THE EVIDENCE WAS ALL OVER THE FLOOR—THE PAPER CLIPS AND PEN caps. A sunbeam illuminated a dent she’d made in the case board.
The morning had come, and brought reality with it. And questions. Lots of questions, dancing around in her head in circles.
The questions, in no particular order:
What would the media make of this, another death at the infamous Ellingham Academy?
Wait, never mind the media—what would her parents make of this? Fancy School Manages to Kill Student. And the fact that she had been there?
Would the school close?
Maybe close for a few days. It couldn’t close for the year because of this, could it?
Why was she thinking like this? Someone was dead. Hayes was dead.
Because that is what brains do. They think. Her brain attic was full of new and strange things she had not been able to classify and sort yet. Stevie couldn’t feel guilty for her thoughts and she couldn’t engage with all of her thoughts. That was something they taught you in anxiety therapy—the thoughts may come, but you don’t have to chase them all. It was sort of the opposite of good detective work, in which you had to follow every lead.
She stuffed her face into her pillow for a while as her head throbbed gently. Her mouth still had a strange taste in it, the taste of . . .
Outside, she could hear strange voices and the occasional squawk of a radio. She managed to pull her face up and out of the safe, soft confines of the pillow and rubbed the gunk from her eyes.
Hayes. That had really happened. He had actually died. Hayes had died, and they had found his body. And, in response, she had come back and made out with David. It was all too real, too immediate, her feelings all coming together into one knot of terror and shakes and queasiness and embarrassment.
Focus.
Her brain floated around the facts for a bit. Hayes was on the ground, already dead. How could that have happened? She mentally looked around the little space at the end of the tunnel. She peered at the empty shelves on the wall. She scuffed at the stone floor with her shoe. She looked up the ladder, at the hatch that led to the observatory. . . .
About twelve feet up. If you fell from that distance onto the stone, you would be in bad shape. You could die.
Stevie saw it in her mind’s eye. She had gone up there. She had closed that hatch behind her. Had Hayes gone up to look around? Maybe he stepped the wrong way in the dark and fell through the hole.
Why did he go back? Probably to film something. But Hayes would have brought someone for that, probably. It really looked like he wanted to go alone. She saw the way he did his backward walk, trying to slip back.
But he hadn’t gone back to the garden. He’d gone all the way around, to the maintenance road, to the woods, to the tunnel. He’d gone back and died.
Riddle, riddle, on the wall . . .
She’d almost forgotten that, the terror that had woken her the other night. She had to have dreamed that. She was thinking about murder and death and tunnels and Truly Devious and her brain projected it all onto the wall.
Right?
Stevie rested flat on her back and practiced a few minutes of breathing exercises, making the exhales longer than the inhales, taking the air all the way down to her abdomen.
She could still smell some musky body wash or shampoo on her skin. David.
There was that as well. On any other day, this would have been the only story. Today, it barely made the cut.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “Now. Okay. Now. Get up. Now.”
She got up.
Shortly after, a showered Stevie, dressed in thin, loose sweatpants and her black hoodie, emerged into the common room. Janelle and Nate were at the table, both still in pajamas. Pix was on her phone in the kitchen. David sat on the sofa in rumpled jeans and a wrinkled maroon Henley shirt. His hair was wet, flattening some curls to his forehead. He looked at her when she came in—a direct, lingering look, but one without humor. He seemed to simply be taking her in, noting her presence.
There was little to say, some mumbled good-mornings, some nods. What do you say when your housemate dies, even if you don’t know him that well? Even if what you did know you didn’t like much?
You say very little.
Ellie appeared, wearing paint-stained, waffle-textured long underwear bottoms and a large, ripped-up T-shirt for a French band and long tube-sock tops on her arms. Her eyes were bright red and swollen. She dropped down on the sofa next to David, curled into a ball, and put her head on his lap. He absently set a hand on her mess of matted hair.
Stevie felt a swell of queasiness. Would they talk about what had happened? And if they did, what would they say? Maybe they would never talk about it. Maybe things that happened on nights like last night didn’t count.
Something in her plunged at that thought, and she stared into her coffee. It tasted dank and bitter, but it was hot, and drinking it made her feel something other than weird. So she drank it.
“Stevie,” Pix said, coming in. “That was Larry. They need to talk to you again, up at the Great House. He’s coming for you.”
Janelle looked at her fearfully. Nate went pale.
“That’s normal,” Stevie said. “The police do that. They need to ask the same questions several times to clarify the information.”
“Everyone else has to stay here,” Pix said.
“All day?” Ellie said, looking up from David’s lap. Her voice had that thick tone that happens after someone has been crying a lot.
“For now,” Pix said. “There are counselors coming if you need to talk.”
David rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
There were two police cars from the Vermont state police under the portico of the Great House as Stevie and Larry approached it a short while later.
