The camera had a red light on it, a power indicator, and a single lens that shimmered like a rainbow. There was a rubber bumper around the lens that looked like an eyelid. It struck Peter that even if he wasn’t suicidal, a few weeks of this and he would be.

It did not get dark in jail, just dim. That hardly mattered, since there was nothing to do but sleep anyway. Peter lay on the bench, wondering if you lost your hearing if you never had to use it; if the power of speech worked the same way. He remembered learning in one of his social studies classes that in the Old West, when Native Americans were thrown into jail, they sometimes dropped dead. The theory was that someone so used to the freedom of space couldn’t handle the confinement, but Peter had another interpretation. When the only company you had was yourself, and when you didn’t want to socialize, there was only one way to leave the room.

One of the COs had just come through, doing his security sweep-a heavy-booted run past the cells-when Peter heard it:

I know what you did.

Holy shit, Peter thought. I’ve already started to go crazy.

Everyone knows.

Peter swung his feet to the cement floor and stared at the camera, but it wasn’t giving up any secrets.

The voice sounded like wind passing over snow-bleak, a whisper. “To your right,” it said, and Peter slowly got to his feet and walked to a corner of the cell.

“Who…who’s there?” he said.

“It’s about fucking time. I thought you were never going to stop wailing.”

Peter tried to see through the bars, but couldn’t. “You heard me crying?”

“Fucking baby,” the voice said. “Grow the fuck up.”

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Carnivore, like everyone else.”

Peter swallowed. “What did you do?”

“Nothing they said I did,” Carnivore answered. “How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long till your trial?”

Peter didn’t know. It was the one question he had forgotten to ask Jordan McAfee, probably because he was afraid to hear the answer.

“Mine’s next week,” Carnivore said before Peter could reply.

The metal door of the cell felt like ice against his temple. “How long have you been here?” Peter asked.

“Ten months,” Carnivore answered.

Peter imagined sitting in this cell for ten straight months. He thought about all the times he’d count those stupid cinder blocks, all the pisses that the guards would get to watch on their little television set.

“You killed kids, right? You know what happens in this jail to guys who kill kids?”

Peter didn’t respond. He was roughly the same age as everyone at Sterling High; it wasn’t like he’d gone into a nursery school. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t had a good reason.

He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “How come you didn’t get bail?”

Carnivore scoffed. “Because they say I raped some waitress, and then stabbed her.”

Did everyone in this jail think they were innocent? All this time Peter had spent lying on that bench, convincing himself that he was nothing like anyone else in the Grafton County Jail-and as it turned out, that was a lie.

Did he sound like this to Jordan?

“You still there?” Carnivore asked.

Peter lay back down on his bench without saying another word. He turned his face to the wall, and he pretended not to hear as the man next to him tried over and over to make a connection.

The first thing that struck Patrick, again, was how much younger Judge Cormier looked when she wasn’t on the bench. She answered the door in jeans and a ponytail, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Josie stood just behind her, her face washed by the same vacant stare he’d seen a dozen times over, now, in other victims he’d interviewed. Josie was a vital piece in the puzzle, the only one who had seen Peter kill Matthew Royston. But unlike those victims, Josie had a mother who knew the intricacies of the legal system.

“Judge Cormier,” he said. “Josie. Thanks for letting me come over.”

The judge stared at him. “This is a waste of time. Josie doesn’t remember anything.”

“With all due respect, Judge, it’s my job to hear that from Josie herself.”

He steeled himself for an argument, but she stepped back to let him inside. Patrick let his eyes roam the foyer-the antique table with a spider plant spilling over its surface, the tasteful landscapes that hung on the walls. So this was how a judge lived. His own place was a pit stop, a haven of laundry and old newspapers and food long past its expiration date, where he’d go for a few hours between his stints at the office.

He turned to Josie. “How’s the head?”

“It still hurts,” she said, so softly that Patrick had to strain to hear her.

He turned to the judge again. “Is there a room where we could go talk for a few minutes?”

She led them into the kitchen, which looked like just the kind of kitchen Patrick sometimes thought about when he imagined where he should have been by now. There were cherry cabinets and lots of sun streaming through the bay window and a bowl of bananas on the counter. He sat down across from Josie, expecting the judge to pull up a chair beside her daughter, but to his surprise she remained standing. “If you need me,” she said, “I’ll be upstairs.”

Josie looked up, pained. “Can’t you just stay?”

For a moment, Patrick saw something light in the judge’s eyes-want? regret?-but it vanished before he could put a name to it. “You know I can’t,” she said gently.

Patrick didn’t have any kids of his own, but he was pretty damn sure that if one of his had come this close to dying, he’d have a hard time letting her out of his sight. He did not know exactly what was going on between the mother and daughter, but he knew better than to get in the middle of it.

“I’m sure Detective Ducharme will make this utterly painless,” the judge said.

It was part wish, part warning. Patrick nodded at her. A good cop did whatever he could to protect and serve, but when it was someone you knew who was robbed or threatened or hurt, the stakes changed. You’d make a few more phone calls; you’d shuffle your responsibilities so that one took priority. Patrick had experienced that, to a greater degree, years ago with his friend Nina and her son. He didn’t know Josie Cormier personally, but her mother was in the field of law enforcement-Christ, she was at its top level-and for this, her daughter deserved to be treated with kid gloves.

He watched Alex walk up the stairs, and then he took a pad and pencil out of his coat pocket. “So,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Look, you don’t have to pretend you care.”

“I’m not pretending,” Patrick said.

“I don’t even get why you’re here. It’s not like anything anyone says to you is going to make those kids less dead.”

“That’s true,” Patrick agreed, “but before we can try Peter Houghton we need to know exactly what happened. And unfortunately, I wasn’t there.”

“Unfortunately?”

He looked down at the table. “I sometimes think it’s easier to be the one who’s been hurt than the one who couldn’t stop it from happening.”

“I was there,” Josie said, shaken. “I couldn’t stop it.”

“Hey,” Patrick said, “it’s not your fault.”

She looked up at him then, as if she so badly wished she could believe that, but knew he was wrong. And who was Patrick to tell her otherwise? Every time he envisioned his mad dash to Sterling High, he imagined what would have happened if he’d been at the school when the shooter first arrived. If he’d disarmed the kid before anyone was hurt.

“I don’t remember anything about the shooting,” Josie said.

“Do you remember being in the gym?”

Josie shook her head.

“How about running there with Matt?”

“No. I don’t even remember getting up and going to school in the first place. It’s like a blank spot in my head that I just skip over.”