Confessions of a Murder Suspect

71

I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it was very, very hard to go back to that filing cabinet, where I knew there could be reams of documents detailing things I wasn’t ready to face.

So once I had the folder marked J.R. open, I took my time. Slowly, slowly, I leafed through the thick stack of pages of my own calligraphic replica of the poem “Maud,” one of several Big Chops I’d had to do after I ran away.

I forced myself to read every word of the tortured, dense Victorian poem all over again. A delaying tactic. How much did I want to find what else Maud might have tucked into this folder?

I could delay no further when a newspaper clipping fell out. Before I could read the headline, I saw a face in the accompanying photo.

Now it was no longer a hazy face in my memory, struggling to come into focus. It was plain as day, the handsome face of the young man I’d run away with. Dark blond, longish, straight hair—and the smile that had in an instant taken me in. Won me over. Made me believe in him. In fact, it had been the only thing I believed in, for that short period of time: that he would save me. That we could save each other.

There it was, in black-and-white. He was a real person. He was beautiful, yet frightening to me somehow. And he was missing.

SON OF STORIED FINANCIER, 18, DISAPPEARS UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES.

My hands were shaking so hard they crumpled the paper. Or maybe I was crumpling it up on purpose. I didn’t want to read any more.

Buck up, Tandy. Read it.

I took a deep breath, opened the clipping, and got only as far as the first two words:

James Rampling.