Page 90 of The Witch’s Orchard

“What?”

“I went to school with Dwight. He smoked pot and I always had the idea that he sold it, but a lot of kids did. He could be enterprising, but he wasn’t a criminal mastermind or anything.”

“Enterprising?”

“Senior year, he started this racket where he broke into teachers’ desks after hours. He was working part-time on the janitorial staff, you know? So, it was easy. Anyway, he would take our test or quiz answers, copy them, put them right back where he got them, and then sell them. Never classes he was in, though, so I don’t think he ever got caught.”

“How’d you know about it?”

Greg winces, and then a pained smile crosses his face.

“How do you think I passed my AP Geometry midterm that year?”

“So, you never suspected that Dwight took the girls? Even though he was here the day Molly was taken?”

“But he and Deena saw each other, didn’t they?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I haven’t seen their statements but, from what I hear, they saw each other leave.”

“I remember a pipe was leaking out in the barn,” he says, his gaze distant. “I called Mack’s after Bob and Rebecca left and before I had to go to school for some teacher training on a new STEM initiative. I asked if he could get someone out to the house. I remember Janice saying that she would take all the extra water in buckets and pour it on the garden. It was a hot summer. We couldn’t afford to waste the water. I remember saying that sounded like a good idea but not really thinking about it. Not really thinking about her or Max. Or Molly. I couldn’t find my keys. I was distracted. I was in such a hurry to leave that morning…”

I watch him, waiting as he gets lost in the memory of the day Molly was taken and then blindly gropes his way back to the present.

“I had no idea,” he says. “How can anyone…”

He shakes his head, and we sit in the quiet for a little while before he says, “How do you do this? How do you get involved in stuff like this? It all feels so… nebulous. Like fog.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m just following every lead I have. Most of what PIs do is go around gathering information until they get ahold of something with substance. Then they follow that thing until it either turns up results or doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we go back to gathering.”

He nods understanding.

“That year—you hear people in town talk about that year like it was cursed,” he says. “The hottest year we’d had for decades. And the factory closed. The whole town went out of work. That spring, I remember seeing the look on these kids’ faces. Kids who always just assumed they’d go work at the same factory their moms and dads worked at.”

“And that was no longer possible. What did they do instead?” I ask. But I already know the answer.

“Army, mostly. Recruiters swooped in. It was a poverty draft.”

I feel myself smile. It’s the same draft that got me. The same one that got so many other kids in Appalachia. The only path to education through a war zone.

“And then you left as well.”

“I didn’t leave,” he says, defensive.

“You took a long-haul trucking job.”

“I thought losing my daughter was the worst thing that could happen to me. I… Yes, I ran away. I just couldn’t stay in that house. I’m not proud of it. I didn’t know what else to do. I just couldn’t stay in that house. Janice had the church.”

“But not you.”

“No. I just… I never liked the Zieglers. I never trusted them.”

“And you brought this up at the time?”

“Yeah.”

“To Sheriff Jacobs?”

“Yeah.”