The strange thing is, I knew he was going to be a cop before he did. The experience with Laura, Peter, and Dada changed him. So did Ray. I never told him that I didn’t trust Ray, not ever, not for a minute. But Jonny had found someone’s footsteps to follow, the way he once expected to follow his father’s path. I always thought he would be a better cop than Ray, because Ray was in it for himself. Jonny was different. He was in it because something had been taken from him that year, and this was a way to get it back.

Not that he ever would. When you lose some things, they’re gone for good.

Life goes on, for better or worse, but sometimes in the silence, your mind travels back. I never really got past that summer. We never talked about it again, but I carried it with me every day. I knew he did, too.

I never went back to the park. To the lake. I didn’t want to be reminded. Even so, there would be days when I drove along the highway that skirted the wilderness refuge, and I would stare down into the nest of trees, and I would be seventeen again. In my bare feet. The baseball bat in my hands.

If only I could tell Jonny the truth about what happened that night.

PART THREE
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The Witness

18
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Clark Biggs looked stiff and uncomfortable in a straight-backed wooden chair pushed against the living room wall. His hands sat limply in his lap. His eyes were fixed on a bookshelf across the room. Maggie followed his stare to a picture frame with a photograph of Clark and Mary in the backyard. They were playing in the fall leaves. Mary tossed colored oak leaves in the air, her smile big and wide, her blond curls flying. In the photograph, Maggie could see the contentment and pride hiding behind Clark’s solemn eyes. Today, that happiness had been vacuumed away, leaving his heart empty.

“Mr. Biggs?” she asked again softly.

He broke out of his trance. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was asking if you had ever seen a silver RAV4 parked around the neighborhood, or whether anyone you know owns a vehicle like that.”

“Oh.” He put his hands on his knees and studied the faded pattern in the carpet at his feet. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I,” Donna Biggs said. “I’m sorry.”

She sat beside Maggie on Clark’s sofa. Every few seconds, she stole nervous glances at her ex-husband, as if she were struggling with her desire to comfort him. Donna’s eyes were red-ringed and moist.

“The bad news is that there are hundreds of vehicles like that in the Duluth and Superior area,” Maggie told them. “That’s a long list. However, we’re cross-referencing vehicle ownership with criminal records to see if we can narrow down the suspect pool. We’re also going back to the other neighborhoods where the peeper struck to reinterview people who may have seen something, now that we have a specific vehicle type. We’ll also be checking the vehicle ownership records against the list of people and organizations you’ve given us, to see if there’s anyone who was part of Mary’s life.”