Slone's only television station hired another rookie reporter to get to the bottom of things. Volunteers scoured the earth as the search spread throughout the countryside. Doors and windows were bolted. Fathers slept with their guns on their nightstands. Little children were watched closely by their parents and babysitters. Preachers reworked their sermons to beef up their slant against evil. The police gave daily briefings for the first week, but when they realized they had nothing to say, they began skipping days. They waited and waited, hoping for the lead, the unexpected phone call, the snitch looking for the reward money. They prayed for a break.

It finally came sixteen days after Nicole disappeared. At 4:33 a.m., the home phone of Detective Drew Kerber rang twice before he grabbed it. Though exhausted, he had not been sleeping well. Instinctively, he flipped a switch to record what was about to be said. The recording, later played a thousand times, ran: Kerber: "Hello." Voice: "Is this Detective Kerber?" Kerber: "It is. Who's calling?" Voice: "That's not important. What's important is that I know who killed her." Kerber: "I need your name." Voice: "Forget it, Kerber. You wanna talk about the girl?" Kerber: "Go ahead." Voice: "She was seeing Donte Drumm. A big secret. She was trying to break it off, but he wouldn't go away." Kerber: "Who's Donte Drumm?" Voice: "Come on, Detective. Everybody knows Drumm. He's your killer. He grabbed her outside the mall, tossed her over the bridge on Route 244. She's at the bottom of the Red River."

The line went dead. The call was traced to a pay phone at an all-night convenience store in Slone, and there the trail ended.

Detective Kerber had heard the hushed rumors of Nicole seeing a black football player, but no one had been able to verify this. Her boyfriend adamantly denied it. He claimed that they had dated on and off for a year, and he was certain that Nicole was not yet sexually active. But like many rumors too salacious to leave alone, it persisted. It was so repulsive and so potentially explosive that Kerber had thus far been unwilling to discuss it with Nicole's parents.