Then, from the bed, there is movement.

“Oh,” says Vic Hewitt. “Oh. Oh. I guess you’re here about Bear.”

His voice is remorseful—but also younger, more energetic, as if he is returning in his mind to another time in his life.

Judy hesitates. She isn’t certain whether statements from those with infirm minds—the term she learned at the academy—are admissible in court. But her own personal curiosity, in this situation, wins.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m afraid I’m here about Bear.”

Vic Hewitt is struggling, now, to sit up in bed. Judy bends down, places a hand on his back. Helps him. Then sits on the edge of his bed. Upright now, Hewitt gazes directly at her, and she sees his eyes are filled with tears.

“I only helped,” he says. “I only helped.”

“You didn’t kill him?” Judy asks.

“Kill him? God no,” says Vic Hewitt.

“Who did?” Judy says.

And then, from outside the door, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Judy goes quiet. Draws her gun. Walks swiftly toward the wall next to the threshold, and puts her back to it.

“Oh no,” says Hewitt. “Oh no.”

The person stops outside the door. Judy can hear breathing. She will fire this gun, she tells herself, only if necessary.

At last, T.J. Hewitt takes one step into the room, looking in Judy’s direction already, as if she knows who will be there.

She looks Judy up and down. Looks directly at her gun.

“I’ve got one of those too,” she says, mildly. “But I don’t draw it on people.”

“Lie down,” Judy says. And then she adds: “Please.”

T.J. sighs. Takes her time. She gets down on her knees, looking up at Judy all the while as if demonstrating the ridiculousness of the exercise. Then lowers herself, in a slow push-up, to the ground.

Judy, gun still drawn, pats her down.

“All right, listen,” she says. “You and I are going to walk toward the Command Post together.”

“Toward my house, you mean,” says T.J.

“Sure.”

“Well, that won’t work.”

“Why?”

“I can’t leave my dad here. He wanders. That door has to be locked.”

Judy sighs, exasperated. “Can he come with us?”

T.J. gives a half laugh. “Hardly. Look at him. I had to carry him up the stairs to get him here.”

For a moment, Judy and T.J. look at each other. Then T.J. says: “Tie us up.”

Judy blinks. “With what?”

“There’s rope downstairs. All kinds of stuff. Tie us up. I’ll help you.”

She hesitates. It feels like a trap; and yet there is no other option, in Judy’s mind, that doesn’t involve leaving at least one of the Hewitts alone.

And so she does it: she follows T.J. down into the slaughterhouse, and then around the side of it toward another building T.J. calls the granary, and from here they extract the rope, and back upstairs, in the little apartment above the slaughterhouse, Judy ties the Hewitts together, back to back on Vic Hewitt’s bed. Then she ties the rope itself to the bed frame.

•   •   •

Fifteen minutes later, she returns, with four investigators and five state troopers.

•   •   •

Thirty minutes later, she’s sitting in the passenger’s seat of a patrol car. The Hewitts are in the back.

Victor

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975

In the Director’s Cabin, Vic was speaking with a recalcitrant twelve-year-old boy, a child who had been shunned by his peers and had recently converted his embarrassment at this development into physical aggression.

In the middle of their conversation, the boy had stopped suddenly to point through a nearby window.

“What is it?” said Vic, turning.

“Something’s in the lake,” said the boy—his tone changing from bitter to unsettled.

Sure enough: in the middle of Lake Joan was a white-bellied object that looked at first like a surfacing whale.

Vic stood and walked to the window.

It was a rowboat, capsized.

“Stay here,” said Victor. “Don’t get up out of that chair.”

•   •   •

Outside, Vic broke into a run. A bad thunderstorm had just come through, sending counselors and campers inside, and the grass was slick with new rain. He stumbled, once. Fell to his knees. Then stood again.

The grounds felt empty. He swung his head around, but saw no human forms.

Even up the hill, at Self-Reliance, it was quiet—for the first time in a week, it seemed. The Van Laars had been having their annual party on the grounds—to which Victor, who used to be included when Peter I was alive, had not been invited in years.