Outside, my mother was waiting in the car with the interior light on, reading one of her romance paperbacks. She jumped when I opened the door, which was understandable. A college girl had disappeared from her bed in the middle of the night, her roommate right next door. Everyone was on a razor’s edge.
“Was it fine?” my mother asked as we wove down the rain-slicked mountain at a walker’s pace.
“I didn’t say much. Mostly listened.”
“That’s good, Ruth.”
She waited until we hit Rainier Boulevard, the stretch where there are no streetlights, giving her just enough time to say what she wanted to say without having to remain in the car long enough to endure my response.
“You don’t need to talk about all the decisions you’ve made in there. It wouldn’t be fair to your father. I don’t even want to tell your brother you’re going to this thing. He’d probably want to know why I’m not the one in there talking about my grief. He was my husband, after all.”
We pulled into the driveway. My mother always did this. Trapped me in the car with her wishes, her martyrdom.
“I’m not there to talk about all that,” I said.
My mother opened the door, and the interior light illuminated. She put one foot on the pavement but then looked back at me concernedly, and for a second I thought she might apologize for the part that was her fault, or at the very least thank me for my continued discretion. I was twenty-five, so that made it nine years.
“Ruth, honey, stop picking.” She swatted my hand away from my face, a little harder than she needed to. “You’re going to scar.”
PAMELA
Tallahassee, 1978
Day 2
I’d passed the campus police station countless times on my walk to and from the Longmire Building, but I’d never before been inside. It was a compact space, crowded with filing cabinets and storage boxes stacked as tall as the frosted glass partitions between a dozen or so desks. Here and there, a black push-button phone rang, but on the whole, it was much quieter than I’d expected it to be, given the circumstances.
“My name is Pamela Schumacher, and I’m here to see Sheriff Cruso,” I said to the guard behind the crescent moon–shaped desk. “I have urgent information.”
“The sheriff works out of the Sheriff’s Department.”
“But I called and they said he was here.”
“He happens to be,” the guard said snottily. “You got lucky.”
But I hadn’t gotten lucky. I’d called. It took everything in my power not to say as much to his lazy pink face. “Can you let him know I’m here?”
Somewhere behind one of those privacy panels came Sheriff Cruso’s extended sigh. “I’m aware, Miss Schumacher.”
* * *
“This interview beginning Tuesday, the seventeenth of January, 1978, at approximately eleven-oh-five a.m. Present at the interview are Detective Ron L. Pickell, Sheriff Anthony Cruso, and Pamela Ann Schumacher. Miss Schumacher, will you confirm your name for the record.”
As briskly as I could, I identified myself. Then: “I need to show you something.” I reached for my purse.
Pickell held up a hand, stopping me. “Can you first state your school year and address?”
“It’s all standard procedure,” Sheriff Cruso said when he saw the flash of impatience on my face. “You just happened to show up several hours before your scheduled procedural interview.” He and Pickell shared a weary smile I’d seen men make around me a million times before. It was the smile that agreed She’s a handful, huh?
I rattled off the answers to their standard procedural questions, one knee bouncing.
“Okay, then.”
I opened my purse and handed Sheriff Cruso the Wanted poster. “That’s him. That’s the man I saw at the front door.”
I sat on my hands while they reviewed it. I was wired to within an inch of my life. I’d been trying to track down Sheriff Cruso since yesterday afternoon, when Tina drove me home from the hospital. I’d caught one or two hours of sleep alongside Bernadette at Mrs. McCall’s house, before showering and dressing and waiting for the sun to rise. Then I’d taken off for campus, checking at every red light that I’d remembered to fold the Wanted poster and slip it into my purse.
“Have you been speaking to Martina Cannon?” Sheriff Cruso asked in an exhausted way that stunned me. I’d just handed him his suspect—ignite the manhunt!
“I only met her at the hospital yesterday.”