Private Affair(75)
Marge gave him a questioning look. “I can show her their pictures. From the Donley yearbook. It’s online.”
When Marge went back into the room, Olivia looked at Max. “The yearbook is online?”
“Yes. A lot of them are these days. Even real old ones. Sometimes the school does it, or someone in the class scans it in and makes it available to anyone who’s curious.”
He got out his phone and began scrolling through material.
“We’re just going to show them Troy and Tommy’s pictures?”
“No. We’re going to do it the right way.” He began downloading yearbook pictures, and she saw Brian, Gary, Patrick, Tommy, Troy, Joe Gibson, and several other boys, some of whom hadn’t been at the party.
Olivia looked at them. “Like a time machine,” she murmured.
“Yeah. We don’t have to worry about their looking different. These pictures were probably taken a few months before the party.”
When Marge came back into the hall, Max showed her the phone. “We’re hoping it’s two of them. Can we have a few more minutes with her?”
“If you’re quick.”
Max and Olivia went back into the room. Julie was propped up in bed, looking expectantly at them.
Max squatted beside the bed. “These are some boys who could be the ones. I’m going to show them to you one at a time, and you tell me if it’s one of them.”
As he began scrolling through the pictures, Olivia waited with her breath frozen in her lungs.
When Julie gasped, every muscle in Olivia’s body tensed.
“Him,” she whispered.
“You’re sure?” He glanced at Olivia. “Troy.”
“I couldn’t forget that sickening smirk. He thought he had it made, that he could do any damn thing he wanted to anyone he wanted.”
Max began scrolling through the pictures again, and once again Julie stopped him.
“That one.”
It was Tommy.
“And you’re sure about him, too?”
“Not as sure,” she conceded. “But I think so.”
“I know this was hard for you, but you’ve been a tremendous help,” Olivia said. “Thank you so much.”
“It wasn’t hard. I hope you can make them pay—after all these years.”
They thanked her again and stepped back into the hall.
“I hope you won’t tell anyone about Julie or this place,” Marge said.
“Of course not,” Olivia answered.
“Then she can’t be a witness.”
“We don’t need her for that. One of these guys is still murdering people. We just have to figure out which one,” Max said.
***
Downstairs, Marge went into the kitchen, and Olivia whispered to Max, “We can’t prove it was Troy or Tommy. And we promised that Julie wouldn’t have to get officially involved.”
“But we’ve got some pretty good evidence. She identified them. She confirmed the party date. I think we need to proceed on the assumption that the murderer is one of them.”
“And what—get a confession?”
“It may be too late to tie him to Pammy’s murder, but there will be evidence at his house connecting him to the current murders.”
“There’s still the question of a motive,” she said. “I could see killing Gary because in a twisted killer’s mind, he could somehow blame Gary for breaking up Brian’s party and therefore ‘causing’ the hooker’s murder. But why Angela and Claire? And why is he after me?”
“It’s all speculation at this point,” Max answered. “I mean there’s no way to know for sure yet. But we have to assume this guy is into cleaning up messes by eliminating witnesses. He wants anyone who could testify to what happened after the party out of the picture. And if he was raping classmates up at the cabin, he wants all those witnesses gone, too.”
“But why now? Why ten years later?”
“Because he’s afraid that the reunion is stirring up memories—like it did for you.” Max gave her a direct look. “Maybe Patrick tried to blackmail him. Maybe Gary did, and he got rid of those threats early on. But I can’t get into the mind of a twisted killer. Let’s hope we take him alive, and he can tell us.”
“You think the police might not take him alive?”
“The way he’s acting, he might force the cops to take him out, if he’s desperate enough. Or if his plans aren’t working out.”
The conversation was cut short when Max’s cell phone rang, and he saw that it was Shane on the other end of the line.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“We got a DNA match on that blood sample,” his friend said.