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Moscow, Idaho

I t’s been barely a week since the murders, and the chief has received maybe five hundred emails from strangers about the case. Some good, some bad.

Some are very bad.

One guy, who says he lives in California, writes that he’s going to appear in the police station parking lot and take him out.

Then the same guy sends him dick pics.

At night, the chief keeps his twelve-gauge shotgun in the bedroom. He’s grateful that two of his daughters are married and have different last names and that the third lives a five-hour drive away.

Another person, who says he’s in Florida, starts emailing the chief weekly telling him he will fail and that this is going to be the next JonBenét Ramsey case.

A woman emails and tells Fry that she knows the truth: He’s the murderer—and he’s going to frame someone else in order to look good.

Many people claiming to be in law enforcement write and tell him that he’s screwing everything up.

Fry is used to hate mail, although not this much all at once. But that’s not his primary aggravation right now.

It’s the image building across the country of Moscow being a Podunk little town where nothing ever happens, with a police department that looks like the Keystone Cops.

One reporter criticizes Fry for going home to change into his uniform and get his gun before heading to the crime scene.

His longtime ride-along partner, Paul Kwiatkowski, tells him Paul’s own brother called from Cincinnati and asked: “What is this rinky-dink cop operation?”

Plus, Fry’s now got to deal with all the conspiracy theories out there.

There’s one floating around about the victims having been gagged and bound.

Another says the police failed to look in the garbage at 1122 King Road.

Another suggests Kaylee had talked about a stalker who must be the killer.

The murder-suicide story is still making the rounds.

Then there are all the accusations being hurled at the surviving roommates and the victims’ close friends.

Fry knows that it was a mistake not to come out sooner than he did and say something .

He inadvertently created an information vacuum, and that’s why he now has to spend time he can’t spare rebutting some of the crank stuff flying around on social media and Reddit.

(Truth be told, he’d never looked at Reddit, didn’t even know what it was, until his son told him he was now famous on it.)

This is a learning curve, but Fry’s not too proud to admit after that first disastrous press conference that he needs help.

State brings in a public information officer from outside Boise, a guy named Aaron Snell, to act as his coach. From now on, the chief isn’t going to utter a word in public without rehearsing with Snell and his colleagues first.

“They would literally drill me for about an hour,” he said later. “They worked with me on the fluctuations of my voice… they would act like they were the national press, and they would come at me to see how I would answer each question.”

In his head, he’s clear on what information needs to stay privileged for the investigation.

The key is not to give any of it away. Which is proving harder than he imagined.

Fry has huge respect for the press. But he doesn’t like that the national media, unlike Evan Ellis and the locals he trusts, seem to think they are owed a narrative from him, justice be damned: “They think they can have it right now. They want it right now.”

Fry doesn’t believe that either the press or the community should know everything.

That isn’t their right. One news organization even called the police station and said they required protection for their crew.

“It’s in our contract,” the guy apparently said.

Fry exploded when this was relayed to him.

“Well, it’s not in my contract,” he said.

Whenever Fry walks anywhere, he is followed, photographed, and peppered with questions by the press.

He discovers that the media can see through the police station blinds to his computer screen, so he buys butcher paper and plasters it over the station windows.

Why? he asks himself periodically. Why did I ever sign up for this?

Fry’s mom once asked him that question, and his answer wasn’t too profound: “Because somebody’s gotta do it, Mom.”

But the truth is he believes in public service just like he believes in God.

He and his wife, Julie, share an unshakable faith that gets them through the day.

Back in May 2007, when police officer Lee Newbill was killed, Fry was called in to the live shooting, and as he was running out the door, Julie said, “Hey, just one last thing: Come home to me.” He got home over twenty-four hours later and asked if she’d slept okay. “I’ve never slept better,” she replied.

He was puzzled. Why hadn’t she been worried? “Do you love me?” he’d asked her.

“I do love you,” Julie replied. “You’ve trained your whole life for this day. You have God in control of your life, and either He’s going to take you or He is not. I have no control over that. I trust Him and I trust you.”

So, yes, now, in his darkest moments, Fry does believe that the Lord has his back. And he trusts his instincts. They are good.

Blaine Eckles asks him if he could maybe throw a bone to the Argonaut, the college newspaper, at a press conference. Fry is happy to oblige; he takes questions from the students before he gets to anyone else. They, at least, know how to conduct themselves.

His second press conference, on November 20, focuses on the autopsy results and victims’ last movements, and it goes much better than the first. From there, the trajectory climbs steeply upward.

Snell is happy with Fry’s progress. He reminds Fry how much responsibility he bears, justly or not. He tells him, “Because you’re the chief, if this [investigation] fails, you’ll be a failure. If this happens ”—if the case is successful—“you’ll be a hero.”

