You Deserve to Know

Chapter 28

28

THIS PAST SPRING

A UTHORITIES S EARCH FOR M ISSING S TUDENT A THLETES.

Lisa couldn’t shake the headline from her thoughts over the next few days. When she had time, she searched for more information about Michael Finch and Dexter Kohl but came up with nothing.

What she did discover was that Humboldt County was so infamous for its high number of missing persons, it had acquired the nickname The Black Hole. It held the dubious distinction of having the highest per-capita missing-persons rate in California.

About a week later, on a Monday, she dropped Kai off at school after a dentist appointment and returned home, where instead of doing admin work for her coaching business, she fell down a rabbit hole of online research. She learned that growers had been cultivating marijuana in Humboldt since the 1960s, and growing was considered a way of life, woven into the culture and texture of the community. Before pot was legalized, the region attracted so many growers because it was remote and inaccessible to law enforcement.

“I believe that everyone living here is either directly or indirectly related to the marijuana industry,” one local told a reporter.

But even though pot was legal now, the area still struggled with high crime rates and boasted one of the highest homicide rates in California.

Lisa got out of her chair, energized by the news. She had spent hours online, and Kai was almost home. She was so revved up that she went downstairs to make him a snack plate.

Her intuition told her that the disappearance of these two guys—Michael Finch and Dexter Kohl—was somehow related to drugs. And that Scott’s being in the area at the same time was no coincidence. After all, they were high school baseball players just like him. Maybe he had been involved with drugs, but had closed that chapter of his life and didn’t want to look back, so he pretended he had never been in California. Maybe they were his friends, and their disappearance had traumatized him, and that’s why he wouldn’t talk about California.

But over the next few days, the more Lisa mulled over the few facts she did know—these two baseball players missing, Scott’s social security number being used in the area at the same time—the more convinced she became that something nefarious was going on.

It was a rainy spring morning when, on a whim, she put in a call to the high school both boys had attended. She wasn’t optimistic; it seemed like a long shot. When her call went to voicemail, she improvised, leaving a garbled message about being a podcaster who covered missing persons cases.

After a few days, she all but abandoned hope anyone might call her back, but to her surprise, a return call came at the end of the week. It was a typical Friday in late May. The suburbs of D.C. were in full bloom, and the neighborhood was filled with flowering white-and-pink dogwoods and the last of the azaleas. Kai had spring fever and was counting the days until school ended and summer began. Lisa was with the whole gang, having the first barbecue of the season in Gwen’s backyard, when her phone rang. Normally she would let unknown callers go to voicemail, but this time she took it.

“This is Arlette Fagin, secretary at Mad River Regional High School,” a woman said. “Sorry it took a few days to call back. Things are busy here with graduation.”

“That’s quite all right, I appreciate your calling.” Lisa stood up and walked briskly inside Gwen’s house in search of privacy. She locked herself in the downstairs bathroom. “Thank you for calling back.”

“How can I be of service?”

“As I said in my message, my name is Lisa Greco-King and I have a podcast about unsolved crimes and missing persons. Are you a true-crime fan, Ms. Fagin?” Her tone was steady, and she knew she projected confidence. She would give this Fagin woman no reason to doubt her.

“I can’t say that I am. And if this is another one of those documentaries about Humboldt County and the drug trade, I’m sorry, but I cannot help you.”

“Oh, no, no. Not at all,” Lisa said, quickly backtracking. She’d have to take another tack. “Not in the slightest.”

“Good. We’ve had enough so-called journalists coming here and painting our county as a lawless safe haven for criminals.”

“I have no intention of doing that.” Lisa peered through the wooden blinds to the backyard to make sure no one was looking for her. Gwen had custom black wood blinds on both the bathroom windows to match the room’s crisp black-and-white theme. It was as if she were allergic to color. “I was interested in a very specific case of two boys who graduated from Mad River and went missing about twenty-eight years ago. I think I might have a lead on one of them, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.”

“Oh. Well, that is different.”

“I’m sure their families would love to know if they are okay. Do the names Michael Finch and Dexter Kohl ring a bell?”

“I can’t say they do, but I’ve only been here seven years.”

“My problem is I can’t find a picture of either boy anywhere. That’s where I thought you might be able to help. Is there any chance you have yearbooks that go back twenty-eight years ago?”

“Sure, we’ve got yearbooks that go back to when the school opened in 1935. Why don’t you give me those names and the year you think they graduated, and I’ll see what I can find.”

Lisa gives her the information and adds, “I think they both played baseball, if that’s any help.”

“Well, if they went to Mad River, they’ll be in the yearbook.”

Arlette agreed to send over a photograph if she found anything, and they said their goodbyes. Lisa’s heart was pounding. She could hardly believe how easy this was, and how fun. What passed for fun in your forties was anything that pulled you out of your pathetic daily grind. She had heard other moms use the word to describe Target shopping sprees or half-marathons. What bullshit. Fun was clubbing until three A.M. and doing so much coke that you headed to an after-party and stayed up until the sun went down the next night. Fun was jetting off to Puerto Rico with a married guy you had met at a bar only the week before.

And fun was digging up dirt on the arrogant jerk your best friend married, the one who thought he was perfect. The one who pointed out when one of her eyelash extensions started falling off. “What’s wrong with your eye?” Scott had asked with faux concern, in front of everyone no less, as if he didn’t know. The one who told her to calm down when he came out and found her confronting an Amazon driver who had parked her in. Scott had actually apologized to the driver. Sorry about that, man.

She flushed the toilet and ran the sink for a few seconds in case someone was in the hall. No one was when she stepped out of the bathroom, and she returned to the table outside, her whole body quivering with excitement. Her senses heightened, she found it torture sitting silently while everyone else, completely oblivious, enjoyed their ice cream. She wanted to shout across to Scott, I know! I know you were involved in something! I’m hot on your trail. Imagining the look on his face, she could not help but smirk.

It wasn’t even an hour later when her phone pinged.

Arlette Fagin had come through.

Lisa opened her texts. Even though the photo was only thumbnail size, Lisa could tell it was a team picture, the kind ubiqui tous in high school yearbooks. Clicking on it, she enlarged it and could see it was of the Mad River varsity baseball team. The boys’ names were listed underneath, and she had no trouble locating both Dexter Kohl and Michael Finch. Under the table, her fingers trembled as she pinched the screen, enlarging the faces of the boys. It was risky doing this here where someone might see, but the need to know was like a physical itch that had to be scratched. The voices around her, discussing the upcoming group vacation in the Outer Banks, faded as she homed in on a tall guy in the back row of the photo with a square jaw and an easy smile.

Lisa gasped.

“What is it?” Aimee asked.

“Huh?” Lisa looked up. “Oh, the house, it sounds amazing.”

“It also has a private pool,” Gwen said. “A small one, but still.”

Lisa turned to look across the table at Scott, sipping his beer, oblivious to the fact that she had found him out. The deliciousness of it all thrilled her and she squirmed in her seat, filled with newfound energy. She held his fate in her hands, literally on her phone, and he was clueless.

He gave her the same easy smile he had displayed in his high school baseball team photo twenty-eight years earlier, and she grinned in return.

Hello, Michael Finch.