Chapter 50
There are too many things biting at me. Montana has fifty species of mosquitoes, and it feels like I know them all. There are too many things left undone, especially the Montana connection with the sister of the boy who was coached by Randal Askens. The girl who contacted Jess.
Vivian.
I hop back online and search Vivian and Ryan’s mom and dad, Rick and Cindy Petronis.
His dad doesn’t use social media, but his mom is active.
I scroll through her posts: shares of humorous cartoons, charity events in her community, book club reads.
There’s nothing unusual. Her page gets stale after her son’s passing, which doesn’t surprise me.
I’m about to click off when an old post stops me. It’s from several months after Ryan died. It’s a picture of a carbon-colored suitcase, packed and standing upright, and text below that reads:
Packed and ready to head to northwest Montana. Pray for me that this will be a good thing.
I suspect she’s referring to visiting Vivian in the valley since she goes to FVCC, but something about the heaviness of the comment makes me pause. I read all the comments from her friends below.
Good luck.
Praying for you.
Hope you find peace and healing.
The comments are out of whack for someone visiting their daughter. I wonder if she was coming this way to vacation alone after visiting Vivian, to perhaps deal with her grief. I’m about to dig deeper, to check for extended family in Montana, when Jeremy arrives.
I’ve already dug out my Kevlar from the garage and have put it on under my sweater.
It’s uncomfortable, but in a weird way, it feels good to be held in tight, as if it will keep me from dissolving into an amorphous pile of mush while I pour out all my secrets.
That it will somehow keep me whole and upright.
Alderson and Greene have met Jeremy at the entrance to my drive for a thorough search of him and his car. When they’re confident he’s not hiding anything, they escort him to me, but I’m nervous enough to insist on doing my own.
“Not so fast,” I say.
He stops and squints at me. “Huh? They already searched me.”
“Then another won’t hurt. I need to be sure, myself, or I won’t feel comfortable enough to confess.”
He looks at Alderson.
“I’d do what the lady asks,” Alderson says.
“Fair enough.” Jeremy shrugs.
“Slowly, and I mean slowly, put the backpack down, take off your jacket, and throw both at my feet.”
“I’d rather not toss this.” He holds up his pack. “With my laptop in it.”
“Okay, put it on the ground.”
He does so, carefully, just as he set the six-pack down the other night.
“Now take off your fleece.”
He gingerly takes off his fleece and holds it out.
“Toss it over.”
It lands at my feet. “Now, stay put. Don’t move your hands.
Even a millimeter.” I pick up his fleece and shake it.
It’s too light to have a gun or a knife.
I advance until I’m only four feet away.
He’s wearing a casual beige button-up made from thin cotton.
It’s clear there’s no gun nudged into his waistline. At least, in front.
“Slowly turn around,” I order.
His trousers are a sort of lightweight pant, almost flimsy—the kind you use to keep cool when hiking. No gun.
“Okay, you can face me now.” Once he does, I gesture to his ankles. “Now slowly, and I mean it again, lift one pant leg at a time.”
“Isn’t this overkill?” But he bends down and lifts the left, exposing a wool sock partway up his tan, muscular calf. He raises the other. No gun. No knife. Alderson stands by, guarding.
I search the pack to find his laptop, several notebooks, pens, an extra long-sleeved shirt, and some jerky, energy bars, and trail mix in a separate front compartment.
“There’s a deputy in front and out back. Both are right here if you need them,” Alderson says. “We’ll be working on you-know-what.”
I know he’s talking about Ridgeway and Lasserio and getting to the bottom of this copycat business. I thank Alderson and tell Jeremy to follow me.
I take Jeremy inside and he sets up at my kitchen table while I make coffee. When I sit down, he asks for my permission to use his phone recorder and sets it between us.
I start out slowly, my stomach in a knot, but once I get going, it takes me only minutes to get through what happened to Sophie. He listens quietly, without interjecting and rarely asking questions, but I suspect he’s saving them up for when I’m done.
