“Connor,” Imogen says, thankful to move on.
He steps forward, dodging the talking stick entirely, and throws his paper into the flames.
“Connor,” Imogen tries again.
His jaw clenches, but then he says, “I was raised in Willowland, an intentional-living community in Northern California.”
“Nice way of sayingcult,” Zach mutters. So, I was right about him.
“It wasn’t like that,” Connor insists. “Willowland was dedicated to radical inclusion, income sharing, and ecological sustainability. Religious services weren’t even offered.” Zach raises his hands as if to sayfine, you win, but he doesn’t look convinced. “My childhood wasn’t all that different from anyone else’s. Until one night, when my mother kissed me on the forehead, made me promise to be good, and, along with all the other adults, drove away in an unmarked van. The next morning, the police arrived and told us what they’d done. She was arrested after beating eight people to death with a tire iron. It was supposed to be a statement against capitalism, something like that.” He mumbles this last part like it’s embarrassing.
“Thank you,” Imogen says, then she offers the talking stick to Zach. As he advances, the air seems to grow thicker. The other club members fix their stares on the dirt, the pines, the fire—anything that’s not him.
“My mom left early on,” Zach begins. “My dad managed a small motel off I-94, and worked really hard to give me a great childhood. He put this blow-up mattress at the bottom of the laundry chute, so I could slide down it again and again. He let me watch whatever I wanted on pay-per-view, and whenever I picked a horror movie, he’d cut the electricity to the room and play creepy sound effects on a boom box outside the door. I’d be all like, ‘Dad! Dad! It isn’t funny!’ But, like, it reallywasfunny.’?” He smiles, but it’s clearly a private smile, just for himself and his father.
Ros folds her arms across her chest. “Are you getting to the part where he locked guests in the walk-in freezer and let them die of exposure?”
“Ros!” Imogen glares at her. “Respect the space!”
“Oh, please, it’s not like any of them are winning Parent of the Year awards. Might as well be honest about it.”
Now I know who Zach’s father is. Back home, there’s a copy ofCold Case: Hunting the Ice Box Killeron my bookshelf—annotated with seven different colors of highlighter, sticky flags bookmarking almost every page. I specifically remember a passage about how the police discovered fingernails broken off in the frost that built up around the vents. He used to watch them trying to escape on the CCTV monitors. How could a man likethathave owned a crested gecko named Linda?
“Look,” he says, “I don’t really want to talk about my dad. I came here for good times and strong drinks. Let’s leave it at that.” He flings his paper into the fire and retakes his place beside me.
“Nicola?”
Imogen holds out the talking stick. Its feathers catch in the wind and flutter, like a sparrow that’s taken flight. I’m about to step forward when the sound of an engine breaks the silence. A vintage car, with a sleek black hood and sharp angles to its bumper, crashes through the woods and bumps down the dirt road toward the lodge.
“Jesus,” Kemy mutters under her breath.
The car lurches to a stop, and the driver’s-side door opens.
10NICOLA
THE FIRST TIMEI met Greer Woods at the hardware store, the two of us ended up at the picnic table my dad had built on the lawn behind the parking lot. We sat among the hollowed-out carcasses of dead appliances, sipping lukewarm coffee that had been brewed hours earlier in the staff room. She told me about the show, about how the camera crew would follow her around town as she recapped the crimes, questioned possible suspects. Then she asked if I’d be interested in helping with her investigation.
My shocked guffaw almost sent my coffee splashing over the rim. “Me? Why?”
“Because we’re trying to find whoever murdered your friend.” When that didn’t elicit an immediate response, she tried another tack: “You must have theories.”
I had hundreds, all catalogued on a spreadsheet. For years, I’d been tracking the whereabouts of every member of our community on the nights the victims went missing. Mr. Cleary, the girls’ field hockey coach, who claimed he’d gone straight to the athletics office after practice and hadn’t known about Rebecca Stoeffel’s punctured tires. Lewis Nolan, who’d been working the counter at Double Dips the day Jody Hill was murdered. There were rumors around townthat he’d asked her out, and she’d rejected him; no one could confirm them, though. Mr. Grunditch, who lived down the street from Heather Dickerson and was on the sex offender registry. He’d been arrested for indecent exposure—urinating against the wall of our public library, drunk out of his mind on two-dollar draft beers—which, admittedly, had little to do with the crimes, but it didn’t feel right to take him off the list.
That didn’t mean I wanted to share those theories with her, though. For years, the police had reopened, then closed, then reopened the case. The cycle had become exhausting, and while I understood that Greer Woods would bring new resources to the table, there was no way to be certain that she was doing this for the right reason. She was a wealthy attorney from Los Angeles with a multimillion-dollar TV contract—a contract that she probably wanted to get renewed. What were the chances she was here because she wanted to honor Claire’s memory instead of profiting off the darkest moment of my life?
“Sure, I do,” I said. “Why do you care?”
“I want to get justice for these women. Did you know I’m the reason why my dad’s in prison?”
I did but stayed silent, wanting to hear what she was about to say.
“A woman knocked on our door in the middle of the night, panicked and injured. I was home alone and too afraid to answer, so I called nine-one-one.”
When the police arrived, they’d discovered the woman—barely alive. I once watched a physician on a true crime documentary explain how she’d survived by throwing herself across the hood of Tom Woods’s approaching car, to avoid being struck head-on. Rushed to the hospital, she was treated for splintered ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a fractured ankle. She spent weeks in the ICU before emerging as his final, and only surviving, victim.
“It never occurred to me she was running from my dad,” Greer said. “I thought her car had broken down maybe, that she’d gotten turned around in the woods.”
“You saved her life.”
