Their ten acres at the edge of town had been given to them by Chase’s father, to build on. Gina had an image from that time of Chase on the roof with a hammer in one fist, and sawdust in his hair, and she had been deeply proud of him. He believed he could do things, like build a house, and so he could. But he had cut corners where he shouldn’t have. The inside doors were flimsy, the ventilation bad, the hot water tank too small. And still Chase loved the house, and would never leave it.

He was gone when she came downstairs again. She did her end-of-school paperwork, then took the dog to the beaver creek, cutting wide around the empty hobo camp with its murdered ghosts. From the road she could see the whole valley, locked in by mountains. The dog raced ahead and doubled back to her, then raced ahead again. Inconsequential white clouds broke up the midday blue. This walk, with the flash of redwing blackbirds in the burdock, was the only thing Gina loved about the house. But Amy loved it with the automatic love of children, and it would be dangerous to take her away. She was too ready to dismiss her mother already. When Gina got back, there were men in the farthest field, wearing flak jackets, guns and radios. Two squad cars waited at the bend in the road.

At one o’clock that morning, in Helena, a hundred miles to the south, four boys had stolen a red Volare. The Murphy boys were brothers: Joe had jail time, Danny had a juvenile record for stealing tools from garages. Lyle Ribaud was off the Blackfoot reservation, and people said he would have been all right if he hadn’t mixed up with the Murphys. Trey Jordan was only fourteen, a high scorer on standardized tests, a cleared suspect in his own father’s death the year before. The gun the boys carried—a little Walther PPK—was Trey’s.

The boys sat in the stolen Volare outside town drinking beer, talking about how nothing ever happened in Helena, how it was a boring, stupid town. Then they cruised past the drive-in, wishing it were open for burgers and shakes, and turned on Thirteenth. Joe Murphy drove slowly enough down the dark, sleeping street for Trey Jordan to fire one bullet through every front window for two blocks, each with a lovely, satisfying crash and shatter, until the two clips he had were empty. Then Joe headed north for Great Falls. It was 3:30 A.M., and they were gone before anyone knew what had happened.