Numb, I nodded. “Poor Thea.”
“She had a hard life,” Ford said. “That much was obvious. I feel real bad for her mother. Poor woman.”
“Sheriff, we have a new theory,” Cole said. “You see how she says there that she—his girlfriend—was out of town, implying they lived together.”
“Which led us to thinking he might be older,” I said. “An older, married man who lived with his wife.”
“Holy cow, I didn’t think of that,” Ford said. “It’s hard to believe, though, isn’t it? A seventeen-old-girl with everything going for her to sleep with a married man? She’s not the type.”
“Type?” Cole asked.
“Sad. Lonely. Latchkey kid type without the family support Beth had. Those are the type of girls a man like that would prey on.”
“Girls like Thea,” I said.
“Exactly right.”
“How will we ever find him?” I asked, voice breaking.
“You two go home and lock that gate. Stay low and out of sight. I don’t want you anywhere that this monster could shoot you.”
I shivered, suddenly aware of how exposed I was on the street.
“Come on,” Cole said. “Let’s get you back to my house.”
Ford squeezed my shoulder again. “I’ll pull records of every married man who lived here in 1989. Trust me, I’m not going to rest until I find this guy.”
18
Cole
Thirty minutes later, we sat in my living room with Moonstone. I held Carlie’s hand as Moonstone, sitting across from us, read through the last of the journal pages. We’d texted her to meet us back at the house instead of the pizza place.
“I’m sorry, Carlie,” Moonstone said when she was done. “This must have been hard to read.”
“Thank you,” Carlie said. “And thank you for coming here and helping us. If it weren’t for you, we would never have found these.”
“Something else has happened?” Moonstone asked. “I can see it in your faces. Does it have anything to do with the sirens I heard?”
Carlie nodded. “Thea Moore was killed by a sharpshooter this morning. Right before we went to see her and ask her what she knew.” Carlie gestured toward the pages spread out on the table. “That’s why we hurried off this morning. We both felt an urgency to talk with her.”
“We were too late,” I said. “They pulled her out on a stretcher.”
“This is terrible,” Moonstone said. “I know how disappointed you must be.”
Carlie told Moonstone about the conversation she’d had with Thea. “She must have gone to him and said she was going to expose him.”
“And he put a stop to it,” Moonstone said.
“We have a new theory. We think he was older,” Carlie said. “A married man. An adult married man.”
“Ford’s going to pull records of all the married men in Logan Bend at the time,” I said. “I can’t figure how that’ll lead to anything. There’s too many, and how would we know who she had contact with?”
Moonstone’s brow wrinkled. “I wish I could get something. I thought I might from the journal papers. Sometimes energies get left behind when people go. I thought Beth’s might be in here.”
“Was there anything else you can tell us from your dream?” Carlie asked. “Any clues to who Z is?”
“I’m afraid not,” Moonstone said. “The message was clear. We were to look for the missing pages.”
“But they don’t really tell us anything, other than she was pregnant,” I said. “We still have no idea who Z is.”
“We know now that she was going to confront him,” Moonstone said. “Which is an important piece of the puzzle. We can deduct that he knew she was pregnant and about her plan to tell your mother and father. He killed her to keep her from exposing him.”
“Motive,” I said.
Moonstone ran her hands over the sheets of thin paper as if they were a precious cloth she was about to sew.
“Why would she have hidden these pages in a separate place?” I asked. “Almost like she was planting evidence in case anything happened to her.”
“Which would make sense,” Carlie said. “If she actually wrote his name.”
“Exactly. Why would she hide these separately? Also, when did she do it?” I couldn’t get my head around that particular move. Why would she hide the last entries in a different location if they didn’t have any information in them? How were they different from the rest of the journal? Despite my pity for Beth, she also infuriated me. Why would she have played this game? If she knew he was dangerous, why hadn’t she told someone? Especially Carlie? She’d lied to my brother and gotten herself in a dangerous position and left no real information about the identity of this mysterious, probably married man she’d been having sex with. “If she were nervous about his reaction, thinking him possibly dangerous, then why not spell it out?”
“I don’t know,” Carlie said, sounding exasperated. “I can hardly recognize the girl in this journal. All the secrets and lies.”
“Love makes us do things we wouldn’t normally consider,” Moonstone said. “Your sister was young and vulnerable. Whoever this guy was, I’m sure he charmed the pants off her.” She flushed. “I’m sorry. Poor choice of words.”
Carlie mouth lifted in a sad smile. “It’s okay. He quite literally did just that.” Her eyes filled with tears. “As angry as all this makes me, I have to remember she was only seventeen. When I think of my daughter at that age, it all makes sense. Beth was a child who had been taken advantage of by an adult.”
“We can only hope that I’ll get something,” Moonstone said. “Perhaps from the list the sheriff comes up with? Sometimes words will jump off a page. Speaking of which, do you have the rest of the journal with you?”
Carlie nodded and reached into her purse. She placed the ratty journal on the tabletop. “Here. Do you want to read it? I can tell you I’ve read it through several times and there’s nothing in there that even hints at the guy’s age.”
“I’d like to touch it, if
