studied the details of the photo, as he had so many times before, and started with what he knew. The photograph had been taken in Hampton. The woman appeared to be in her early twenties when the photo was taken. She was attractive. She either owned a German shepherd or knew someone who did. Her first name started with the letter E. Emma, Elaine, Elise, Eileen, Ellen, Emily, Erin, Erica . . . they seemed the most likely, though in the South, he supposed there could be names like Erdine or Elspeth, too. She went to the fair with someone who was later posted to Iraq. She had given this person the photograph, and Thibault had found the photograph in February 2003, which meant it had to have been taken before then. The woman, then, was most likely now in her late twenties. There was a series of three evergreen trees in the distance. These things he knew. Facts.
Then, there were assumptions, beginning with Hampton. Hampton was a relatively common name. A quick Internet search turned up a lot of them. Counties and towns: South Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nebraska. Georgia. Others, too. Lots of others. And, of course, a Hampton in Hampton County, North Carolina.
Though there’d been no obvious landmarks in the background—no picture of Monticello indicating Virginia, for instance, no WELCOME TO IOWA! sign in the distance—there had been information. Not about the woman, but gleaned from the young men in the background, standing in line for tickets. Two of them had been wearing shirts with logos. One—an image of Homer Simpson—didn’t help. The other, with the word DAVIDSON written across the front, meant nothing at first, even when Thibault thought about it. He’d originally assumed the shirt was an abbreviated reference to Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle. Another Google search cleared that up. Davidson, he’d learned, was also the name of a reputable college located near Charlotte, North Carolina. Selective, challenging, with an emphasis on liberal arts. A review of their bookstore catalog showed a sample of the same shirt.
The shirt, he realized, was no guarantee that the photo had been taken in North Carolina. Maybe someone who’d gone to the college gave the guy the shirt; maybe he was an out-of-state student, maybe he just liked the colors, maybe he was an alum and had moved someplace new. But with nothing else to go on, Thibault had made a quick phone call to the Hampton Chamber of Commerce before he’d left Colorado and verified that they had a county fair every summer. Another good sign. He had a destination, but it wasn’t yet a fact. He just assumed this was the right place. Still, for a reason he couldn’t explain, this place felt right.
There were other assumptions, too, but he’d get to those later. The first thing he had to do was find the fairgrounds. Hopefully, the county fair had been held in the same location for years; he hoped the person who could point him in the right direction could answer that question as well. Best place to find someone like that was at one of the businesses around here. Not a souvenir or antiques shop—those were often owned by newcomers to town, people escaping from the North in search of a quieter life in warmer weather. Instead, he thought his best bet would be someplace like a local hardware store. Or a bar. Or a real estate office. He figured he’d know the place when he saw it.
He wanted to see the exact place the photograph had been taken. Not to get a better feel for who the woman was. The fairgrounds wouldn’t help with that at all.
He wanted to know if there were three tall evergreen trees clustered together, pointy ones that could grow almost anywhere.
3
Beth
Beth set aside her can of Diet Coke, glad that Ben was having a good time at his friend Zach’s birthday party. She was just wishing that he didn’t have to go to his father’s when Melody came by and sat in the chair beside her.
“Good idea, huh? The water guns are a big hit.” Melody smiled, her bleached teeth a bit too white, her skin a shade too dark, as though she’d just come back from a trip to the tanning salon. Which she probably had. Melody had been vain about her appearance since high school, and lately it seemed to have become even more of an obsession.
“Let’s just hope they don’t turn those Super Soakers on us.”