PD: WM-Ht: 6’1” Wt: 145-(DOB: 2/3/28)
Status: NOW
CR: Neg.
DOI: 1h/12m
From these notes, Graves learned that James Preston was an eighteen-year-old white male. He was tall and rather thin. He had no criminal record, nor any outstanding warrants against him. That such a background check had been run on Preston at all indicated that he’d briefly been under suspicion, though probably for no more substantial reason than that he’d been the last person to see Faye Harrison alive.
On August 30, at 2:30 P.M., Preston had arrived at police headquarters in Britanny Falls. Seven minutes later he’d been interviewed by New York State Police Detective Dennis Portman in Sheriff Gerard’s office. That interview had lasted one hour and twelve minutes. It had been conducted by Portman alone, with no others present, and, in the absence of a stenographer, it had been recorded by means of audiotape.
The contents of that tape had later been transcribed, a copy of the transcription officially included in Portman’s Murder Book. The transcript was nearly twenty pages long, a rambling, repetitive conversation, with Portman applying the usual police method of revisiting the same area again and again, hoping to glean some additional fact the witness had either forgotten or chosen to conceal.
In the case of Jim Preston, the method had succeeded only in extending a brief sighting into an elaborate account of Preston’s own activities on the day of Faye Harrison’s disappearance:
PORTMAN: I guess I’ll start by asking you what you were doing on Mohonk Trail, Jim?
PRESTON: I had been hiking all that morning.
PORTMAN: Where had you started from?
PRESTON: Just outside Millerton.
PORTMAN: What time did you start out?
PRESTON: Around seven o’clock.
PORTMAN: Do you remember the route you took?
PRESTON: Up through Larchmont Gap. Then along Higgins Creek.
PORTMAN: Where had you planned to end up?
PRESTON: At the end of Mohonk Trail. I figured it would take me about three hours to get there from where I started, then I could get back home by lunch.
For the next four pages of transcript, Preston traced his route through the mountains, meticulously indicating particular trails. He’d walked for over an hour before finally penetrating the forest surrounding Riverwood, encountering no one else until he began to make his way up Mohonk Trail.
Up the trail, as Graves noted particularly, just as it had been reported in the local paper the day after Preston had first been questioned by Sheriff Gerard.
PORTMAN: Now, about what time was it when you got onto Mohonk Trail?
PRESTON: Well, I don’t carry a watch, but I think it was probably a little after eight o’clock.
PORTMAN: How long after that did you run into Faye Harrison?
PRESTON: About forty minutes or so. I’d made it to the top of the hill. That’s when I saw her.
PORTMAN: What did you see?
PRESTON: Well, I was walking up the trail and when I made it to the top, I stopped. There’s a big rock there. Right at the top of the hill. Indian Rock, they call it. That’s where I was when I saw her. She’d already passed Indian Rock. She was headed down the other side of the hill.
PORTMAN: So she was ahead of you?
PRESTON: Yes.
PORTMAN: How far ahead?
PRESTON: Oh, maybe thirty yards or so. Going down the slope to where the trail forks. One trail goes to the parking area and the other down to the river.
PORTMAN: Which one did she take?
PRESTON: I don’t know. I didn’t watch her that long. I just saw her heading down the trail.
PORTMAN: Did she see you?
PRESTON: I don’t think so. Her back was to me.
PORTMAN: Was she alone?
PRESTON: Yes, sir. She was all by herself. Moving pretty fast down the trail.
The fact that Faye Harrison had been moving at such an accelerated pace had triggered a thought in Portman’s mind.
PORTMAN: The way she was walking. So fast, I mean. Did you get the idea she might be trying to get away from somebody?
PRESTON: Could be.
PORTMAN: Now, when you first talked to Sheriff Gerard, you mentioned seeing another man in the woods. Was he on the same trail?
PRESTON: No, sir. He wasn’t on the trail at all.
Graves saw Portman lean forward on the cluttered desk, his sunken eyes boring into Preston’s open, youthful face.
PORTMAN: Now, you’ve already identified that man as Jake Mosley, right?
PRESTON: Yes, sir. Sheriff Gerard showed me a picture of him-Mosley-and he was the man I saw.
PORTMAN: How far from Faye Harrison was Mosley when you saw him?
PRESTON: He was pretty far down the slope from her. Almost at the bottom of the hill. The other side of the hill from where the girl was.
PORTMAN: You mean back toward Riverwood?
PRESTON: That’s right.
PORTMAN: What was he doing down there?
PRESTON: Just standing there, as far as I could tell. At the bottom of the slope. He was sort of leaning against a tree.
PORTMAN: Did you ever see him come up the trail?
PRESTON: No. I just rested there at Indian Rock a minute, then went on down to the parking lot.
PORTMAN: Was Mosley still at the bottom of the slope when you left Indian Rock?
PRESTON: I don’t know. I didn’t look back down that way.
PORTMAN: So you never saw Mosley again?
PRESTON: No, sir.
PORTMAN: Did you see Faye Harrison again?
PRESTON: No. She just disappeared. I glanced down the hill and saw this man, Mosley, the one you’re talking about. Then I looked down the other side of the hill, where I’d seen the girl. But she was already down the trail and out of sight.
“Down the trail,” Graves said aloud, glancing back over the transcript of Jim Preston’s interrogation, noting that Preston had referred to Faye Harrison as going “down” Mohonk Trail on four separate occasions. He felt something shift in his mind, a tiny, audible movement, the sound Slovak heard when something didn’t fit.
He walked to the map on the wall and peered at it closely. Mohonk Trail clearly ran “up” the ridge toward Indian Rock, then circled it and headed down the other side of the mountain at a steep angle until it reached the Hudson River. If Faye had been going down Mohonk Trail when Preston saw her, she had already gone past Indian Rock.
With his finger, Graves traced the path Faye had to have taken to have been seen going down Mohonk Trail. If Faye had intended to meet Allison Davies at Indian Rock, why had she not stopped there? Why had she not waited? And if, after realizing that Allison was not going to meet her at their “secret place,” why had Faye not returned to Riverwood? Why had she gone down the opposite slope instead?
One answer presented itself instantly. Graves saw a dark figure moving swiftly along Mohonk Trail, Faye, now alert to its presence, rushing away, past Indian Rock and down the other side of the ridge, no longer precisely aware of where she was headed, only that she had to get out of the encircling woods. A man. Pursuing Faye from behind. Closing in swiftly. Reaching for her shoulder. Now Graves saw Faye twist round to face him, a figure his imagination had already draped in Kessler’s black leather coat. As if he were a boy again, he felt Kessler’s hand grasp his shoulder, heard the words that had sounded in the darkness behind him, Start walking. He knew Faye must have obeyed instantly, instinctively, already half-paralyzed, fear searing through her sharp as an electric shock. He recalled the words he’d heard that night, Kessler’s and his own.
Where you live, boy?
In that house there.
Okay, walk on.
And he had walked on, moving meekly through the covering darkness, with no thought of escape, no notion of resistance, frightened only for himself, for what might happen to him if he did not obey, and knowing all the time exactly what he was doing, a little voice mercilessly reminding him that he was leading Ammon Kessler to his sister.
Graves peered at the map intently, as if something lay hidden along the trails and ridges it portrayed, the unfound rope that had been used to murder Faye Harrison. He saw her once again on the trail, shoved brutally from behind, and wondered if she’d made it far enough down the slope to have seen the open area through the trees, cars parked there, people getting in and out. How near they must have seemed before she suddenly felt the hand grip her shoulder, heard the voice behind her. And after that, how far.