Page 42 of Dead Man's Hollow
MAISY: Yes. How did you learn Heather had a pager, Kristy?
KRISTY: Heather was supposed to stay with me after school until our mom got home from work. The rule was once you were ten, you could stay home alone. But sometimes Heather wanted to meet up with a friend or stay after school for an activity, so she asked if I’d be okay on my own for short periods of time.
MAISY: And you said yes?
KRISTY: That’s right, I’d told her I’d be fine. I mean, when Diana was ten, she wasn’t just staying home alone; she was responsible for an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. So we thought my parents’ rule was pretty dumb. Arbitrary. One day, Heather came back from the mall with this pink pager she’d rented from a kiosk. It was used, and someone had glued a rhinestone sticker in the shape of a capital letter C in one corner. I told her she could cover it up with a different sticker, but she said she liked it. She decided the C stood for ‘clandestine.’ Then she gave me the number and swore me to secrecy. I promised not to tell anyone.
MAISY: And you kept that promise even after she disappeared, didn’t you?
KRISTY: I did.
MAISY: Would you have mentioned the pager if the police had interviewed you?
KRISTY: I’m not sure. But they didn’t talk to me, so I guess we’ll never know.
My producer and I have reviewed the case file, and I can confirm that it does not contain a witness statement from Kristy Kaminski.
MAISY: Do you think they should have?
KRISTY: I don’t know. I mean I understand why they didn’t. I’m sure they thought an eight-year-old wouldn’t know anything. And obviously, they focused mostly on Amy, because she was there the night Heather disappeared. (She pauses.) But I also didn’t volunteer the information.
MAISY: Do you wish you had?
KRISTY: With the benefit of hindsight and the maturity of adulthood, yes. At the time, though, I wanted to believe that Heather had run away. And I thought if she had the pager and I didn’t tell anyone, she and I could stay in touch. I must have paged her number a couple hundred times over the summer, even though I’m sure it was shut off for lack of payment.
MAISY: And she never answered?
KRISTY (quietly): No. No one ever answered.
MAISY: Did anyone besides you ever page her?
KRISTY: Sometimes. We’d be home after school, just the two of us, and then she’d get a page and tell me she had to run out for a bit.
MAISY: Did she ever tell you where she was going?
KRISTY: No. From the way she acted, I assumed it was a boy. She’d get giggly and giddy. She was never gone long when she got paged that way. Sometimes a half an hour, sometimes an hour, but she was always back before Amy got home from her after-school activities.
MAISY: Heather never told you who the boy was? Not even a hint?
KRISTY: No. She never even told me itwasa boy. I inferred it by the way she acted and because sometimes her hair would be messed up or her lip gloss would be wiped off when she came home—like she’d been making out with someone. (Kristy pauses here and looks down at her hands.)
MAISY (gently): Is there something else you want to share?
KRISTY: When Heather went missing, I went through her room before the police did. I wanted to see if her diary had any clues. I was deep in my Meg Mackintosh Mystery Series era then. I honestly thought I could solve the mystery of what happened to my sister. I was such a little goofball.
MAISY: Did you find any clues in her diary?
KRISTY: I couldn’t find the diary at all. I’d, well, I’d read it before. It was this white faux leather book with a gold lock and gold script that read ‘My Diary’ on the front. The lock was a joke. I could pop it with a bobby pin—and did, more than once. She kept the diary wedged between the back of her vanity table and the wall, but it wasn’t there.
MAISY: Do you think your parents or one of your other sisters removed it?
KRISTY: No. I know my sisters didn’t because I asked them about it once years later and they didn’t even know she kept a diary, let alone where she hid it. And if it was my mom or dad, they never mentioned it, and we didn’t find it in their things when we cleaned out the house.
MAISY: So as far as you know, Heather’s diary went missing with her.
KRISTY: As far as I know. I don’t know why she’d take it to the party, but I don’t know where else it could have gotten to.
MAISY: What do you think happened to your sister, Kristy?
