“Does this kid have a name?” I grab a pen and the first piece of paper I can get my hands on: Optimal check stubs, itemized, about two thousand of them, fanned out on my floor.

“Monty Devue,” he says, and I freeze. I used to babysit for Monty back when he was a stringy goofball, all knees and elbows, who wanted to be a freight train operator or Bill Gates when he grew up. A good kid—gentle, softhearted. Slow to learn, but tenacious and curious.

“There must be a mistake,” I say. Monty would never light a fire in the middle of a drought on Gallagher’s property, if only because of the animals. Monty always loved animals, used to rescue snails and turtles from the road.

“There isn’t,” Kahn says, and hangs up.

For a long time I sit there. Monty. The fire. Lilian McMann, and her daughter in those argyle socks, and Becky Sarinelli with her skirt cinched at her waist.

I open my computer again. The results page emerges from the darkened screen.

Wallace Rush, the CFO of Optimal, with Byron Grafton at a pledge event.

Wallace Rush and Byron Grafton, as undergraduates, shirtless and painted with the same fraternity symbol.

Wallace Rush and Byron Grafton, suited up at an alumni dinner for their fraternity. With them is Colin Danner.

And finally: a formal reprimand of Wallace Rush, Byron Grafton, and Colin Danner issued by the University of Indiana for “abusing the position of power they assume as representatives of their fraternity.”

Old habits, it seems, die hard.

—

I won’t sleep, not unless I drink, and if I drink I know I’ll be tempted by the closeness of Condor’s house, by his bright windows lit against the darkness like some kind of sign.

Before I realize it I’m in my car and I’m heading for Frank Mitchell’s storage space, as if I’m pulled there involuntarily by gravity.

Security is even shittier than last time: a secondary gate is wide-open, so I drive straight around to unit 34 without even blowing a kiss to the manager lumped over his phone in the main office. The whole place is a jigsaw of locked cells, a miniature postapocalyptic city with no people left in it.

The lock opens a little easier this time and I roll open the door, wincing at the way the sound makes crashing waves over the silence. But still no one comes, and I remind myself that I am here legally, sort of, that I’ve been given permission to enter legally, even if I got permission by lying. The lights blink on after a short delay, and I roll the door down behind me, once again wishing there was ventilation. The whole place carries a faintly chemical smell that tingles my nostrils and tastes sweet in the back of my throat. As I move toward Kaycee’s artwork I imagine that the paintings themselves are sweating acrylic, that the wet, slick look of the paint isn’t a trick of the light but because she was only recently here.