When the Stars Go Dark

Anna goes to Caleb’s to ask him about the studio. Caleb is busy working on a painting of his own in his garage. He is guarded when Anna asks about his father’s paintings and the studio itself. Caleb agrees to accompany Anna back to the studio and go over the paintings. As Caleb returns to the house to get his wallet and keys, Anna sees a photograph over his workbench but can’t identify it. The next moment, Caleb is in his truck, driving right at Anna. Caleb slams his brakes and shouts out the window, “If you follow me, I’ll kill her” (312). Once he’s gone, Anna breaks into the garage to use the phone to call Will’s office. She notices that the photograph is of a Pomo woman and infant, but her home, Anna notices, is “cone shaped, made of bark and reeds, and planks of redwood” (312) just like the shelter in the woods that the rescue teams had seen in Jackson State Forest. Anna realizes in a terrifying moment Caleb fits the profile for a serial killer: a “twisted” individual hiding in plain sight, abandoned by his parents, his father a “tyrant and an alcoholic” (312), his paranoia and rage triggered years ago with his twin sister’s murder. Anna meets Will on the road, and they head to the shelter in the woods to stop Caleb, they are certain, from killing Cameron.

The search does not go smoothly—Anna is uncertain exactly where to find the shelter. But when they do find it, it’s deserted. Inside, they find grim evidence that Cameron had been bound and tortured: “smears of blood on a tangled sheet that looked like a lurid watercolor” (318).

The team splits up to search for Cameron. Anna heads down a slope into a small valley—and it is there she spots Cameron hiding in the brush, “[b]one thin and painted with mud, more animal than girl” (321). Anna assures the terrified girl that she is with the police. The girl tearfully says only that she wants her mother and she wants to go home.

Rescuers, among them her brother Hector, rush Cameron to the nearest hospital. Her mother and father are called. ER doctors assess her, and she is exhausted but otherwise uninjured. Anna tries to get the girl to talk about Caleb and where he might be. Cameron says little, just shakes her head and stares out the window.

The search begins for Caleb. The next day his car is found abandoned, but Caleb is long gone. With a warrant, the police now search Caleb’s apartment and find three oil paintings that are unmistakably of Shannan Russo.

When Cameron finally agrees to talk with Anna, her memory is shaky. She had answered the modeling ad. She asked Gray to take some portfolio pictures for her interview. It all seemed legitimate, and Cameron wanted to be a model, maybe even an actress like Emily. Devastated after learning that her father’s mistress was pregnant and that she had vaginal scarring consistent with repeated sexual trauma, she agreed to meet Caleb and a friend of his connected to art dealers. It was only after she got into Caleb’s car that she realized he had lied and was driving her out of town.

Weeks go by with no sign of Caleb. Anna begins to piece together a psychological profile to explain why Caleb had abducted Cameron: maybe because of his relationship with his parents, maybe because of the death of his sister. How many others had he killed over those years? Anna is alone in her cabin with Cricket when she is aware that somebody is in the room with her. It is Caleb, armed with a hunting knife.

To buy time, Anna talks to Caleb about why he never killed her Cameron. Anna gets Caleb to talk about his parents. He reacts angrily but assures Anna that his mother was loving and caring. When Anna asks about Jenny, Caleb’s mood darkens: “She shouldn’t have tried to leave me” (344). Caleb admits to killing Jenny to stop her from leaving. He strangled her and dropped the body into the Navarro River. Anna reassures Caleb that she thinks he is no “monster,” that they can find a way out of this. Then, Caleb lunges at Anna with the knife—but Cricket leaps between the two and Caleb viciously stabs the dog. Anna runs to her bedroom and grabs her service revolver under her pillow. When Caleb comes at her, she fires three times into Caleb’s chest, killing him. Anna runs out to check on Cricket.

A week later, Anna and Cricket are staying with Tally. Cricket survived her deep knife wound. Anna thinks she might head back to Petaluma—Polly Klaas is still missing. Tally tells Anna she had dreams that tell her Polly is dead but that her killer will be apprehended and the consequent trial will change how law enforcement tracks missing children.

Tally gently suggests to Anna that her place is not in Petaluma. Anna needs to go home and work out the problems she is running from. Anna confesses to Tally why she left: on a particularly busy day, Anna strapped their two-year-old daughter, Sarah, in her car seat. Yet somehow the girl wiggled out of the car seat and, with Anna inside the house on the phone about a particularly difficult case, she wandered next door where a neighbor accidentally struck the girl as she pulled out of her driveway. For weeks, she and her husband wrestled with blame and grief until Brendan suggested Anna needed some time away before her commitment to her work cost them their son as well.

Tally hugs Anna, “strong and tender, forgiving” (352). Tally dismisses Anna’s guilt. The last thing Sarah would want is for her mother to be forever sad. Tally says she has had communication with Sarah and that Sarah is “untroubled […] She’s everywhere, like light” (353). When Anna prepares to head home, Tally gives her a final piece of wisdom: “The people we love never leave us […] You know that already. That’s what I mean by spirit. I mean love” (356).

Before departing Mendocino, Anna stops to visit Cameron. She is recovering from her ordeal and has begun to remember dark episodes of sexual abuse at the hands of her father—but so far “only in pieces” (357). Anna encourages Cameron for what lies ahead.

That only leaves saying goodbye to Will. She opens up to him, tells him about her daughter, about her troubled marriage, about her guilt, and about her “raw grief” (358). Will suggests that perhaps Anna might come back and together they could look into the unsolved murders from the same summer as Jenny’s murder: “Come back soon,” he says.

Anna prepares to leave Mendocino. She lingers for a moment by the Masonic Lodge and looks up at its carving, Time and the Maiden. She studies the figure of the weeping girl. She thinks how that girl symbolizes Jenny, Shannon, Cameron, and herself when she first arrived in Mendocino “guarded and wounded” (359). As she heads home, she realizes how each person must come to accept the terror and beauty, the suffering, and the joy of every day and to embrace others and open themselves to love.