Page 64

Rathdrum, Idaho

I t’s completely dark when Jack DuCoeur arrives at the Goncalves ranch house at around nine p.m.

Jack knocks on the door, crying, and when Steve opens it, he is business first.

“Jack, I gotta ask you to roll up your sleeves. I hate to do this, but I’ve got to do it.”

The kid shows him his arms, wrists, and hands. Nothing. No scratches. Nothing that would indicate that twenty-four hours earlier, he was wielding the huge knife that killed Kaylee.

They hug.

Jack walks the family through everything he knows at this point. He shows them his phone and all the missed phone calls in the early hours of Sunday morning.

He thinks he might burst.

He was asleep. Asleep! If only he’d woken up, if only he’d answered, Kaylee and Maddie might still be… he breaks down.

Steve tells him not to go there. There was nothing anyone could have done.

Kaylee and Maddie had done everything right. They’d gotten a sober person to drive them home, then they’d gone upstairs to sleep.

No one could have done a damn thing against someone with a knife in the bedroom.

Steve doesn’t want to think about what terror his daughter, or Maddie, might have experienced.

He will later say that the pain is like a splinter that’s wedged deep beneath the surface of the skin. It hurts all the more because he feels as if someone should help remove it.

But so far there’s no one out there helping him or his family. At least no one official.

What option does that leave him other than taking matters into his own hands?