“So you’re ready?” asked Tremblay.

“I guess so.” She looked at her money scattered across the bedroom rug. There didn’t seem to be as much of it.

“Then you’d better get going.”

Jessica and LeBrun left the house and walked back down the sidewalk to the pickup. It wasn’t until they were driving out of Exeter that she spoke.

“Why didn’t you do something?”

“I don’t like guns. You didn’t say there might be guns.” LeBrun’s voice was a low monotone.

“You still could have done something. You could have jumped him.”

LeBrun laughed abruptly. “And get shot? You didn’t pay me to get shot.” The streetlights stopped at the edge of town and the interior of the truck suddenly grew darker.

“Are you going to give me back any of my money?”

“Hey, I just risked my life. That’s worth a grand. Are you going to start in with the questions again?”

Jessica was quiet a moment, then asked, “What did Tremblay mean when he said, ‘When are you going to do it?’ What’d he mean by that?”

“He never said that.”

“I heard him.”

LeBrun continued to stare straight ahead. “What he said was, ‘Why’d you do it?’ Meaning why did I bring you all the way down here.”

“That’s not what he said.” But Jessica wasn’t one hundred percent certain and LeBrun must have heard the doubt in her voice. A few snowflakes drifted across the windshield. More were caught up in the headlights.

LeBrun put his foot on the brake and the pickup slowed. “You want to ride in the back? It’s a long way. You could freeze to death.”

Jessica slouched down in her seat and stuck her chin in the collar of her coat. She wondered whether she had misheard and what it meant if she hadn’t. And she thought about what to do now. She couldn’t even go back to stripping. Tremblay would do something horrible to Jason, she was sure of it. Her sense of defeat was like a stone on her heart. Everything felt pointless and wrong.

—

On Wednesday, December 2, the police had brought the results of the autopsy: Scott had been murdered. This fact gave new significance to Bobby Newland’s disappearance. The autopsy had shown that Scott had been killed by a sharp object pushed up through the base of his skull. The state policeman in charge of the murder investigation was Harvey Sloan, a lieutenant in his midforties who wore dark suits and colorful ties. Over and over, Sloan heard how Bobby had accused the Bishop’s Hill community of Evings’s death. And again the possibility was raised of a link between Evings and Scott, though the police themselves said nothing. Bobby’s description was sent all over the country. The fact that he was gay seemed to suggest that he might have had a special motive for murdering a young boy.

The commotion caused by Bobby’s absence lasted till the next morning, when he was located on Martha’s Vineyard, where he had lived before coming to Bishop’s Hill. He had arrived on the Vineyard on Saturday, returned to the restaurant where he had worked, and asked for his old job back. Plenty of people had seen him and there was nothing to indicate that he was trying to hide. Even so, Lieutenant Sloan had him picked up, then he flew over to Martha’s Vineyard with another policeman to question him. By late afternoon Bobby had been released, although he had been told to stay on the island.

Hawthorne called Bobby on Friday, after getting his phone number from Lieutenant Sloan. Bobby had been shocked by Scott’s murder and angry that he had been a suspect. It also confirmed his belief that he had done the smart thing by leaving. He apologized to Hawthorne for his sudden disappearance, but he added, “What possible reason did I have to continue there?”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Hawthorne said. He was sitting in his office and his desk was heaped with papers. “I thought you did a good job, and the kids liked you.”

“I hated Bishop’s Hill,” said Bobby. “I was only there because of Clifford. It’s an awful place and the people are awful as well.”

Fritz Skander wanted to sue Bobby for breach of contract. “It will mean some additional money,” he told Hawthorne. “Goodness knows, we need it.”

“I have no intention of suing him,” Hawthorne answered.

“Well, he certainly won’t be receiving his November paycheck,” said Skander, “and if he ever asks us for a recommendation, he’ll find he’s barking up the wrong tree.”

The discovery that Scott had been murdered brought a number of police detectives to Bishop’s Hill. Chief Moulton was often on campus as well, even though the state police investigation seemed to have passed him by. Lieutenant Sloan never consulted him and Moulton was allowed to poke around Bishop’s Hill only as a courtesy. A state police lab crew spent much of Wednesday in Gaudette’s apartment and sealed off Scott’s dorm room. Bobby’s small apartment was also taken over.

The psychological effect of the murder was disastrous. All pretense of teaching came to a stop. Larry Gaudette had been well-liked. It was shocking to think of him as a murder suspect. Bobby Newland’s decision to quit heightened the sense of chaos. Four psychologists were brought over from Mary Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, and counseling sessions were expanded. It had already been decided to close the school a week early for Christmas vacation, on the eleventh instead of the eighteenth. Hawthorne would have closed the school even sooner if it hadn’t been for the various difficulties of changing plane tickets and travel plans and the disruption to parents’ schedules. Quite a few kids would have had no place to go. Also, the police were reluctant to have the students who had been at the school over Thanksgiving suddenly taken out of reach.

Hawthorne was constantly on the phone to members of the board, trying to convince them that, despite the huge disruption, the school was continuing to operate. Gifts to the school had increased and the work on the roof of Emerson Hall would be completed by mid-January. Although applications were no higher than the previous year, at least they hadn’t gone down.

Carolyn Forster, the trustee at Dartmouth, assured Hawthorne that he had the board’s full confidence, and Hamilton Burke told him on Friday, “We have no intention of closing the school. We’ll keep it going till the last dime is spent.”

At the moment, it seemed to Hawthorne that he was operating on sheer will, with no thought beyond the Christmas vacation. The next semester remained vague; he needed to hire two new psychologists and he needed to have more of the faculty on his side. But at other times he was overwhelmed by pessimism and wondered why he was wasting his time. There was no guarantee that the school would make it, and really, how could they ever get over Scott’s death?

The police interviewed everyone who had known Scott, which meant the entire school. Kate was questioned about Scott’s call to her on Thanksgiving Day when he had been looking for Hawthorne. Had Scott seemed upset? Was he scared? A hundred times Kate blamed herself for not driving to the school right away and bringing Scott home with her. But how could she have known? Even Hawthorne regretted going down to Krueger’s in Concord; if he had been at the school to receive Scott’s call, then the boy might still be alive.

Hawthorne had coffee with Kate in the Dugout late Friday morning to assure her that she couldn’t blame herself about Scott. Herb Frankfurter and Tom Hastings sat drinking coffee across the room. Hawthorne was aware of their quick looks and knowing expressions. Several students were playing video games and a dozen more were grouped around a few tables. Something by the Spice Girls was on the jukebox, although the volume had been turned down.

“It wasn’t as if I’d been doing anything important,” said Kate, explaining why she hadn’t gone over to the school. “It was just laziness on my part.”

“You didn’t know anything was wrong.”