“Just say what you know,” Larry said. “Just tell the truth.”
“I know,” Stevie said.
“How are you holding up?”
“I think I’m fine. Maybe it hasn’t hit yet. Is that bad?”
“It’s not bad or good. It just is. That’s something you’ll find out if you decide to go into this line of work. You have to take things as they are, not how you hear they’re supposed to be.”
That was one of the most sensible things an adult had ever said to Stevie.
Once inside, Stevie thought she’d be going to the security room, but instead Larry took her to the massive oak door that led to Albert Ellingham’s office.
“In here?” she said.
“That’s where the detective is speaking to people,” he said. “Just answer her questions. You’ll be all right.”
A detective this time. Not a uniformed officer.
Two leather chairs sat by the massive rose-marble fireplace, the disturbing trophy rug spread between them. A petite woman in a gray suit sat in one of these chairs writing in a small notebook.
“Stephanie?” she said, consulting the book. “My name is Detective Agiter. Come sit down.”
Stevie sat down in the opposite chair, one of Albert Ellingham’s personal chairs. Even though it was very old, the leather was still in fine condition and it had an easy, comfortable give. This is where he sat, running his empire, thinking of his lost wife and daughter.
Detective Agiter was a carefully curated palette of neutrals. She had long, elegant hands. Her dark hair was swept tight across her head into a bun, not a single strand out of place. Stevie most admired her shoes, which were utterly nondescript black flats. There was a studied stillness to her face. Never give anything away. Stevie needed to master this look. This was what a detective looked like.
I’m just going to record this,” she said, putting a digital recorder down on the small Art Deco table between them. “Interview between Stephanie Bell and Detective Fatima Agiter, Sunday, September tenth, nine forty-five a.m. Now, Stephanie, or Stevie?”
“Stevie.”
“Stevie, you were involved in the filming of video that was about the Ellingham kidnapping. Whose idea was the video?”
“Hayes’s.”
“How did you get involved?”
“He came and he asked me to help him make it.”
“And why did he ask you?” the detective said.
“Because I know a lot about it.”
“About the Ellingham kidnappings, you mean?” the detective clarified. Stevie nodded and admonished herself internally. You were supposed to be clear. It wasn’t clear.
“I know a lot about the Ellingham case. It’s what I came here to study. The crime . . . the history of it.”
“So Hayes wanted to make a show about the Ellingham kidnappings, and he came to you because you know about it. And you asked Nathaniel because he’s a writer?”
“Hayes asked me to ask him,” Stevie said.
“So it sounds like Hayes was assembling a group of people, all with different areas of knowledge. There was also Maris Coombes, who has theater experience, and Patrick Dashell, who studies film. And together, the group of you put this project together.”
“Correct,” Stevie said.
“How did you access the tunnel?”
Stevie’s heart lurched a bit.
“I opened the lock,” she said.
“How did you open it?”
“I picked it,” Stevie said.
The detective raised one of her well-groomed eyebrows, her only tell in this interview.
“You picked it?” she clarified.
“That’s right,” Stevie said. There was no denying it. She picked a lock. Good-bye, Ellingham. It was fun while it lasted.
“How do you know how to pick a lock?”
“YouTube,” Stevie said, shrugging. The shrug was supposed to make it look like this was no big deal and just something that people did, but she wasn’t sure how it came off.
“Any reason?”
“No? It’s easy? No. People do it. It’s a thing. Just a hobby.”
This did not sound good. Nothing to see here! I just pick locks for fun.
“Larry told me your interest is in law enforcement,” the detective said.
“Yes,” Stevie said.
“We usually don’t pick locks.”
“No,” Stevie said. “I know.”
Detective Agiter scratched her ear for a moment, then moved on.
“When you were finished, did you all leave the tunnel together, or in groups?”
Strange. She didn’t ask about the hatch opening at all. Stevie’s heart skipped and her brain glitched for a second.
“We left together,” she said. “Maris and Hayes . . . they stayed behind.”
“Do you know what they were doing?”
“I can guess,” Stevie said.
“What is it you would guess they were doing?” the detective said.
“Making out?” Stevie said. “Something like that?”
The detective half smiled and consulted her notebook.
“During the filming, there was theatrical fog. Do you know how this was created?”
“We had fog machines.”
“Did you use anything else?” the detective asked.
This was a weird question.
“No,” Stevie said.
“Just the three machines.”
“Correct,” Stevie said.
Seriously. Why was she asking about fog machines?
“I think that’s about it, Stevie,” she said. “Unless you can think of anything else that happened that was out of the ordinary?”
Stevie looked around her brain attic. There was, of course, the note on the wall. The note she probably imagined. You couldn’t tell the police about stuff you thought you probably imagined.
Except, could you? People did that in murder mysteries all the time, and it was always important.
“Nothing,” Stevie said.
