“That’s a good idea,” Trev says. “If you want to dig around the garage, you can. It’s the only place I haven’t finished searching yet. There’s still a lot to go through.”

“I’ve got time,” Rachel says. “You in, Kyle?”

Mouth full of coffee, Kyle nods.

The rest of our order comes, and our conversation’s abandoned for the clink of silverware and some really excellent home fries. When Trev goes up to the counter to pay, I ask Kyle, “What do you think of Matt?”

“Like, as a suspect?”

“Suspect, person, whatever. He and Trev were friends; I’m looking for another perspective on him.”

Kyle leans back in his blue wicker chair. “Matt’s a tweeker,” he says. “And he’s relapsed twice. He’s clean now, has been for maybe six months. Adam seems to think this time’s different, but he always wants to think that. Their uncle had to step in this time, really lay down the law. Someone in the family has to go with Matt to meetings so he doesn’t ditch.”

“You don’t like Matt,” Rachel observes.

Kyle’s cheeks redden. “He was shitty to Adam when we were kids. But family’s really important, so Adam always forgives Matt, no matter how bad he acts. Matt is older—he should’ve stepped up when their dad left, but he just caused more problems.”

“Shitty person doesn’t necessarily translate into stone-cold killer,” Rachel says.

Trev walks back to the table. “Let’s get going,” he says, tucking some bills underneath my coffee cup for the tip. He grabs his keys off the table and twists one free from the ring, handing it to Kyle. “There’s soda and stuff in the fridge. Help yourself to whatever. Just make sure to lock up and leave the key under the rock on the porch after you leave.”

“And call us if you find anything,” I add.

“Here.” Rachel unhooks her Batman charm bracelet and fastens it around my wrist. “For luck.” She gets up and slings her messenger bag over her shoulder.

We part at the door, Rachel and Kyle heading across the street. Trev tosses me the keys again and reaches over to turn the radio on once we’re back in the truck.

“I don’t think we should tell Matt we found Mina’s interviews,” I say as we drive past the soccer field, where girls in blue uniforms are chasing the ball across the grass.

“Then what do you want to say?”

“Just that we found a list in her room with his name on it. I want to see how he reacts.”

“Okay, but let me do most of the talking.”

I nod as I pull up to the address that Trev’s given me, a squat brown apartment building with a chipped tile roof and a FOR RENT sign on the lawn. We get out of the truck and walk up to 2B.

Trev knocks, and a few minutes pass before the door opens. Matt looks like an older, worn-down version of Adam. His skin doesn’t have Adam’s healthy glow, his cheeks are sunken, and there are fading red marks on his jaw. But he’s got some weight on him and his eyes are clear.

It’s possible he’s clean.

“Trev, my man.” He and Trev do that one-armed hug thing that guys do, and he smiles at me. “Who’s this?”

“This is Sophie.”

“Hi.” I hold out my hand, and Matt takes it.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“I’m friends with your brother. And Kyle Miller.”

“Oh yeah.” Matt’s smile widens. “Come on in.”

Matt’s place is neat and clean. Two brindle pit bulls jump and wiggle up to me, trying to lick my face as we walk through the doorway. He calls them off and opens the back door for them. I search as subtly as I can for any sign that Matt has relapsed. The house smells like smoke and there’s a china bowl with burn marks almost overflowing with cigarette butts, but when I look down, I don’t see any roaches, just yellow filters. There are no beer bottles or caps, no mysterious baggies in plain sight, no pipes—not even a bottle of Visine or NyQuil.

All of it could be hidden somewhere. When getting high is the only thing you can think about, you get pretty smart about keeping it a secret.

“How’s your mom doing?” Matt asks Trev.

“You know.” Trev shrugs. “It’s better for her, being with my aunt, I think.”

“That’s good. What about you?”

Trev shrugs again. Matt reaches out, claps Trev on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, man.” He looks at me. “Hey, you guys want something to drink? I’ve got soda and water.”

“I’m okay,” I say.

“So what’s up?” Matt asks after we’ve settled on the peeling vinyl couch. He sits down across from us in an armchair.

“Well, it’s kinda weird,” Trev says. “I’m going through Mina’s stuff; I want to have it packed up when my mom comes home. I found this list of names in her desk, and yours was on it. I was wondering what the list was about. I didn’t know you guys were friendly.”

“We weren’t,” Matt says. “Not really. She didn’t tell you about the story she was doing on Jackie?”

“No,” Trev says.

“It was for the Beacon. She said she was doing a profile for Jackie’s birthday and asked me for an interview. I said okay and talked to her. When I never saw anything come out in the paper, I just figured she hadn’t finished it before…” Matt trails off uncomfortably.

“What did she want to know?” Trev asks.

“Normal stuff. How Jackie and I had started dating, what our plans had been.”

“Did she ask you about the case?” I ask.

“Nah,” Matt says. “Mina knew I had nothing to do with it. Detective James is an asshole on a power trip.”

I keep my expression neutral, thinking about how Mina had Matt as Suspect Number One on her list.

“What else did you guys talk about?” I ask.

“Um, she asked how long we’d been together. We talked about soccer, how Jackie ran for student body president junior year. She must have bought a case of glitter glue for all those signs we put up.”

Trev grins. “I forgot about that. She freaked out when she ran out of pink.”

Caught in the memory, Matt laughs, then sobers suddenly, running a hand through his black hair. “Sometimes it’s like she was here just yesterday,” he says. “She always made me laugh, even when everything else sucked.” Absently, he digs something out of his pocket, flipping it over in his fingers, and I see it’s a six-month sobriety chip.

“Six months is awesome.” I gesture at the chip.

His fingers tighten around it. “You in the program?”

