Page 30 of Dead Man's Hollow
The statement might seem out of place to a podcast listener, but Jordana can edit it out if she needs to. Maisy’s goal is for Amy to feel as if she’s having a natural conversation.
Amy gives her a faint smile. “No, she wasn’t. She had a wine cooler. No, wait, it was a Zima. I remember the bottle. And when she finished that, she had a beer.”
“Any other drinks?”
“I don’t know. I left the fire to walk around, and when I came back … she was gone.” Her voice is thick with emotion.
“Was the boy she’d been talking to gone, too?”
There’s a long pause.
Amy swallows audibly, then trails a finger around the rim of her glass, through the condensation that’s gathered there. “Um, yeah. He was gone, too.”
So she did know about the guy.
“Tell me about him.”
Her eyes widen. “There’s nothing to tell. He didn’t go to our school. I’d never seen him before.”
“Oh, that’s right. He was an Allderdice student.”
Amy’s expression is baffled. “Was he? Like I said, I didn’t know him. He was just some guy.”
“Just some guy who was talking to your sister the night she disappeared.”
“They were only talking. He, um, he said he liked her dance moves and offered her a beer. He offered me one, too, but I said no thanks. Then I decided to take a walk.”
Maisy waits. Sometimes not asking a question is the best question of all. Her patience is rewarded.
“They were flirting, and I didn’t want to be a third wheel. A literal bump on the log.”
“You say they were flirting. Both of them? It was mutual?”
“It seemed mutual. That’s why I walked away. If he’d been hitting on her and she wasn’t into it, I never would have left. I’d have stayed and told him to beat it.”
“You’re not the only person who saw them together, correct?”
“No, there were a ton of people at the fire.”
“I’ve reviewed every witness statement your friends and classmates who were in the woods that night gave to the police. Why do you think not a single person mentioned this boy?”
The patio is silent except for the faint buzz of the bees hovering in the planter of pale pink snapdragons nearby and the lazy whirr of the ceiling fan above the table. Amy’s staring at her hands again.
Finally, she raises her eyes. “I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t know that nobody told the police about him. That’s weird.”
It’s more than weird, but Maisy moves on. “Why didn’t you?”
Amy clears her throat and flicks a glance toward Jordana. “You have to understand how things were back then. If I’d have told the police or my parents that Heather was flirting with a Black guy before she disappeared, they’d have jumped to conclusions. I thought … I guess I thought that information would distract them from finding her because they’d have an easy scapegoat.”
Maisy’s meets Jordana’s eyes. The college student hadn’t been alive in 1994, but they both know racism’s still alive and well in the new millennium.
“Do you think that’s why nobody else said anything about him?” Maisy asks.
Amy takes a drink before answering. “I doubt it,” she says, and leaves it at that.
“What about the fight?”
She casts a baffled look at Maisy. “What fight?”
