“No! That wasn’t me. It was someone else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know who it was. I couldn’t see.”

“Then Dada broke it up. Laura ran into the woods. Are you sure you didn’t follow her?”

“No,” Finn told them. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs.

“You said you don’t remember. Isn’t it possible you did follow Laura into the woods? Toward the beach?”

“I wouldn’t do that.” His eyes darted around, looking for escape.

“That night didn’t end in the field. Someone went after Laura. Someone took the baseball bat and chased her up to the north beach. Someone killed her. Beat her to death. Hammered her until she was almost unrecognizable. If I did that, I’d probably black it out, too.”

“Oh, my God,” Finn murmured.

“Or did you just see it? You’re a watcher, right? Did you see who killed Laura? Because that’s what we need to know. We need to know what happened.”

“I don’t remember.”

Maggie leaned forward. “You remember Mary Biggs, though, don’t you? You remember what she looked like, right? Well, here’s what she looks like now.”

She spilled a stack of photographs onto the desk. Autopsy photos. She picked them up one by one and pressed them into Finn’s hands, watching him go blue, watching him swallow hard, watching his head bob back and forth like the ticking of a clock as he stared, unable to look away, at the swollen, lifeless remains of Mary Biggs, pulled from the water after she drowned.

“You killed her, Finn. You killed this wonderful girl.”

Finn squeezed his eyes shut.

“OPEN YOUR EYES!” Maggie bellowed at him. His eyelids sprang up in shock. She clutched a close-up photo of Mary’s face, her skin puffed and pale. She shoved the photo so close to Finn that Mary’s face was his whole world, and he couldn’t see anything else.

“Tell me why,” Maggie said. “Tell me why you did this to her.” Her voice softened. “Look, I know you didn’t mean to. Did you love her? Did you want a chance to tell her how you felt? But she didn’t understand. She was scared of you.”

Finn gulped air like a fish. He swallowed hard as if something were in his mouth that wouldn’t go down.

“Mary and Laura both deserved better,” Stride said quietly.

Finn was a rubber band that had been stretched until it was frayed and ready to snap. When Finn buried his face in his hands, Stride caught Maggie’s eye. They both thought the words would spill out now, like a dammed-up river seeping through sandbags and finally bursting free. He would talk. He would confess. He would throw off the anvil that had weighed on his conscience. He would seek absolution for the secrets that had made his life so miserable that he could only escape it into a numbed world of marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol.

“Let it go,” Maggie murmured.

Stride said, “It’s okay.”

Finn stared wildly at them. Tears ran from his eyes; mucus ran from his nose. He clapped a hand to his mouth, shoved them both aside with a stiff jerk of his arm, and bolted through the door, slamming it behind him. They heard the gasping, retching noise of his stomach spewing onto the marble floor of City Hall. When Stride opened the door again, the sweet stench of vomit made him cover his nose and look away.