One of the troopers called Nate’s name and summoned him into the front parlor. Larry sat on the step next to Stevie.

“How you doing?” he said.

“I wrote some of it down,” Stevie said, showing him the notes. “As fresh as I could.”

Larry read the page carefully. Stevie followed his eyes as they went to each line.

“This is good,” he said, passing it back. “You’re handling this well.”

“Do you know what happened?” Stevie asked.

Larry shook his head.

“Don’t know?” Stevie said. “Or can’t say?”

“They’re ready for you,” an officer said, stepping up to Stevie and guiding her into the security office.

Here she was, watching a case up close, giving a statement, experiencing all the things she so longed to experience.

All it took was for someone to die.

17

THE POLICE KEPT STEVIE ABOUT A HALF HOUR. THE QUESTIONS WERE exactly what Stevie expected. Run through the order of the day. Who went where and what time? What was Hayes doing in the tunnel?

The collection of information, she knew, needs to be clinical. Don’t assume. Don’t get friendly. Ask the questions. Establish the timeline. Record accurately and quickly. She tried to keep her answers clear, short, but complete. No embellishments. No editorializing on what it all meant.

When she was done, Larry was waiting with Nate so they could drive back to Minerva. As the three of them stepped outside, a crime scene processing van made its way onto the property. This caught Stevie short for a moment and gave her a quick surge of panic. She thought again of the hatch. But it was very likely that all death scenes where the cause wasn’t immediately clear had to be processed.

The moon was thin like a hook, and the owls were calling. The smell of fall leaves blew on the wind and Hayes was dead.

They returned to a very wakeful Minerva. There was a kind of a suctioning sensation as she and Nate entered—like they vacuumed the conversation out of the air.

“Oh my God,” Janelle said, hurrying to Stevie and hugging her. “Are you okay? Oh my God. Is he really dead? Stevie? What happened?”

Over Janelle’s shoulder, Stevie looked at Ellie and David. They were hunched up together on the corner of the purple sofa. Ellie was largely in a ball—not crying, but vacant. David sat close to her, his arm dropped gently over her shoulder.

Nate started to giggle.

“What the hell are you laughing about?” Ellie snapped.

“I have no idea,” Nate said.

“It’s shock, El,” Pix said. “Just laugh, Nate. You can’t help how you react.”

Nate started laughing harder, and then he started to hiccup.

Stevie felt the sleepiness descending hard now. She was utterly calm, just very tired.

“I’m going to bed,” she said simply.

Back in her room, Stevie found that she was moving with very slow, precise motions. Most nights she just pulled off her clothes and threw them into her laundry sack. Tonight, she hung her coat carefully, pulled each arm delicately out of her shirt, removed her pants as if they were fragile. She rolled everything and dropped it carefully into the bag, then dug the warm, school-issued pajamas from the bottom of the dresser and put them on.

She climbed into bed, lights on, and stared straight ahead, gripping her phone as if waiting for it to ring. No one was going to call. It was just something to hold.

She had no idea how much time had gone by when there was a quiet knock on her door. At first she decided to ignore it, but then she pushed herself up and opened it.

Somehow she knew it would be David.

“Your light was on,” he said quietly. “Can I come in?”

She blinked and rubbed her neck, then shrugged and left the door hanging open. He came in and shut it. Stevie sat on the floor against the foot of her bed. He leaned against the wall. His hair had been tamed a bit and his expression was unusually serious.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked.

“I know he’s dead,” she said. “That’s it.”

David drew his lips inward in thought and rubbed his hands together for a moment. He paced over to Stevie’s bureau and drummed his fingers on the edge for a moment. He didn’t seem to be focusing much on anything. He slid down to the floor. Stevie stared at the lower half of his sweatpants, which seemed like a safe place to stare. They were very old and may have once been deep navy blue. Now they were washed-out blue-gray with the word YALE on the leg in cracked white lettering.

“Why did you say that before, about not talking?” he finally asked.

“Because witnesses are unreliable,” she replied.

“You think people will lie?”

“No,” she said. “It’s not that. It’s that people don’t know what they remember. It’s not that people lie so much as people are just wrong about what they think they see. Humans are bad at estimating time, distance, and duration of events, especially when scared or stressed. And it’s all a lot worse in the dark. But one of the worst things is when witnesses start talking to each other. As soon as you start talking to someone else, the story you have in your head changes. Human memory is rewritten like computer memory. You just get the most updated file. Which is why, if you see some kind of accident, you should record what you experienced right away, without speaking to anyone else. That’s going to be your clearest account. You may still be off, but you won’t start baking in mistakes.”

The explanation ran smoothly from her lips, as if she had been waiting her entire life to deliver it to someone. It arrived fully formed. Now that she was talking about crime more hypothetically, her body warmed a bit and her senses returned.

“What?” David said.

Stevie looked around for a way to explain. The only objects she had to use for examples were pens and paper clips. They would do. She pulled off some caps.

“Say there’s a robbery,” she said, “and there’s a getaway car and a bunch of robbers with guns. Witness One may then recall three robbers, two with masks and one with a hat, and a black car.”

She set down one black pen cap and two paper clips.

“Witness Two may remember four robbers, all with masks, and a blue car.” She added two paper clips and replaced the black cap with a blue one. “And maybe they thought they saw a motorcycle.”

She pushed a roll of tape past.

“Witness Three is sure it was three robbers,” she went on, taking away a paper clip. “One wore a mask and a hat, and the car was green. I don’t have a green cap, so . . . anyway. Witness Three is sure of what he saw. That’s a big deal—people who think they have good memories are sometimes the least reliable but the most likely to sway others. And that witness then says that the motorcycle was with the green car.”

“Is that the tape?” David asked. “And the green car is that blue cap?”

“The point is,” Stevie said, “now that Witness One has talked to Witness Three, and Witness Three seems really sure about what they saw, Witness One may now think back and see three robbers in hats, not masks. Witness Two now questions the masks and thinks the car was green. And one robber was very tall. Witness Three claims they were all tall. And suddenly everyone starts to say that they were all tall, and that the motorcycle was with the green car.”