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“Maybe she wasn’t drinking after all. Maybe the wine was from the box being thrown around during the accident.” This was volunteered by another anonymous member of our party.
Someone else said, “There was alcohol in her soda bottle.”
Full circle.
Tony said, “There wasnothingin her soda bottle because it was emptied out. Deputy Dempseythoughtthe bottle smelled like alcohol and assumed she was drunk driving. There was no forensic testing done.”
“Is that true?” Rory asked.
I shrugged. “It’s unclear. If there was forensic testing done, the results were never made public.”
Blake was not to be distracted. “There’s no reason to believe her car was in that bad a shape. She never complained about it to friends.”
I said, “The spring semester started January 28. She’d been back a total of two weeks. She lived, worked, and went to school on campus. How much driving was she doing? Her college friends said she hadn’t complained about the car. Her friends back home said the car was in bad shape. Her family said the car was in bad shape. Her dad took her car-shopping the weekend before she disappeared. I think the car was probably in bad shape. I don’t see any reason for her dad to lie about taking her car-shopping, and I don’t see any reason to take her car-shopping unless she really needed a car.”
“None of the dealerships in the area could remember them car-shopping,” said yet another young guy I didn’t recognize. A whole new generation of online sleuths were now pursuing Deirdre through the mists of time and the Intertubes. “And they didn’t talk about it at dinner when they went out with one of her friends.”
I sighed.
“If he was helping her get away from Tommy, which is what Weber thinks—”
“Which is it?” I interrupted. “Because originally Weber thought Deirdre was fleeing her abusive father. Now he thinks her dad played a role in a convoluted plan to escape her abusive boyfriend? Come on. Pat O’Donnell strikes me as the kind of man who wouldn’t hesitate to have a word with a jerk he thought was mistreating one of his daughters. The last thing he’d do is ship her off to parts unknown.”
“But if she was trying to get away from Tommy and she waspregnant,” Iliana began.
“If she was pregnant, she wouldn’t have been drinking and taking birth-control pills.”
Iliana had no reply to that, but Blake was far from out. “You’ve never met Pat O’Donnell.”
It was tempting, but I restrained myself to, “Neither has Weber.”
“Weber’s still the expert on this case. He’s been investigating Deirdre’s disappearance a lot longer than you.”
“Is it a contest?”
“You know who else has been investigating it?” Rory broke in. “State and Federal law enforcement. And yet youallthink you know more than they do.”
This pronouncement was met with wordless astonishment.
Hailey, who’d moved away with most of the group to more closely inspect the oak tree, called, “Law enforcement isuseless.”
As Rory began to splutter, I murmured, “Careful. You’re about to blow your cover,” and he threw me a sharp look. He didn’t answer me directly, though. “Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is most likely correct.”
“There we agree.”
Iliana said, “But who’s to say what’s the simplest explanation in this case?”
“Good point. From my perspective, faking an accident to stage a disappearance that was bound to attract media attention and the involvement of law enforcement and would then require going into hiding for the next nineteen years doesn’t seem like the easiest way to get out of a difficult romance. But what do I know?”
“Exactly.Youhave no way of knowing what it was like for a woman like Deirdre.”
“Nobody knows what it’s like for someone else. The best we can do is try to think what we’d do in that same situation, and weigh it against what we know of the other person and their circumstances.”
Hailey walked back over and looped her arm through mine. “I don’t think Deirdre was the kind of girl who tried to run away from her problems.”
Blake said, “Really? What the hell was she doing in the mountains of New Hampshire?”
I said, “There’s a big difference between taking a few days to figure out some major life decisions and abandoning your entire life.”
