“People are talking about it, Cam. They’re calling him a rapist. They’re saying ‘Justice for Emily’ again.”
“Who’s saying that?”
“Lots of people. There were so many comments on Lisette Blanchard’s Instagram, she closed down her account.”
I exhale. “Come on, Luke. You know better than to believe online gossip. Think about what they were saying about me a few weeks ago.”
“I know,” he says. “But this stuff is true. And he was escalating.”
My hand freezes on the door handle.
“Jim Grady told me. He knows a detective in the Burlington area, so I asked him to do some digging.”
“Is that . . . Is that kosher?”
“He’s a friend. You’ve met him. He knows where my heart comes from. He wanted to find out himself.”
“Okay, fine.”
“When did you get so concerned over the sharing of police information?”
I clear my throat. “What did Jim say?”
“A lot,” he says. “For one thing, the reason why the cops were looking for Harris Blanchard in the first place wasn’t because his friends reported him missing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They only found out he was missing after they went to his Airbnb to question him, and his friends said he never came home. A girl had been in the station that morning. . . . Apparently, she had left the bar with him and they went for a walk. They were both drunk, but he was blasted. He got violent.”
“Oh . . .”
“She managed to fight him off and get away and leave him there in the woods, where he passed out. But her clothes were torn. She had cuts. She was very shaken up. I know I’m not a real cop. But I’ve done tons of research, and I’ve learned a lot from Jim over the years, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that guys like this don’t just mellow out on their own. They get a charge off hurting people and getting away with it. And the more they get away with it, the more dangerous they become.”
“She had cuts? This girl?”
“Yes. She said he held a knife on her.”
My throat closes up. “A knife.”
“It was a deer-hunting knife, Cam,” he says quietly. “A big one. They found it on his body.”
Fourteen
It was a Buck 119. I actually have to bite my tongue not to say it out loud. Luke starts talking about the recidivism rate among rapists, but all I can think about is Ashley Shawger removing it from the glass display case and showing it to me, the long blade gleaming. This is the Buck 119. Nothing fancy, but a good, solid, versatile knife.
After I left his store, I’d driven eighty-one miles, as instructed, to the post office in Ellenville, where I’d disguised myself for the security cameras, slipped the Buck 119 into a padded envelope, and mailed it to a PO box in Burlington, Vermont.
0001 knew what would happen. If everything went the way she planned it to go and if each part of this giant machine she’s assembled performed her role effectively, she knew very well where the knife would wind up, but how did she know Harris Blanchard would be there?
Luke says, “You’re so quiet, Cam.”
“Did Harris post on Instagram about going to Burlington?”
“He always posts about it. He and that group of friends go there every winter break. Why?”
“Nothing. I guess I’m just processing everything.”
“He’s gone,” Luke says. “He’ll never hurt another girl again.”