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Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

I get up from the table and grab a smoothie from the fridge, then I spend the next four minutes surveying my dad’s wall of chaos. Mostly I am interested in the green sticky notes, the highlights.

I move down the line, reading them:

K and 1st

Guy in suit and red tie

Follows to car, takes pictures of him kissing woman.

Megan and Derrick go see Karate Kid

—

H and New York

Woman in black skirt

Meets up with woman in blue skirt

Go to motel

Derrick introduces Jennifer to James

All four go to Revenge of the Nerds

—

Ridge and 4th

Black guy in jeans and white T-shirt

Meets up with two women.

Sees her taking photos and shouts at her

She runs

Doesn’t blackmail

Jennifer and James go on first real date

Chili’s and a movie, Purple Rain

She gets first kiss!

I laugh. “Did you have to put an exclamation point after she gets her first kiss?”

“That’s a big deal for a girl,” my dad says with a big smile.

“Yeah, who was your first kiss?”

“Fifth grade. Jeannie McAndrews.”

His gaze is far away; he’s back in that kiss. When he returns he asks, “And yours?”

“I think it was the prom you set up for me. The lady from your work’s daughter.”

“Right, what was her name? Margaret Rooten’s daughter. Jill or something?”

“That was it, Jill Rooten.”

“She wasn’t very cute,” my dad says with a laugh. “Sorry about that.”

“You tried,” I tell him.

It couldn’t have been easy to convince your coworker to have her daughter wake up at two in the morning and get ready for prom in a guy’s living room for an hour.

“Margaret actually posted some of Jill’s wedding pictures a couple years ago, and she really turned out beautiful. I think maybe she had the bump in her nose fixed.”

Good for her.

My dad says he will be right back and disappears from the room.

I look up at the wall clock.

3:16 a.m.

He returns a moment later with a large atlas. He opens it up, rifles through pages, then rips out four of the two-foot tall pages.

I watch as he removes a framed picture from the wall in the living room and tacks the pages to the wall, creating nearly a four-foot map of DC.

He grabs a green thumbtack from his pocket, hovers over the map for a long couple seconds, then pushes it in. He says, “This is the park where Jennifer Nubers’ body was found.” He pushes in three more green thumbtacks. “This is the school where she was last seen . . . this is Bob, her stepdad’s, place . . . and this is her mom’s house.”

He hands me the box of thumbtacks and walks into the kitchen.

“I think it will help to visualize where she photographed all her marks. Maybe it will spark something.”