She showed him the poem.

“And here,” she said, showing Hunter the stuck-together photos with the cut-out letters. “Proof, or close to proof. I have actual evidence about this case. And if your aunt does as well, I need to see it. Because I feel like she is playing some kind of game with me. And something is going on at my school. Two people have died.”

“Accidentally,” he said.

“Yeah, but something is happening. If this money theory is something Mackenzie really said, I need to see the notes.”

Hunter inhaled deeply and looked at the office door.

“I’m the real deal,” Stevie said. “I’m not here for the money. I’m here to find the answers. Please.”

Hunter’s gaze drifted along the floor, then up to Stevie’s face.

“She’ll be back in less than an hour,” he said. “She never teaches the full forty-five minutes. Come on.”

He went through the French doors, and Stevie followed. Once inside, he walked toward a file cabinet. But instead of opening it, he knocked a stack of magazines on the floor out of the way with the tip of his crutch.

“She’s paranoid,” he said, leaning the crutch against the cabinet and getting down on the ground. He pushed the magazines off and revealed a pizza box underneath. This, he opened. The pizza box was unused, and inside it contained several manila folders. He thumbed through them, then selected one. He sat back on his heels for a moment.

“I think when she talked to Mackenzie, he was sick,” he said. “He was old. They had him on a lot of medication. He told her things that he had always kept quiet, because he was vulnerable. But, I guess, it had to come out.”

He considered, and then passed the folder up to Stevie.

The tab read: MACKENZIE. It was a thin folder, with only a few papers inside, handwritten on torn-out pieces of yellow legal paper. A lot of the notes seemed to concern whens and wheres of meeting. Then, there was one page with just two points:

* Ellingham left house on night of kidnapping for approx. 45 minutes around 2 a.m., did not go through front door. Seemed to leave from office. Mackenzie seemed sure that there was a tunnel leading from the Great House out, and possibly another that went from Minerva, where Ellingham would house his mistress, to a location on the opposite side of the property.

“Gertie von Coevorden my ass,” Stevie said. “So this is how she knew there was a tunnel.”

There was one other point, and it seemed important.

*** Last thing Albert Ellingham said was “It was on the wire”***

“On the wire?” Stevie repeated.

“Yeah,” Hunter said. “She read that to me. She thinks it means on the wireless? The night Albert Ellingham died, there was a big radio show . . .”

“The War of the Worlds,” Stevie said.

This was something that came up in every book about the case. On the night Albert Ellingham died, there was a radio broadcast by Orson Welles called The War of the Worlds. It was a play about an alien invasion landing in New Jersey, told in the style of a news broadcast. Except people in the 1930s weren’t used to that kind of meta story, and thousands of people freaked out thinking there was a real alien invasion going on and the world was ending.

“Seems like a weird thing to mention,” Hunter said.

“On the wire,” Stevie said again. “These are the big reveals? Something about a tunnel and a wire? What about the stuff about the will?”

“She would never write that down. Like I said, she’s really paranoid. She doesn’t even like that I have a phone that can take pictures. But I think that’s the . . . well, you probably noticed the bottles. And the smell. And everything.”

“Kind of hard to miss.”

“I should put this stuff back,” he said, reaching for the folder. “You should probably get out of here, or . . . you know, we could . . . If you want to take a walk or something? Get some coffee? Go somewhere that doesn’t smell like ass? Before she gets back and sees you?”

They walked down Pearl Street, from the university area, down to Church Street, where the shops and the tourist section took over. This street was blocked off to cars, so they walked down the middle. They said nothing for a bit—just let the silence sit between them.

“She went through treatment once,” he finally said, “about ten years ago, because my family staged an intervention. She said she went only because they made her, to keep them happy. She always says she doesn’t have a problem. I think she believes that.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hunter said. “Not for her, but . . . she’s not that hard to deal with. She’s fine to live with, basically. The house smells because she smokes inside and has no sense of smell. But my room is . . . it’s better. I have a giant air filter and a bunch of Febreze up there. I keep the window open a lot. Gets kind of cold.”

“Sounds awesome,” Stevie said.

“Sometimes I stay over with other people,” Hunter said. “My friends on campus. I just crash on the floor. It’s no big deal since I only live a few blocks away anyway.”

“Why do you do it?” she said. “Live here?”

“I get discounted tuition, I have a free place to live while I go to school, and I keep an eye on her and report back to everyone. With me around I think she’s a little more stable. She eats more regular meals. She maybe doesn’t drink as much. Every once in a while she gets kind of . . . agitated. She’s not dangerous or anything. She yells. But that’s it. We have one agreement—she doesn’t drive. I drive or she walks or takes a cab.”

Stevie wondered if Hunter really was as okay with this as he seemed. Living with an alcoholic aunt in a smoke-filled house in return for free room and board and a tuition discount seemed maybe not the best deal in the world, but on some level, she got it. You do what is necessary.

You make deals.

“You haven’t asked me about the crutch,” he said.

“I didn’t think I was supposed to,” she said. “You’re not wearing a cast, so I guess you use it permanently.”

He nodded.

“Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I’ve had it since I was fifteen. The cold doesn’t help. I should really live in Florida or something, but here I am, in warm and sunny Vermont.”

“Good pick,” Stevie said.

“It’s a big tuition discount. My friends have futons.”

There was a coffee place coming up on the right and Hunter headed for it, but Stevie lingered.

“The tunnel,” she said.

Hunter turned back.

“What about it?”

“How Ellie died down there. If we had known sooner . . . I don’t know. Maybe we could have gotten to her in time. Your aunt knew it was there. I know it’s not her fault. I’m the one who made Ellie run.”

“If I understand what happened,” Hunter said, “and I’m not saying I do, but, what you said was right. Wasn’t it? About what Ellie had done?”

“Yeah, but . . . I don’t think it was the whole story.”

“What do you mean?”

Stevie shook her head. She didn’t even know what she meant. There was too much information.

“You know what?” he said. “There are some cool swings by the water. Bench swings. Bench swings make everything better. Want to go try them out? Better than coffee!”

A bench swing sounded nice. Being with Hunter was . . . she wasn’t sure. Not terrible. Maybe odd, because he was so friendly. But was that wrong? Was it wrong just to be nice and well-adjusted?

“Sure,” she said. “A swing. I could think of worse things.”

They turned back off Church and headed toward the lake. Stevie pulled out her phone to check the time.

“Wow,” Hunter said. “That guy is getting the shit kicked out of him.”

Stevie looked up. There, down at the end of the street, under the bus shelter by the courthouse, there was a group of skateboarders.

One of them was repeatedly punching David in the face.

21

“OH, HI,” DAVID SAID AS STEVIE APPROACHED. HE SMILED. HIS TEETH were red with blood. Specks of it dotted his white collared dress shirt. He had dressed up again, just like he had on the first night they had both taken the coach to Burlington. On that occasion, David was trying to trick Stevie’s parents into thinking they were dating as a way of convincing them that she should stay at Ellingham after Hayes’s death. This time, there was no such explanation. He was just dressed to the conservative nines, getting his face smashed down the block from the courthouse. He was also wearing the two-thousand-dollar coat, which had grime all over it. There was a gash along his right cheek that was trickling blood. There was another cut above his eye. His shirt had torn down near the hem and some of the buttons were undone, indicating that something had happened in the torso area.

“How’s it going?” he said casually. “Who’s your friend?”

There was a bit of bloody spittle coming out of the side of his mouth.

“Are you okay?” she said. She tried to take him by the arm, but he shrugged it away.