Page 87 of What Boys Learn

“At Dartmoor,” I said to Willa. “I don’t know why they won’t name the club. That’s where he worked. That’s where he met the girls.”

The newscast carried on with the expected quotes from the few people who were willing to talk about Weber—how normal he was, how unexceptional.

“Yada yada,” Willa said. “You said Sidney’s mom had a pill problem. Maybe he was her dealer and that’s how they met. And if he worked at the pool, he could have delivered them right to her lounge chair. Nice, right?”

“Maybe.” I sighed. “But then again, if he had such a good supply of fun drugs, what was he doing giving Izzy something so weak? The pill she took was a mild sedative. They’re not common date rape drugs. Unless he knew she had that allergy—and how would he?—he would have tried something different.”

The news had transitioned to music. Willa turned it off, then twisted further in her seat to face me. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not saying he wasn’t in the motel with her. I mean, he took inappropriate photos. And he was obviously thinking of doing something violent, something that required subduing his victims, given all that stuff in his car. Wouldn’t he have given her something stronger, if he meant to knock her out?”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing.”

Willa narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, deepening her wrinkles. “So what if he didn’t plan to knock her out? Maybe he just wanted to relax her enough to go along, and he thought she would, unlike that other girl.”

“But isn’t that a different criminal profile?”

“Different criminalprofile? What are you, now—one of those characters on those TV crime shows, with the wall of pictures and string?”

“You watch those shows, not me.”

“That’s right. I do. And let me tell you—some guys tiptoe into the shallows first. So maybe Izzy was the shallows.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to ground myself again. Dr. Campbell had said the same thing about a hesitant and inexperienced killer like Weber. He hadn’t refined his methods yet. On top of that, he’d chosen a compliant victim. He might have thought he didn’t need strong, fast-acting drugs, necessarily. “You’re right. It makes sense.”

Willa touched my shoulder. “Abby. What’s up with you? Everything all right at home?”

31

The Weber news should have removed a burden from Benjamin’s shoulders, but he seemed to struggle under an even heavier weight now. He roamed the apartment with an awkward, stiff posture, like he was expecting someone to jump out from a closet. He was neither hot-tempered nor sassy nor completely silent but something else entirely—cautious and brooding. Like he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I knew that feeling. It summed up most of my adolescence.

Two days had passed since I found out about the identity of Chris Weber. One day had passed since Curtis spoke to Benjamin about Weber privately. After I got home from shopping with Willa, Robert stopped by to casually congratulate Benjamin and ask if he wanted to go for a drive—something I encouraged, just in case Benjamin wanted to confide something to Robert that he wouldn’t say to his own therapist. None of it persuaded Benjamin to open up. He returned to his bedroom, telling me to let him know when dinner was ready.

“Not pizza, if I get a vote,” he said, just as I’d pulled the Giuliano’s menu flyer from the fridge.

“You want to make some pasta and homemade sauce, together?”

“Not really.”

But he didn’t sound rude about it, just fatigued.

Since he was stopping by, Robert had brought the box of criminology files he’d mentioned, so we could look through them together. I grabbed two beers from the fridge and told him we could make tacos, the boring kind. Ground beef, hard-shell tortillas, a packet of spices.

“Nothing boring about that,” Robert said. Would I ever date someone with more refined tastes?

I took out the ground beef and put it inside a Ziploc and then into a pot of cool water to defrost, since our microwave’s defrost function always ended up cooking the meat into a rubbery gray mess. Back in the living room, I started to pull the files from the box and lay them out on the coffee table. “Just from what I’ve read online, I’ve started to have nightmares.”

“You still want to look, then? The Mayfield and Scarlatti cases are closed.”

“But what about Harper McKibben? What about Veronica Lovell? What about all the other women who are still missing?”

Robert whispered, “Tell me you haven’t gone nuts. You’re not still worrying about Benjamin.”

“Of course not. Not in the way you think.”