His fingers tap busily on his keyboard. It’s nerve-racking at first, but I get into a flow.
I start with Missoula, with meeting Sophie, and move on to our walk by the river when we first met Josh and the gang.
I describe the camping trip, the rape, the night in the woods, and the aftermath.
“Sophie started using more and more as time went on,” I say.
“Eventually, she took a fatal dose of fentanyl.”
Jeremy leans back and sighs. “Coping with rape through drugs,” he says.
I realize how fast I’ve been talking and how shallow my breathing has been. “Yes, coping. Or not coping.” My thoughts turn to Jess now.
“It must have been awful to watch your roommate go through that.”
“It was. And you know the thing I can’t get out of my head?”
Jeremy listens.
“She told me she was sorry. After the rape, after we made it out of the woods, at the clinic when she was getting checked over, she said she was sorry for flirting with Josh when she knew I liked him. She said it with such sorrow and sincerity, as if she thought she deserved what he did because she’d hurt me.
I was speechless, it was so twisted. I mean, she felt guilty for taking him from me, but in an awful way, she’d done me a huge favor.
I felt nauseous that I’d even had a crush on someone like him.
I didn’t know what to say. I told her that she shouldn’t worry about that, but I’m the one who should have apologized to her.
But I can’t remember if I did. I can’t remember if I told her I was so sorry for convincing her to go in the first place. ”
Saying these words out loud brings home just how bruised and shamed I’ve been for so many years. Tears press behind my eyes, but I hold them back.
Jeremy sets his hand on mine, a sweet, comforting gesture that makes me want to weep even more.
“It was particularly difficult to watch her personality change. And now.” I shake my head, Jess’s retorts echoing in my ears. “Now I’m going through it all over again.”
“How so?”
“I’ll tell you. It’s part two, three, and four of this, but we should take a little break first. I need some air.
” I grab the empty coffee mugs off the table and set them in the sink.
We throw our coats on and go out to my backyard.
The new extra deputy stationed out back brings reassurance. I tell him we’ll just be on the swing.
The air is brisk and the sky over the Whitefish Range is dramatic. Glowing white and deep charcoal–colored clouds layer above the ridges.
“Storm’s brewing,” he says.
“Grimly appropriate.” The last moments of twilight cling around us. Herds of deer graze on grass in the surrounding fields.
“Sorry,” he says. “But Montana has a way of mimicking our moods, doesn’t it?”
“Montana is like a bad relationship,” I say as we walk over to my old rickety swing.
“How so?”
“When it’s bad, it’s miserable, but when it’s good—when the sun comes out and makes up with you and the lakes sparkle and mountaintops shine—there’s nothing better and you feel like you can’t live without it.”
He chuckles.
We both sit on the swing’s broad seat and rock back and forth.
“Speaking of relationships,” he says. “You in one?”
The question surprises me. It could just be journalistic fishing, or it could be more. I decide to simply ask, “Is this a personal question or one for the piece?”
“Both.”
Something like giddiness wells up, but I’m too frayed and spent to parse it, not to mention that my guard is as high as a mountain. I can’t imagine it ever coming down. “No,” I say. “Like I said, I dated Wallace for a while, but since we broke up, I haven’t seen anyone.”
“Which I guess should take us back to part two of this, don’t you think?” He checks his watch.
“Yeah,” I say. “In a minute.”
Nerves creep up and my throat thickens when I think about telling him about part two. I brush it away and focus on Jeremy. His muscled thigh, taut against the fabric of his pants, presses against my leg. That brings on a whole other tension.
“What about you?” I ask.
“Me, relationship-wise? Well, given that you’re not a journalist, I take it this is a personal question?”
“I guess it is.”
“I’ve been seeing someone,” he says, his voice low. “In New York.”
I’m not sure how I feel about his answer. Partly, it pricks me, and I’m angry at myself for that.
