Page 33 of Her Final Hours

“Yeah.”

He reeled it off. It was vague at best. His recollection wasn’t good.They had taken Jenna aside and asked her the same questions. They’d seen this guy standing beside a blue truck, an older, beat-up pickup with a light bar of two square lights and two round ones.

“And you say you’d seen him before?”

“The night before.”

“So he was a camper?”

Noah shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, there are many people, friends, families, and guests at that place. He could have worked for the lodge.”

“And all this was on the east side.”

“That’s correct.”

“So you didn’t notice anyone else watching?”

“No. Look, it was dark. We saw that guy earlier in the day.”

“I thought you said you saw him that night.”

“Did I?”

The cop read back his words again. Noah was getting confused and anxious. “Listen, trees surround that lake. That’s why we picked the south side. We could still see the campsite. It was in full view through the trees. I figured she would follow a few minutes after us.”

“So you never went back to see why she didn’t show up?”

“Of course we did, but she wasn’t there. All we found was her towel and flip-flops.” He sighed. “I already told the other deputy this. Look, is my father here?”

“He’s been notified. He’s on his way.” Pages flipped in the deputy’s notebook. “And so that was around ten-twenty, you informed her parents.”

He nodded.

“And you say this happened around….”

“Nine fortyish.”

“Why did you wait so long?”

“Because we tried to find her. We didn’t want her to get in trouble.”

“Because you weren’t supposed to be out there.”

He nodded.

“It wasn’t because you or Jenna disagreed with Payton?”

“What?”

“Well, you said...” he flipped his pages. “That she wasn’t in the best mood that night.”

“Right. But that wasn’t because of us. She had some problems at home. She never said what. We never asked.”

“How about you take me through it again from the start?”

Back then, he thought the cop was a moron, but in hindsight, he knew he was looking for holes in his account that would conflict with Jenna’s. They had separated them and asked the same questions, and then, days later, they pulled them in to form a picture of what the man who’d been watching them looked like.

“This was the original composite they put together from the Identi-Kit, right?” Helen said, sliding what he’d seen so many years ago across the table to him. A flash of recognition, a moment in the day when they’d seen the guy that Jenna called creepy. Back then, there was no immediate sketch. It required selecting eyes, hair, face and facial hair. Noah nodded.