Bright Young Women

Pamela learns that the judge wants to question her before she testifies because of concerns that Tina is unduly influencing Pamela and thus Pamela shouldn’t be allowed to testify. Ruth’s mother, Shirley, claims that Tina manipulated her daughter and is making false claims about Tina’s disappearance. People keep reassuring Pamela that even if The Defendant isn’t found guilty of killing Denise and Roberta, he’ll be convicted and executed for the murder of Kimberley Leach (because evidence in this case is much stronger). However, Pamela is determined to secure justice for her friends.

At the hotel, Pamela, Tina and Shirley argue; Tina is adamant that Ruth was abducted and killed. Tina blames Shirley for the lack of thorough investigation into Ruth’s disappearance: “If the mother of a missing girl is telling the detective assigned to her daughter’s disappearance that, actually, nothing suspicious is going on here, they believe you” (326). Pamela sides with Tina, and Shirley leaves in a huff.

Pamela meets with Carl a second time, and he tells her about what happened when he traveled from Colorado to Seattle in 1978. He began questioning people and learned of a theory that The Defendant confessed to multiple murders while being questioned by Seattle police after his first escape. (The escape took place in Colorado, but he’d speak only with Seattle police.) The Defendant wanted to be extradited to Washington (which, unlike Colorado, didn’t have the death penalty).

Carl explains that after The Defendant’s arrest, he agreed to speak with Carl. Then, Carl becomes distracted by hallucinations and delusions.

Pamela meets with the judge who is presiding over the Florida trial. He asks her about how she met Tina and what Tina has told her. Pamela tries to persuade him that she was consistent in her claims that she saw The Defendant and not Roger, long before she met Tina, and that she’s “not someone who is easily influenced” (335). The judge agrees to question more people and then determine whether he’s willing to allow Pamela to testify.

Pamela waits in Florida, extending her trip and hoping that she’ll be allowed to testify. She’s supposed to be in New York for a mandatory internship, and her supervisor there is growing frustrated by her absence.

Pamela testifies in the trial. She’s shocked when, while she’s being questioned, Veronica Ramira asks her about the time that Roger kissed her. In December 1977, before the attack, Roger got very drunk and kissed Pamela. She shoved him away, and told Denise immediately. Denise responded by breaking up with him, though they subsequently got back together. Pamela has never told anyone about this; she never thought it would be revealed because “only two people in the world knew about the kiss, and one of us was dead” (344). Veronica uses this incident to imply that Pamela secretly had feelings for Roger and said that the man she saw wasn’t him in order to protect him.

Pamela processes the information she learned from Carl. Years earlier, in 1996, Pamela had requested access to the recordings of the confession The Defendant issued to Seattle detectives. She was told that no such tape existed and was given access to other recordings instead. Listening to these recordings led her to believe that The Defendant grew up in an abusive home and was conceived because of an incestuous relationship between his mother and grandfather; as a result, she made a career change into mediation because “kids who are raised in hostile environments are seven times more likely to become violent perpetrators as adults, and I’ve been given the unique opportunity to disrupt that pattern” (349).

However, Pamela now knows about the second confession recording, stemming from Carl’s conversation with The Defendant; this tape was used in the investigation into Ruth’s disappearance. Pamela learns that after the case was closed, Rebecca Wachowsky (Ruth’s sister-in-law and former lover) obtained the tapes. Pamela and Tina go to Seattle and meet with Rebecca; Pamela tells Rebecca that on the grounds of Tina’s having been Ruth’s legal domestic partner, she’s entitled to have access to the tapes. Pamela offers to return the original to Rebecca after making a copy, and she and Tina leave with the tapes.

Ruth arrives at the crowded beach. A man approaches her with his arm in a sling and asks her to accompany him to his parents’ house to help him load his sailboat onto his car. He claims that he’s a law student; Ruth finds him awkward and somewhat unlikable but also feels sorry for him. She gets in his car, and he drives her to a beautiful house. Ruth grows increasingly uncomfortable; when she enters the house, she realizes that no one else is there and the man has a gun.

The man rapes Ruth, ties her to a chair, and then drives off, leaving her alone in the house. Ruth thinks she’ll survive: “I thought again that what had happened wasn’t so bad, in the grand scheme of things” (362). However, after a short time, the man returns with another young girl.

The text cuts to a scene in 2021. Tina and Pamela are listening to the confession tape at Tina’s home. The Defendant describes how he killed both Ruth and the other girl. In addition, the novel includes an excerpt from The Defendant’s closing remarks at his 1979 trial, denying that he committed any crimes.

Pamela recalls a day when she overheard a group of college students at a coffee shop watching a recording of The Defendant’s sentencing. Even though the Judge was sentencing him to death, he spoke kindly and empathetically to The Defendant. The students are interested in the case because many true crime documentaries and film adaptations have featured The Defendant and his crimes. Pamela is typically disgusted by how these stories valorize or center on The Defendant, but she observes that by now “it’s a climate that assigns more value to my side of the story” (369).

In the confession tape, The Defendant identified an isolated stretch of trail in Issaquah where he buried Ruth’s body in 1974. Years earlier, Gail (the forensic anthropologist who chatted with Ruth in Aspen, and who investigated the death of Caryn Campbell) reached out to Tina after learning of Ruth’s disappearance. She offered to help if Tina ever found leads. Tina and Pamela alert Gail to the possible burial location, and Gail has a team investigate and identify some locations where the soil shows potential changes. Tina and Pamela plant ferns there, planning to monitor them. If Ruth is buried there, the chemical dynamic of the soil will result in the ferns growing red. Tina and Pamela are hopeful they’ll finally identify Ruth’s resting place and feel a sense of closure.