The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

exact. Each of them felonies. It’s almost certainly the biggest burglary case in the history of Maine.
Possibly, in terms of the number of separate break-ins, the largest in the country. Maybe the world.
Knight explains that he entered places strictly at night, after carefully trying to ensure that nobody was
home. He never stole from anyone’s full-time residence, where it was more likely someone could
unexpectedly show up. Instead, he burglarized only summer cabins and the Pine Tree Camp. Sometimes the
cabins were unlocked; sometimes he jimmied a window or forced open a door. Pine Tree alone he broke
into perhaps a hundred times. He always took all he could carry, but it wasn’t a lot, so he had to keep
coming back.
Vance explains that he will have to forfeit all the stolen material he possesses. She asks Knight to claim
what is his. “Everything is stolen,” he says. His backpack, his boots, his break-in tools, the entirety of his
campsite, and all the clothes he is wearing, right down to his underwear. “The only thing I can honestly say is
mine,” he states, “are my eyeglasses.”
Vance asks if he has any family in the area. “I would rather not answer that,” he says. He doesn’t know if
his parents are alive or dead—he has not been in contact with anyone—but if they are alive, he hopes they
never learn that he’s been found. Vance asks why, and Knight says that he wasn’t raised to be a thief. He says
that he is ashamed.
Knight does admit that he grew up in central Maine. He was never in the military. He says that he
graduated from Lawrence High School, class of 1984. The Pine Tree Camp facilities director, Chesley,
mentions that his wife also went to Lawrence, in the nearby town of Fairfield, graduating two years later.
They might still have the 1984 yearbook at their house. Hughes asks Chesley to drive home and try to find
it.
Vance calls dispatch and runs a check on Knight. He has no criminal record; there are no warrants for his
arrest. He is not listed as a missing person. His driver’s license expired on his birthday in 1987.
Chesley comes back with the yearbook, the Lawrence Lyre, its navy blue cover stamped with a big silver
“84.” The senior picture for Chris Knight, as he’s called, shows a kid with dark tousled hair and thickframed
eyeglasses, arms crossed, leaning back slightly against a tree, wearing a blue polo shirt with two
breast pockets. He looks healthy and strong. There’s less a smile than a wry sort of smirk. He’s not pictured
with any sports team or school club or anywhere else.
It’s hard to tell if the same person is now sitting in the Pine Tree dining hall. Knight says that he hasn’t
seen an image of himself in years, except maybe a blurry reflection in the water. There’s no mirror at his
campsite, he mentions.
“How do you shave?” asks Vance.
“Without a mirror,” he says. He no longer knows what he looks like. He stares at the photo, squinting.
His eyeglasses have been pushed up on his forehead, but now he moves them back to his nose.
And this is the moment, both Hughes and Vance agree, when they suddenly feel certain—they just sense
in their guts—that everything they’ve heard tonight is true. The color of the frames may have faded over the
decades, but the boy in the photo and the man in the dining hall are wearing similar pairs of glasses.
It’s not long before dawn now; the darkness has crested. Knight, as Vance knows, will soon be swallowed
by the legal system, and perhaps never speak freely again. She’d like an explanation—why leave the rest of
the world behind?—but Knight says he can’t give her a definitive reason.
She points to the scabs on his wrists. “What did you do for medicine?” she asks. “Or doctors?”