“That’s good. Think all you want, but no calls. Are we agreed on that?”

Mrs. Sigsby looked at him with contempt, but the way she was biting her lips suggested she might also be afraid. If so, that made two of them. “Of course.”

But when she got to her office—the blessed air-conditioned silence of her office—she found thinking was hard. Her eyes kept straying to the locked drawer of her desk. As if it wasn’t a phone inside, but a hand grenade.

13

Three o’clock in the afternoon.

No news from the men hunting for Luke Ellis in the woods. Plenty of communications, yes, but no news. Every member of the Institute staff had been notified of the escape; it was all hands on deck. Some had joined the searchers. Others were combing the Institute village, searching all empty quarters, looking for the boy or at least some sign that he’d been there. All personal vehicles were accounted for. The golf carts the employees sometimes used to get around were all where they belonged. Their stringers in Dennison River Bend—including two members of the town’s small police force—had been alerted and given Ellis’s description, but there had been no sightings.

With Alvorson there was news.

Ionidis had shown initiative and guile of which Jerry Symonds and Andy Fellowes, their IT techs, would have been incapable. First using Google Earth and then a phone locater app, Zeke had gotten in touch with Alvorson’s next-door neighbor in the little Vermont town where Alvorson still maintained a residence. He represented himself to this neighbor as an IRS agent, and she bought it without a single question. Showing no signs of the reticence Yankees were supposedly famous for, she told him that Maureen had asked her to witness several documents the last time Mo had been home. A woman lawyer had been present. The documents were addressed to several collection agencies. The lawyer called the documents C-and-D orders, which the neighbor rightly took to mean cease and desist.

“Those letters were all about her husband’s credit cards,” the neighbor lady told Zeke. “Mo didn’t explain, but she didn’t need to. I wasn’t born yesterday. Handling that deadbeat’s bills is what she was doing. If the IRS can sue her for that, you better move fast. She looked sick as hell.”

Mrs. Sigsby thought the Vermont neighbor had it right. The question was why Alvorson would do it that way; it was carrying coals to Newcastle. All Institute employees knew that if they got into any kind of financial jam (gambling was the most common), they could count on loans that were next door to interest-free. That part of the benefits package was explained at every new employee’s intake orientation. It really wasn’t a benefit at all, but a protection. People who were in debt could be tempted to sell secrets.

The easy explanation for such behavior was pride, maybe combined with shame at having been taken advantage of by her runaway husband, but Mrs. Sigsby didn’t like it. The woman had been nearing the end of her life and must have known that for some time. She had decided to clean her hands, and taking money from the organization that had dirtied them was not the way to start. That felt right—or close to right, anyway. It fit with Alvorson’s reference to hell.

That bitch helped him escape, Mrs. Sigsby thought. Of course she did, it was her idea of atonement. But I can’t question her about it, she made sure of that. Of course she did—she knows our methods. So what do I do? What will I do if that too-smart-for-his-own-good boy isn’t back here before dark?

She knew the answer, and was sure Trevor did, too. She would have to take the Zero Phone out of its locked drawer and hit all three of the white buttons. The lisping man would answer. When she told him that a resident had escaped for the first time in the Institute’s history—had dug his way out in the middle of the night under the fence—what would that person say? Gosh, I’m thorry? Thath’s too bad? Don’t worry about it?

Like hell.

Think, she told herself. Think, think, think. Who might the troublesome housekeeper have told? For that matter, who might Ellis have t—

“Fuck. Fuck!”

It was right in front of her, and had been ever since discovering the hole under the fence. She sat up straight in her chair, eyes wide, the Zero Phone out of her mind for the first time since Stackhouse had called in to report the blood-trail had disappeared just fifty yards into the woods.

She powered up her computer and found the file she wanted. She clicked, and a video began to play. Alvorson, Ellis, and Dixon, standing by the snack machines.

We can talk here. There’s a mic, but it hasn’t worked for years.

Luke Ellis did most of the talking. He voiced concern about those twins and the Cross boy. Alvorson soothed him. Dixon stood by, saying little, just scratching his arms and yanking at his nose.

Jesus Christ, Stackhouse had said. If you have to pick it, go on and pick it. Only now, looking at this video with new eyes, Mrs. Sigsby saw what had really been going on.

She closed her laptop and thumbed her intercom. “Rosalind, I want to see the Dixon boy. Have Tony and Winona bring him. Right away.”

14

Avery Dixon, dressed in a Batman tee-shirt and dirty shorts that displayed his scabby knees, stood in front of Mrs. Sigsby’s desk, looking at her with frightened eyes. Small to begin with and now flanked by Winona and Tony, he didn’t look ten; he looked barely old enough for first grade.

Mrs. Sigsby offered him a thin smile. “I should have gotten to you much sooner, Mr. Dixon. I must be slipping.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Avery whispered.

“So you agree? You think I’m slipping?”

“No, ma’am!” Avery’s tongue flicked out and wet his lips. No nose-pulling, though, not today.

Mrs. Sigsby leaned forward, hands clasped. “If I have been, the slippage is over now. Changes will be made. But first it’s important . . . imperative . . . that we bring Luke back home.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded. “We agree, and that’s good. A good start. So where did he go?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“I think you do. You and Steven Whipple were filling in the hole he escaped through. Which was stupid. You should have left it alone.”

“We thought a woodchuck made it, ma’am.”

“Nonsense. You know exactly who made it. Your friend Luke. Now.” She spread her hands on her desk and smiled at him. “He’s a smart boy and smart boys don’t just plunge off into the woods. Going under the fence might have been his idea, but he needed Alvorson to give him the lay of the land on the other side of it. She gave you the directions piece by piece, every time you yanked on your nose. Beamed it right into your talented little head, didn’t she? Later on, you gave it to Ellis. There’s no point in denying it, Mr. Dixon, I’ve seen the video of your conversation. It is—if you don’t mind a silly old lady making a joke—as plain as the nose on your face. I should have realized it sooner.”

And Trevor, she thought. He saw it, too, and also should have seen what was going on. If there’s a comprehensive debriefing when this is over, how blind we will look.

“Now tell me where he went.”

“I really don’t know.”

“You’re shifting your eyes around, Mr. Dixon. That’s what liars do. Look straight at me. Otherwise, Tony is going to twist your arm behind your back, and that will hurt.”

She nodded at Tony. He grabbed one of Avery’s thin wrists.

Avery looked straight at her. It was hard, because her face was thin and scary, a mean teacher’s face that said tell me everything, but he did it. Tears began to well up and roll down his cheeks. He had always been a crier; his two older sisters had called him Little Crybaby Cry, and in the schoolyard at recess he had been anybody’s punching bag. The playground here was better. He missed his mother and father, missed them bad, but at least he had friends. Harry had pushed him down, but then had been a friend. At least until he died. Until they killed him with one of their stupid tests. Sha and Helen were gone, but the new girl, Frieda, was nice to him, and had let him win at HORSE. Only once, but still. And Luke. He was the best of all. The best friend Avery had ever had.

“Where did Alvorson tell him to go, Mr. Dixon? What was the plan?”

“I don’t know.”

Mrs. Sigsby nodded to Tony, who twisted Avery’s arm behind his back and hoisted his wrist almost to his shoulderblade. The pain was incredible. Avery screamed.

“Where did he go? What was the plan?”

“I don’t know!”

“Let him go, Tony.”