Andrea thought about how Carson kept popping into Piper’s office when she was meeting with her. And how he seemed invested in the documentary—proud of it, even. Maybe he was more involved in the school than she thought. Maybe he was closer with Piper, too. She thought of the empty office they’d passed on the way to Piper’s that day. On the Facebook group, it had been reported that Carson, along with the rest of the staff eventually, had been interviewed about their whereabouts when the attack went down. Carson had been near the playground, tending to the new garden the kids had planted. He only came running when he heard the bellowing security guard.

But had anyone seen him? Could he have something against Piper? Only, what would his motive be?

“Baby, I’ll be right back,” she said, ruffling Arthur’s hair and walking to her laptop, which was open at the kitchen bar.

She clicked to the Silver Swans website. Carson Dillard, office manager, read his name in the directory. Below his name was a headshot of Carson giving a slightly snooty half-smile. Andrea had typed his name into Google; up came a few social media profiles. On Facebook, Carson posted pictures of himself with two small, fluffy white dogs; all the likes came from other members of his family and people who, through more clicking, had gone to high school with Carson in a very tiny town in Idaho. Andrea dug deeper. Carson’s parents were lumpy, badly aging people with troubling dental hygiene. His father wore a lot of camo. His mother sold Young Living essential oils. Some of their posts were political. They seemed . . . poor, actually.

But the image Carson was trying to present of himself in Raisin Beach was far from that. There were posts of a groomed Carson next to Piper at school functions, dinners, conferences. Sometimes, in his captions, he described himself as a “deputy director” of the school, or the “marketing director,” or once, simply “VP.” He was inflating his duties there, Andrea thought. Trying to make his life out to be even better than it was. Distancing himself from his roots.

More recently, there were other photos of Carson posing in front of an Audi S-class, sleek with fresh wax. How does one pay for an Audi S-class on an office manager salary? Andrea wondered—but maybe he was heavily in debt, again to reinvent himself into someone from a different class. He was also really into mirror selfies and posting how many reps he’d done in a newly acquired boot camp routine. Andrea clicked on the groups he belonged to: Louis Vuitton Fan Club, Audi Enthusiasts of America, and Triple-L Farms, which, Andrea learned upon clicking, sold cuts of Wagyu beef for $99 a steak.

She texted the other women. Carson Dillard’s family are bow-hunting Trump supporters. Then she included a picture of Carson posing next to his Audi.