I suppose in some way, it wasn’t that much different than what my mother did to me, to all her prisoners. Of course, the detectives couldn’t use “enhanced interrogation” techniques, though I’m sure they got away with plenty more back then than they do now. Who knows? Maybe they beat him with phone books, slapped him around, made him pee himself.

If my mother had put me through another nightmare, another twenty-three days of hopelessness, there is no doubt I would have admitted to having the flash drive, that yes, the President did give it to me. I would have said anything to make it stop.

Maybe that’s how Chase Wingleberry felt.

He just wanted it to stop.

“Why aren’t you out there working the case?” I ask him.

He tilts his head to the side. I’d seen the tilt before. After I asked him how the workout regimen was going, or how the two-thousand-piece puzzle of white doves was coming, or how the new fence in the backyard was coming.

“I, uh, well.”

“You gave up.”

“Well, you said it yourself, it’s a closed case.”

“And you just said it yourself, the guy didn’t do it.”

He lets out a long exhale. I know he’s done. His new hobby had lost its magic. He’d find something new in a couple days.

I shut the door and go into the kitchen.

Lassie and Murdock are asleep on the linoleum floor, where they come when it’s sweltering, like it is this evening.

“You boys trying to cool off?” I say, then open up the freezer and put a lime popsicle next to each of them.

“Do not eat the stick this time” I say to Murdock, rubbing his huge head.

He promises not to eat the stick, then eats the stick.

I spend the first part of my day sending Ingrid an email, telling her how much I miss her and that I can’t wait for her to get back. It’s only a couple paragraphs, but it takes me ten minutes to perfect.

I send it at 3:13 a.m.

I gaze over the top of my laptop at the stack of Jennifer’s journal entries. The pages are riveting reading, and I want to spend the next hour drinking scotch and soaking up her sixteen-year-old wit.

I can’t.

Thinking about Chase Wingleberry falsely confessing to killing young Jennifer keeps bringing me back to that table in the White Room.

I need to find it.

To find her.

To find that stupid flash drive.

But how?

I am at a crossroads. I tried to get back in touch with Sidney Ewen, hoping he might send me some of the letters my mother sent him, but he’d yet to reply to my messages.

He was probably too busy shopping for a new couch, and chairs, and carpet, and a china cabinet, and whatever else Team Rampage destroyed.