Chapter 14: The Pink Camcorder

Nolan's POV

On Wednesday morning Callie was at the cabin table before me, turning Trevor's last line over like a coin.

"Who paid for the ring?" she said. "I'm going to call my mother and ask."

"Not by phone," I said. "Give me a day, and then ask her to her face."

She nodded slowly, and I told her I had a shift at the district office.

It was the first lie I had told her since the bed, and it sat in my mouth the whole drive down to Leland.

Leland has one main street, a diner, a feed store and a tire shop.

The tire shop belonged to the boy who had driven the car in 2013.

I knew because I had read the sergeant's list so many times that the names no longer looked like words.

He was twenty-nine now, thick through the middle, with grease on his forearms and a wedding ring.

Two customers waited on plastic chairs, and a radio played country music.

I walked up to the counter and laid the flyer on it.

I had taken it down from the trailhead board that morning, the first time in twelve years.

Danny's school photo had gone brown at the edges.

MISSING, it said over his face. DANIEL ORRICK, 15.

The man behind the counter read it, and the color went out of him one inch at a time.

"I know who you are," he said.

"Then you know why I'm here."

"I was seventeen."

"You were driving."

"Mister, I..."

"Don't call me mister. Say what you did."

The customers had stopped pretending to read their phones.

The door to the salon next door opened, and a woman in a black apron came in with her arms crossed.

I knew her too, from the same list.

She had been the other friend, the one in the front seat.

"Don't," she said to him. "Don't say a word to him. Brooke said."

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