Page 24 of What She Saw

She was a senior in high school, and she’d had her troubles with the law. The last sheriff had fixed several tickets for her.

“I escorted her to the first aid trailer. She didn’t have any idea where she was. She said she was fine and then she threw up on the ground. Moments like that were why I’d set my sights on homicide in a bigger city. The dead stayed where you left them, and they sure as shit didn’t barf.”

“You left her at the first aid trailer?”

“Yeah. I thought she’d be fine.”

“But you lost track of her.”

“I couldn’t remember which trip to the first aid station it was when I realized Bailey had vanished.”

“But she didn’t leave the festival. She hooked up with one of the victims, Debra Jackson, also a local high school student.” All the girls had been young and pretty.

“I didn’t find that out until later.”

Chapter Eight

Sloane

Saturday, August 16, 2025, 9:30 a.m.

“When did you realize the concert was going south?” I asked Paxton.

He drew in a breath and shifted in his chair. Thirty-one years and the question seemed to still annoy him. “I’ve been asked that question so many times.”

“It irritates you,” I said.

“It does. Reporters are Monday-morning quarterbacks. None of you were on the field making calls and dealing with the mayhem.”

“You have a point. All of us have twenty-twenty vision in retrospect.” I wasn’t here to piss him off and shut him down. “I’m not judging. I’m trying to see the scene as you did.”

“No matter how long we talk, you never will.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s your angle?”

“No angle. I want to find the victims’ bodies.”

That softened his frown a fraction. “Thirty-one years in these mountains is a lifetime. You’ll never find them now.”

“The earth never completely swallows everything. There’s always a trace or a clue.”

The black leather of his chair creaked as he leaned back. “That’s a nice thought, but the world is a big place.”

“No one noticed that the women had disappeared.”

“No wonder. By midnight, people had packed the field. It was shoulder to shoulder. Rafe Colton said there’d be a few hundred people, but there had to be two thousand or more. People had hiked up the fire road and slipped into the venue through the woods. The music kept amping up the crowd. The promised large security turned out to be just three guys in black security T-shirts who didn’t arrive until eleven. We were all in over their heads. Honest to God, I was never so glad to see the sun rise. Unless you had someone watching your back, anyone could’ve been swallowed up by that mess.”

“Taggart made multiple statements to that effect. He said halfway through the night he couldn’t find Rafe Colton.”

“That’s right. He was impossible to find for a couple of hours.”

“Could he have driven off the mountain?”

“No way. The roads were jammed.”

“And the mayor? Where was he?”

Paxton shook his head. His mouth tightened. I suspected he was chewing on a few choice words. But politics got the better of candor. “Mayor Briggs was a good man. He wanted the best for this town. Dawson was hurting financially then. Folks were out of work, and he wanted to help.”

“He thought the festival would be a success,” I said.