“I’ve got a little over ten months.”

“Good for you,” he says. “The meetings are a big help, but it’s still hard sometimes.”

“Yeah, it’s tough. But you know, it’s just one—”

“‘One day at a time.’” He finishes the slogan and looks up at me with a rueful smile. “That’s all we’ve got, right?”

“Something like that.” I smile back, letting it be my excuse to stare into his eyes. Had it been him that night? It’s so hard to clearly remember the killer’s voice, to remember exactly the shape of his eyes through that mask. Three little words punctuated by gunfire, and I…I can’t be sure.

But I can be sure of one thing: addicts lie.

Matt rubs his fingers over the edge of the chip, like he’s drawing strength.

“Did you happen to mention to anyone that Mina was doing a story on Jackie?” Trev asks.

“I think I told my mom,” Matt says. “She thought it was nice that the Beacon was doing a feature on Jackie. Mom loved Jackie.” His green eyes go bright, and he grips the chip tightly, swallowing hard. “It’s just tough,” he says, “thinking about her. Not knowing what happened.”

“Do you think she ran away?” I ask him.

Matt shakes his head, his eyes still moist. “Nah, Jackie loved her family—she’d never leave them, especially Amy. Jackie was excited about college. We even talked about us getting an apartment near Stanford, me going to community college. She wouldn’t have run—no reason to. Someone took her.” He breathes deep, his chip clutched tightly in his hand. “And all I can do is pray she’s out there somewhere, that she’ll get away if someone’s got her, that she’ll come back home.”

“You think she’s still alive?” The second it’s out of my mouth, I know it’s a mistake. He looks like he’s about to burst into tears; pushing this way won’t do any good.

“I hope so,” Matt says. “More than anything.”

There’s an uncomfortable stretch of silence when I don’t know what to say. He could be lying, laying it on thick to mislead us. He could be telling the truth—he could really believe that she’s alive after all these years, because he can’t stand to imagine the alternative.

“We should go,” I say. “I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”

“You cool, Matt?” Trev asks. “I can hang out.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” He waves us off. “Just…bad memories.”

“Thanks for talking to us.”

Matt nods and walks us to the door. “See you around.” He smiles, but his eyes aren’t in it. The door shuts behind us, and I hear the sound of the bolt sliding into place as we head to the stairs.

“Well, what do you think?” Trev asks when we get to the truck.

“He’s tall enough to be the killer,” I say, stepping up into the cab. I fasten my seat belt and turn the key in the ignition. “I know he has guns. Adam goes hunting with him all the time.”

“Just about every guy has a gun around here,” Trev points out as I back out into the street. “I have a gun.”

“You have your dad’s old pistol. Have you ever even shot it?”

“Sure. It’d be stupid to have a gun I didn’t know how to use. I taught Mina, too.”

“When was this?” I don’t remember Mina ever mentioning it.

“When you were in Portland. She asked me to. She…” Trev frowns. “She asked me right around Christmas.”

“When she was getting the threats.”

“So why didn’t she take it with her that night?” Trev asks, and there’s this angry note in his voice that makes me flinch. “She knew where it was, how to use it. She could’ve protected herself.”

“She didn’t bring the gun because she didn’t suspect whoever she was meeting,” I say.

We slow to a halt at the stoplight at the end of the street, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see a muscle in Trev’s jaw twitching. It’s eating at him, that Mina knew she was in enough danger to want to learn how to shoot but had kept her secrets too long.

“Matt doesn’t think much of Detective James,” I say, because I hate how well Trev can blame himself. I need to steer him away from this.

“Neither do you,” Trev points out.

I roll my eyes. “That’s because Detective James gets an idea in his head and won’t budge from it. How much progress has he made in all these months chasing after nonexistent drug leads? If he’d done his job the first time, Mina wouldn’t have had to go after the guy who took Jackie. He’s failed to catch the same killer twice. That’s his fault, too.”

“Look, I’m pissed at him, too, but eventually, we’ll take all of this stuff to him. We’ll have to get along.”

“He’s an ass.”

“Well, let’s say that Matt is responsible,” Trev says. “What’s his motivation for getting rid of Jackie?”

I flip the turn signal at the stop sign, looking both ways. “Did they fight?”

“Sometimes. I think she was pissed he was smoking so much pot. She was trying for a scholarship so her parents wouldn’t have to pay for college. Spent a lot of time working out, running drills, studying so her grades were good enough. She wanted him to keep up.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So, what—he kills her ’cause she’s bugging him about weed?”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Trev says. “She disappeared out on Clear Creek; that’s getting into the woods. Maybe they went hiking or they were fighting and she fell?”

“Then why wouldn’t he just call the rangers and tell them it was an accident? Accidents happen in the Siskiyous all the time. No, someone took Jackie and killed her and probably dumped her somewhere. That’s why no one’s ever found her body.”

“This is so messed up,” Trev says under his breath.

“I know,” I say. We sit in silence for a long moment. “You still up for going to talk to Jack Dennings?”

“I can’t let you go alone,” he says, which isn’t really an answer, but I’ll take it.

“Then get my phone out. I have the directions on it.”

We’re quiet on the drive to Jack Dennings’s place out in Irving Falls. Trev fiddles with the radio, finding an old-school country station, and Merle Haggard’s worn voice fills the cab of the truck as I focus on the road.

I don’t know what to say to him when it’s about normal stuff. So I keep quiet and roll down the window, trying to get some relief from the heat, but the hot air blasts me, blowing my hair back in my face. The truck’s AC has been broken for as long as I can remember, and though it’s not even noon, it’s in the triple digits already. Sweat collects at the small of my back, and I pull my hair off my neck with one hand, slinging it over my shoulder.