Page 62

Moscow, Idaho

I t’s nine thirty p.m. when Jim and Stacy Chapin pull into Moscow.

When she sees Maizie and Hunter, Stacy hugs them tightly. Then Jim does. Stacy has one message for her two surviving children: “I don’t know what the hell just happened, but this won’t sink us as a family. We’ll figure it out. Together.”

They head to the police station for a so-called debrief, but the police don’t have any information for them that they don’t already know. Chief Fry is now on the premises, back from King Road. He and Tyson Berrett sit with the family in a conference room.

The chief is instantly struck by the strength and grace of both Stacy, a statuesque woman with long blond hair, and Jim, her quieter, kind-eyed husband who is dependably by her side, not in front, not behind, but right there next to her.

The worst part of this job is having to deliver news like this to families, and yet Fry is often impressed by the dignity and resilience of the parents and siblings he’s gotten to know, some of whom he has forged close relationships with.

Stacy Chapin is special. He can see that. Even now, she’s expressing concern about his team, about what they are going through, and offering her support.

He tells her that they will find whoever did this.

He’s appointed Captain Tyson Berrett to be the Chapins’ point person. They should call him whenever they want, and he will call them every day.

But now?

Strangely, there’s nothing for the Chapins to do except go home. And wait.

But they aren’t going to drive back home tonight. Jim has already been at the wheel for almost twenty hours straight. So the family heads to the Best Western hotel, where the university has booked a block of rooms.

In the lobby they encounter Emily, Hunter Johnson, Dylan, Bethany, Josie, Linden, and Ava, all huddled together, exhausted.

Stacy hugs all of them, noticing immediately that Hunter Johnson and Emily are clearly in shock. Hunter Johnson can scarcely speak.

“Are you guys all right?” she asks, knowing they are not.

She asks if she can bring them food, water, blankets.

She knows Emily and Hunter Johnson well, and in the absence of their own parents, she steps in. Her years as a school principal have taught her a thing or two about mental health, and she can see that Hunter has been especially traumatized and will need counseling.

She’s going to make sure that he gets it; she offers up there and then the same team in Moscow that the police have provided to help Maizie and her own son Hunter, a gesture that strikes everyone as remarkable, given what she herself must be going through.

In the coming days, weeks, and months, many people will marvel at Stacy Chapin’s bandwidth and compassion for others in the face of personal tragedy.

Stacy herself will later say that of course she checked on the kids and their families. What else could she have done?

Deep inside, she’s lost. But she knows that now, more than ever, she’s needed as a mom.

She’s always been everyone’s backbone. And she’s not going to stop now.

In Emily’s hotel room, the friends huddle together. They are terrified but also reassured when they hear sirens going on and off all through the night, the police cars circling.

Bethany is withdrawn and quiet, but the rest of them take turns talking.

Dylan, especially, is in full flow, reliving what she thinks she saw the night before.

She realizes that the man she thought was a firefighter must have been the murderer. So why did he walk away from her? They’d made eye contact.

If he was after Maddie or Kaylee, why did he kill Xana and Ethan?

Had he been upstairs all along?

Dylan thinks maybe he was. But how did he get in?

The lock on the back sliding door is broken. Until now, that was quite useful, because their parents and friends knew how to get into the house if they didn’t have the code to the front door.

But how did he know that?

Emily asks what Dylan did after she saw the killer.

Dylan explains that she raced into Bethany’s room and slept there. She says she was scared, yes, but she hadn’t wanted to trust her own instincts.

Emily doesn’t blame Dylan for telling herself at the time that she was drunk, tired, crazy, hallucinating. But she can see that Dylan—Bethany too—is likely headed into a shitstorm of pointed fingers for not calling the cops sooner.

Emily doesn’t blame her Little for bolting herself in with Bethany and falling asleep. She, too, would likely have second-guessed herself in the same situation.

Her maternal, protective instincts kicking in yet again, she decides she’s going to do her best to defend Dylan in the coming days.

People come and go at all hours at 1122 King Road, she later explains. “Your first reaction if you see someone at four a.m. just isn’t going to be Oh, here’s a guy who has come to murder us. Common sense tells you, Oh, it’s just someone visiting .”

But common sense is an approach this group has now dispensed with.

Over the next days and months, all they will feel at night, in the dark, is fear bordering on terror, wondering who is out there—and if he is coming for them next.