I watch him keenly, trying to parse him. If he is the CA, I’m giving him what he wants, and I should, in theory, be safe. Also, if he is, I want to catch him and put an end to this thing. But all I can do right now is play along and see if he says or does anything odd. My senses stay on high alert.
“On and off,” he adds. “But yeah, we’re giving it another go.”
I get up from the swing and clap my hands together once. “Time to finish this. The sooner we’re done, the better.”
“Wait,” he says, grabbing my hand.
I jerk away, my hand seizing my gun.
“Whoa.” He holds up his hands. “Whoa.”
“Sorry.” My chest rises and falls. “You can’t grab me, Jeremy.”
“I see that.” The easy brown of his eyes is almost golden in the natural light, but there’s real worry behind the ease. Is it for me? For himself? “I’m sorry,” he adds. “Really.”
“It’s okay.”
“I was just going to say, thank you for trusting me with your story.” His hands are still up in surrender. “I know how unsure you were about me, about this. I want you to know that I don’t take any of this lightly.”
“I didn’t do this on blind faith. I did it because you’re right, that piece you did on Indigenous women . . . You were smart to give me that link. You showed me compassion. Well, them. You didn’t exploit their pain. And you explored solutions and called for specific action.”
“Well, I guess I’m a little sly, too.”
“I guess you are.” I smile.
He slowly lowers his hands.
I nod that it’s okay. When my pulse settles a little, I say, “You need to be for your job. We all need to be. And you’re welcome, but I have two requests.”
“What are they?”
“I don’t know how fast you work, but I don’t want it to come out until tomorrow, until after my time to confess is up.” I watch his reaction.
Confusion crosses his brow. “Why?”
The questions dart through my mind: If you are the killer, what does this do to your sense of morality? Are you going to make a move to take me out because it’s not on your timeline, or will you accept my full confession a day late?
“I mean, it’s going to be a crunch,” he adds. “But yeah, I was absolutely planning to push this so it’s posted well before midnight. Hitting that deadline’s part of the point, isn’t it?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, yes. Originally, I thought I’d confess on the killer’s timeline. But I realize I don’t want that.”
“But waiting, defying the killer. Won’t that invite an attempt on your life?”
I don’t answer. I stare into his eyes. I want to ask him, Will it? You tell me.
“And that’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?” His voice goes a notch higher, like he’s nervous, too.
Anxious and excited for himself to be near his prey? Or anxious for me? I wonder again. But I say nothing. I watch him, try to see something, anything that will tell me the answer.
“That’s a little crazy.”
“If I don’t find who’s behind this, they’ll move on to the next person. I can’t have that. I know this will possibly bring about an attempt on my life, but if I can take down whoever this is, I’ll be one fucking happy private investigator.”
There’s still so much to do to find out whether I’m only the target of some copycat or the real CA’s hit, but Alderson and Greene are working on this central question.
Me? I still intend to track down Vivian and to investigate the towns where Mooney said there were suicides, especially the ones with addiction or grief clinics.
I have a small hunch that a connection lies between one of these northwest Montana towns that Vivian’s mom, Cindy Petronis, was visiting with her packed suitcase and the places Mooney said people died from the drugs he was pushing for Carssen.
But everywhere I go from now on, I will have a bodyguard, and I’ll wear my Kevlar, like I am now.
“But this isn’t only about trying to lure the killer out.”
“No?”
The mix of emotions whirling inside me makes me feel fluttery and conflicted, but underneath it all, I feel a release, a deep, nourishing sense of freedom to get this out.
“It’s about my story, one I’ve decided I want to share after all.
One I’ve been keeping buried for too long.
This isn’t some flimsy confession in a social media post. Which leads me to my second request.”
“You got my attention.”
“What I’m about to tell you involves my sister. I do not want her name used. I will not give you the rest of this story unless you promise me that you will not disclose her identity.”
“I promise,” he says. “And if your sister isn’t happy with it?”
“She definitely is not happy, but I’m past that. I want this out. So come on, let’s do this before I change my mind.”