When the crowd thinned, I drove to a quiet neighborhood, parked the van, and crawled into my cot. I write this by flashlight after 373 days in the wilderness, feeling farther than ever from the truth. I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, but it does me good to keep a record, helps me organize my thoughts, helps me remember where I’ve been, and gives me someone to talk to. Good night, Wanda. I miss you. Good night, Benny. I miss you too.

TODAY’S PASSAGE: I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. He hath led me and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

—Lamentations 3:1–2

June 25, 1976, Weed, California

Coffee was all I could handle this morning. My stomach was as tight as a clenched fist. After calling the service from a pay phone in the library to see if anyone had responded to yesterday’s flyers, I dialed the tip line from the story about the little girl who’d been murdered. The cop who answered was suspicious when I said I wanted to talk to the girl’s parents.

“Do you have information about the crime?” he said.

“Not specifically,” I said.

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m conducting an investigation.”

“Into what?”

“That’s classified.”

“Classified?” the cop said. “Are you with law enforcement?”

“It’s an independent investigation.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’ll tell that to the parents.”

“You’re not gonna talk to the parents if you don’t give me your name and tell me where you’re calling from,” the cop said.

I hung up and quickly left the library in case they were running a trace. After what happened last time, I should know better than to go through official channels. You remember that, in Seattle, when I first tried to contact the family of someone murdered in a way similar to Benny. It was a teenage boy there, and I stupidly agreed to meet his mother at the police station after phoning the tip line. When I showed up the cops took me into custody and interrogated me for forty-eight hours before escorting me to the city limits. I never got to talk to the mother, but I read later that the father ended up confessing to the killing.

This time I drove to another phone booth, at a gas station on the other side of town, and looked in the directory hanging there. I quickly found the address for Mr. and Mrs. James Byrd. Rather than calling, I’d visit in person.