So the Sarne grapevine hadn’t gotten in gear yet, and she didn’t know. “Someone paid Scot to come here and hide in my room last night. He was supposed to beat me up. It was just like the other morning, except this time he was by himself. If Hollis Boxleitner hadn’t been with me, I could be in the hospital by now.”

“I didn’t know,” she said, and again I felt guilty. But there’s no gentle way to tell someone a tale like that. And I couldn’t minimize it any more than I had. “What’s happening to our town? We were okay until you came!”

That was a fine turnaround. “Your mother invited me,” I reminded her. “All I did was find Teenie’s body, like I was supposed to.”

“It would have been better if you’d never found her,” Nell said childishly, as if I could have predicted this outcome.

“That was my job. She shouldn’t have been lying out there in the woods, waiting to be found. I did my job, and it was the right thing to do.” I said this as calmly as I could.

“Then why is all this happening?” she asked, like I was supposed to supply her with an answer. “What’s going on?”

I shook my head. I had no idea. When I got one, one that would release my brother, I was never going to put foot in Sarne again.

Nell left to go to school, looking stunned and very young.

I stopped in the police station to give a statement about the incident of the night before and ask when I could see Tolliver. I was almost scared to ask the desk clerk, the round woman who’d been there the first time I’d come in the week before. I was scared that once they found out I wanted to see him, they’d find some way to keep me from it. And I didn’t even know who “they” were.

“Visiting hours are from two to three on Tuesday and Friday,” she said, looking away from me as if I were too loathsome for her eyes to behold.

Since it was Tuesday, I could see him that afternoon. The relief was enormous. But until two o’clock, I didn’t have anything to do. I was sick to death of that motel room.