“There’s no way Gabriel’s a killer. He’s…” I almost say a good kid, but I’m only a year older than he is, and how patronizing is that?

“Nice?” Ben supplies, then shrugs. “Nice people can do awful things. And Gabriel’s not all good. He got suspended for punching someone a few years ago. He’s got anger issues.”

I chew on Ben’s theory. Ludicrous, surely. But Gabriel was at the game—he’s a football player—and could have done it as easily as anyone else. Luke or Morgan. They’re on the board. Should Gabriel be, too? Should Ben?

“Not that I’m accusing you,” I say. “I’m not. But…where were you?”

I hold my breath, waiting for Ben’s reply.

“Where I am every halftime. In the locker room, trying to cool down out of that stupid mascot head.”

I stop an intrusive thought that now lives in my brain rent-free, courtesy of Natalie’s rumor about Ben and that giant foam head.

“So you know who was in the locker room and who wasn’t?”

Ben nods. “Gabriel wasn’t there.”

And Bronte says Morgan was missing from the cheerleaders, too.

The long stretch of Maura’s street ends, giving way to a neat row of houses with a proper sidewalk in front. The edge of the Seaview High parking lot is visible a few blocks off. We walk the rest of the way to the football field in companionable silence.

“Is there a plan?” Ben asks.

“Everyone keeps asking me that,” I mutter, scanning the area. Yellow police tape still cordons off the lower stairs that lead to the pool, but otherwise, the place is deserted. The shrine has grown, a mound of bouquets and teddy bears now limp and wet at the foot of the Caroline Quinn Memorial Bench.

“This way.” I take off, leading us to the field proper. I do a turn, sizing up the stands, identifying my approximate position, then come back around, point.

“The procession started there.” I power walk the path the cars took. They would have let the court hopefuls out in a side parking lot behind a squat cinder-block structure.

“What are we doing?” Ben jogs to keep up with me.

“Timing it.”

“Why?”

Because I need to keep busy. Keep following threads. Put myself in Natalie’s shoes. Crowd the other thoughts out of my head.

“Because we need to know how much time the killer had,” I settle for, pushing against the mist-turned-drizzle, rounding the athletic center, and pausing to orient myself relative to the main school building. We’re on the rear end of the tennis courts, and if Natalie took the long way around them she would have avoided the view of food-truck lines and the security officer. I check my phone for the time before moving on. City-trained, I’m an aggressive walker on my best day, but I take it slower—one, because of the rain, which has turned the grassy path around the back of the property a muddy slip risk, and two, because Natalie was in heels.