Travis would bring some pot and beer and a bag full of melons. I was like, what in the hell he doin’ with the melons? But then we’d go up five stories, and drop the melons and bottles from the roof. Travis got the idea from some old late-night talk show. We’d have a good ol’ time laughing and watching stuff splatter on the cement. But then Travis would want to play another game.…

REPORTER

Travis Fegin disappeared when you were twelve.

Hayes snickers through the phone.

HAYES

Did he now?

REPORTER

Did you—

HAYES

So the first girl, the one ridin’ her bike home from school. I took her up there. You wanna know what I did to her before I chucked her off the roof?

REPORTER

I’m here to talk about whether there were any other victims. To give you a chance to—

HAYES

She was so young, so smooth, she didn’t understand.…

A GUARD’s voice bellows in the background.

GUARD (O.S.)

Get your [bleep] pants on!

There’s more yelling and then the sound of a dial tone.

CHAPTER 38

MATT PINE

The bed at the Adair Motel was as hard as he’d expected. Matt wrestled with the sheets, his thoughts jumping from his call with Keller, to the scuffle at the bar, to Jessica Wheeler. He shifted his eyes to the plastic alarm clock: 2:34 A.M.

Maybe he should go for a run. No, he should try to go back to sleep, but he was too wired. Possible foul play, Agent Keller had said. It was hard to get his head around that. Who’d want to kill his family? They wouldn’t have brought much money to Mexico. And who would kill a little boy? Maybe Keller would have some answers. They’d agreed to meet at the diner in the morning.

From there, he’d go visit his grandpa. Spend some time with his aunt.

Matt startled at a tap on the door. He sat up. Had he really heard that, or was it just his imagination? He clicked on the lamp, listened.

He padded in bare feet to the door and put an eye to the peephole, but no one was there. He stepped over to the heavy curtains and opened them a crack. The parking lot was dimly lit, but he didn’t see anyone. Maybe it was Ganesh or Kala or one of his other friends.

That was when he noticed something on the floor. Someone had slipped a folded sheet of paper under the door. A note wrapped in red string.

He scooped it up, pulled at the string, and felt a flutter of excitement in his chest:

MEET ME AT THE KNOLL AT 3 A.M. TONIGHT?

YES OR NO

CIRCLE ONE