In my living room, a girl deformed by terror is leaning on the armchair, screaming: and then I startle up and I realize that I’m the one who screamed. The girl is Kaycee, embalmed in oil on one of her canvases. A self-portrait.

I look around. On the table, another two stacked canvases, a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam, and cigarette butts floating in a filth of dirty liquid.

I haven’t smoked since college. But I can taste the smoke in my mouth.

I try to shuffle back through my memories, but all the images feel like balloons, slipping out of my grasp. I don’t remember going back to Frank Mitchell’s unit at the U-Pack but I must have: I don’t remember why and whether I was seen, whether I was careful, what on earth could have compelled me to steal the paintings and bring them home with me. I’m moved by a desperate, enormous desire to hide them, to burn them, to get them out. But they are staring back at me, refusing to be moved.

I fall onto the couch.

Ten years, and my dad never said a word to me about Kaycee’s disappearance. I tried to press him for information but he had little to offer: only that he turned up Kaycee’s bag down by the reservoir, half concealed by overhanging brush, and thought she must have forgotten it there after a bonfire. He expected her to come looking for it, only to learn everyone was saying she’d run off.

Who runs off and leaves a wallet, cell phone, and driver’s license behind?

I asked him why he didn’t go to the police, and he only shrugged. It wasn’t any of our business, he said. That girl was nothing but trouble, anyway.

I hardly remember the drive back to my rental, then to our makeshift office. Time is moving in jump cuts again. The rest of the team is already assembled when I burst through the door, and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“Kaycee died.”

Joe sits very still, like the way small prey freezes at the approach of a predator. “What are you talking about?”

“Kaycee Mitchell. She didn’t disappear. She didn’t leave town. She died,” I repeat, and as soon as I do, I’m sure it’s right. The words feel right. They feel as if I’m taking out a piece of shrapnel from my chest. “I think she died here, in Barrens. Because she was sick.” Joe’s face hasn’t changed, so I plunge on. “I think that her family was paid off to lie about it. Maybe Misha, too. Maybe even her boyfriend, Brent.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?” Joe asks, in a way I don’t like.

“I’m fine,” I say, because I am, I think I am, and all my memories feel like dreaming so they must be dreams. And I tell him what my father told me about finding her bag near the reservoir.