99.7 K-ROCK played the deep or obscure tracks on an album, not just popular “top 40” songs, except for three hours each Sunday night when she’d play punk and new wave—Bauhaus, Television, the Cure, the Slits, Concrete Blonde, and House of Love. The college kids would call her and beg her for the Ramones and the Violent Femmes—always the Femmes. Lara laid out her first hour of songs, something she liked to do, although a lot of on-air talent chose songs on the fly.

First up was a Led Zeppelin two-set. She placed “Achilles Last Stand” on turntable one, turned the knob to the CUE setting, and set the needle on the track. Then she pressed the START button. The turntable belt wound the record slowly until she heard the beginning chords of the song. When she detected the first few notes, she hit the STOP button, rotating the record backward with her fingers until the vinyl made a growling noise at the opening chords. She repeated the ritual with “How Many More Times” on turntable two.

Lara activated turntable number one. The song melted perfectly into the fading chords of the station jingle. She flipped the window blind and stared out into the road. Enough cars were still going down the hill at this hour to cause a small traffic jam, but they would thin in the hours to come. Perhaps it was the loneliness of the job, but Todd was never far from her thoughts when she was locked in the radio studio.

She kept looking at the phone, hoping to see it blinking, almost willing it to do so. She supposed she could enchant it to ring, but there would be no one on the other end. If Todd was going to contact her anywhere—if he could contact her—it would be here. When she’d worked the midnight-to-six shift, he often called to check up on her, worried about her locked alone spinning records. But her father had been right: Just as with Peter, there had been no sightings of Todd. Christmas had come and gone, Valentine’s Day, his mother’s birthday—all points when everyone had thought he’d call. Despite his abandoned car being found, his credit cards had never been used. Like Peter Beaumont, he’d simply vanished.

Always, she scrutinized the final moments she’d seen him. They’d taken on mythic status, like a collection of valuable missing jewels. She’d combed through every minute, every word, gesture, and movement, looking for something that would provide the key. What had she missed?

Thinking back now, she couldn’t recall the last image of him. When she thought about the moments in her life—the defining ones that had truly mattered—how much did they really add up to? For her, maybe ten hours in a total lifetime? Was that a lot or a little? She didn’t know. But that moment. That was the one.