I pull the file out.
Petronis, Ryan.
A zing of adrenaline makes my spine go straight.
Why does my sister have a file for Ryan Petronis, the boy who died by suicide at the high school where Randal Askens coached football in Washington State?
Jess is a gifted investigator, I remind myself. This coincidence isn’tthatsurprising. It makes sense that she’d get there as I had, so I relax and wonder if Jess called the secretary at Ryan’s school, as I had done. Hopefully she didn’t pose as Randal Askens’s sister, too.
I open the file and begin to read.
Jess has notes on Ryan’s parents, Rick and Cindy Petronis, and his sister, Vivian.
Jess, no surprise, is ahead of me.
Ryan’s sister, Vivian, attends the community college in the valley.
This is something—a tentative link between the place the CA’s first victim worked in Washington and Montana. To the very area I reside in. The college must be Jess’s connection to the boy’s sister.
At the top of one of her pages, Jess has written in bold,Hazing That Is Not Hazing. She’s underlined it several times. I read more of the story behind Ryan, how he was broomed by several of his teammates at a football camp retreat in the Cascade Mountains.
My back is stick-straight, my head in a fog.
Vivian must have divulged quite a bit for my sister to have so much personal information on Ryan Petronis. But why hasn’t Jess said anything to me about her research? Herdigging. About her connection to this girl?
It doesn’t sit right in my gut.
If I know my organized sister, she will have dated her notes. Sure enough, at the top of the first page, it reads March 22.
This information launches me out of my chair. Jess has been gathering information on Ryan Petronis sinceMarch?
For the past five and a half months?
Nearly two monthsbeforethe first sketch even dropped?
The walls of her small office close in on me.
Why was she gathering information on a boy whose coach was in the adjacent room when he was assaulted by a group of football players, the same coach who was one of the Confession Artist’s first two kills? How could she have known about the boy two months before the nation even knew about Randal Askens?
Chapter 38
I stand in the doorway and watch her. She’s no longer curled up with her face smooshed into her pillow. She’s stretched out, nose up. Finally asleep, she breathes rhythmically and deeply. She looks peaceful, but I’m going to ruin whatever few brief moments of calm she’s found through sleep.
Jess looks frail, too. She’s lost even more weight and her cheekbones are even sharper.
I draw and release a deep sigh and have begun to make my way over to her when the doorbell rings. Jess flinches awake and sees me.
“Stay put,” I say. “I’ll get it.”
I hurry back into Jess’s office and drop her file where I got it and go to the front. I peer out the windows to see who’s there. Alderson and Greene. And the officer assigned to Jess and Sam. They introduce me to her. Turns out she’s from the Kalispell Police Department, not the county, like Zane, my protective detail. I don’t recognize her, but that doesn’t mean anything. The department is getting bigger as the valley grows, and in this situation, involving the FBI, they’ll use resources from whichever department they can.
“You guys can’t get enough of me, can you?” I say.
Alderson chuckles. Greene still doesn’t find me amusing and doesn’t even crack a smile, but both sets of their eyes are energized. I wave them in.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Trying to get some shut-eye.”
