Tracy Progaski had been a married woman, five years older, and she’d had an eye for the eighteen-year-old Tate. She and Tate would get together every now and again to have sex in the cab of Tate’s Dodge pickup. Tracy tended bar and her husband worked the night shift at a paper mill, so it hadn’t been hard for them to sneak away.

Reed was Tate’s best friend, and what good was having sex with a married woman if you couldn’t brag about it to your best friend? Somewhere in those conversations, it had occurred to Reed that he might get a little of that action as well. He didn’t have Tate’s looks, or his charm, but he wasn’t some half-formed troll, either. So Reed went to the bar where Tracy worked, ordered a Coke, and did his best to flirt, complimenting her smile, her looks, moving slowly as he tested the water. In time, he became emboldened and told her that her ass had the perfect amount of jiggle. At that, she stepped back and grinned, and something dark washed across her face.

“Hey, Stanley.” She directed her words to a good ol’ boy at the end of the bar. “This kid here just told me that my ass has the perfect amount of jiggle.” She turned her back to the man, stuck her butt out, and bounced it. “What do you think?”

The guy named Stanley laughed, exposing two missing front teeth. “I think you’d better stop jiggling, or your boy’s liable to mess himself.”

There were a dozen people at the bar, and they all got a good laugh out of that one—all of them except for Reed, of course. He wanted to climb over the bar and beat Tracy with a beer mug and then shove the broken shards into Stanley’s neck. Instead, he stood and walked out of the bar. That was the night he decided that Tracy Progaski would find her way into the Tioga Pit.

The plan had been an easy one. Reed knew that Tate would go back to the well at some point, so all Reed needed to do was wait until that trip coincided with a night that Tate’s parents would be out of town.

Tate and Tracy had a routine. He’d pick Tracy up in the parking lot of the bar after she closed, and the two would drive out to the woods. When they finished, he would drop her off back at the bar.

Reed’s plan began at 11:45, when he filled his truck with gas at a particular gas station, one that was on the way to the land where he and Tate liked to hunt deer. That would be the start of their alibi. After that, he backtracked to the bar and put a small board with a nail in it under Tracy’s back tire—passenger side, where she wouldn’t see it. Then he drove out of sight to wait for her to finish her shift and for Tate to show up and whisk her away in his truck.