Forget it, he told himself. You got away with cutting out Bonnie’s pictures. It’s pressing your luck to try the same thing with Sandra. Pressing Lane’s luck.
No way.
He went back to the part of the story about Bonnie. She and her friends were actually the last people to see Sandra.
Incredible.
Okay, he thought, maybe not “incredible.” It’s a small town, only eighty-nine kids in the graduating class. Bonnie was “Spirit Queen,” without question one of the most popular girls in her class. It would be strange if she
Sandra must’ve been one of her very best friends, though. You don’t go double-dating with just anyone.
What about this Biff Tate? Bonnie’s boyfriend, obviously. Stupid name. He was probably a football star, or something.
Bonnie was probably making it with the guy.
A goddamn jock. Larry could just hear him bragging in the locker room. “Sure, I slipped it to her. Had her begging for more.”
Come off it, he told himself. It’s stupid to be worrying about her boyfriend. Kids Bonnie knew were getting nailed. Two down in less than two weeks.
Had to be tough on her.
Yeah, and I bet good ol‘ Biff was more than eager to comfort her in her grief.
Larry muttered, “Shit,” then glanced at Alice across the room. Her back was turned as she shelved books. She didn’t react, so he assumed that she hadn’t heard him.
He copied the story about Sandra Dunlap and returned to his search of the newspapers.
A brief piece in the July 31 edition indicated that the girl was still among the missing, that her parents feared the worst, that the police were again asking witnesses to come forward with information.
On August 10, 1968, Linda Latham vanished.
The photo showed a cheerful, blond girl with freckles and a cute, uptilted nose. This didn’t look like a school picture. She wore a T-shirt, and a ball cap with its bill turned sideways. Larry gazed at the girl’s young, innocent face. It saddened him, stifled the excitement he felt about discovering another victim.
TOWN STUNNED BY KIDNAPPING
Linda Latham, 17-year-old daughter of Lynn and Ronald Latham, was apparently abducted late Friday night while walking home from the house of a friend, Kerry Goodrich.
At approximately midnight, Linda’s parents grew concerned about her absence and telephoned the Goodrich residence, only to learn that their daughter had left more than an hour earlier. The walk, a distance of four blocks, should have taken the girl no longer than ten minutes.
Alarmed, her parents searched the area between the two homes. Finding Linda’s handbag near the curb approximately a block from the Goodrich house, they promptly called the police.
Though the area was canvassed by authorities, no information about the apparent kidnapping was obtained.
Linda Latham is the second teenage girl to disappear under suspicious circumstances in recent weeks. On July 26, Sandra Dunlap vanished from her home on Crestview Avenue, and her fate remains unknown to date.
Police point out that there is little similarity in the circumstances of the two disappearances. “The M.O.‘s are completely different,” according to police spokesman Captain Al Taylor. “It would be premature, at this point, to speculate that both crimes were the work of the same perpetrator. In spite of that, we do need to recognize that two teenagers have been abducted over a short period of time. There certainly
Captain Taylor went on to suggest that teenage girls refrain from going out alone, that they carry whistles in case of an emergency, and that they report any encounters of a suspicious nature.
Authorities are conducting an all-out search for the two missing girls. Anyone with information about either disappearance is requested to contact the police immediately.
Nothing about Martha Radley, Larry realized. Didn’t the police see a connection there? Obviously not, or they’d be even more concerned.
One murder, two disappearances. That’s three down.
Larry removed the bottom page from his small stack of copies — the list of 1968 graduates from Buford High School. He found the names Dunlap, Sandra and Latham, Linda. The Radley girl wasn’t there, of course: she was only sixteen.
But she’d been in the Art Club, and Sandra and Linda had both been Bonnie’s classmates.
Bonnie knew all three.
God, she must’ve been devastated. And scared.
Something like that happens, and you’ve got to start wondering who will be next.
Maybe you.
He copied the story.
He continued searching. He copied three follow-up stories, none of which provided any new information. The girls were still gone. The police had no suspects.
Bonnie was next.
He found her picture and story on the front page of the
He stared at the screen with a horrible feeling of loss.
What did you expect? he told himself. You knew she was dead, you’ve got her body. This shouldn’t come as any great blow.
But it was as if part of his mind had held on to a wild hope that Bonnie’s story would have a happy ending, after all. Somehow.
The newspaper crushed that hope.
He moaned as he stared at the photo. He knew it well. It was her senior picture. He had it in his filing cabinet.
Reluctantly, he read the story.
BONNIE SAXON VANISHES
Bonnie Saxon, voted Buford High School’s “Spirit Queen” during the fall, 1967 homecoming festivities, disappeared during the night from the Usher Avenue home where she lived with her mother, Christine.
The 18-year-old girl was last seen by her mother when she returned home following a date Friday night with her boyfriend, Biff Tate. The next morning, Bonnie was gone. Her bedroom window was found to be broken, and blood was noted on her sheets.
This marks the third disappearance, since late July, of local teenage girls. On July 26, Sandra Dunlap, 18, vanished from her home. Like Bonnie, Sandra was apparently taken during the night from her bedroom. In both cases, there was evidence of forced entry, and blood was found on the bedsheets. The second disappearance occurred on August 10, when Linda Latham, 18, was the victim of an apparent kidnapping while she walked home after visiting a friend.
According to Police Chief Jud Ring, “It looks now as if we have a definite pattern, especially between the Dunlap and Saxon cases. It’s reasonable to conclude that all three girls were abducted by the same perpetrator. This is a very nasty situation. We still hope that the girls will be found alive, of course. But we just don’t know what has become of them. What we do know is this: there is every reason to believe that such crimes will continue if we fail to apprehend the person responsible for these outrages.
“Our department,” he went on, “is conducting a full-scale investigation of the matter. No avenue is being overlooked. I have every confidence that we’ll soon have the perpetrator in custody. Until then, however, it’s imperative that all our female citizens exercise the utmost caution in their daily affairs.”
Bonnie Saxon is a graduate of the Buford High School Class of 1968. In addition to being voted “Spirit
