remember how long in advance it was planned?”
“Oh. Yes, I think…He’d spent a few weeks talking me into it. So quite a long while ahead of time.”
“And had you picked a place to go?”
Diana’s face creased into a frown. “I think we discussed that for a while. He wanted a really long walk, and I wanted something shorter, which left me some time to see my sister during the day. So I’m not sure. Maybe we pinned it down a few days before.”
Jonah nodded. “Do you remember if you or he suggested the approximate area?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Diana replied, “but I would have been keen on it being close by.”
Jonah nodded again, thinking about the possibility of some kind of premeditation. Could Mackenzie really have intended to get his girlfriend drunk and then slip away? And had he really organized his whole weekend around seeing Aurora? He knew she would be with friends, and not alone.
Or had he and Aurora arranged it somehow? Had her comment to him been a coded message that the rest of the class hadn’t understood?
“Can I just ask a final question?” he continued, aware that a silence had arisen.
“Of course.”
“In your honest opinion, as one who knew him well,” he said, “would you describe Andrew Mackenzie’s behavior as suspicious? Did you start to wonder if there had been anything…improper between him and his pupil?”
He saw her face tighten. “I didn’t ever think so. I thought he was a good man. I still think he is, but I suppose…it’s been so long….” She shook her head. “It’s so hard to be sure! I wonder if I remember him as he really was, or whether it’s gradually changed.”
“Nothing more definite?”
“What can I say?” Diana asked, looking wretched. “I don’t want to believe that he was involved, and I never thought he was. But that’s all I’ve got.”
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
He stopped the tape and rose, letting Hanson show Diana out once again while he retreated toward his office.
He was almost at his sanctuary when he saw the door to CID opening. O’Malley was standing aside to let Andrew Mackenzie in.
Hanson was only yards away with Diana. The ex-girlfriend stopped without warning. She put a hand up to her mouth.
Mackenzie saw her a moment later. The look he gave her was sick with fear.
26
Aurora
Saturday, July 23, 1983, 2:50 A.M.
It was the cold that woke her up. Or the shivering. Her whole body was convulsed by it, a teeth-chattering shaking that ran through her.
Her mouth was so dry it made breathing uncomfortable. She didn’t want to get up from the warmth of her sleeping bag. Didn’t want to move. But the thirst was too much, and after she had tried to curl up and ignore it for a time, she unzipped the bag and scrambled out of it.
She was disoriented for a moment when she realized that she was in deep darkness. The bright beacon of the fire behind the trees was gone, and the sky was moonless.
Still racked by shaking, she stood with her arms folded and tried to see which way to go. She tried to remember.
She’d set her sleeping bag up with her head away from them all. She’d done that on purpose. So she needed to walk toward her feet to find them again.
She took small, hesitant steps. She couldn’t see what her feet were doing. Why had they let the fire go out?
Between the trunks, she eventually started to see a deep red light. Low-down, like footlights.
She emerged into the clearing to find it empty, the fire nothing but pale-white ash and orange-red embers. There were no sobbing people. No music. No conversation. Nothing but the susurrating wind between ash leaves, punctuations to a profound quiet.
And she was cold still. Really cold.
Aurora approached the fire and ducked down next to it. She tried blowing on it to stir it, and then hunted around for more firewood. She found a bundle of sticks tied not far from the remaining beer cans.
She decided to open a can. She drank three mouthfuls of it, but felt no less parched than before.
The shaking was still running through her as she put it aside. Her fingers were heavy and useless on the string that tied the firewood. They slipped three times. Four. And she lost patience. She yanked at a long, thick branch until it came free. And then she did the same again and again until she had six of