesture that makes me want to weep even more.
“It was particularly difficult to watch her personality change. And now.” I shake my head, Jess’s retorts echoing in my ears. “Now I’m going through it all over again.”
“How so?”
“I’ll tell you. It’s part two, three, and four of this, but we should take a little break first. I need some air.” I grab the empty coffee mugs off the table and set them in the sink. We throw our coats on and goout to my backyard. The new extra deputy stationed out back brings reassurance. I tell him we’ll just be on the swing.
The air is brisk and the sky over the Whitefish Range is dramatic. Glowing white and deep charcoal–colored clouds layer above the ridges.
“Storm’s brewing,” he says.
“Grimly appropriate.” The last moments of twilight cling around us. Herds of deer graze on grass in the surrounding fields.
