“Did anyone ask why?” Stevie asked.

“I asked Diane why, lots of people asked her why. She said Todd’s dad took the keys because he’d gotten a D on a major test. Like I said, I knew Todd. I rode in that car and I knew all about his life. His dad might have been pissed about a test, but his dad never took his keys.”

“Didn’t the police question him?” Stevie said.

“The police said they did. He said he was at home all night. His parents said the same thing, said they were all sitting in the living room watching TV.”

“But they would have looked at the car.”

“So you’d think,” Paul said, smiling mirthlessly.

“No one checked the car?”

“After the accident, the Jeep wasn’t in the driveway, where it normally would have been. No one saw that car for a week. And then, after a week, the police gave us some report, some form, that said that someone had gone out and looked at the Jeep and that it was fine and showed no signs of damage. It was dated the day after the accident, but no one—no one—thinks that’s when they actually went over and looked at it. Again, this is a small town. Todd’s father was the mayor. He said his son was home all night, so his son was home all night. The Jeep vanishes, the Jeep reappears a week later, and the police say the Jeep is fine. So the Jeep was fine.”

“Did anyone keep the bike?” Stevie asked. “They could check for paint.”

“I think about this all the time,” Paul said, shaking his head. “This was 1978. No one knew to ask about things like that. Years later I went back and asked about the bike, but there’s no record of what happened to it. It’s gone. I assume they got rid of it. I mean, it was a hit-and-run in a small town. It was sad, but not a lot could be done about it. That was the general attitude.”

“So if everyone knew it was Todd, what happened?”

“Well, there were basically three camps in town. There were people who thought Todd did it and supported us. There were some people who thought Todd was innocent—not many, but a few. Those people make me furious, but not as furious as the third group, which I think was the biggest group of all—the people who knew Todd did it and chose to do nothing. They knew Dana saw him. They knew the car was missing for a week. They knew it all, but they thought, It was just an accident. Why ruin a kid’s life over an accident? They knew the mayor was lying, but they put it down to protecting his kid. Being a good dad. Those are the people I could never forgive.”

He had to pause for a moment and shift in his seat. Stevie could see the weight he still felt, all these years later.