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.”