In other words, Fry is the face of the investigation. Literally.

Fry is usually clean-shaven and even instituted a department policy against facial hair.

But this month, he and some officers have been doing a no-shave November to raise money for cancer patients at Gritman Medical Center.

Fry planned to shave his beard at the end of the month, but Snell tells him he absolutely cannot do that until there’s a suspect in custody.

“The nation knows you with a beard,” he says, and so the whiskers stay.

The days are so long and busy, Fry’s mind almost becomes blank.

He fills eight pages of a notebook with details he might want to remember, even talk about, if one day this nightmare is fully behind him.

At night, when he gets home, which is often at around eleven p.m., he pours himself a whiskey—until he starts to worry about the size of the drink he’s pouring and wonders if he’s headed in a direction he’s warned his younger officers and their families about.

After that, Fry asks Julie to pour it for him.

At least, Fry thinks, he’s gotten the rookies and their families the therapists and support they’ll need, something he didn’t have when he was their age. The spouses have been educated about the signs of PTSD, what to look for and what help to get.

There’s also mundane stuff to do, like filling out purchase orders, buying an extra computer server, having food delivered, carefully monitoring the morning and evening meetings, and signing off on whatever resources are needed to follow leads.

The investigators are spending a lot of time looking at video from CCTV cameras positioned around 1122 King Road, what’s commonly called a video canvass.

Footage from a local gas station shows a white car leaving the area in the right time frame, but the face of the driver isn’t clear and neither is the model of the car, which seems not to be displaying a front license plate. At first, the investigators believe it’s a Nissan Sentra.

The police have issued a map showing the victims’ last movements to the public, asking for anyone who saw anything suspicious to call the tip line; an FBI agent is monitoring all the calls.

It’s not unlike the map Fry made for Michelle Wiederrick, the mother of poor Joseph Wiederrick, the student who, in 2013, wandered for eight miles after a fraternity party and wound up freezing to death by the river.

As if Michelle could read his thoughts, Fry receives an unexpected email of support from her. “We are praying for you,” she wrote. “I know you are going through a tough time.”

Emails like this—from the families of victims in prior cases with whom he has a bond and with whom he has stayed in close touch—are what keep him going.

Chrissy Dove, the sister of Sarah Parks, the young pregnant woman who was strangled to death and then burned in a house fire by her husband, Silas, in 2009, texts Fry a screenshot of him and Bill Thompson on TV: I’m so sorry y’all having to deal with this; prayers for y’all and the families, she wrote.

Fry had found the body of poor Sarah and her unborn baby after Silas claimed she’d died in the fire, but it had taken some time for him to be able to prove the case and for Bill Thompson to pressure Silas into taking a plea deal.

A few days later Chrissy texts Fry again with another photo: You’re on Good Morning America… I hate that y’all have to go through this because I’m sure it brings up many more things in your mind.

The chief replies: Yes, the demons have come to life again, but we do it for the victims and their families. That is our reward.

That is the reward. He believes it. Fry wants to get whoever did this for the four victims’ families.

But all the garbage out there in the press is not helping.

He can see on TV that the Goncalveses are using the media to flush out anything they can.

Kristi is on NBC begging whoever did this to come forward.

She says openly that she’s frustrated with the little news they are getting from the cops.

That’s because on their nightly calls from Tyson Berrett, he’s got nothing to report.

And because, as Alivea will later put it: “We had no one to help us not put our foot in our mouth.”

Fry sighs. Each of the families gets the same information, but he’s noticing they deal with it differently.

Maddie’s mom and stepfather, Karen and Scott Laramie, are quiet, shell-shocked; they let the Goncalves family talk for them. Maddie’s dad, Ben Mogen, also stays out of the fray.

The Kernodles stay quiet as well. It’s possible they don’t want anyone focusing on them right now. On November 19, Kootenai police arrested Xana’s mom, Cara Northington, on two charges of drug possession. She’d been clean, working as a waitress, but relapsed following Xana’s death.

Stacy Chapin heard about this with a certain amount of shock as well as sympathy for Jeff and Jazzmin. Stacy didn’t know that Xana’s mom had been in and out of jail her whole life. Ethan never told her.

Stacy assures Berrett and Fry that they have her family’s support, no matter how long the investigation takes. “We don’t care if this takes you thirty years, we will still believe in what you’re doing,” she tells Fry. “We’ll believe that you guys are doing it right and we’re going to support you.”

People like her are what make the chief’s world go round.

On November 23, Chrissy Dove sends him a note: “I wish I could let the world know how hard y’all really work on cases… knowing all the heart and love that y’all show.”

Fry replies: “They will know when we make an arrest. I have lost all respect for the national news and media.… All it does is hurt the families… and gives people false information.”