The apartment is one long vaulted space partitioned off at the back with drywall to form a bathroom and bedroom. I expect a bedroom, anyway, and wonder worriedly if I’ve missed some signal and this is a romantic ploy. But when Will opens the door and reaches for the light, I see only storage chests stacked in the center of a bare room.

“Where are you sleeping?” I have to ask.

“On the sofa. It’s fine. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

I think of Hap. His habit of nodding off in the living room, a blanket pulled up over his chin—resting, thinking, and chewing over the problems of the world. Glancing around at the file boxes, I’m about to ask what it’s all for, but then it hits me. Beth’s decision to split. His insomnia. The way he can drain a glass of vodka as if it’s water. They’re all rooted in a single problem, a single obsession. “This is about Jenny.”

“Not just Jenny, but yeah.” He opens the lid of the first box and pulls out a grainy photo of a pretty teen. Button nose, straight teeth in an openmouthed smile, eyes with a downward turn but still bright, still open to whatever waited. I don’t recognize her but think I’m supposed to. “Yvonne Lisa Weber,” he says, reading my look. “One of the victims of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker killer.”

“Wait,” I say, remembering how he’d brought this up with Rod Fraser in Petaluma, grasping for connections. “What’s going on here?”

“Just a project of mine. A lot of these girls went missing the same year Jenny disappeared.”

“You think they’re related, then.” I exhale, surprising myself. I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath. “There was never any connection made. I remember that from when we were kids.”

“That’s right, but I’ve always thought the authorities missed something. That my dad dropped a thread, or that no one really looked close enough.”

I can see from his body language how wired he is, how none of this is theoretical or remotely casual. But I can’t imagine faulting him. My own obsessions have driven my career from the beginning and are still here, perhaps louder and more insistent than ever. “Do you think these cold cases have something to do with Cameron?”

His eyes bounce from the box to my face and back again. “Not necessarily. I just can’t let go of the idea that I might still be able to figure out what happened to Jenny. A clue might be here.” He reaches for another photo, of Yvonne Weber’s best friend, Maureen Louise Sterling. “They disappeared together in February of 1972, after leaving a roller rink well after dark. They were thirteen.”