Bobby Ray Hayes pled guilty to killing seven women, a deal prosecutors took to give the families closure. But questions remain about whether the Smasher had more victims. The prison wouldn’t allow me to meet with Hayes in person, but they permitted us to talk by phone. Viewers are warned that what you’re about to hear is highly disturbing and not suitable for younger viewers.

CUT TO the reporter sitting in an office in front of a speakerphone.

HAYES (O.S.)

You want to know what I did to them?

REPORTER

No, I wanted to talk about whether there are other victims.

HAYES

When I was ten, my mom’s boyfriend would take me up to the old warehouse by the train tracks in Plainsville. Mom was real happy ’bout it, like I finally had a father, you know?

REPORTER

Was this Travis Fegin?

HAYES

Travis would bring some pot and beer and a bag full of melons. I was like, what in the hell he doin’ with the melons? But then we’d go up five stories, and drop the melons and bottles from the roof. Travis got the idea from some old late-night talk show. We’d have a good ol’ time laughing and watching stuff splatter on the cement. But then Travis would want to play another game.…

REPORTER

Travis Fegin disappeared when you were twelve.

Hayes snickers through the phone.

HAYES

Did he now?

REPORTER

Did you—

HAYES

So the first girl, the one ridin’ her bike home from school. I took her up there. You wanna know what I did to her before I chucked her off the roof?

REPORTER

I’m here to talk about whether there were any other victims. To give you a chance to—

HAYES

She was so young, so smooth, she didn’t understand.…

A GUARD’s voice bellows in the background.

GUARD (O.S.)

Get your [bleep] pants on!

There’s more yelling and then the sound of a dial tone.

CHAPTER 38

MATT PINE

The bed at the Adair Motel was as hard as he’d expected. Matt wrestled with the sheets, his thoughts jumping from his call with Keller, to the scuffle at the bar, to Jessica Wheeler. He shifted his eyes to the plastic alarm clock: 2:34 A.M.

Maybe he should go for a run. No, he should try to go back to sleep, but he was too wired. Possible foul play, Agent Keller had said. It was hard to get his head around that. Who’d want to kill his family? They wouldn’t have brought much money to Mexico. And who would kill a little boy? Maybe Keller would have some answers. They’d agreed to meet at the diner in the morning.

From there, he’d go visit his grandpa. Spend some time with his aunt.

Matt startled at a tap on the door. He sat up. Had he really heard that, or was it just his imagination? He clicked on the lamp, listened.

He padded in bare feet to the door and put an eye to the peephole, but no one was there. He stepped over to the heavy curtains and opened them a crack. The parking lot was dimly lit, but he didn’t see anyone. Maybe it was Ganesh or Kala or one of his other friends.

That was when he noticed something on the floor. Someone had slipped a folded sheet of paper under the door. A note wrapped in red string.

He scooped it up, pulled at the string, and felt a flutter of excitement in his chest:

MEET ME AT THE KNOLL AT 3 A.M. TONIGHT?

YES OR NO

CIRCLE ONE

Matt remembered circling yes on an identical note seven years ago in science class. He checked the time again: 2:39 A.M. He could borrow the Escalade from Ganesh, but he’d been drinking. He could wake up Curtis to drive him. Or, if he went on foot, he could probably make it. He examined the note again. Then he threw on his shirt and jeans and reached for his sneakers.

* * *

Matt made it to the Knoll with five minutes to spare. He was sweaty, worried that he smelled from the run, but he was cooling off in the breeze. It was warmer tonight, but otherwise a lot like that night when he was in ninth grade: the leaves rustling overhead, the only light from the moon, which was intermittently covered by clouds. The same pounding in his chest. He wasn’t an innocent boy anymore, of course. He’d kissed his share of girls since then. But none had sent fire through him like Jessica Wheeler. He was glamorizing it all, he was sure. Why was it, he wondered, that we do that? Rosy up memories and make them idealized versions of what really happened.

