I flipped through my note cards. The next obvious move was to chat with the principal at the alternative high school. I wished Dolan were on hand so he could handle it. Though I hated to admit it, he'd be subjected to a lot less guff. Mano a mano. Once he flashed that badge of his, people tended to respond. I picked up my minimap and located the Kennedy Pike, then fired up the Chevy and pulled out of the lot. On the way down Main Street, I detoured into a filling station and pumped gas into the tank. I stood there clutching the pump, watching the gallons go in while the total sales price went up. The process took so long I thought the tank must have sprung a leak. I'm accustomed to my VW with its gas tank the size of a bucket of paint. $29.46 later, I nosed out of the station and turned right.

Once I reached Kennedy Pike, I drove west, scanning for sight of the cemetery and the white frame structure across the street from it. This section of Quorum was made up of endless flat, empty fields stitched together with lines of trees that served as windbreaks. When I finally spotted the cemetery, it looked as flat as the fields around it. There was only a smattering of visible headstones. Most were laid flat in the ground. I could see a few concrete benches and a sparse assortment of plastic bouquets that had been left near graves. The surrounding fence was iron and without ornament. Square brick support posts appeared at fifteen-foot intervals. There were seven full-sized trees of an indeterminate type, but the branches hadn't leafed out yet and the limbs looked frail against the April sky.

Just beyond the cemetery entrance and across the street, I saw the Lockaby Alternative High School. I wondered if the students made the same melancholy association: from Youth to Death with only a stone's throw between. When you're of high school age, the days go on forever and death's little more than a rumor at the end of the road. Dolan and I knew death was just a heartbeat away.

I parked in the lot and followed the walkway to the front porch, up a flight of wide wooden steps. This must have been a farmhouse once upon a time. It still carried an air of small rooms and cramped hopes. I let myself into the foyer, where eight kids were sprawled on the floor with sketchbooks, doing pencil drawings of the staircase. The teacher glanced up at me and then continued moving from student to student, making brief suggestions about perspective. From upstairs, I could hear another class in progress. Laughter trickled down the treads like leaking water. I don't remember anything funny from my high school days.