“I figured Brett and Crissy were halfway to Philly by then. I had no reason to think otherwise, and I didn’t want to rat them out. It wasn’t until two days later, when Crissy was found, that I knew something went sideways.”

Doug had been looking at Tim, but when his eyes pinged to me, I saw they were veined in red. “When Crissy turned up and Brett didn’t, I had no idea what to think,” Doug said. “She wouldn’t tell me anything, not even when she tested positive for meth. My best guess was that she and Brett missed each other somehow, and she got desperate. Maybe she had the drugs on her. Took a hit and wandered off into the woods. Or maybe she met some tweaker on the road and didn’t want anyone to know. I played out every scenario I could think of, but the bottom line for me was she was okay. What good would it do to tell everyone I was out there with her? You’ve gotta understand, I was sixteen years old. I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing, but I knew it wouldn’t look good if I admitted to driving her out of town.”

“But didn’t you wonder what happened to Brett?” My voice sounded oddly high to my ears.

“His car was gone,” Doug said meekly. “I thought he went to Philadelphia. We all did.”

I’d never considered the possibility there might be a downside to Doug’s exceptional memory. He told the story like it was days rather than decades old, and that made it all the more unsettling. While I’d relied on him to sweep the cobwebs from my own mind, he’d been harboring this secret. It was like one of those gotcha moments from a detective drama—I wasn’t even at the quarry last night! Who said the body was found at the quarry? There was no connection between Doug and Brett’s murder until, suddenly, there was.

“Look,” Doug said now, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. You keep a secret long enough and you forget it’s there, you know?”

Again I nodded, but the truth was Doug never forgot anything.

It’s funny how the mind plays favorites, jettisoning some memories while spotlighting others. Right then, mine was on my talk with Russell Loming. How he’d told me he’d sold drugs to a boy at the drive-in, and that the boy had been around Crissy’s age. Doug had been at the drive-in that night. Doug and Crissy were born just a few months apart.

I stared at my brother. His brow was stitched, and he was looking down at the cover of the yearbook like he couldn’t understand how it got there. By the time Tim’s cell phone chimed, Doug’s face was buried in his hands.

“It’s a text from McIntyre,” Tim said as he studied the screen. “We have a sighting at the river.”

TWENTY-NINE