Micah nods. “There’s a piece of evidence putting him in the car, yeah. They’re still sorting out the rest.”

“That’s why Paul never talks about Jax, isn’t it? Why he bought up all of Pitts Cove. Paul knew what was down there, didn’t he?”

Micah watches me for a long time, the water dripping in streams off his chin. He sighs, his breath cutting a shaft in the foggy rain. “It sure as hell looks that way.”

His answer hits me square in the stomach because it makes a sick sort of sense. Paul knew. He knew, and then he left Bobby down there. For twenty years.

I look to the shoulder, a thin line of mud and puddles that ends in scraggly brush, searching for a good place to vomit. “I can’t go home, Micah. The Sterlings were just there. They told me about the necklace, which I’m guessing you’ve been looking for, haven’t you?”

He nods. “I couldn’t mention it. You understand that, right?”

“But...didn’t Bobby Holmes go missing around the same time Jax wandered into the woods? How is it possible nobody made the connection?”

“You didn’t.”

“I was a kid.” Six going on sixteen, thanks to my jailbird father and a mother who left me alone with a newborn baby for long stretches of time. Too busy caring for Chet to care why the trailer at the end of the park suddenly went dark and quiet. Of course I didn’t make the connection. But the police should have.

Micah lifts his hands, lets them fall back to his sides with a splat. “Selling drugs is a dangerous business. When Bobby disappeared, people assumed he skipped town or ended up at the wrong end of a drug deal gone bad. I heard a million scenarios, and not one of them involved Jax or the bottom of Pitts Cove. It wasn’t something people assumed because there was no reason to assume it.”

“And Katherine?” I say her name, and my voice wavers. “Is it true she and Paul were fighting before her death?”

Micah winces. “Everybody argues, even the perfect couple. And for what it’s worth, I regretted saying those words the second they came out of my mouth. Sam latched on to it like a bulldog, but he couldn’t prove anything. That’s got to count for something, right? Now can we please get out of the rain?”