The Collective(50)

I clear my throat. “What did Jim say?”

“A lot,” he says. “For one thing, the reason why the cops were looking for Harris Blanchard in the first place wasn’t because his friends reported him missing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They only found out he was missing after they went to his Airbnb to question him, and his friends said he never came home. A girl had been in the station that morning. . . . Apparently, she had left the bar with him and they went for a walk. They were both drunk, but he was blasted. He got violent.”

“Oh . . .”

“She managed to fight him off and get away and leave him there in the woods, where he passed out. But her clothes were torn. She had cuts. She was very shaken up. I know I’m not a real cop. But I’ve done tons of research, and I’ve learned a lot from Jim over the years, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that guys like this don’t just mellow out on their own. They get a charge off hurting people and getting away with it. And the more they get away with it, the more dangerous they become.”

“She had cuts? This girl?”

“Yes. She said he held a knife on her.”

My throat closes up. “A knife.”

“It was a deer-hunting knife, Cam,” he says quietly. “A big one. They found it on his body.”





Fourteen


It was a Buck 119. I actually have to bite my tongue not to say it out loud. Luke starts talking about the recidivism rate among rapists, but all I can think about is Ashley Shawger removing it from the glass display case and showing it to me, the long blade gleaming. This is the Buck 119. Nothing fancy, but a good, solid, versatile knife.

After I left his store, I’d driven eighty-one miles, as instructed, to the post office in Ellenville, where I’d disguised myself for the security cameras, slipped the Buck 119 into a padded envelope, and mailed it to a PO box in Burlington, Vermont.

0001 knew what would happen. If everything went the way she planned it to go and if each part of this giant machine she’s assembled performed her role effectively, she knew very well where the knife would wind up, but how did she know Harris Blanchard would be there?

Luke says, “You’re so quiet, Cam.”

“Did Harris post on Instagram about going to Burlington?”

“He always posts about it. He and that group of friends go there every winter break. Why?”

“Nothing. I guess I’m just processing everything.”

“He’s gone,” Luke says. “He’ll never hurt another girl again.”

“I know.”

“And he did it to himself.”

I don’t say anything.

“When Nora and I come up, we can all toast to the future.”

“I’d like that,” I tell him, just to get off the phone. “I’d like that a lot.”


I HAVE A landline at home, but I don’t remember the last time I used it. It’s one of those things I keep telling myself I should get rid of, but there’s something that keeps me from doing it—my last tie to the past, I suppose. Plus, the turquoise rotary phone in the living room—a Salvation Army find from my college days—would be dead without it, and I don’t like that thought. I never sprung for landline voicemail. Instead the phone is attached to an answering machine that’s nearly as ancient as it is. At one point, there was a recorded message on it featuring Matt, four-year-old Emily, and me, but it got erased when she was around nine—I think by Emily herself—and it’s been the default robot voice answering that phone ever since.

That is, on the rare times it needs to be answered. Telemarketers call it on occasion, but I can’t remember the last time the red message light read anything other than 0. Once I get into my house, though, and set my laptop case down on the coffee table, that glaring light is the first thing I notice: 23. Twenty-three messages.

I push the button. “Hi, Camille.” The voice is chipper, female, and unfamiliar. “How are you feeling? This is Katie Mitchell from the Daily News, and I just wanted to see if I could talk to you about Harris Blanch—”

I press delete. The next message is almost identical, except that it’s from a New York Post reporter named Daphne something or other, and besides wanting to know how I’m feeling, she’s also “wondering if I plan to attend Harris Blanchard’s funeral.” Delete.

A serious-sounding young male voice follows, this time from the Times Union, calling me “Mrs. Gardener” and wondering how I “feel about everything.” Next up is a man from the Daily Freeman in Kingston and then there’s a producer from some radio show I’ve never heard of and then a guy calling from TMZ (Must be a really slow day for celebrity news . . .), each and every one of them posing different variants of the same question: How do you feel? As though, after five years, a light’s been switched on, and how Camille Gardener feels is the only thing that matters.

I know I stoked this interest with my Brayburn Club outburst, but still. Still. I delete the reporters’ messages, one after another after another, until it becomes reflexive and rather satisfying. I don’t let them speak long enough to learn their names or where they’re calling from. I just listen for the hello and push delete . . . until I’m twenty messages in and for the first time, I recognize the voice of the person leaving the message.