I swallowed, and Cavendish stormed off. I stumbled toward the patrol car.

Ten minutes later the cruiser slowed outside my house, and I made it up the porch. Opened the door and let Purvis out.

My bulldog climbed into my lap, and I thought of the conversation with Cavendish six hours ago. About that cop, Terry Willard, who quit the force.

Firing a gun just does something different to each person. For some guys, they don’t want to touch the steel again.

I ran the night back in my head. From when the short guy arrived to when we got back down and saw the ambulance.

But mostly I thought about that moment in the forest.

The click Remy heard wasn’t the sound of a flashlight going off.

The old guy had fired a single shot at Remy, but his clip was empty.

And I hadn’t returned fire. I imagined that Remy had guessed at that in conversation with Chief Senza and Dr. Cavendish. After all, how else would the doc suspect it?

I wanted a drink, and it was good that the house was empty. Dry of the poison.

I laid back on the top step of the porch, my back on the cool concrete. What was the first stage called again? Of an officer-involved shooting?

Impact?

I felt flattened. Out of breath, and I didn’t want to go back to work. Didn’t want to talk to another soul, especially anyone who was a cop.

18

Wednesday, September 11, 1:56 p.m.

At first Allie D’Antone didn’t understand what she was witnessing.

A smear of red paint.

A mahogany-colored handprint that slid along the white wall. Revealing a hand that grabbed at one of the art smocks.

The bell had just gone off, and the words of Ms. Borland were ringing in her ears.

Always use an art smock, Ms. B would say. I don’t want to hear someone’s momma telling me they ruined a perfectly good blouse in art class.

Then it was like slow motion.

Mr. Tanner. What was he doing here?

And why was he covered in paint?

From behind her, Allie heard a noise.

It was Avis screaming, and some part of Allie knew that something was wrong. Because Avis knew things that the other girls didn’t know. Avis’s dad told her stories. Stories of crime and violence.

Mr. Tanner grabbed at the hook that held the white smocks, and yanked it off the wall, landing on the ground with the pile of smocks atop him.

And then she saw the man.

Standing as if he were catatonic.

He looked like the dad of a cute boy in her French class.

Except that he stood over Mr. Tanner with a gun, as the science teacher fell to the ground, his chest leaking red all over the art smocks.

19

I woke up the next day, still fully clothed in what I’d worn during the stakeout. I loosened my legs from around Purvis’s body and rolled over to see the clock by the bed: 10:21 a.m.