“Got a VCR in the school you can use,” the priest said. “I’m still not sure whether you’re doing the right thing, not sure I should encourage you since you stole the tapes you want to look at, but the man Baladine seems to do people a variety of harm. Set it up for you, then I have to meet with members of the parish council. Got a bunch of kids coming, cleaning out the crypt before school starts tomorrow. Parish picnic this afternoon. Lots to get done.”

I ran down to my room and picked up the tapes I’d taken from Baladine’s closet yesterday. The three of us walked through the church to a door that connected to the school. The dark vaulted space was full of life as a group of boys shouted to each other behind the altar: “Bet you it’s full of bones.” “Yeah, Carlos here is going to faint when he sees one of those arms coming after him, ain’t you, man?”

Father Lou interrupted them with a good–natured shout that they needed to be more afraid of him than of any bones and he’d be back in a minute to make sure they were clearing out the old hymnals. He undid the dead bolt and led us into another long unlit hallway. He walked quickly in the semidarkness. Morrell and I kept tripping on things like loose tiles as we tried to keep pace. Father Lou took us up a back staircase to the school library. There he reluctantly decided he needed light to see what he was doing and turned on one dim desk lamp.

When he saw that Morrell and I knew how to set up the VCR, he went back downstairs to see how his hooligans were doing in the crypt. I started with the tape for the week that Frenada died.

We got a series of disconnected frames from the voice–activated system of Rosario waking Utah and Madison, of Eleanor starting work with them in the pool and then turning off the camera. And then Frenada was poolside with Trant and Baladine. The little red date in the corner identified it as June 26, the night Frenada died. Trant said he understood Frenada was telling people that he, Trant, had stolen a T–shirt and he was tired of hearing about it. Baladine must have turned the camera off at that point because the next scene was the following day with Rosario in the nursery.

I sat back in my chair. “No proof, but very suggestive,” I said to Morrell. “Let’s get some copies of this before I send it back to the Baladines.”

He grunted agreement, although he pointed out there wasn’t enough there to get Baladine arrested, let alone convicted. I agreed and put in the first of the Nicola tapes to see if it might give us something more concrete.