What if the reason they couldn’t ID her was she didn’t have any fingerprints on record?

I wouldn’t worry about that now: Everybody had fingerprints on record these days—kindergarten kids, teachers. I did. All the Thornton Wilder instructors had been fingerprinted. And if she didn’t, she would be fingerprinted when they arrested her.

As it turned out, I had to leave a message for Pete Sunday, who was on his honeymoon. The colleague who answered asked if this matter could wait until Friday. “No,” I said. “Well, yes. But please tell him it’s urgent.”

Unknowing, I had waited years. I could wait a a few days more. I would think and make lists. I would go through all the texts and make a list of everything she said, and a list of her myriad phone numbers. I would put together a case. The important thing was that Pete Sunday believe me. I didn’t have to prove that Esme did it; he would have to do that. All I had to convince him of was that this wasn’t just a mother’s natural protective instinct coming up again after so many years.

Which, of course, it was.

And yet, if it were not for that instinct, I might have given up, long ago. Then there would be no answer. There would be no justice. There would be no other story.

11

Jep and Stefan were at work when Pete Sunday called me back. I was prepared to give an impassioned speech if Sunday didn’t take me seriously. But before I said anything, he pointed out, “I gave you the wrong box.”

“There are no mistakes,” I said.

“Well, other than this one. It was an honest mistake. I probably broke a law or two. I wanted you to see the evidence but I didn’t intend for you to see those crime-scene photos, Mrs. Christiansen.”

“Thea.”

“Right, Thea.”

“And it’s okay. You didn’t force me to look at them.”

“What’s up?” he said.

Then I plunged in, racing to reveal the whole jigsaw of suspicions and suppositions so that he would see this was more than just a mother’s longing. I explained how the mention of the fingerprints on the golf club in the report contained in the evidence box, unimportant as this seemed, was the final puzzle piece.

“Okay,” he said, as if talking to himself. “Okay. Say this girl, this...”

“Emily. On the texts, she calls herself Esme, which I guess is the name that Belinda called her. But if she’s the same girl that Stefan knew, and I know she is, her name was Emily Lindquist or Emily Lundgren and she came from Chicago.”

“Did she live in Black Creek?”

“I think so. I think she went to college there.”

“Did you ask Stefan if she was in school with Belinda?”