“Okay. Interview complete at ten twenty.”
She stopped the recording and Stevie pulled herself out of the deep chair.
“What happened to Hayes?” Stevie asked.
The detective looked up at her.
“We have to wait for the coroner’s report,” she replied.
“No,” Stevie said, her face flushing. “Sure. Sorry.”
She made her way to the door and had just put her hand on the sharply edged crystal knob when she had a thought.
“There was one thing,” she said. “Janelle’s ID.”
Detective Agiter looked up from her notebook.
“What’s that?”
“My friend Janelle,” Stevie said. “Someone took her ID to Minerva. When we went to yoga class on Thursday, she had it. But when she went to leave, it wasn’t in her bag. Then the next day, it was on the path in front of our building.”
“Why do you say someone took it? Couldn’t she have lost it?”
“It was clipped into the front pocket of her bag,” Stevie said. “I saw it myself. She tapped us into yoga and put it back in the front pocket. When we left class, it was gone. And then it just showed up Friday morning outside.”
“What’s Janelle’s last name?”
“Franklin,” Stevie said.
The detective wrote this in her notebook.
“Thanks, Stevie,” she said, dismissing her. “Why don’t you head back to your house?”
There were two people from security in the main hall talking to police. Neither seemed to pay any attention to Stevie when she came out of the Ellingham office. Up on the landing, she saw Charles deep in conversation with Dr. Quinn and a few other faculty members. Stevie walked outside unaccompanied.
Outside, a cloud cover had come by fast. The campus was disturbingly quiet, as everyone was largely in their houses. There were many things to worry about at the moment, many things to feel and fear. But the thing that was currently at the forefront of Stevie’s mind was fog. Why ask about the fog, of all things? Who the hell cared about the fog? There had to be a reason. She asked twice.
Stevie combed through anything she knew about the fog machines. They were rentals. They spat out fake fog. They stank, kind of.
There was a little echo in the back of her mind. Fog. It had come up in another context. Fog . . .
Dry ice. She had just been around dry ice. It was in the workshop, when Janelle and Dash got into it about the poles, and Dash looked into the container with the dry ice and said that the fog machines were easier to work with.
Stevie stopped halfway back to Minerva and pulled out her phone and Googled dry ice, paging through the various search results until she landed on one that also contained the words safety hazard.
Dry ice is solidified carbon dioxide . . . not normally dangerous but caution should be used in handling . . . sublimates into carbon dioxide . . . must be used in ventilated spaces or else there is danger of hypercapnia, as carbon dioxide displaces oxygen, especially in low-lying structures such as basements, due to its weight. This can lead to unconsciousness and death, which can be rapid. . . .
Stevie swallowed hard.
The dry ice was in the workshop. Janelle’s pass was taken. Janelle’s pass opened the workshop.
She was supposed to go home. She’d already broken enough rules.
She should go back to Minerva.
So why was she turning away from Minerva and heading back toward the workshop area? Her pass wouldn’t let her in. What did she even think she would find? Her every instinct pressed her on, though.
“I’ll check the records,” she heard Larry say.
He and Detective Agiter were coming up behind her. Stevie had just enough time to duck behind a golf cart.
“You have times in and out?” the detective asked.
“Yeah, the system records both. Hang on.” Larry put his phone to his ear. “Jerry? I need you to pull up a record for me. The name is Janelle Franklin. I need to know the tags on her pass on Thursday evening.”
Stevie trailed behind them at a distance as they walked to the workshop. There was a pause as Larry got his own access card out and opened the door. Once they were inside, Stevie would lose track of this conversation, and losing track of this conversation seemed like a terrible idea.
That dreamlike feeling took over her again, and she found herself creeping low toward the door, catching it before it closed. She held it open with her finger to give them a chance to move farther into the room. She pushed it open a bit more and found that they were already on the other side of the room, looking at the blue dry-ice bin.
Was she doing this? She was doing this.
She pushed the door open farther and crept inside, moving behind a standing rack of yard implements.
“Jesus,” she heard Larry say, “this thing was full. How the hell . . . yeah, Jerry. Okay. Here we go. Into the art barn at sixteen fifty. Then nothing until one twelve the next morning. Taps in here to the workshop. Yeah.”
He tucked the phone away.
“So according to Stephanie Bell,” the detective said, “Janelle Franklin’s ID goes missing during a yoga class.”
“I’ll check that against her schedule, but they have yoga classes in the art barn. That checks out to me. So someone takes the pass . . .”
“And uses it to come in here at one in the morning. We’ll need to take it and print it. This adding up to you? He comes in here, takes . . .”
This was when Stevie’s phone started ringing.
Larry and the detective looked over at the same time.
There was no point in trying to stay concealed. Stevie stood up.
“Hey,” she said.
She took a moment and glanced at the phone.
The screen read: PARENTS.