Page 106

Priest Lake, Idaho

I t’s late, after ten thirty p.m., and the Chapins are headed to bed.

Stacy is showering when Jim hears her phone ring. He looks at the caller ID. He knows something big must have happened for Tyson Berrett to be calling so late.

“Stace, you need to come get this,” he yells.

Stacy comes out and hears from Berrett that they have just arrested a guy named Bryan Kohberger.

She and Jim go to Hunter’s and Maizie’s bedrooms and tell them the news.

That night, for the first time in weeks, Jim Chapin sleeps well. They all do.

Kohberger’s arrest can’t bring Ethan back. But Maizie and Hunter are headed back to UI in a few days, and Maizie was worried that whoever murdered Ethan was still around campus, lurking.

Stacy and Jim assured her that the UI campus right then was probably “the safest in the country”—but privately, behind their closed bedroom door, they expressed to each other that maybe Maizie was right to be concerned.

So the fact that the police have arrested someone comes as a huge relief.

They have no idea what his connection to Ethan is, and they are not interested in finding out. The bottom line is that their son is in a jar in their basement and nothing can change that.

But when Jim sees Kohberger’s face on the news, weirdly, it resonates.

“He just looked like a bad guy… the long, drawn face… he just… fit the picture that I had in my mind,” he said later.

Jim is glad they’ve got him. He wants this guy to pay. And he feels certain that he will, no matter what happens next.

“Stace will shoot me for saying this… but… there’s three ways you can look at it. He’s either going to go to jail for life or he is going to be put to death or he’s going to walk out the front door. And I’m okay with any one of them. Because the outcome for him is going to be the same.”

What he means is that Kohberger is not likely to survive even if he gets off.

This is Idaho, after all.

“You really think Steve Goncalves,” Jim asked months later with a wry smile, “is going to sit back while he walks around freely?”

The answer is no.