“Okay. Look,” McGowan says. Because sometimes the moment calls for a reality check. Even as she sees a line again, one she shouldn’t cross. Like the one in an interrogation room in Chaps. In some ways, that room was no different from this one. Four walls. Questions and unsatisfactory answers. “I’m not much for sparring. If you wanna feel like you’re winning this talk…then, great. You won. Let’s award you the prize first so we can just get that out of the way. I asked to talk to you because I’m looking for the killer of a young woman in this town, our town, and it’s my job to find him. I’m questioning everybody I can think of, and I have zero desire to make you or your school look bad. People get hurt all the time, yes, but if we can do something about even a small percentage of those, if we can put any killer behind bars, then we’re doing something pretty fucking amazing with our lives. So, let’s drop the boxer stances and talk. Woman to woman. Samhattanite to Samhattanite. Pretend you and me…we’re at the bar…and we’re just talking over a drink, discussing what we think could’ve happened to Tammy Jones. Because, who knows, Janice, we might just solve it.”

Principal Taylor doesn’t immediately react, and her expression is difficult to read. Will she make this easy? Or was her steel façade forged so long ago there’s no chance of uprooting?

“I thought you wanted to talk to me about a very specific thing, Detective. A thing you might want to talk to me about, considering you’re a detective and you live in Samhattan.”

“What do you mean?”

But Taylor is already lifting a box from beside her chair and placing it on the desk.

“Oh God,” Coach Wanda says, pain in her voice.

“We could’ve talked about this other stuff over the phone,” Taylor says. Triumph in her voice yet. “I could’ve told you I didn’t know of any males who might’ve done this and that would’ve been that. But this”—she taps the top of the box with a single blue fingernail—“this is the file on the last time something bad happened to a member of the girls’ basketball team.”

McGowan looks to the box. Looks to Wanda. She thinks of Chuck Larson’s story about the baller Belinda in 1998. Thinks how her ears perked up when he said there was no weapon found. No, he hadn’t said the girl was crushed to a pulp, but he did suggest the killer used his bare hands.

That was twenty-four years ago.

“Twenty eleven,” Principal Taylor says. “Two girls, Kell Darren and Nicole Welsh. Both members of the basketball team. Both now buried in the center of town.”

Is there relief in Taylor’s face too? Mirroring the empathy McGowan saw in Chuck’s?

“This is what you should be focused on,” Wanda says. Her voice cracks with the memory of what must be described in the box.

“How could I have known to ask about this?” McGowan says. She feels ambushed.