“It sounds almost restful.”

There was a crash as the outside door was flung open, followed by the sound of feet running in the hall. Hawthorne and Krueger turned toward the door. Almost immediately Scott McKinnon slid through it and stumbled to a stop. His wet red hair hung in strings across his forehead.

“Mr. Skander wants you. You better hurry. Someone ripped apart Mr. Evings’s office. I didn’t get a good look, but they say it’s a wreck.”

—

One whole wall of Clifford Evings’s small office had been a bookcase. Now the books were on the floor and many were torn—pages ripped out, covers pulled off. Hundreds of loose pages were scattered across the room, or cubby, as Evings liked to call it. One of the wing chairs by the fireplace was tipped over, and Evings was perched on its side with his head in his hands. He wore a green cardigan so threadbare at the elbows that the fabric of his white shirt was visible. The second chair was slashed and its stuffing had been pulled out. The desk lay on its side; the desk lamp was by the door with its glass shade smashed. The frame that had held the painting of Ambrose Stark had been partially pried from the wall. The painting itself was missing.

Bobby Newland stood behind Evings with his hand on Evings’s shoulder. “I’ve called the Brewster police and the state police.”

Krueger was again struck by how alike the two men looked: bald and gangling. He imagined that Newland had grown his mustache and goatee just to make a clear distinction between Evings and himself.

“Most assuredly everything will be done,” said Skander. He stood by the fireplace and looked around in dismay. “Of course, if the culprit is a student and a juvenile . . . but we’ll see, we’ll see. Unquestionably an expulsion would be called for. Nothing like this has ever taken place in all my time at Bishop’s Hill. And how dreadful for it to happen while a representative of the Department of Education is visiting us.”

Krueger remained with Hawthorne by the door, which was shut to prevent the students from peering in. Krueger found the room warm to the point of stifling. Was Skander saying that the vandalism was particularly awful because he, Krueger, was here to witness what had happened? It seemed an odd position. When Hawthorne told him that the empty frame had held the portrait of Ambrose Stark, Krueger found himself thinking that Stark had broken loose, as if the former headmaster himself had caused the wreckage.

“When did this happen?” asked Hawthorne.

“We don’t know,” said Bobby. “Possibly during lunch. Clifford and I came back about one-thirty and found it like this.”

“Of course it happened during lunch,” said Skander. “We’ll have to make a list of all the people who weren’t there. That would be a good start.”

Krueger couldn’t help staring at Skander’s necktie and its message, “What, me worry?” “And nobody saw anything?” he asked.

“Believe me,” said Bobby, “if I knew who did it, that person would be here right this instant.”

“Do you have any ideas, Clifford?” asked Hawthorne gently.

Evings shook his head but neither spoke nor removed his hands from his face.

“It had to be students,” said Bobby. “They’ve been making fun of Clifford all fall. Those damn discussion groups, talking about gayness and diversity and whatnot. Nobody ever cared that Clifford was gay until it became a matter of discussion.”

“Of course we don’t know for certain that students did this,” said Skander. “It could be an adult. Try to imagine a parent with a grudge against the school, someone who felt his child had been unduly punished.” He raised an index finger and looked at it thoughtfully.

“And I suppose you’re going to say that someone might have just happened to stroll by the school—some stranger who came in here and just on a whim—”

“Stop it, Bobby,” said Evings quietly.

“I think I’ll wait for the police outside,” said Skander. “And if I were you, Robert, I’d watch my tongue. We all understand that you’re angry, but that’s no reason to be unpleasant.”

Skander left. Krueger briefly got a glimpse of several students standing in the hall.

Hawthorne knelt down beside Evings, putting a hand on Evings’s knee. “I’m terribly sorry this happened, Clifford. We’ll find out who did it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Evings shook his head but didn’t speak.

“There are many people,” said Bobby somewhat primly, “who don’t believe you’ve done this school any good at all.”

Evings raised his head and put a finger to his lips. “Hush, Bobby, let’s not talk about it. You know as well as I do that I haven’t done all I could.”

“Given the situation,” said Bobby, “how could you?” He kicked at some papers on the floor. “A disaster waiting to happen, that’s Bishop’s Hill in a nutshell.”

Krueger began to feel annoyed but kept his thoughts to himself. Newland and Evings had good reason to be upset and this wasn’t the time to engage in a discussion about Hawthorne’s merits. Yet what had happened was horrible. All day Krueger had felt that the school was about to burst apart, as if the display of decorum were the thinnest of veneers covering a mass of hostility, resentment, and fear.

“Is this a practical joke too?” he asked Hawthorne.

There was a knocking on the door.

It was Skander with a policeman from Brewster, a heavyset middle-aged man with a red face. When he saw the state of the office, he took off his cap and massaged his brow. “My, my, hasn’t someone been making a mess.” He introduced himself as Chief Moulton.

Hawthorne told him what had happened, though it was clear that Skander had already passed on the basic facts. Before he finished, a state police sergeant arrived from the barracks in Plymouth, so Hawthorne had to begin all over again. Not that there was a lot to tell. The incident had apparently happened during lunch and no one had seen anything. Krueger kept thinking of the missing painting and Stark’s harsh expression. Seven men were now in the office and whenever Krueger moved he either stepped on something or bumped into someone. He began to make his way toward the door. He had a two-hour drive ahead of him and felt he should leave the police to their work.

Hawthorne walked Krueger to the entrance of Emerson Hall. Classes were in session and the corridors were empty. Outside it had resumed raining hard. Krueger buttoned up his coat and drew on his gloves.

“Don’t worry,” Hawthorne kept saying, “I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“Do you really think students wrecked the office?”

“I don’t know.”

Krueger wanted to urge Hawthorne to leave Bishop’s Hill, to quit his job and walk away. He felt dismayed by his own inadequacy, that he couldn’t take Hawthorne’s arm and say how worried he was. He wanted to tell his friend that he was afraid for him, but he lacked the courage. Still, there was more he wanted to learn about the school and he believed he could do it best from his office in Concord. He took Hawthorne’s hand and his eyes scanned his friend’s face.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

—

Away from home Detective Leo Flynn didn’t have a natural smile, no matter how much he tried. He needed to be in his own chair in his own living room—preferably with Junie, to whom he had been married for forty-one years, or with one of the kids—before he could let himself go. Even when one of his colleagues in the homicide unit told a joke he liked, Flynn’s smile had a watchful, self-observed quality. Now, as he directed his smile at Jerry Sweeney, a bush-league miscreant with two larceny convictions and a half-dozen years in Walpole, Flynn could see Sweeney fight off a desire to hurry from the room.

“Of course,” said Leo Flynn, widening his smile, “we could discuss this downtown.”

They were sitting in Sweeney’s small apartment in Dorchester. It was Monday afternoon, November 9, and Flynn had happened upon Sweeney after several weeks of hanging around sleazy bars in Revere, Dorchester, and South Boston looking for friends of Sal Procopio. Sweeney was a freckled, florid Irishman of about forty, already thin on top, with hands like slabs of meat. From the kitchen came a banging and clattering, as if Sweeney’s wife were engaged in throwing pots and pans on the floor.