When I opened the door Louise bolted. I saw her run past Sister Simon. She was barefoot, and my first instinct was to chase her. She ran so fast she was gone before I knew it. I stood for a while watching the empty stairwell. I’m not sure what I was thinking at first, not thinking at all, I guess, though I remember I could not shake the image of Louise running from that room. I had expected only to see a dead girl. It never occurred to me that the nuns would lock Louise back up in the room with Ernestine after they had found Ernestine dead. I removed my hat to enter the room.

There was a smell in the room, the familiar smell of death again, too sweet, not like flowers, more like potatoes, frozen potatoes, the kind we used to eat when there was nothing else to eat. Ernestine Chief Spear was captured in a knot of sheets. Old sheets strangled her arms, wrapped her ankles, bound her so tight the rigid arch of her back suggested a struggle to free herself from the grip of the sheets rather than the struggle to regain her breath. Her hair was dry and snarled. A small froth, like egg whites, beaded her mouth. Her eyes were open, clean as glass. I felt a flutter in my chest and I swallowed hard. My mouth was thick with saliva. My chest was tight. I turned back to Sister Simon. She was still standing in the doorway with her hands folded in front of her. Her black habit was chalk stained. I expected her to be praying, but she was looking at me like I was supposed to clean up the mess instead of investigate.

“You locked Louise back up in here with her?” I said, turning again toward Ernestine. Sister Simon was calm and justified. “We didn’t want her out in the halls,” she said. “We didn’t want her to scare the others.” I nodded, knowing cruelty would never be a crime around here.

I checked the room to distract myself. The lamp by the bedside had been broken. There was no other source of light in the room except the window, and it had been partially boarded; a bad jail for a grown man let alone two girls in the throes of puberty. It had been dark in here all night. Kick marks marred the bottom of the door and the shellac had been scratched off. Louise. Places in the wall clawed. Bloodstains. I looked away. “You must have heard something,” I said, “the door banging?”

“Nothing,” she said. “If the students heard anything, they haven’t said.”