The bathroom door busts open, and a girl steps out. One of her arms, it's not right, shriveled up, but in her other hand she holds the top of a black plastic garbage bag. She looks at me and the kid's father and says, "Who the fuck are you?"

And this hayseed smiles. Grinning like an ape, he steps away from feeling the walls and says, "Echo…" He says, "It's darned sweet to see you again."

Irene Casey: The morning I drove Chet up to the airport in Peco Junction, on his way to collect Buddy from the city, Chet told me the oddest bit of news. He reminded me about the brown cowboy wallpaper we hung in Buddy's room. He said to pull it down. Steam it soft, and tear it down, he said.

Stuck in the wall, behind every wad of booger that boy pasted there, Chet told me to dig in the plaster drywall. If I did that, he said, I'd never need for money another day in my life. Only, touching the boogers, he told me to wear rubber gloves.

Lew Terry: So this girl with the curled-up arm and the garbage bag, she looks at the father guy and says, "Have we met?"

And Farmer John, he nods at the black plastic bag she's holding and says, "What'd you find worth busting in for?"

"Rant gave me a key," the girl says.

And the father guy says, "I'm sorry. I reckon I forgot."

To me, the girl says, "You know what a ‘Porn Buddy' is?" She says that if somebody dies, most times they have a close friend who's designated to hurry over and search their place for drugs and sex stuff. All the junk they don't want their parents to know about them. She swings the black plastic bag in her hand and says, "Everything you don't want to know about your son is inside here."

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): We were, all of us, worried about Echo. On my own, I went to visit her. I took her a deli carton of chicken soup one night. I wanted to make sure she was eating. We sat and talked, and I didn't leave until she'd eaten every bite.

Just to tie up any loose ends, I'd loaded that soup with those Plan B birth-control pills. To really flush her out, I mean beyond loaded.

Lew Terry: The kid's father has gone back to feeling the walls, touching the soft black lumps that, close as I could guess, were hashish. Still touching the wall, not even looking at this girl with her bag, the father guy says, "Two secondhand skin magazines, some Percocet left over from his one visit to the dentist, a stained vibrator, and a pair of handcuffs lined with fake fur."

The girl looks inside the bag.

"The last two gadgets are yours," the father guy says, "but you're welcome to take it all."

And the girl says, "How the fuck…?"

Officer Romie Mills (Homicide Detective): Standard procedure is to stake out the residence of anyone emotionally significant to the suspect. We had officers watching the Lawrence apartment and the suspect's apartment. We were well aware of Chester Casey's comings and goings, and we can confirm that both he and Echo Lawrence were in the suspect's apartment, together, for a period of time with the landlord, Lewis Terry.

Lew Terry: The father guy touches a spot on the apartment wall, tapping the paint, and he says, "Look here."

It's one of those hash bumps.

The father guy reaches inside the chest pocket of his bib overalls and brings out a jackknife; he snaps the blade open and stabs it into the plaster.

And I tell him to just hold on. The damage deposit won't cover him carving up the walls.

With the knife still sunk into the plaster, he's wiggling the blade, saying, "But the money you stole should cover it…"

I didn't steal any money. I tell you. I told him, I did not steal anything from this apartment.

"Let's ask the coin dealer over on Grinson Street," the father guy says, and he draws the jackknife blade out of the wall. Where he stabbed and dug, he picks with two fingers. He slides out something and wipes the white plaster dust from it. A gold coin. And he says, "This look familiar?"

Officer Romie Mills: What's less clear is why Echo Lawrence apparently invited the suspect's father to her home, after that meeting. And why she allowed Chester Casey to take up residence in her apartment.

At that point, we had no solid leads on the whereabouts of Buster Casey.

Irene Casey: When I saw Chet onto that airplane, he must've been scared he was going to die. The poor man, he told me, "Reen, you've had a difficult time of this life." He said he was sorry about everything, but that he loved me, he would always love me. The last time he looked at me, from the doorway of going on that plane, Chet said, "You were a wonderful mother."

Shot Dunyun: Boy oh boy, Rant's dad rolls into town certifiably, bona-fide, bat-shit crazy. He shacks up with Echo. Calls that pest-control place to ask for Rant's old job. The first time I meet him, this middle-aged doofus, he grabs my neck with one hand. He gropes me, plants his mouth over mine, and says, "Miss me?"

How weird is that shit?

When I said "mine," I meant my mouth.

Lew Terry: Me and that crippled girl, we watch while the dead kid's father goes around the room. Everywhere there's a soft black lump, he stabs in his knife and digs out a gold coin. Looking at the girl, the father guy says, "In your apartment, when you fell asleep, the last night you and Buster were together, he pasted lumps of his snot around your walls."

The cripple, she says, "Rant wiped boogers on my walls?"

Everywhere she finds a lump of snot, the father says, Rant was leaving her some treasure.

She says, "I still don't understand."

He says, "Don't bother getting tested for rabies, just start your treatments."

This girl, she says, "You're not really a policeman, are you?"

32–In Hindsight

Ruby Elliot (Childhood Neighbor): I can tell you, getting abandoned at the Junction Airport by her husband is not the worstest event ever to happen to Irene Casey.

Glenda Hendersen (Childhood Neighbor): Basin and Ruby and me, we went through school with Irene, and she was always cutting class. Never did seem to matter, how she come into the world without a daddy. Irene was full of grand plans. Talking all the time about college or the army, anything she figured could deliver her out of town. Sad part is, she never did get beyond the ninth grade. The summer we was thirteen years old, her and Basin, Ruby and me, we ran wild, staying out; then Irene quit coming to the phone. Irene quit—well—everything.

Ruby Elliot: Between you, me, and the lamppost, it was no surprise to anybody that Irene was expecting. Three months along, folks say, before she married Chet. Story is, out of the blue, Chester Casey walked up on her porch and asked her ma, Esther, Could he have a word with Miss Irene Shelby? Like him and Irene was total strangers. Nobody hereabouts knew Chester from Adam. He come out of nowhere, no job or family, simply showed up in Middleton, saying, "Good morning, Dr. Schmidt…Howdy, Reverend Fields." Calling everybody by his name.

Wasn't until that day Esther even knowed her girl was pregnant.

Dr. David Schmidt (Middleton Physician): For better or worse, it was Chet's child. The age Irene was, we wanted to be certain she wasn't making another mistake, only looking for some man, any man, to help her raise a child. Chester must've been nineteen or twenty years old. We ran your standard paternity test, and every genetic marker pointed to the baby being his.