“Because it’s not that different than what happened here.”

“Then why don’t I know about it already?”

“That,” Taylor says, “is not my jurisdiction.” Then, “I brought this box up from storage myself. So, don’t you dare imply I don’t care.”

McGowan imagines the look Taylor gives her is the same one she scolds students with.

“Thank you,” McGowan says. And she means it.

She stands up to take the box.

“I do have my theories why you wouldn’t have heard about these two murders,” Taylor says.

“Murders,” McGowan repeats. She sits again with the box and removes the top.

Wanda says, “It’s disturbing, Detective.”

“But that’s not why people shut up about it,” Taylor says.

McGowan sees a small stack of typed pages.

“The reason is because they don’t think they should talk about it,” Taylor says.

McGowan’s heart picks up speed at two words on the top page: “bare hands.”

She thinks of Chuck Larson, folded up on himself in the passenger seat of her car, mumbling mostly disconnected facts about the city and its history like a schoolkid telling ghost stories during a power outage.

Daphne

McGowan wrote it off as Larson told it. Only using it for clues, links, to Tammy Jones. But now…

Is Joyce Taylor telling her the entire city has been quiet about this ghost story…intentionally?

Taylor says:

“They worry that if they do talk about it, and word spreads, then one person, two persons, three persons, four will be talking, writing, singing, and thinking about…her.”

“Her?” McGowan asks, her eyes still on the page. But she knows now who Taylor means.

“Don’t think for one second the people of Samhattan aren’t quiet about it on purpose, Detective.” And Taylor looks a little self-conscious for the first time since McGowan sat down. A little self-aware. “Don’t think for one second all the people you know, the people you see every day, don’t think for one second they don’t believe in the power of talking about—”

The phone erupts on the desk. Taylor gets it before the second ring. McGowan feels disoriented. So many questions.

Why do you look scared, Janice?

Taylor speaks into the receiver:

“Who’s calling the principal’s office when everybody knows the principal isn’t supposed to be in her office on a summer night?”

McGowan and Wanda watch as Taylor’s face goes from smug to curious to—

Scared, McGowan thinks again.

She closes the lid on the box. Knows she’s going to be reading it later. She stands up. Knows she’s going to be rushing from this office in seconds.

Taylor looks to her. Nods.

“At her home?” Taylor says into the phone. “I see.”

McGowan is already at the office door.

Principal Taylor cups a hand over the receiver and looks to McGowan with a wholly unguarded expression for the first time tonight.

“A second girl from the team,” she says. “Melanie Jack.”

But McGowan hears the name as she’s exiting the office.

She rushes up the tiled halls of the high school, the same halls the ballers walk as they dream of big games, big shots, big futures. She hears the name again, coming through the static of her CB: Melanie Jack, again, echoing in these halls, as if Melanie Jack were already, unfairly, part of a myth, and no longer (and never-again-to-be) real.