He stood at the center of the opening in the trees, imagining Jessica all those years ago appearing from the forest, holding a flashlight, wearing pajama bottoms and a tight sleep shirt. He reminded himself that he knew nothing of this girl—this woman—now. They were likely very different people. He’d spent his formative years in Chicago, college in New York. She’d stayed in Adair, apparently working at Pipe Layers. It had been only seven years, but that was a full third of their lives. But something about the way she’d pushed through the crowd at the bar, fearlessly taken charge and broken up the altercation, gave him the same rush he’d had in ninth grade.

Matt scanned the area and didn’t see her. Maybe she’d thought better of it. Or it was a prank. Or worse, someone luring him up there to get some payback for the documentary’s hit job on the town. But he’d never told anyone of that night, and only Jessica knew about the note.

A light appeared from the woods.

Jessica ambled over to him. “You came.”

She clicked the flashlight off and they stood there. In the silver haze he saw the girl from science class. The delicate heart-shaped face. She was older, her hair longer, more stylish. She was still about an inch shorter than Matt. They’d grown at the same pace. And those lips … Matt needed to snap out of it.

The words were caught in his throat for some reason, so he just nodded.

“Sorry for the sneaking around,” Jessica said. “You’re not the most popular guy in the world after that TV show. And I have a business to run.…”

That explained it. She didn’t want to be seen with him. Wonderful. “You run the bar? I thought you just—”

“… worked there as a dumb cocktail waitress?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m just playing with you,” she said. “After my brother’s accident, I had to put college on hold. Ricky couldn’t take over the place when my uncle got sick. Stanford let me defer for a while, but I think that ship has sailed. The bar does pretty well, though. There’s not much to do in Adair. But, as you can see, the hours suck.”

“Stanford, wow.”

“I wanted to get as far away as possible. See how that worked out?”

“For both of us.”

“Come on,” she said, “you can walk me home.”

Matt followed her down the hill and to the worn path until they reached the large circular patch of grass and dirt everyone called the Hub. From there they took a dirt road that led to her childhood home. He was going to ask if she could still possibly live in the same house, but he thought better of it. He knew the answer and did not want to make her say it. They walked shoulder to shoulder along the narrow road.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Jessica said.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly received a warm reception.”

Matt released a noise of agreement.

“I’m sorry about my brother,” she said. “He hasn’t been the same since the accident. He gets confused. And he doesn’t have many friends, so he shows off for those assholes who only hang out with him for the free drinks he sneaks them when I’m not looking.”

Matt nodded. “What happened to him?”

“Car wreck. Mangled more than his body. Traumatic brain injury. You wouldn’t notice the TBI at first, but if you talk to him for a while…”

Matt gave her a sympathetic look. As a girl she’d been sweet, empathetic. It was what had attracted him. And by the sound of it, putting her life on hold to care for her brother, taking over the family business, she hadn’t changed.

“So why’d you call me out here?” Matt asked, examining her profile in the pale light.

This time it was Jessica who blushed. “I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.”

“To say I’m sorry, I guess.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I wasn’t exactly a good friend after what happened with your brother.”

Matt thought about this. For the first time, he remembered that Jessica had ghosted him after Danny’s arrest. Avoided him at school. Not returned his calls. How was it possible he’d forgotten? He had such vivid memories of that night. The itchiness of the grass on his back as they lay watching the stars. The feel of her hand holding his as they walked this very path. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear in the prelude to the kiss.

After Danny’s arrest it was a montage of misery, with lots of gaps in the timeline: his parents fighting. The sound of his father sobbing behind the closed bathroom door. The reporters outside the house. The receiver of the landline phone in the kitchen dangling off the hook. The whispers and stares whenever they went into town. The moving van. Maybe forgetting was a defense mechanism. Blocking out the unpleasantness.

Matt had a troubling thought: maybe that was why Danny couldn’t remember anything about the night Charlotte was killed. Blocking out what he did.

Jessica looked down at the grass. “If I could go back in time, I’d tell my mom I could be friends with whoever I wanted. I’d be stronger, a better friend. I saw the pain you were in, and I should’ve—”

“You don’t need to apologize.”