With Alison Danzinger’s disappearance dominating the town, Tom spends the day and evening watching the local news instead of doing schoolwork. The reports repeat that Alison is missing, police are pursuing leads, and no suspect has been named, leaving Tom tense and unable to focus on anything else.

Exhausted after being awake for most of the last thirty-six hours, Tom falls asleep on the sofa. He wakes when Daisy calls, and Tom immediately senses from Daisy’s crying that something has gone badly wrong. Daisy tells Tom that Alison has been found dead and that her body was pulled from the river.

Daisy adds that she overheard her father say Alison had been mutilated and appeared to have been tortured. That detail makes Tom connect Alison’s death to Brandi’s murder, and he also remembers that the river was Slug’s preferred place to dump Tom’s father’s body. Tom realizes that Slug may have been more deeply involved in Brandi’s death than Tom understood, and Tom is horrified by what he may have set loose.

Before Daisy hangs up, she quietly admits that her father does not want her speaking to Tom or any of the students from the high school. Tom is hurt but relieved that Daisy frames it as general suspicion rather than a specific accusation against him. After the call ends, Tom reflects that Alison had known he was the unnamed boy who was supposed to meet Brandi the night Brandi died, and he is left with rising fear as Daisy disconnects before hearing him say he loves her.