The Never List

“Your best friend, Sarah. Your best friend. Do it for Jennifer.”
    By then I couldn’t hold back the floodgates. I didn’t want him to see my tears, so I stood up and quickly walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I stood running the faucet for a full minute, pulling myself together. My hands gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles were as white as the cold porcelain under my fingers. When I came back, Jim was standing up to leave. He was slowly gathering his things and putting them back in his case one by one.
    “I’m sorry to push you, Sarah. Dr. Simmons won’t like it. But we need you to make this victim impact statement. Without you, I’m worried. I know we let you down. I let you down. I know the kidnapping charge wasn’t sufficient for all he did. At the end of theday we just didn’t have the proof to charge him with murder. Without a body, and with DNA evidence that was … contaminated. But we have to make sure he serves at least the full sentence on what we’ve got him for. We can’t take any chances on that.”
    “It wasn’t your fault. It was the lab—” I started.
    “My case, my fault. And believe me, I’ve been paying the price ever since. Let’s get through this and put it behind us.”
    Easy for him to say. I was sure that’s just what he wanted, to put this mess in his past. His big career mistake. For me, it was a little more difficult.
    He held up his card, but I waved it away. I had the number.
    “I will prep you here at your apartment. Anywhere you want. We need you.”
    “And Tracy will be there too?”
    “Yes, Tracy will be there, but …” He looked over at the window, embarrassed.
    “But she made it a condition that she doesn’t have to see me, talk to me, or be alone with me, right?”
    Jim hesitated. He didn’t want to say it, but I could see right through him.
    “You can say it, Jim. I know she hates me. Just say it.”
    “Yes, she made that a condition.”
    “Okay. Okay, I’ll think about it, not just ‘okay.’”
    “Thanks, Sarah.” He took an opened envelope out of his notebook and placed it on the table. “The letter. You’re right, it’s yours. Here it is. But please talk to Dr. Simmons before you read it.”
    He walked to the door. He knew not to try to shake my hand. Instead, he gave me a quick wave from the other side of the room and closed the door quietly behind him, then stood right outside, waiting for me to fasten the bolts. When he heard the final click, he walked away. He knew me well.

CHAPTER 3
    I spent three days alone in the apartment with the letter. I put it in the center of the dining room table and walked around and around it for hours, thinking. I knew I would read it, of course. I knew it was the only way I could get closer to the truth. I had to find Jennifer’s body. It was the least I could do for her, and for me. As I stared at that letter alone with my fear, I could just imagine Jennifer looking up at me with her empty eyes, pleading without a word, find me .
    Ten years ago the FBI had put their best men on the case. They questioned him for hours, but he didn’t give them anything. I could have told them that. He was cold and methodical and, I knew, totally unafraid of any punishment they could mete out. No one could touch him.
    This was a man who had fooled the administration at the Universityof Oregon for more than twenty years. The image that stuck in my head was of him at the lectern, with all those eager co-eds writing down every word he spoke. He must have loved that. I could just picture the teaching assistants sitting so close to him, one on one, in that stuffy little office I visited later with the prosecutor.
    When Christine went missing, no one even remembered that she had been one of his favorite students. Good old Professor Jack Derber. What a great guy he was, a wonderful and brilliant professor. He had built a nice life for himself, and he even had a little mountain retreat nearby that his adoptive parents had left him. No one knew it had such an ample cellar. His parents had used it for pickling and canning. But not Jack.
    I pulled myself out of my reverie. I was here. Safe in my own apartment, staring at this letter. I had practically memorized the crinkle of the paper, the soft line of the tear from when the lab tech had opened it with some sharp instrument. The seam was flawless. Derber would have liked to see that. He always admired a clean cut.
    I knew they had studied the contents