All of that was three months ago. Since then time has passed as usual. It is the middle of January now, the start of another year, and people in Holt are still talking about the events of last fall. In town Joe Don Williams remains particularly upset about things, since it happened to be his shotgun that Burdette had with him that night. Burdette took it from the rack in Williams’s unlocked pickup. The pickup was parked in the alley behind Jenny New-comb’s house. So people are talking about that now too.
And in the intervening months the police have begun to send out all-points bulletins again, as they did once before when Burdette disappeared. This time they’ve charged him with kidnap as well as theft. But they haven’t been able to locate him. For as Jessie remarked about him that night in the bedroom: he’s good at that. If nothing else, Jack Burdette knows how to disappear.
So I am still in Holt County. I am still publishing the weekly newspaper my father turned over to me years ago. And Wanda Jo Evans is still in Pueblo, living on the Front Range, working for the phone company. And Nora Kramer, that fragile black-haired girl I married out of college a long time ago, is living once more with her father in Denver and they seem to be quite happy.
But Jessie? What about her?
Somewhere in this great world I want to believe that she is all right too. I want to believe that she and TJ and Bobby are still alive, even if it is in California with Jack Burdette. No one has heard anything about them since that night, but I want to believe that much and I hope for more.