Dan didn't speak, but she knew he was listening.
"She knew a guy who saw Rachel after she disappeared, a guy Rachel stayed with." Diana related the details of Kay's story to Dan. To his credit, Dan didn't interrupt or voice any skepticism. He listened intently, as though he knew how much rode on the information Diana passed along to him. "Jim Potts," she said at the end. "James Potts, I guess. She said he's dead, but you should check him out anyway."
"We will. I will. We'll get the word out. We'll send it through the whole state, the whole country. This is real hope, Diana. She lived past that first night, the first forty-eight hours, right?"
Diana felt empty. She tried to summon a sense of optimism, but couldn't. "If she's still out there... maybe she's not meant to come back. I found one girl in the woods. Maybe that's enough."
"I don't know," Dan said. "Are you ready to go home?"
"My car's at the station. I have one more stop to make."
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Despite his lack of sleep, despite spending the entire night awake at a crime scene in the middle of nowhere, Nate Ludwig entered his Intro to Folklore class feeling energized. He had nothing prepared for the students and planned to just dismiss them after a few minutes, perhaps throwing in a perfunctory extra reading assignment to keep them honest. He had more important things to think about now. He had started writing down notes, recalling with as much detail as possible the events he had witnessed out at the Donahue place. He wanted to get back to that, his real work, while it remained fresh in his mind.
As he walked to the podium, something unusual happened. His students broke into a round of applause. He assumed they intended it sarcastically, but after a few moments, he saw they were sincere. Something had changed.
He motioned for them to be quiet.
"What is this all about?" he said. "Did you finally realize how extraordinary I am?"
"Dude, you're all over the news."
"You saved that woman's life."
"Are you going to tell us about it? You found it. That Pioneer Group thing."
He felt a smile spread across his face.
"Well, I was going to let you out early today. But if you're really eager for details, I don't mind talking about myself a little bit."
The students cheered again, egging him on. He drank in the attention.
"Well." He cleared his throat. "The clearing on the Donahue farm is a haunted place, a locus of evil if you will. What brought it into existence? I'm not sure I can say conclusively. My own research, as well as the research of colleagues of mine, indicates that such places occur in the folklore of almost every town or city, dating back to the founding of this country. And they also exist in Europe, Asia, South America..."
Several hands were already raised. He'd never seem them so engaged so quickly.
"Yes?" he said, pointing at one.
"Did you see the killer?"
"Did I...yes, I did see him."
"Up close?"
"Yes, rather close."
"What's he like? Is he crazy?"
"Actually, he seemed a little sad and pathetic."
"Did you see the bodies?"
"I'm not sure it's appropriate to say."
"Did it smell?"
Ludwig paused. He saw what was happening.
"Are you only interested in the prurient details?" he said.
They didn't respond. They didn't know what prurient meant.
"I mean to say, are you only interested in the gory stuff, the kinds of things you'd see on some lousy cop show?"
The students nodded and cheered some more. They did want to hear the seamier side of things, not the folklore, the research, the history and human drama that had unfolded in that clearing.
"I have some other work to do today," he said. "And I'm tired. Why don't we resume our work with the next class?"
They didn't seem that disappointed after all. They quickly gathered their things and left, and so did Ludwig. He had a book to finish after all.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Roger waited in a small, cold room. It had cinder block walls and no windows. He sat at a beat-up wooden table, one covered with scratches and burn marks. He imagined a lot of criminals had sat at this table, waiting for the police and the lawyers to come in and hand down their fates. Now, Roger was one of them. A criminal. A killer.
But was he? Really?
He couldn't make up his mind, no matter how long he thought about it. And he'd been thinking all morning. He saw the way the lady cop looked at him in the clearing, something like fear showing on her face and in her eyes. But not just fear. As they cuffed him and led him away, Roger looked back at her, made eye contact with her, and he thought he saw something else. Sympathy? Maybe, he thought. Maybe that. But something more, something much more important.